Best sci-fi movies?

[sophie]

Well, yes, but they are comic-based films. I wouldn't call 'Mars Attacks!" sci-fi either.

Well yeah. It's a spoof. Of 50s sci-fi B-movies.

 

[onejayhawk]

I thnk you pushed that whole "even numbers" thing just a little bit too far there...

A little, maybe. Not much. It is not just the Kirk/Spock movies. it applies to Picard/Data as well.

J

 

[abradley]

Link to video.

8/10 Stars Well, I liked it
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120157/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_20
26 July 2004 | by MissTRious (m/s Seven Seas Mariner) – See all my reviews
OK, so Soldier isn't deep and meaningful like Blade Runner or as big budget as Terminator 2 but on the whole I found it quite enjoyable.

The fact that Kurt Russell stayed in character not speaking and being virtually emotionless made the moments when his humanity broke through all the more poignant. I found his portrayal of restricted emotional development more touching than Arnie's in the T films (and before I get comments yes I know that Arnie was a cyborg and Kurt was human but the premise put forward by both films was the same).

So to the film itself, a reasonable US/Brit cast are able to flesh out this little story. Not really sure if Gary Busey and his two deputies were baddies or goodies, so was unable to decide whether I liked them or not. The colony was a little more realistic neither a misguided bunch of peace loving/gullible/cowardly hicks who get wiped out from the get go nor a group of subversive aggressive terrorists paranoid about offworlders and each other.

Kurt Russell is good and unlike other comments I do not feel this will have a negative impact on his career (unlike maybe Escape from LA - sequels are such fickle creatures!). Sean Pertwee has really done his late father proud by continuing the families noble Sci-Fi lineage. And the rest of the cast helped flesh out this pathetic band of people making the most of a bad situation and not doing too badly.

If you see this on your TV schedule I would recommend giving it a chance. I don't think you will be disappointed.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Contact (1997) Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, William Fitchner, Tom Skerritt, and a 12-year-old Jena Malone, dir. Robert Zemeckis.

Good flick. Better book, but good flick.

Hey, crap. Zemeckis. Has anyone mentioned Back to the Future yet?

No. We suck at this game. If you really want to roll your eyes at how bad at this game we are, well, we missed Ghostbusters too.

But you also caught Eternal Sunshine, and that's a really good catch.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Rocky Horror is Sci Fi (among other things)
Close encounters of a third kind
ET

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Truman Show isn't scifi, though (it could be done with current tech). And Jim Carrey must be the worst jerk among known US actors

Jim Carrey is Canadian. But he took out US citizenship over 10 years ago, and the US is welcome to keep him.

One reason why I loathe the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) is because in his more manic performances he's a lot like Jim Carrey when he's showing off.

I thnk you pushed that whole "even numbers" thing just a little bit too far there...

Agreed. First Contact is barely acceptable as a Star Trek movie, and only the character of Lily Sloan saves it for me. Someone on TrekBBS had an interesting speculation the other day... could the DS9 character of Sloan - the one who gets Bashir involved with Section 31 - be a descendant of Lily Sloan?

I see absolutely no reason whatsoever to include Insurrection or Nemesis on the list of good Star Trek movies. After First Contact, the only good Star Trek movies have been the movie-length fan films, most notably "World Enough and Time" by the New Voyages/Phase II production company (George Takei is in that one).

Of course it's sci-fi. The fact that it came out in 1998, before The Bachelor, before Survivor, before Big Brother, and before the broader reality shows that essentially follow one person's life as they grow up like Teen Mom, Dance Moms (to a lesser extent with eg Maddie), and all of the Real Housewives spin-offs only makes it that much more incredible. The movie basically takes The Real World and follows it to its logical conclusion. That's classic sci-fi.

I seem to recall a Twilight Zone episode from the '80s that did it first.

Contact (1997) Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, William Fitchner, Tom Skerritt, and a 12-year-old Jena Malone, dir. Robert Zemeckis.

Absolutely. This one is actually my favorite. I've seriously lost track of how many times I've seen it (5 times in the theatre alone).

By no means "best", but "underrated" is Cube (1997). A bunch of Canadians you might recognize from television, Nicole de Boer, David Hewlett, dir. Vincenzo Natali. At first glance, I thought this was another of those 'torture porn' movies about how many ways the filmmakers can think of to kill people - Final Destination, anything by Eli Roth, etc - which are not for me. I was assured this was not the case, and was pleasantly surprised.

Are you spying on my video shelf? I suppose Cube is pretty tame by some peoples' standards, but after seeing it, I got the creeps from seeing cube-themed designs. ThinkGeek is selling a Doctor Who blanket with Gallifreyan designs that remind me of some of the stuff from Cube, and that's why there is no way I'm ever adding that blanket to my collection of Doctor Who stuff. It's nightmare-inducing.

There are a few interesting Cube stories posted at fanfiction.net, though.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Since Valka mentioned Twilight Zone - Does it count? Is it Sci-Fi or ist is "Mystery"?

In my opinion it is the best series for television ever made period. The only ones that come close (that I've seen) would be Twin Peaks.

 

[Ajidica]

Agreed. First Contact is barely acceptable as a Star Trek movie, and only the character of Lily Sloan saves it for me. Someone on TrekBBS had an interesting speculation the other day... could the DS9 character of Sloan - the one who gets Bashir involved with Section 31 - be a descendant of Lily Sloan?

Barely acceptable?
How high are your standards?
I rank Wrath of Khan and First Contact as the best two, then Generations because it feels like a high-budget TV episode, then the better TOS movies, then Star Trek: The Motionless Pictures (for the visuals), then the rest.
The Abrams Star Treks don't make the list.
I was fine with "Star Trek" being a basic action filled plot because it was the first in the series and Star Trek did need a bit of a cleaning up after Nemesis and Enterprise; but I just got mad at Abrams over Into Darkness. Seriously Abrams, you do this whole "reset the timeline to not be bound by cannon" (I'm fine with that) yet the second movie you make is an inferior rip-off of the best Star Trek movie?

 

[Lay_Lay]

80's kid here.
Enemy Mine, The Last Starfighter, Solarbabies

 

[Angst]

Oh, and Clockwork Orange

 

[EgonSpengler]

Some more recent recommendations, not "all time best", but solid:

Contagion (2011) - Kate Winslet, Matt Damon, Lawrence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard, Jennifer Ehle, dir. Steven Soderbergh (another great choice for a 24-hour film festival, but I think this was his only sci-fi movie)

Los Ultimos Dias / The Last Days (2013) - Quim Guttierez, Jose Coronado, dir. David & Alex Pastor

Edge of Tomorrow, aka Live, Die, Repeat (2014) - Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, dir. Doug Liman (Go; The Bourne Identity)

Ex Machina (2015) - Domnhall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, Alicia Vikander, dir. Alex Garland (his directing debut, he's mostly written screenplays such as Dredd and Sunshine, both of which I considered adding to this list)

 

[Kyriakos]

I haven't seen all of the anime series, but Serial Experiments Lain probably was scifi (i mean, they may have a plot twist in the end rendering the whole thing non-scifi, but i can't say ).


Link to video.

Present day. Present time.. ahahahaha

 

[Zkribbler]

I never saw the movie. Was it as good as the book?

The Andromeda Strain movie was very close to the book. I have a hard time judging whether it was "as good" because the book had me on the edge of my chair; I had no idea what was coming next. With the movie, I knew--'cause I'd read the book.

 

[Zkribbler]

Charlie the movie version of Flowers for Algernon
Roller Ball, the James Caan version.
Did anyone mention Ahrnold's version of Total Recall?

 

[tetley]

I'm probably going to get laughed at. But I like Battlestar Galactica:1980. Cheesy last 30 minutes, but the orchestral score is amazing. Also I'm grading on a curve: cinematics just weren't as good back then.

Also James Bond:Moonraker. I was addicted to that movie.

 

[muhtesem insan]

https://www.criticker.com/?fl&user=nuka_cola
here all my film rankings. Filter for sci-fi (couldn't find how to get a link for already filtered version)

 

[TheCherryOnTop]

I like the Sci-fi B-movie's with cheesy special effects like Clash of the Titans or Jason and the Argonauts. The Time Machine is a good one too.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Both of those are not B-Movies (or Sci-Fi for that matter) at all, but rather genuine masterpieces. Jason and the Argonauts was produced by Columbia and was made with a 1 Million $ budget, which was a lot more in the sixties than it is now. Clash of the Titans had Burgess Meredith, who was nominated for two academy awards (and is pretty awesome in Twilight Zone). Couldn't be further from B-Movie.

There are also no cheesy special effects, it's almost all made with stop motion which took an immense amount of time and effort and honestly looks fantastic compared with some of the other stop motion movies that came out around that time. Especially Jason and the Argonauts is great, I vividly remember him fighting the skeletons or the animation of the colossus.

The animator doing the stopmotion is called Ray Harryhausen and actually won an Academy Award, albeit for a different movie. Clash of the Titans was his last movie, before he finally retired. Quoted from Wiki:

During his life, his innovative style of special effects in films inspired numerous filmmakers including George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, John Lasseter, Peter Jackson, John Landis, Joe Dante, Henry Selick and Tim Burton.

 

[Berzerker]

Ghostbusters
Mars Attacks
Galaxy Quest

and I liked 2010

 

[TheCherryOnTop]

Let me take another crack at this...

Mad Max
The Matrix
The Thing
Solaris