Your favorite Sci-fi movies?

[JunkMonkey]

4. Screamers

I think this is the first time I have ever seen 'Screamers' on an all-time favourite movie list - of any kind.

 

[kansasbarbarian]

Bladerunner
Planet of the Apes (original)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (original)
The Day of the Triffids
The Fly (original)
Alien
Terminator
Outland
Scanners

 

[psikeyhackr]

The Day the Earth Stood Still (original)

Outland

"Outland" is "High Noon" in outer space. Sean Connery stars as O'Neil, a slightly broken down lawman in a one horse orbital mining colony. And, things are not going so well down at the mines. Workers are losing their minds, hallucinating themselves on fire, and taking one way elevator trips to explosive decompression without their space suits.

http://www.streettech.com/bcp/BCPgraf/Media/Outland.htm

Outland was an enjoyable flick. A friend of mine told me about the High Noon connection. I had seen both of them many years apart but never made the connection.

I just don't put flicks like that in the top rank if they don't have any MESSAGE like The Day the Earth Stood Still.

psik

 

[Michigan]

I'm curious about this. When was the first time anyone asked whether Deckard was a replicant?

I may be wrong* but I don't remember this idea being in the book (apart from PKD's normal "How real are any of us?" phobias) and I don't remember the idea being tossed about at the time of the movie's release. So. If the idea only came into being after the making of the film, and Ridley Scott did not consider it when he was making it, then his post-hoc interpretation of his own work is surely just the same as anyone else's. He says Deckard was a replicant. I say he wasn't. We can both argue our cases (if we have nothing better to do) but neither of us can 'proove' it. If, on the other hand, Scott 'knew' that Deckard was a replicant when he was shooting the movie, then yes, Deckard is a replicant. No question.

Just because a director, or a writer, or an actor knows certain things about a character they don't have a duty to make those facts explicit to the audience.

On the other other hand if Harrison Ford knew at the time that Deckard wasn't a replicant - then he wasn't. No Question.

Isn't Art wonderful?




*I usually am

But if the characters don't truely exist outside of the movie, if all you have to go on is what they actually put on screen, can you base your interpretation on what is in the head of the director? I'm not saying that a director has to be explicit about everything but if he isn't explicit then you are going to get different interpretations and I don't think his own interpretation is necessarily and more valid then anyone elses. Ridley Scott can say "this is what I meant" but that isn't necessarily the same as what he showed.

 

[Michigan]

ROFL

Sure, you know better than the people that created the stuff.

You can call it something different years later and tell yourself you are correct. Anybody can think and say any nonsense they want. How old were you in 1977 and how much SF had you read before that?

psik

What does 1977 have to do with anything? The movie is still available and still open to interpretation. Not saying I know more then Scott but Scotts control of the movie stopped when he was finished with it (or at least finished with the directors cut) and for him to come out after the fact saying he is a replicant sounds like him calling it something different years later.

 

[psikeyhackr]

What does 1977 have to do with anything? The movie is still available and still open to interpretation. Not saying I know more then Scott but Scotts control of the movie stopped when he was finished with it (or at least finished with the directors cut) and for him to come out after the fact saying he is a replicant sounds like him calling it something different years later.

What Scott are you talking about in relation to Star Wars? It came out in 1977 and the link I provided was about a comment in Time magazine May 1977.

psik

 

[Michigan]

What Scott are you talking about in relation to Star Wars? It came out in 1977 and the link I provided was about a comment in Time magazine May 1977.

psik

Got my threads mixed up, I was thinking Blade Runner still. Though that didn't come out until the 80s.

 

[Michigan]

Off the top of my head:

- Exposure to the sun makes you insane? Who's the first to go insane? The Shrink of course.
- The Human Torch's hand freezes in the liquid coolant after a split second's exposure in one scene, but later he goes swimming in it, not once, but twice with his eyes open and retains dexterity in his fingers long enough to save the ship.
- The guy makes an error in his calculations, which nobody double checks, not even the AI built into the ship, that could endanger the entire mission to save Earth? (Don't forget about the previous scene were we learn that the AI will not allow them to jeopardize the mission in any way.)
- Only 1 guy on the ship knows how to detonate the bomb that is the sole hope of survival for the entire human species? Then, they send that one guy out on the surface of the ship to fix a mechanical problem? The science geek? AND the mission commander? Who's coming back from that outing?
- When outside, they fix the nearest broken panel first and walk away from the safety of the only hatch on the whole bloody ship, towards the terminator line that will kill them if they're exposed, which incidentally is moving towards them and their only escape?
- They detour to go to the other ship why? Well, Insane Man is there! One lame plot device among a plethora.
- Insane Man gets aboard their ship and the AI does not bother to tell the crew until somebody thinks to ask? Even after he stalks and kills 3 crew members?
- When Hero Guy finds out about Insane Man he tells nobody else then goes to find him himself with no weapons?
- He finds Insane Man in the solar room and with the blazing intensity of the nearby sun shining through the window, blinding him in the presence of a homicidal madman, what does he do? Tell the computer to opaque the glass so he can deal with Insane Man and complete the mission? No. He puts up his hand to ward off the sun and squints so he can see the guy that's trying to kill them all, and by extension, the human race, and then he runs away.
- Insane Man shuffles about but can still outpace his victims. (Thanks again Hollywood cliche.)
- Insane Man has the strength of 5 men because insanity in Hollywood lends preternatural strength to the deranged just as dogs, mute children and American Indians have a sixth sense that grown adults lack.
- He can hold our hero straight armed over an abyss even as his muscles are rotting off his bones?
- Why is there an abyss inside the spaceship? What's with all the extra space? Oh, I get. It's a SPACE ship.

I could go on. So much promise and hype and so much failure in Sunshine. It was supposed to be a "smart" SF film. "Not just another summer block-buster." Instead it was a cliche ridden heap rife with stupid plot devices, throwaway characters and crap dialog. What was good? Special effects were top notch and the soundtrack was spacey and ominous as needed. Hey, it was a summer block-buster after all! Bah!

Talk about nitpicking.

 

[nquixote]

My Top 10:

Star Wars (original trilogy)
Terminator 2
Aliens
Battle Royale
Brazil
E.T.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Fantastic Planet

Also great:

Dark City
Back to the Future
The Matrix
Jurassic Park
Twelve Monkeys (And La Jetee as well)
THX-1138
Children of Men
Independence Day
Tron
Akira
Dune
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
A Clockwork Orange
WALL-E
The Terminator

Overrated:

Blade Runner
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Gattaca

 

[weirdside]

AI
That movie is just spectacular.

 

[manephelien]

I didn't like Sunshine either, for some of the reasons mentioned by icowdave. In fact, it's my second least-favorite sci-fi movie, the only one I dislike even more is Event Horizon. I guess I don't like thrillers where one or more people go insane in space...

Favorites:
The Abyss (director's cut only, the theater cut ending is dire)
Contact!
Tron
Blade Runner
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Star Trek: First Contact and Wrath of Khan
Aliens
Terminator 1 and 2
Star Wars (original trilogy)

 

[Ropie]

THX-1138

Wow, I remember watching that when I was really young! I always had a memory of a film with a very white background and people with bald heads but could never place it. This was the film. Looking it up, I never realised it was by George Lucas.

 

[socrates17]

My List

I don’t recall having seen this board before and just registered. I am absolutely amazed at the quality of the lists and the extensive knowledge of SF and SF cinema that is demonstrated.
The biggest issue I expect to find is my definition of what qualifies as SF and what doesn’t. I excluded fantasy, hence no LoTR, Cronos, The Haunting (original), etc. (I like Damon Knight’s definition that anything that I can point to and say “That’s Science Fiction.” IS Science Fiction.)
Nobody would claim that Zardoz isn’t SF, but an awful lot of people feel strongly that it is really bad SF. Oh well.
I prefer selecting by genre and not by mode.
SF is a genre.
Fantasy is a genre.
Horror is a mode, meaning that Alien would have been on the list if I thought it was better SF.
La Hora Fria plays like a Horror film, but by the end it’s clearly SF.
Espionage is a genre.
If The Ipcress File has enough SF material in it to otherwise qualify as SF, and it does, then the 3rd Harry Palmer film, Billion Dollar Brain, certainly does. But in both cases the espionage genre trumps the SF genre. (The less said about Moonraker the better.)
Superhero is a genre that trumps SF.
Otherwise, Watchmen would have been SF because Alternate History is a legitimate subset of SF. (Which is my excuse for including Richard III on the list.)
The only place I fudged on my genre rules was with slipstream. I decided to allow 3 films that each had 1 degree of seperation from a major SF writer because in each case the cited film had a lot to do with each writer’s approach to SF.
The 4th slipstream film was the sequal to Alphaville, which probably not too many people know about.

That’s really, for me, the pupose of exercises like these lists:
To help inform each other.
Sticking to my genre rules is my way of allowing me to include more SF that other people may not have heard of and, hopefully, would enjoy.

I waited for District 9 to be released since I had a very good feeling about it (justified as you can see from it’s position on my list) and I insisted on only listing films that I’ve seen (and preferably own.)
I have Hombre Mirando al Sudest, Allemagne année 90 neuf zéro, and Confessions d’Barjo only on VHS and I don’t own J’Taime, J’Taime at all, although I saw it at an Alain Renais retrospective at the Walter Reade a few years ago. Obviously I don’t have District 9 yet.

1 Zardoz
2 Alphaville
3 The Bedsitting Room
4 Stalker
5 Blade Runner
6 A Scanner, Darkly
7 Serenity
8 12 Monkeys
9 District 9
10 Hombre Mirado al Sudeste
11 2001, A Space Odyssey
12 Forbidden Planet
13 The Quiet Earth
14 Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky)
15 La jetée
16 Je t'aime, je t'aime
17 A Boy and His Dog
18 The Man From Earth
19 Abre los ojos
20 The Lathe of Heaven (original PBS version)
21 Dune (original theatrical, not Alan Smithee or remake)
22 La Hora Fria
23 City of Lost Children
24 Eraserhead
25 The Atrocity Exhibition
26 Peut-être
27 Richard III (Shakespeare as alt. history)
28 Quintet
29 Brazil
30 2009 Lost Memories
A Crash (Cronenberg, slipstream)
B Confessions d'un Barjo (slipstream)
C Allemagne année 90 neuf zéro (sequal to Alphaville, slipstream)
D Empire of the Sun (slipstream)

 

[Evil Agent]

Welcome to the forums, socrates.

But.... Richard III as Science Fiction??? Really? It's a good film, but calling it Sci-Fi is more than a stretch in my opinion...

Anyway, I'd like to add a couple recent ones from this summer to my own favourites: Moon and District 9.

 

[JunkMonkey]

The only place I fudged on my genre rules was with slipstream. I decided to allow 3 films that each had 1 degree of seperation from a major SF writer because in each case the cited film had a lot to do with each writer’s approach to SF.
The 4th slipstream film was the sequal to Alphaville, which probably not too many people know about.

<snip>

A Crash (Cronenberg, slipstream)
B Confessions d'un Barjo (slipstream)
C Allemagne année 90 neuf zéro (sequal to Alphaville, slipstream)
D Empire of the Sun (slipstream)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here - partially because when anyone says "Slipstream" in the context of SF movies I think of the Bob Peck, Mark Hamill, Bill Paxton 1989 movie Slipstream.

 

[jjShewster]

Why does everyone rank Bladerunner so highly? It seems like it brought up some interesting issues about computers vs. humans and consciousness. But I didnt think the movie was all that great. It seemed like it was more the concepts that made it a hit.

 

[nquixote]

Why does everyone rank Bladerunner so highly? It seems like it brought up some interesting issues about computers vs. humans and consciousness. But I didnt think the movie was all that great. It seemed like it was more the concepts that made it a hit.

Ditto that. Here's a little micro-review I once wrote of Blade Runner:

Consistently rated as the Greatest Sci-Fi Movie Ever, Blade Runner has it all - fantastic technology, alien landscapes, suspense, romance, action, social import, and memorable characters to spare. Oh wait, it has none of that. But what it does have are androids who look like members of the 80s hair-metal band Poison wearing Dan Rather levels of foundation. And it has an agency dedicated to fighting these menaces-to-society, with secret agents called Blade Runners, possible because they also smuggle swords, possibly because in their spare time they participate in some kind of traditional Hindu foot-injuring ritual. The Blade Runners are armed with - get this - handguns, and in addition are endowed with no apparent special abilities. This would make more sense if the Blade Runners themselves were human, but no - they're actually androids too. So the government is sending wimpy powerless androids up against tough super-androids...why? Is this some kind of strange futuristic sport? Or is it an efficient recycling program - let the new androids kill off the old androids and spare s the trouble? Who knows. But while I was sitting and pondering this mystery, it would have been nice to see some actors doing some actual acting - Harrison Ford was mostly stuck in the "stand there and look concerned" mode that he was later to be stuck in for the rest of his career (Did you know that "Henry" was actually a replicant?). But no. However, I was treated to some great visuals of a dark neon-studded corporate city-jungle...for the first 30 seconds of the movie. After that, I was counting the electric sheep.

 

[jjShewster]

Ditto that. Here's a little micro-review I once wrote of Blade Runner:

Consistently rated as the Greatest Sci-Fi Movie Ever, Blade Runner has it all - fantastic technology, alien landscapes, suspense, romance, action, social import, and memorable characters to spare. Oh wait, it has none of that. But what it does have are androids who look like members of the 80s hair-metal band Poison wearing Dan Rather levels of foundation. And it has an agency dedicated to fighting these menaces-to-society, with secret agents called Blade Runners, possible because they also smuggle swords, possibly because in their spare time they participate in some kind of traditional Hindu foot-injuring ritual. The Blade Runners are armed with - get this - handguns, and in addition are endowed with no apparent special abilities. This would make more sense if the Blade Runners themselves were human, but no - they're actually androids too. So the government is sending wimpy powerless androids up against tough super-androids...why? Is this some kind of strange futuristic sport? Or is it an efficient recycling program - let the new androids kill off the old androids and spare s the trouble? Who knows. But while I was sitting and pondering this mystery, it would have been nice to see some actors doing some actual acting - Harrison Ford was mostly stuck in the "stand there and look concerned" mode that he was later to be stuck in for the rest of his career (Did you know that "Henry" was actually a replicant?). But no. However, I was treated to some great visuals of a dark neon-studded corporate city-jungle...for the first 30 seconds of the movie. After that, I was counting the electric sheep.

Ha Haa! that was a funny post I wish I could write like that.

While we are bashing movies I also didn't like Gattaca and Event Horizon mostly because I thought they were very "anti-science". In Gattaca scientific advancement has made the human will to succeed irrelevant. It also made the future look like a kind of police state. I think all the advancements in genetics etc will be good - cure diseases etc..

Event Horizon was about a "crazy scientist" that opens a doorway to "hell". Again it portrays science as dangerous and scientists as the enemy.
(I guess aliens did this a little but it was more "blame the corporations" instead)

 

[NickeeCoco]

Why does everyone rank Bladerunner so highly? It seems like it brought up some interesting issues about computers vs. humans and consciousness. But I didnt think the movie was all that great. It seemed like it was more the concepts that made it a hit.

I loved the movie for its cinematography. Considering the period it was filmed in, its effects pass the test of time. It's stunning to look at.

 

[Michigan]

Ha Haa! that was a funny post I wish I could write like that.

While we are bashing movies I also didn't like Gattaca and Event Horizon mostly because I thought they were very "anti-science". In Gattaca scientific advancement has made the human will to succeed irrelevant. It also made the future look like a kind of police state. I think all the advancements in genetics etc will be good - cure diseases etc..

Event Horizon was about a "crazy scientist" that opens a doorway to "hell". Again it portrays science as dangerous and scientists as the enemy.
(I guess aliens did this a little but it was more "blame the corporations" instead)

Gattaca just seemed like a B-movie to me. Maybe even took itself too seriously. Thought they could have made it interesting if they pursued the murder plot but instead they just wrapped it up quick and got back to the message they were trying to get across. That's one of the things I liked about District 9, sure they might throw this apartheid angle in there but they didn't let it get in the way of a good movie.

As for Event Horizon, it was a Paul WS Anderson movie, you can't really expect much from it. Certainly no thought was put into the movie, nothing more then a haunted house in space. It's like complaining about a Michael Bay film, or Roland Emmerich film, these guys are going for lowest common denominator, not a piece of art.