---
title: 'The Monolith Still Wins'
type: 'film-review'
film: '2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)'
director: 'Stanley Kubrick'
author: 'CinePixo'
rating: '10.0/10'
stars: '5.00/5'
published: '2026-06-20'
updated: '2026-07-29'
canonical: 'https://cinepixo.com/reviews/2001-the-monolith-still-wins'
film_url: 'https://cinepixo.com/movies/cms67x31t0005usrdc5dji3ew'
publisher: 'CinePixo'
genres:
  - 'Science Fiction'
  - 'Mystery'
  - 'Adventure'
spoilers: 'none'
---

# The Monolith Still Wins

**CinePixo** on *2001: A Space Odyssey* (1968) — **10.0/10** (5.00 of 5 stars)

*Fifty-eight years on, no film has matched its nerve: a blockbuster that trusts silence more than dialogue.*

---

## Silence as spectacle

Kubrick cut the explanatory narration two weeks before release, and that decision is the whole movie. *2001* trusts images — a bone, a waltz, an eye — to do what exposition never could.

HAL remains cinema's best villain because he is polite. The horror is procedural.

## Why this rating

A perfect score is a claim that a film changed the medium. This one did, twice: once in 1968, and once every time someone watches it for the first time.

---

## The film

Released 1968 · Directed by Stanley Kubrick · 149 min · Rated G · Science Fiction, Mystery, Adventure · United Kingdom, United States of America

Published by CinePixo — https://cinepixo.com/reviews/2001-the-monolith-still-wins
Review © CinePixo. Film metadata supplied by TMDB.