The 100 Best Sci-Fi Movies of All Time

[bohica]

73. Ikarie XB-1 (1963)
After attending a rare public screening of the complete Czech version of Ikarie XB-1 at the Museum of Modern Art, I overheard this conversation in the lobby and it stuck in my memory: Who ripped off more from this movie, Stanley Kubrick or Gene Roddenberry?

I'll stay out of that quarrel, but I encourage everyone to check this Eastern-bloc tale of deep space travel, even if it means seeing the cut-up American version known as Voyage to the End of the Universe. It is a gorgeous film that offers some trailblazing imagery of interstellar life that may look familiar to fans of some other, better-known sci-fi properties.

[bohica]

72. Day of the Triffids (1962)
"All plants move—they don't usually pull themselves out of the ground and chase you!"

The great American mid-century paranoid sci-fi thrillers involve saucer men coming to blow up the Capitol. But in Great Britain, plants were the menacing villains.

And The Day of the Triffids adds a second element of horror beyond killer vegetation: A meteor shower leaves a large part of the population blind. The film works best in detailing the breakdown of society following a widespread calamity.

Bonus: If you want to watch this one legally, for free, right now, you can.

[bohica]

71. Rollerball (1975)
Yes, midnight-movie maniacs love Rollerball because it has James Caan killing people with a spiked glove in a psychotic roller derby. But beyond the popcorn spectacle, the movie is actually a well-thought-out (and wonderfully shot) dystopian film with great performances and fantastic interior spaces.

The future is owned by corporations (naturally), and to keep the populace amused, the cities have their champions fight one another to the death. The true centerpiece to Rollerball is a decadent party where the proletarian gladiators are allowed a night to mingle with the ruling class. It's like a '70s sci-fi Rules of the Game.

[bohica]

70. Alphaville (1965)

Only a provocateur like Jean-Luc Godard could get away with simply shooting the modern buildings of Paris and calling it the future or another galaxy and get away with it.

This tribute to cheap pulp may seem like all style on the surface, but once the rugged secret agent Lemmy Caution goes up against Dr. von Braun and the Alpha 60 computer, it segues into a poetic struggle about man against oppression. While certainly not to everyone's taste, Alphaville is essential to those looking to see what a jazz-inspired riff on a classic science-fiction film looks like.

[HAL 9000]

where are numbers 1 through 69? this is a good thread, ts.

[bohica]

69. Inception (2010)
When you wake from a dream, further analysis always shows that everything that seemed to make perfect sense is actually hogwash. After watching and comtemplating Inception, however, all the perplexing narrative actually starts to come together.

Inception's reliance on high concept gets a little tedious after repeat viewings, but this splendidly shot and original tale of corporate espionage is a crafty gem of a picture. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt's zero-g fight was the coolest sequence of 2010.

[bohica]

68. Sleeper (1973)
Hey, who says we can't have a few laughs on this list?

Woody Allen's early funny ones took the nebbish persona and dropped it into some unexpected places, but other than Love and Death's Tsarist Russia, none worked so perfectly as Sleeper's future.

Most of Sleeper is just a setup for gags, but between the cracks some genuine sci-fi concepts sneak in, such as domestic robots, cloning, and the state-run "telescreen." And then there are the giant, mutated fruits and vegetables, leading to the cinema's greatest slip-on-a-banana-peel gag.

[bohica]

67. THX-1138 (1971)
One of the greatest visual leaps forward made by a first-time filmmaker since Citizen Kane (yeah, that's right, I said it), George Lucas's dystopian nightmare with the bizarre name is still something to celebrate. Even though '70s fetishists are about the only ones who would still appreciate the tech on display, there's a relentlessness that pummels the senses: white on white, cold lighting, negative space and screens within screens within screens. The story is completely secondary to the aesthetic, but as an individualist manifesto it is hardly a slouch.

There are those, of course, who'll argue that this is George Lucas's only science-fiction film. More on that later.

[bohica]

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

66. Repo Man (1984)
Harry Dean Stanton should have been named Emperor of Los Angeles for life after this film.

Alex Cox's tale of L.A. punks and low-lifes would have been good enough if it were just about the cutthroat world of automobile repossession. But when a missing Chevy Malibu with corpses of space aliens in the trunk enters the picture, it really starts to sing.

Repo Man has nothing to do with Repo Men or Repo! The Genetic Opera (both crappy) but it did spawn Cox's 2008 sequel, Repo Chick (shot on green screen), which no one has actually seen.

[bohica]

65. Them! (1954)
Giant radioactive ants.

I don't think I really need to say much more.

[bohica]

64. Destination Moon (1950)
Produced at the dawn of the '50s era of great pulp sci-fi, George Pal's Destination Moon was among the first to give interplanetary travel a somewhat serious cinematic rendering.

Destination Moon was forward-thinking in its depiction of a U.S.-USSR space race and the involvement of private industry in technological advancement. It's also the only collaboration between Robert Heinlein and Woody Woodpecker.

[bohica]

63. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Hear me out here: I'm going to go with the 1978 version over the 1956 Don Siegel one, though I know the '56 is the quintessential anti-communist paranoia flick, for a few reasons.

(1) Leonard Nimoy as a touchy-feely new-age author/psychologist/celebrity.
(2) The Transamerica Tower is really ominous from certain angles.
(3) Tons of nudity and gore for a PG rating. What's up, 1978?
(4) Jeff Goldblum runs a holistic mud-bath parlor.
(5) Donald Sutherland's freaky shriek, for your viewing pleasure embedded above.

[bohica]

62. Altered States (1980)
What happens when you drop Latin American insanity herbs into a sensory deprivation tank and mix it all with William Hurt and every bearded character actor you can find? Apparently, you take a trip into the untapped sections of the brain that store our imprinted memory of primordial existence.

It's all very heavy but if nothing else, it will give you flashbacks to your college years, when every discovery of the flesh was imbued with great existential meaning. Also: Great to know what really goes on in the basement of Columbia University's labs. I always knew it was something that involved interdimensional portals.

[bohica]

61. 12 Monkeys (1995)
Based on oddball artist and documentarian Chris Marker's landmark short film of still photographs La Jetée, 12 Monkeys has all the mind-blowing fun of Philip K. Dick with maximum visual impact from director Terry Gilliam.

Bruce Willis is sent from a post-human future not to correct the past but to understand it. Grandfather paradoxes abound, as they usually do in such scenarios. 12 Monkeys was also our first intimation that maybe, in time, pretty-boy Brad Pitt would actually become a genuine actor.

[bohica]

60. Frankenstein (1931)
The classic Frankenstein may be a horror movie if you want to get technical about it, but if this story of a man who uses laboratory gizmos to cheat death isn't sci-fi, I don't know what is.

Those who think Frankenstein is just a cheese-fest may come away surprised. A little girl gets tossed to her death in a lake, Colin Clive's manic mad scientist has a crisp energy, and Boris Karloff's poor reanimated sop will break your heart.