Ten serious sci-fi films for the sentient fan Zap guns, robots, lightspeed-smashing spaceships and bikini-busting princesses do not real science fiction make. Just ask George Lucas. Star Wars defined movie SF in the mind of many a mainstream viewer. But while the film and its sequels and, er, prequels certainly provide the sci-fi enthusiast with thrills a-plenty - guilty …
Absolutely brilliant! A nice little horror edge, a little though provolking and a little bit of gentle romance. German language with English subs, nobody I'd heard of and for once not wrecked by big named, short-arsed, short-tempered Hollywood B-listers with wooden acting skills that could be bettered by a broom handle!
Dark Star was the first movie to show the non-utopian(*) version of the Sci-Fi space travel future: bored, lonely people in a cramped uncomfortable dirty spaceship with everything breaking down and going wrong and a disinterested planet Earth back home cutting off their funding.
(*) - Yes, I mean non-utopian as opposed to dystopian. I'm treating topianity as (at least) three-valued, and I don't think it's really about a dystopia
<i>Solaris</i>, absolutely. But my God, not the remake. Tarkovsky is <b>way</b> better. And while we're thinking of the genius of the man, <i>Stalker</i> should also be in this list. In fact, remove everything from the list as it is, and just slot all of his films in there, 'Sci-Fi' or not. That's all that sentient fans need.
Damned right - more serious than half the films in the article, fully realises its premise (and then some) and delivered in a realist style that reminds me of the real-life young scientists and engineers I've seen in their places of work. Confusing as hell though, but by necessity.
A scandalous omission for the Reg, especially as the first act resembles a documentary about a silicon valley start-up.
The creators of Primer have a new film out this year- 'Upstream Color"... IMDB can help you out.
"Things to Come" is in the public domain now. Check it out on archive.org. It's a site worth checking out for a lot of older stuff like "The Brain that Wouldn't Die", "Metropolis", "Plan 9", "Night of the Living Dead" (sci-fi due to the McGuffin "radiation from Venus" explanation for the "ghouls"), "The Lost World", "Virus" and "Le Voyage dans la lune". Lots of B-Movie junk, but some good or historically interesting stuff there.
..but the ElReg readers and Forumites have also added some classics that need mentioning:
Silent Running, without a doubt a grear classic, although it was a 70's eco awareness type message. I loved the three little tape driven drones, Hewie, Louie and Dewie... I was young when I saw it and it sowed the seeds that made me an eternal SciFi fan..
Sunshine: Visually stunning and also real scifi in the fact that mankind would dontate his nuclear arsenal to rekindle the sun... but it was the little things like how a slight alteration in course almost led to disaster and even with all the technology in place, man is the weakness that made the maiden mission fail..
Black Hole, sure I am going to hell for digging this Disney "classic" out, but it was entertaining and also visually brilliant for its era too.
Event Horizon: Love it or hate it, it was believable SciFi with some scares in the plot. Quite enjoyable and one of LFJr's better roles as a stern faced, no nonsense salvage crew commander
i'm a big sci-fi fan, but not a fan of horror
somehow, i only saw sci-fi in the trailers for Event Horizon and figured any film with Sam Neil has to be good right?
so completely came as a surprise when the horror begins in the movie.
still, damn good film, despite the lack of sleep i endured afterwards. wish i could bring myself to watch it again
I suppose someone had to mention it.....and there goes my "pet hate" button.
If only they hadn't reworked the thing to "bring it up to date". What's wrong with leaving it as personal shields 'n swords (the "slow knife" sequence would have actually made some bloody sense then), pointy-nosed rockets, artillery and the family atomics? No, they had to give it a "ray gun" makeover and remove all references to anything "nooculuh" to keep the plebs in the audience on-message.
It all made little sense after they'd butchered the plotline. The implementation and visualisation is fantastic, but the script is unfortunately utter crap.
I hate it for promising so much and yet delivering so little.
Ah, Dune, my favourite book of all time...
I doubt they'll ever make a movie to do it justice. I do like David Lynchs' version and I also like the Sci-Fi mini-series interpretation, but both are flawed. The David Lynch version had wonderful sets and good costumes but the plot could not be covered sufficiently to make sense in one movie. The book is all about dialog and the monologue of various characters and does not carry over well into an 'action movie' . The subject matter is related to mysticism, ecology, politics and statecraft., again not easily meshed with the obvious succcessful template of the 'action movie'. Despite the plot changes to give the Atriedies advantage a physical aspect 'the sound gun' and the heretical conclusion that Muad dib is a God and not just a man playing God, I've always felt that the 1984 film would be good if only the missing scenes could be returned (I know they don't exist, but an extra hour to the movie would make the story soo much clearer).
Although the Sci-fi channel version had more time to cover more of the book, it makes several mistakes in characterisation. The costumes (what were they thinking?). Paul starts out an arrogant jerk (Re: the opening scene in his bedroom on the ship to Arrakis) and ends the series and arrogant jerk (in a really non-fremen white loincloth, over Feyd's body) but at least the film didn't declare him an actual god, although the water scene in the Sietch does. He was a man playing god only. As for what the mini-series does to Gurney Halleck, I tend to try my best to ignore scenes with him in, as his character was obviously lobotomised and brainwashed by the evil Atriedies... He should be a poet-warrior not a nightwatchman.
I've read the book at least 3 times now and I really do love it, but last time I noticed the death of Paul's first son largely because Herbert skipped over the whole thing so quickly. Herbert himself must have realised he'd bitten off more than he could chew and must have had to cut stuff out or rush it. The Harkonnen takeover and subsequent Fremen rebellion seem glossed over. If the book needs to be interpreted for the screen as a mini-series, then I submit that the book itself should also have been split up so the second half could have been expanded. The only other book I've read from the series is the sequel, Dune Messiah, and Herbert must have thought the first book was too long, since Messiah was so short in comparison and I don't know whether it was a bit poor because it was too short, or just because it wasn't that good.
/if you reverse the colours of the icon you get blue eyes.
Bit of an underappreciated classic methinks. Directed by Katherine Bigelow who got the rights as part of her divorce settlement with James Cameron who wrote the script. It has dated a bit because they chose to set it in 2000 and the technology seems to involve MiniDiscs; but the idea of people recording their experiences seems somewhat prescient in the era of Google Glass.
The opening POV robbery is a work of genius and it has the amazing Angela Bassett as one of Cameron's strong female roles. There are a couple of incredibly violent scenes, including a rape, which some people might find too much.
Strange Days started brilliantly with a great concept but it's trawling the depths by the end with the most ridiculous conspiracy theory dénouement.
Gattaca is a great shout. You could have mentioned Forbidden Planet had the first entirely electronic soundtrack (which wasn't released as 'music') and, what's more, was composed by a woman, Bebe Barron.
Dark Star, Silent Running (flawed), Dune (seriously, but again flawed) and Alien might have been candidates for me. I think Alien in particular, although being as much horror as SF, raises some serious themes (genetic adaptation/dystopian future/corporate exploitation/human flaws/woman as heroine) and spectacular plot twists/shocks (chest burst scene/Ash as a robot) that were so new and influential at the time that they have coloured everything since and detracted from its radicalism today.
Guilty pleasures - Them, Rollerball, Robocop.
...in fact, I would argue that it''s better than any of the ten apart from 2001: A Space Odyssey. One of the downright cleverest films ever made.
What's missing?
Cube
The Fountain
Seconds
A Boy And His Dog
Alphaville
and a bunch of others that I'll remember as soon as I hit "Submit".
By "Cube" do you mean the episode of "NBC Experement in Television" from 1969 Feb. 23 Titled "The Cube" (starring Jim Henson), or Cube (1997)?
Of the two, I think the 1969 one gave me more food for thought, although I don't think I would consider either hardcore science fiction. 1969 Surrealist fiction, 1997 Slasher-horror.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
