The Only Valid Sci-Fi Films
 

Not my choice of words.

Anyway, list 'em.

The Girl From Monday
Moon
Roujin Z
Patlabor 1 & 2
Silent Running
Tetsuo
Metropolis
Solaris (Steven Soderberg's version. Yeah I did!)
Stalker
Alphaville
Total Recall (Schwarzenneger version)

Bladerunner
Twelve Monkeys
Akira
Ghost in the Shell
Pandorum
Elysium
Existenz
Cube
Soylent Green
2001

Summer Wars

i haven't seen all of them so i don't know how the fuck i'd name the "only valid ones" (????)

in any case, some movies i like and haven't been mentioned yet:

mad max (yes it is)

max headroom (word association works sometimes)

strange days (and why not?)

various planets of the apes (NRA edition)

fantastic voyage (raquel welch)

voyage to the moon (méliés)

the one i saw the other day that was so weird what was it called? oh hm ehhh... french/czech... i'm having a bad ADD day... FANTASTIC PLANET

real genius (it was funny) (and it was a scifi movie of sorts)

is revenge of the nerds a scifi movie? ha ha hmmm

wargames (becuz...)

terminator (the 1st one is best) (the 2nd is ok. the rest are "not valid")

SLEEPER!

i'll continue later

how so?

others still unmentioned

metropolis

(a?) clockwork orange

eyes without a face (also horror)

the skin i live in (it is, too)

until the end of the world

eternal sunshine of the bla bla bla

the (first) matrix (the others are "not valid")

are zombie movies "science fiction"? if so-- night of the living dead, sean of the dead,

the fifth element

johnny mnemonic which was not as terrible as i expected

battlestar galactica if only because it begat the series

AI, which wasn't as shit as i thought it would be

brazil, in a way

wall-e

iron man!

weird science (ha ha ha)

children of men

charly

farenheit 451

1984

the time machine (1960) (the others are probably "not valid" but it's just a guess)

there are so many impossible to remember them all

brazil

looper

etc.

I'm glad you decided to include this. But why not Terminator 1 or Terminator 2? They were EPIC mind fucks and produced superbly..

must spread rep.

YES. This is quite literally in my all-time top five, right behind Pulp Fiction and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

on my sci-fi list..

DARK-CITY (fucking seriously underrated flick)

The Fifth Element (cliched but its good!)

I might be one of the few who really liked Prometheus

Predator One (sorry so many Arnold recommendations but really, the guy has been in some great movies)

π (pi)

Back To the Future (Yes its campy, but it was also a great pop-movie and original concept)

Attack of the Killer Klowns From Outerspace (it takes balls to make a movie this bad)

Flatliners

The Lawnmower Man (its not that great, but it is definitely valid)

TANK GIRL

A Scanner Darkly (yeah, it was good, I know, even I can't believe it)

Inception (yup, I went there)

John Carpenter's The Thing

After something Tesla said in the main film thread.

Not sure if any of these are 'valid' but some faves of mine:

Dark Star
A Boy and His Dog
Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
Planet of the Apes (orig.)
Zardoz
Dune
Flash Gordon
Forbidden Planet
John Carter
Star Wars

Ok, I agree, there are others besides Dune, y'all listed some I'd forgotten about!

No love for Dark City??

I cream on the sci-fi movies, and I like funny sci-fi, scary sci-fi, and brainy sci-fi equally.

I have a lot of faves

Dune
Moon
Primer
Solaris (OG)
Pitch Black
Soylent Green
Contact
Wrath of Khan
Event Horizon (more of a horror movie but still...)
Akira
Blade Runner
Frankenstein and Bride of... (OG)
The Day The Earth Stood Still (OG)
Galaxy Quest
Aliens
The first Matrix
La Jetee'
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (OG)
They Live
The Empire Strikes Back
Tron
Repo Man
Terminator I and II
Robocop
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Hardware
Predator I and II
Total Recall (OG)
Ghost In The Shell
Gattacca
Strange Days
12 Monkeys
Escape from NY
Independence day (Pure bubblegum , but what fun bullblegum!)
Fifth Element (I fucking love this movie. I love when directors overflow with ideas and put everything they can imagine into a movie)
Dark City (One of the best of the last 20 years)
Pi
Iron Giant
The Cell (Only J-Lo flick I dig)
District 9
A Scanner Darkly
Children of Men (one of my faves of the last 20 years as well. Cuaron is a bad-ass and I am looking forward to seeing the new space station freakout film they have been advertising)
Paprika
V for Vendetta (not quite sci-fi but maybe?)
Iron Man
Wall E
9
Metropolis
Watchmen



I have yet to see Elysium (Rudy Rucker says it is a sweet piece of cyberpunk film), Oblivion, or Pacific Rim.

oh ha ha

Odd to mention "Aliens" and not this.

that's the good one! also a great horror movie.

and thanks to murmer for mentioning zardoz ("the tabernacle!")

has any one said "serenity" yet? not the best of all movies but i was glad it brought firefly to closure.

and let's see...

oh


post-"apocalypse" scenarios are generally sci-fi-conceived worlds (not really "apocalypse" in that it's not religion). "what happens if" *nukes*. speculative fiction. w/ a scientific motivation.

e.g., that movie when america gets nuked, what was it called? the day after or some shit like that. science fiction.

anyway. still unmentioned:

sins of the fleshapoids!!! (yeah)

scanners

rabid

cosmopolis

the brood

pi

hackers! (so cheesy and terrible w/ their 33kbps modems, yet i've watched it at least 5 times)

... and then crap like

universal soldier (ha ha ha-- terrible movie) ("look for something. something hard." <-- so bad it's funny)

aeon flux (disappoint! the only excuse to watch was charlize theron)

Dr. Strangelove
The City of Lost Children

also one of the greatest comedies ever!

(must spread more butter, it seems)

Another good one is The Omega Man, based on Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend (and far better than the version with Will Smith). Anyway, great sf take on the whole vampire thing.

Another good horror/sf is Hammer's Quatermass and the Pit.

the day the earth stood still

earth vs flying saucers

Is Repo Man sf?

radioactive dead aliens in the trunk stolen by nuclear lab scientist = of course!

--

the thing some people have said since the 80s (or so) due to fast technological change science fiction becomes the main mode of understanding the present. which is why it becomes more and more common and less of a specialty/weird genre.

this has to do in part w/ cyberpunk and cyberpunk had to do with the change in our relation with science and technology-- the stuff is no longer big science "out there" but it's close and intimate (the contact lens and the walkman, some writer said, but i'm thinking also the personal computer, the microwave oven, etc), hence the stuff of everyday life. also, AIDS (a bio weapon?), the rise of biotechnology, the universality of plastic surgery, advances in neuroscience, etc.-- technology enters the body rather than outer space.

---

anyway while writing this i remembered something from a little earlier--

the man who fell to earth

which was pretty great, and sad as fuck.

I frankly like all the Aliens flicks, which is why I did not list them all.

So are we all in agreement that it was a silly statement by tesla? Agreed.

not necessarily the only valid but if it is a genre id add

Countless film noir
Vertigo
Sunset Boulevard
All About Eve
Gilda
Possessed (the Joan Crawford film)
The Conversation
Bird With the Crystal Plummage
Marathon Man
The Black Swan
Les Diaboliques
The Parallax View
The Wicker Man
Jacob's Ladder
The Usual Suspects
Repulsion
Dr Mabuse
Eyes Wide Shut
Sleuth
Memento
Spider
Blow Up

Memento isn't a sci-fi, its a psychological thriller, there isn't any advanced technology involved, if anything, I think the polaroid thing is meant to emphasize the low-tech aspect, even in 2000 polaroids were considered historical. Still no love for Dark City??

I already proclaimed my love for Dark City

blade runner
sunshine - i really like this one. great picture, great soundtrack
12 monkeys
the first two terminators
alien - nothing wrong with the rest of the quadrilogy but the first one kicks ass
eternal sunshine of the spottless mind - one of my favorites but does it count as scifi?

I don't think any on my list qualify as sf. I treated psychological thriller as completely seperate, although there probably are crossovers. A Scanner Darkly, maybe? 2001?

Haha.. I didn't fully read your post, just your list, I just realized you were posting psychological thrillers ;)


A Scanner Darkly is definitely technologically based, and a fantastic film. Probably the only movie aside from Matrix I that Keanu is any good in. And Robert Downey Jr was priceless!!

I know what you mean.

Jacob's Ladder scares me everytime. That movie tapped into something horrifying.

River's Edge is cool, My Own Private Idaho is ok.. really his Bill and Ted's is better than those, but Matrix and Scanner Darkly were the only truly superb Keanu flicks. I mean, it was sort of like Trent Dilfer in the 2000 Superbowl for the Ravens. The guy was a mediocre QB at best, but he could make the plays when it counted, and that team was literally one of the best defenses of NFL history. In Matrix and Scanner Darkly, the production, the casting, and the writing more than made up for Keanu's mediocrity. For Keanu a mediocre performance is golden, all the others outright suck.

wait, what? bill and ted better than my own private idaho? what bad drugs are you on?

it's true that my own private idaho belongs to dead phoenix, so if you're talking about keanu i don't know maybe you mean something else, but as a movie-movie, that blows them out of the water.

now speaking of that cartoonish man, i thought he was worst in "dracula" haaaa haaaa haaa trying a fake english accent haaaa haaa haaa.

but what was i going to say? oh yes. johnny mnemonic wasn't a bad movie. okay, a bit cheaply made, a bit of "this cheap set is getting on the way" kind of way, but it was unterrible and his cartoonish accent was a very good fit-- i don't mean now "cartoon comedy" but he developed a series of physical movements for the movie that made him look like a keith haring little man thing on a double-breasted suit. you know the keith haring paintings, i forget what's called, they were even on keychains. but with a suit. like an egyptian hyeroglyphic. you get the idea.

The Matrix sucked! Keanu Reeve's best films are River's Edge, Thumbsucker, and Parenthood.

I still dispute Repo Man being sf, all the aliens and stuff are just weird window dressing from what I remember.

Repo Man is cyberpunk sci fi all the way.

Keanu was OK in Constantine, Point Break, Matrix I, etc. River's Edge I find boring.

oh shit constatine WAS good! yeah. point break is a bit of a lollercoaster. matrix 1 definitely ruled-- just because the sequels blew dog chunks it doesn't ruin the original.

i haven't ever heard of river's edge. yes, yes, i'll look it up.

Man, River's Edge was THE hipster/indie flick of the late 80's early 90's. Every nihilistic punk freak I knew loved that flick. It is based on a true story about high school kids so jaded that when a fellow student of theirs kills someone they did not report it but instead kept visiting the body and taking other kids there to look at it (if memory serves), and while I do not enjoy the movie,. it is a good movie and I think, Crispin Glover's first freaky role.

The actual news item was a real freak-out to the squares/regs who could not imagine such jaded children....