In the year 2001, Dave Bowman was taken by the Jupiter monolith and transformed into a powerful being. Now, in the year 2010, Dr. Heywood Floyd, the man held responsible for Discovery’s failure, is going to Jupiter. He and his crewmates must reactivate the psychotic HAL-9000 computer, so they may learn what happened, and they must find out the meaning of Dave Bowman’s last transmission… “My God, it’s full of stars…”

2001 is a story of evolution. Sometime in the distant past someone or something nudged evolution by placing a monolith here on earth (presumably elsewhere throughout the universe as well) Evolution then enabled man to reach the moon’s surface where he finds yet another monolith, one which signals the monolith-placers that we have evolved that far. Now a race begins between computers (HAL) and man (Bowman) to reach the monolith-placers, the winner will achieve the next step in evolution, whatever that may be.

Mykelti Williamson and Justin Lazard are a pair of astronauts who make the first successful manned mission to Mars. Lazard’s character gets infected by an alien and slowly begins to mutate. When they get back to Earth all he has on his mind is to have sex with Henstridge!

Dr. Evil uses a device he calls a “Time Machine” to travel back to 1969 and remove Austin Powers’ mojo. The sexually wounded swinger must travel back in time and, with the help of agent Felicity Shagwell, recover his vitality. Meanwhile, Dr. Evil’s personal life runs amok as he discovers love, continues to shun his son and develops a close relationship with himself. Well, actually, a clone 1/8 his size whom he dubs “Mini-Me”. The always time-baffled Dr. Evil begins his plan to put a gigantic cannon on the moon, thus turning it into a device called either “The Death Star” or “Alan Parson’s Project,” depending on which name is available.

This time, the Man of Steel has his hands full with a trio of super-powered villains who escape from their Phantom Zone prison (remember the weird flying diamond-shaped mirror that scooped them up from the planet Krypton?) and land on Earth, where all three have powers to rival Superman’s own. How does it all come out? With a fabulous duel above the streets of Metropolis, and a startling plot twist that neatly ties in Superman’s explosive past. Arch-criminal Lex Luthor plays both ends gleefully against the middle in hopes of a modest reward: Australia.

When an American space capsule is swallowed up by what they believe to be a Russian spaceship, World War 3 nearly breaks out. The British Government, however, suspect that other powers are at work as the space craft went down near Japan. S.P.E.C.T.R.E. is the force behind the theft, as James Bond discovers, but its motives are far from clear, and he must first find out where the captured space capsule is held before America and Russia initiate another world war.

Interesting narrative, excellent computer generated images (for its time), extensive interviews with numerous scientists (mostly Americans and Russians-thank goodness this documentary isn’t biased towards any country) and a memorable soundtrack combined to make compelling viewing for anyone interested in astronomy.

For reasons unknown, the earth’s inner core has stopped rotating, causing the planet’s electromagnetic field to rapidly deteriorate. Instantly, life around the globe begins to change dramatically. In Boston, 32 people with pacemakers, all within a 10-block radius, suddenly drop dead. In San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge collapses, sending hundreds of people plunging to their deaths. In London’s Trafalgar Square, flocks of pigeons lose their ability to navigate, flying into panicked crowds, slamming into windshields and causing drivers to lose control of their cars. And in Rome, as thousands of tourists watch helplessly, an electrical superstorm reduces the ancient Roman Colosseum to rubble. Scrambling to resolve the crisis, government and military officials call upon geophysicist Dr. Josh Keyes and a team of the world’s most gifted scientists to travel into the earth’s core in a subterranean craft piloted by “terranauts” Major Rebecca “Beck” Childs and Commander Robert Iverson. Their mission: Detonate a nuclear device that will reactivate the core and save the world from sure destruction.

Due to a shuttle’s unfortunate demise in outer space, NASA becomes aware of a doomsday asteroid that is on a collision course with Earth. It seems that the only way to knock it off course is to drill into its surface and detonate a nuclear weapon. But as NASA’s under-funded yet resourceful team train the world’s best drillers for the job, the social order of the world begins to break down as the information reaches the public and hysteria results. As high-ranking officials play politics with the effort, the drilling team all faces deep personal issues which may jeopardize humanity’s last chance…

Contact, based on the novel of the same name by Carl Sagan, is the story of a free thinking radio astronomer (Jodie Foster) who discovers an intelligent signal broadcast from deep space. She and her fellow scientists are able to decipher the Message and discover detailed instructions for building a mysterious Machine. Will the Machine spell the end of our world, or the end of our superstitions? Will we take our place among the races of the Galaxy, or are we just an upstart species with a long way to go?