Expatriate director Stanley Kubrick dazzled and mystified film freaks back in 1968 with his mind-blowing 2001: A Space Odyssey (Thursday at 7 p.m. ET, Universal HD). Novelist Arthur C. Clarke's sprawling past-and-future saga of cosmic import made for not only an eye-popping 70mm epic and brain-teasing fantasy, but also the perfect drug-date flick for the hippie era.
And you think you've got a computer nightmare on your desktop today? Remember all-controlling mainframe HAL? "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that . . . "
Kubrick mostly just mystified filmgoers, though, by the time of 1999's Eyes Wide Shut (Thursday at midnight, Universal HD), his valedictory, released four months after his death at age 70. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were recruited for yet another odyssey, this time sexual and contemporary, also unsettling, and also cryptic. Make up your own minds, Kubrick seemed to keep telling us, decades later.
2001 also airs Thursday at noon ET on Universal HD, where Eyes Wide Shut repeats late Thursday/early Friday at 3 a.m. ET.