The 100 Best Sci-Fi Movies of All Time

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88. eXistenZ (1999)
The last truly whacked-out film from the master of body horror (please, please come back to us and leave the Jung biopics to someone else!), David Cronenberg's eXistenZ was a prescient look at the way role-playing video games will take over our culture. Okay, so the immoral side-missions in Grand Theft Auto aren't quite of this life-altering nature, but I do think there are gamers out there who would manipulate their nervous systems if it meant a more immersive environment.

eXistenZ is icky and gooey in just the right places, featuring a lot of gross stuff going into and coming out of Jude Law's mouth. It is certainly of a piece with Cronenberg's earlier Videodrome even if I'm not completely sure what happens at the end of either.


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87. The Fountain (2006)
From one angle The Fountain is historical fiction. From another, it is a medical drama. A third of it, however, is some far-out heavy sci-fi as a bald Hugh Jackman floats through nebulae in a translucent sphere on his way to chat with God. Or something.

I can't sit you down and explain to you what The Fountain is about, I only know that between the music, gorgeous photography and deeply heartfelt performances I end up a blubbering mess by the time the movie is over. If Rachel Weisz were my lost wife I'd sit under a tree and mediate for a thousand years, too, if it meant I'd get her back.


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86. Starman (1984)
Infamously chosen over Spielberg's E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial by Columbia Pictures, Starman may've been an unwise business move, but it was hardly a creative disaster. This touching love story between Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen is like E.T. for grown-ups, but mixed with notes that later show up in Contact, Ghost, and maybe Rain Man.

Starman is a prime example of sci-fi that even people who don't like sci-fi will love. Once past the premise (dude from space looks like dead husband) it's hard not to cheer along as our heroes embark on a road trip to safety with the big bad government in hot pursuit. The follow-up TV series with Robert Hays may not have been the best idea, however.


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85. Sleep Dealer (2008)
The difficult issue of migrant labor gets a dystopian spin in this not-that-unbelievable tale of capitalist power.

A young man from rural Mexico goes to Tijuana to find work and get vengeance against those who destroyed his family. In the city, if he can find a "coyotek," he can have his nervous system hacked to gain the ability to plug into a grid that will use him as a suspended virtual-reality drone. In the cyber sweatshops, young Mexicans dangle and make robotic motions as actual machines build things in El Norte.

Despite a microbudget and some special effects that, to put it politely, cut corners, Sleep Dealer is an effective piece of agitprop that also has a number of well-developed ideas about future tech.


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84. Men in Black (1997)
Few movies have captured the fun, zany spirit of 1950s pulp while also managing to be so, well, good. The groundbreaking effects, sharp script, and solid performances from Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith made Men in Black an instant classic.

This movie is also great for anyone who has ever driven into Manhattan from Long Island. It's hard to look at those dilapidated structures from the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens, and not laugh, knowing what squiggly, slobby aliens are lurking among them.


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83. Stalker (1979)
Back in the '90s when life coaches like Tony Robbins started telling people to get "in the zone," I had to laugh. Surely they must have known that it isn't that easy to get in the Zone.

In Andrei Tarkovsky's trippy film Stalker, the Zone is a forbidden wasteland where the usual rules of perception and physics are not sacrosanct. In the heart of the Zone is "the Room," and inside the Room is where, so it is said, one's deepest wish becomes a reality.

To get there, a person must hire a guide (called a Stalker), and the road is fraught with endless long takes of slowly moving rivers laden with symbolic iconography. Tarkovsky's deliberate camerawork and evocative tone creates some weird, moody cinema.


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82. Dreamscape (1984)
In Dreamscape, Dennis Quaid has the ability to enter other people's dreams, and at first it seems like he'll be able to help them combat their psychological issues in a series of cool color-saturated fantasy sequences. Then he uncovers a plot to start World War III and must stop the evil powers the only way he knows how: by taking a nap!

Here's one thing I know: All movies could use a dash of David Patrick Kelly as a lizard monster.


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81. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
One the newest entrants on our list, Rise is a remarkable essay on the elasticity of consciousness, evolutionary thresholds, medical ethics and oh-my-god-did-you-see-what-that-monkey-did moments.

In all seriousness, though, Andy Serkis's performance may well be remembered as the tipping point at which motion-captured performance was elevated to the level of true dramatic art. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to watch the scenes on the Golden Gate Bridge—the part where Buck sacrifices himself makes me cry every time.


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80. Cube (1997)
This film about life-threatening puzzles and traps takes something like Saw and improves it to the third power.

In Cubea group of people wake up inside a strange room. There are portals on all four walls, the ceiling, and the floor. Each of these take them to... a similar room. On the surface, this sounds like a play, and an obnoxious one at that. Yet somehow it stays cinematic. Maybe it has something to do with all the gross ways in which people get killed.

Cube gets bonus sci-fi points for having Ezri Dax in its cast. The movie spawned two sequels, both of which are decent but not essential.

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79. Fantastic Planet (1973)
A mix of disturbing Czech animation and French despair, Fantastic Planet portrays a world where human beings are kept as the pets of gigantic blue aliens. We follow the life of a baby born in captivity as he tries to find his place either in domestic safety or with his own kind in the wild. The massive blue Draags have their own bizarre culture, based on meditation and shared thought. In time, our hero grows to become a revolutionary in an interspecies war. The film features hideous beasts, massacres, and loads of nudity.

A very cool flick—but perhaps it was misfiled in the children's section. My mother certainly wasn't impressed.

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78. Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
One of the French new-wave master's few work-for-hire films (and his only one in English), Francois Truffaut's very mid-'60s take on Ray Bradbury's fascist parable is far better than it seems on the surface.

The premise, that firemen are tools of the state used to destroy books, works well enough to show the dangers of an illiterate populace. Anything printed—even signs—are outlawed, keeping the citizenry completely reliant on ephemeral images and sounds. Under Truffaut's influence, Bradbury's metaphor for social control packs a real visual punch; to actually see the post-literate society function so close to normally is really quite jarring.

Truffaut upped the ante, too, by keeping the credits audio-only.

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77. Scanners (1981)
"All right. We're gonna do this the Scanner way. I'm gonna suck your brain dry."

Those who go into this film thinking it's going to be nonstop exploding heads can sometimes be a little disappointed. (And there I go perpetuating the problem with the clip above.) But if you are looking for a creepy tale about the military industrial complex using psychic powers to breed a new race of... wait... what is Scanners actually about, again?

The script doesn't actually survive too much scrutiny, admittedly. But considering that this movie was made with last-minute tax-shelter money and literally written on the spot in some cases, one shouldn't be too critical. From a distance, it is one of the more evocative paranoid sci-fi horror flicks of the early digital age.

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76. Outland (1981)
You can imagine the lunchtime pitch session. "I want to make High Noon in space starring Sean Connery." I imagine Peter Hyams had a green light before the salad got there.

Outland adds some great sci-fi grit to the classic good-versus-evil showdown, and it's one of the best movies ever to show what an average working man can expect should we ever find ourselves mining on distant satellites. (The same hardships as on Earth but with less air.)

Outland was in the vanguard for its use of layered front-screen projection. Plus, it has one of the first gruesome images in mainstream film of a man popping like a tomato in space.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjGRySVyTDk#

75. Dark Star (1974)
Sharing a title with the Grateful Dead's most legendary jam is no coincidence, I'm sure. John Carpenter's Dark Star is the closest thing we'll get to a "Cheech and Chong in Space," telling the story of longhair dopes punching the clock as they destroy planets.

The clip above shows a much-loved moment in which a crew member, seeking to diffuse a bomb, drops a philosophical bomb upon the computer system that controls it. Another sequence features a creature that resembles a beach ball causing trouble in the air vents. If that seems familiar, there's a reason: The film's co-author and star, Dan O'Bannon, took that side plot and ran with it, later creating the Alien franchise.

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74. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
The Star Trek movie for people who think they hate Star Trek (though, admittedly, not the favorite of my people who love the franchise).

Captain Kirk and a reborn (kinda) Mr. Spock have their trip back to Earth blocked by a planet-destroying probe. The only solution is to go back in time and rescue humpback whales. (Just go with it.) Their journey to 1980s San Francisco afforded audiences the chance to see their own culture through the eyes of Trek's heroes from the utopian future.

It's a masterpiece of fish-out-of-water storytelling, as well as a good time-travel mind scrambler. Plus, DeForest Kelley gets to show off his remarkable comic timing.