Wonderful film that stands up to repeated viewings. I love the scene where Ellie gets the first hint of a signal and blasts across the desert in her T-bird shouting to her crew through the CB. An early Matthew McConaghy appearance where he hasn't yet succumbed to the inaudible muttering of later work. Contact is based on a Carl Sagan novel, which is also excellent.
Yep, the Clooney version was a bit hit and miss IMHO. I really am not a fan of Natascha McElhone's style of acting, but I thought Jeremy Davies was brilliant as Snow.
‘Strange Days’ is a great movie that I feel captures some of the Sci-Fi zeitgeist around the millennium, the burgeoning internet, and a bit of cyberpunk. The subject matter is rather dark and disturbing, which I believe has led it to be rather obscure. But it makes a powerful and prescient statement about how tech empowers and dehumanizes us, porn, addiction, exploitation, and fandom. It’s an incredibly powerful statement that is quite relevant.
Another little movie that I liked very much is "Frequently Asked Question About Time Travels", and the two "Hot Tub Time Machine". OK, the second was really weak, but the leads are hilariously funny...
Danny Boyle's "Sunshine" is excellent. It strays away from scifi in to horror a bit occasionally, but the premise is great and the science is accurate. Dr Brian Cox was scientific advisor to the film.
I know it's pointless to discuss about personal taste, and movies are a great example and reminder of that. But to me Sunshine characters looked like a bunch of Big Brother contestants, spending their time in petty arguments, making trivial mistakes, and dealing with mostly imaginary physics, until Freddy Krueger shows up. And how do you solve an existential threat like the sun shutting down? But with a huge bomb, of course. As usual.
I'm not 100% sure it was intended, but to me it's in the category of "films that contain dizzying genre shifts". Other examples would be From Dusk Till Dawn or Kill List. I actually really enjoy this trope, I think the fact it starts off looking like "conventional" sci-fi and then goes somewhere unexpected is a plus-point (although maybe not for people who really like sci-fi).
It didn't seem to be intended or self-conscious in any way, instead it seemed to take itself very seriously: there wasn't an ounce of sense of humour in it. While "From dusk till dawn" is obviously a humorous genre cross-over. I haven't seen Kill list but Ben Wheatley is an interesting director with a passion for the grotesque- his Sightseers and Down Terrace are pretty funny.
* Sunshine: I'll second this one, about a crew on a mission in space, turns into a different kind of film in the second half, which many people didn't like; has breathtaking visuals and a strong soundtrack.
* Her: A guy falls in love with an AI; has a wonderful atmosphere
* Gattaca: Set in a future of genetic engineering and how the protagonist fights against class discrimination
* Ex Machina, this was pretty hyped I'd say, but takes the opposite approach of Her and shows us the dangers of AI
* The Day the Earth Stood Still: a representative of aliens arrives on earth to tell humans to knock off their douchebaggery; still highly relevant today
* Metropolis: a silent film with a powerful score, set in a future with a large class disparity where the workers rebel
Honorable mentions that I'm not sure are really sci-fi: Brazil, The Prestige, Watchmen
12 Monkeys - Travelling back in time to try and track the outbreak of a virus that wipes out most of humanity.
The Abyss - Survival and discovery on a deep water mining platform.
Apollo 13 - Look at the rescue efforts of this historical NASA moon mission. (Does it count as sci-fi?)
The Dish - Also not quite sci-fi, but a comedy about Australia's involvement in the first moon landing.
Battle for Terra - Surprisingly good animated movie about invading aliens.
District 9 - Alien refugee camp in Johannesburg.
Gravity - Astronaut stranded in orbit, trying to get back to Earth.
The Martian - Survival and rescue of a lone astronaut stranded on Mars.
Moon - After a serious accident, a solitary worker on the Moon discovers a conspiracy.
Oblivion - A veteran assigned to extract Earth's remaining resources begins to question what he knows about his mission and himself.
Predator - The classic that launched the franchise.
Predestination - Faithful adaptation of Heinlein's short story, "All You Zombies."
The Prestige - Some minor sci-fi elements. At the end of the Nineteenth Century in London, two stage magicians engage in a battle to create the ultimate illusion whilst sacrificing everything they have to outwit the other.
Source Code - Using limited time-travel to try and get information to stop a second, larger terrorist attack.
WALL E - In the distant future, a small waste-collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.
There is a German sci-fi series on Netflix called "Dark" [1] that I would also grab the chance to recommend while it is online. I figured that it would have to be above average for Netflix to broadcast it internationally and it turned out to be quite superb (even if it is perhaps only tangentially science fiction).
Stalker - Andrei Tarkovsky film from 1979 on the indifference of aliens and humans' inability to comprehend alien intelligence. Somewhat like Solaris.
The Incident (El Incidente) - a nightmare time-loop movie and possibly the most disturbing movie I've ever seen written and directed by Mexican director Isaac Ezban. You can watch it on Netflix. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3528756/
Speaking of Ezban, Cosas Feas / Nasty Stuff is a disturbing sci-fi short he did in 2009 available on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/65601847
I added my own sci-fi ranking (159 movies) in a spreadsheet here [1]. You can sort it based on IMDB or my score. Many movies include the ranking from the first time I have watched the movie (e.g. Star Wars).
The Black Mirror series is worth watching, although they seem to focus mostly on 'digital consciousness'. The USS Callister episode is not only gripping but very funny too. So many great episodes though - hard to pick a real standout although I would have to say if I had to San Junipero is one of the best things I have ever watched.
Then there's the really cheesy old "so bad it's good" stuff, for example:
- When Worlds Collide (1951)
- The People That Time Forgot (1977)
- Swamp Thing (1982)
Have you seen the original War of the Worlds?
Then there is the Alien franchise, Aliens (Alien 2) being my personal favourite - Bill Paxton is sooo funny in that and of course it's directed by James Cameron. Some other great actors like Michael Biehn too.
Have you watched the series Firefly? Also the (related) movie Serenity.
- Clockwork Orange
- Dr. Strangelove (brilliant!)
- Strange Days
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (version from 1951!)
- Edge of Tomorrow
- Equilibrium
- Arrival
- District 9
- Chappie
- Predestination (i recommend to read Heinleins novel first)
Not necessarily sure it's the sort of thing HNers will like, but I have a bit of an obsession with Hardware (1990). It's strange, trippy, violent and lots of fun.
Surprised to see no one mentioning The Matrix. Definitely a classic that can be enjoyed by anyone. Your mileage may vary with the other two sequels however...
I'd second this, and would recommend looking up the Heinlein short story "All You Zombies," that the movie was based on. The film was a very accurate adaptation.
THX 1138 : George Lucas's first film as a director, just before Star Wars. I wish the guy had a little less dazzling success so we could have seen more of his personnality
THX1138 is pretty special. I'm still trying to find a version without the typical Lucas retroactive CGI spliced in.
Fun fact: there's a scene in the movie (no spoilers) that was filmed, sideways, in the then-unfinished BART transbay tube. If you've seen the movie I bet you'll know which scene.
Yep I always forget that Lucas made American Grafiti. And didn't knew that this post-apocalypse tube was indeed BART. Indeed I was remembering this part when I recommended the movie.
I found Arrival great, until the second part, where things stopped making sense. That part felt badly written. The ending was a let down because of that.
Arrival is a great movie that I didn't enjoy. I think it's because it's a drama with a bit of sci-fi. And the movie explains "the thing" way too much. I felt it thought I was stupid.
It probably did. I suspect contemporary blockbusters are intentionally dumbed down to make them meet the bulk of the bell curve. And think of all those emerging markets with their hundreds of million of poorly educated youth, those can pay their tickets too.
You might say that it's always been like that. Well, it might just be that I'm getting older but I think it's become worse. Either the world is more global today and therefore the expectations about the viewers are more generic, or the equation "more people = more money" has become more compelling, or the producers have found more convincing and subtle ways to get from directors what they want. Villeneuve is a great director, yet Arrival felt shallow and formulaic.
I'll add Transcendence and Lucy. Despite having relatively bad rating, they have unique plots, that in my opinion are a bit closer to what could actually happen.
>they have unique plots, that in my opinion are a bit closer to what could actually happen
But the entire premise behind Lucy (that humans only use 10% of their brains) is a myth[0]. And the consequence that somehow one would get supernatural powers by "using the other 90 percent" is silly.
