The Best Sci-Fi Movies

Director: Philip Kaufman

Stars: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy, Veronica Cartwright, Art Hindle

Philip Kaufman's sinister remake of the 1956 alien takeover flick Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is all about pacing. As the '78 film opens, the threat begins in quiet, almost beautiful fashion, with odd-looking vegetation sprouting from the ground and pods quaintly resting in bushes. And then, gradually, characters' demeanors start altering, paranoia sinks in, and Body Snatchers stacks up the dread all the way into one of the more haunting, gut-punching final shots of all time.

Kaufman's film sustains tension with a vice grip on the viewer's nerves, keeping identities unsure (Who's still human and who's become one of the pod people?) and never shying away from freaky images, such as the sight of one major character struggling to murder the pod version of himself.

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is doubly impressive; it both improves upon the '56 film and Jack Finney's literary source material with a scarier disposition and more layered character development. So when that we're-all-fucked ending hits, it's a death blow to the senses.

Director: Richard Kelly

Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Noah Wyle, Patrick Swayze, Mary McDonnell, Maggie Gyllenhaal

By now, it's safe to call writer-director Richard Kelly a one-hit wonder, but, shit, his only movie worth talking about is a brain-pummeling knockout. Catching critics and moviegoers totally off guard back in 2001, Donnie Darko, a then-26-year-old Kelly's feature debut, introduced a fearless young director who wore his geek stripes proudly. It's an '80s-set teen drama subverted by a shitload of genre tropes, centering on a super-smart high school loner, Donnie Darko (a terrifically sardonic Jake Gyllenhaal), who hallucinates that a dude in a bunny suit warned him about the world's end and begins to accept time travel as a viable practice.

There's much more at stake than that, but we'll fall back from any further summarizing; it's best to experience Donnie Darko with as little pre-existing knowledge as possible. Kelly's feat is all the more remarkable when you realize that an unproven guy in his mid-20s was capable of conceiving such a large-scale, witty, and disturbing fever dream. It's just a damn shame that Kelly's talents aged more like unrefrigerated cheese than fine wine.

Director: Christopher Nolan

Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, Dileep Rao, Tom Berenger

There's always room for some predominant James Bond influences, even on a sci-fi movie countdown. As in last summer's The Dark Knight Rises, brainy blockbuster filmmaker Christopher Nolan makes no mystery of his 007 appreciation throughout Inception, a twist on the old "secret agent" conceit that's infused with complicated mind matters that owe as much to Andrei Tarkovsky as they do Ian Fleming.

Packed with elaborately ambitious action setpieces, intricate storytelling, and humongous narrative concepts, Inception delivers the requisite popcorn thrills while never getting dumbed down. In order to follow its twisty plot, which revolves around a group of "extractors" who enter a person's subconscious to remove thoughts and ideas, one must play close attention throughout—the slightest distraction could leave you asking questions like, "How did Tom Hardy turn into Tom Berenger? Or, "Why is that spinning top so damn important?"

The most pressing question of all, though, will most likely be, "Why can I watch that again?"

Director: Neill Blomkamp

Stars: Sharlto Copley, David James, Jason Cope

As the summer of 2009 began, audiences had no idea what was about to hit them come mid-August, when first-time director Neill Blomkamp's District 9 debuted in theaters, on its way to an Academy Award nomination and $116 million in domestic grosses.

Made for a reported $30 million, this Peter Jackson-produced social satire/action thriller looks like it cost five times its actual budget, which adds to its overall "wow" factor. But, in the end, it's Blomkamp's deft balancing of black comedy, mega violence, and topical messages that elevate District 9 to an eye-opening level of excellence. In Blomkamp's world, refugee aliens that resemble giant shrimp are forced to live in an oppressed South African slums under a strict code of don't-kill-humans conduct. But once a doofus named Wikus (a revelatory Sharlto Copley) ingests some of their magic space gas, his gradual transformation into an overgrown shrimp causes a rift between us and them.

Thankfully, Blomkamp establishes the film's allegorical aspects within the first 20 minutes, which leaves him plenty of space to flex his James Cameron-esque (circa Aliens) ability to orchestrate breathless, CGI-filled action sequences.

Director: Robert Wise

Stars: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe, Billy Gray

Not without reason, the sci-fi flicks of the 1950s are stereotyped as schlock full of ludicrous plots, robotic acting, and shoddy effects—you know, the kinds of movies lampooned on Mystery Science Theater 3000. But The Day the Earth Stood Still goes against every facet of the stereotype: Intelligent, well acted, and, for its time, visually impressive, director Robert Wise's celebrated marriage of social commentary and entertaining genre storytelling is a hacksaw-cut above its '50s counterparts.

Made during a time when atomic warfare had U.S. citizens heavily shook, The Day the Earth Stood Still drops a human-looking alien (played by Michael Rennie) who ventures down to our planet with a warning that, if peace isn't reached, mankind is doomed. Oh, and we can't forget about his gargantuan robot sidekick, Gort, one of sci-fi's most iconic characters. Take Gort away, though, and Rennie's character can be viewed as an allegorical Jesus, visiting Earth as a much-needed savior-much heavier than MST3Kfare, huh?

Naturally, Hollywood attempted to remake Wise's gem in 2008, with Keanu Reeves playing Rennie's part, and.... Actually, that's all you need to hear. Our advice: Forget Reeves' horrendous version and pay homage to Wise's original work of thought-provoking art.

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

Stars: Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis, Juri Jarvet, Vladislav Dvorzhetsky

If the name Andrei Tarkovsky rings a bell, consider yourself a cool person. You're in tune with one of the genre's all-time great filmmakers, a Russian visionary who didn't make a ton of films, but each one he did conceive was a true work of art.

Meditative and poetic, Tarkovsky's Solaris finds the filmmaker at his most cerebral. It's about the hallucinations experienced by a psychologist and his crew while they're aboard a mysterious spacecraft; Tarkovsky's virtuosity is apparent through his decision to explain nothing. The trippy visions, such as one man's dead wife appearing before him, come out of nowhere, hinting at an unseen extra-terrestrial presence. By shrouding the film's antagonist in dream-like vagueness, Tarkovsky ensured that Solaris would linger in minds long after its lengthy yet admirably drawn out narrative concludes.

Director: Terry Gilliam

Stars: Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Bob Hoskins, Ian Holm, Katherine Helmond

The best kinds of movies, no matter the genre, are ones that could've only been made by one filmmaker, which describes every one of writer-director Terry Gilliam's films to the tee. Blessed with an absurdly unique imagination, the one-time Monty Python's Flying Circus member has churned out some of the science fiction genre's strangest and most grandiose dystopian flicks; Brazil, his darkly funny look at a notably bleak future society, is Gilliam's true tour de force.

The film's protagonist, played by a wonderfully bewildered Jonathan Pryce, is an office drone who becomes disenchanted by his world's dependency on machines and tyrannical rule, so he uses his imagination-much like Gilliam himself-to mentally escape; after a while, though, he's not sure what's real and what's absurdist fantasy. Nor can the viewer, frankly, thanks to how seamlessly Gilliam blurs the line between actuality and dreamscapes.

Director: Steven Spielberg

Stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, Bob Balaban, Francois Truffaut

For most of Steven Spielberg's exemplary Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the aliens appear to be hostile. Their first appearances, though not physically before the camera, hint at malicious intentions, specifically the shaking of one character's truck and the abduction of another character's young son.

As Spielberg's visually stunning drama heads into its third act, the stakes are high and the dread mounts, but then a strange, and incredibly ballsy, thing happens: The director subverts your expectations by revealing the invaders to be peaceful beings.

Going against the typical aliens-are-monsters motif in science fiction, Spielberg, who both wrote and directed Close Encounters, answered the eternal question "Are we alone?" with a joyous, "No, and we've got some pretty adorable and friendly neighbors beyond those stars." Back in 1977, that was a courageous stance to take, especially since UFO interest was at its peak and Hollywood thrived off of instilling paranoia and fear in curious moviegoers. Spielberg, always the optimist, offered a scenario in which aliens want to be our friends.

Director: James Cameron

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton, Lance Henriksen, Earl Boen, Paul Winfield

One viewing of Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent "comeback" action pic The Last Stand is all you need to revisit The Terminator (or seek it out for the first time). Because at one point, the recent Governator was just a former Mr. Olympia with minimal acting chops, but then writer-director James Cameron changed all of that.

Casting Schwarzenegger as this film's titular villain (a time-traveling cyborg focused on killing), Cameron accentuated the Austrian muscleman's strengths: a hulking presence, brute physicality, and the ability to nail simple, blunt one-liners like "I'll be back." Schwarzenegger is legitimately frightening in The Terminator, upgrading an already superb and hardcore sci-fi thriller into certified genre classic.

Director: Nicholas Meyer

Stars: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Kirstie Alley, Ricardo Montalban

Eleven movies deep, the legendary Star Trek franchise has found more triumph on the small screen than in multiplexes. Ardent fans of Gene Roddenberry's seemingly neverending intergalactic soap opera are quick to bash the many inferior film sequels, though they're loudest complaints are saved for the first entry, 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

In die-hards' eyes, The Motion Picture tossed all of the show's best elements into Hollywood's dumpster in favor of a dumbed-down and oddly distanced cash cow. As a result, Trekkies weren't waiting with baited breath for the sequel, The Wrath Of Khan. Much to their surprise, however, this 1982 franchise saver reinstated Trek's effectiveness.

With grander action sequences, an iconic villain in Ricardo Montalban's "Khan," and (SPOILER ALERT) the shocking and elegantly handled "death" of Leonard Nimoy's Spock, The Wrath Of Khan does everything right. So much so, in fact, that no subsequent Star Trek movie has been able to usurp it within the heads of obsessive fans, not even J.J. Abrams' laudable 2009 reboot.

Director: Steven Spielberg

Stars: Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Dee Wallace, Peter Coyote, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, C. Thomas Howell

Whether you're a gangster or a gentleman, there's one thing that all people have in common: We were all once little kids, heading into adulthood with wide eyes, innocence, and wonderment. No filmmaker in cinema's history has understood that better than Steven Spielberg, and few movies have profoundly captured that feeling of pre-teen magic better than E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.

The fact that we still cry like onion factory workers every time we revisit this family classic speaks volumes. Presenting the least intimidating alien ever seen on film, Spielberg hit a sentimental grand slam with the title character, a lovable space invader who befriends a young boy named Elliot (Henry Thomas) and becomes the best friend a kid could ever ask for, aside from a German Shepherd. The relationship between Elliot and E.T. is the glue that binds Spielberg's flick; it's impossible to watch E.T. and not wish that a cuddly little alien would land in your own backyard.

Director: John Carpenter

Stars: Kurt Russell, Keith David, Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Richard Masur

It's in no exaggeration to call John Carpenter's The Thing the greatest genre remake of all time. In fact, the unimaginative filmmakers cranking out soulless reboots today would be smart to study this gory, violent, and dark blueprint on how to update material with a nihilistic edge. Carpenter's wild pic remains faithful the premise of the 1951 original, The Thing From Another Planet, about a crew of researchers trapped inside a Norwegian camp as a shape-shifting creature picks them off one by one.

Wisely, though, the '51 movie's ante gets upped considerably with a series of gross-out setpieces, the best of which is a bit where the film's human characters are tied to chairs by Kurt Russell in hopes of discovering which of them is now an alien. Staged with heavy tension, the sequence starts off methodical in its build-up before erupting into a grandiose showcase of creepy-crawlies, chests that burst open, and faces that contort into tentacles with eyeballs.

A total hoot that's both cold-blooded and uniquely accessible, The Thing is one of the decade's best genre flicks. Rent this and stay home the next time a horror or sci-fi remake hits theaters.

Director: Spike Jonze

Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Scarlett Johansson

Her is an interesting entry into the sci-fi canon because it hits *so* close to home that nearly all of its elements could happen today. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theo, a lonely man working as a greeting card writer for other people’s cards (can you think of anything more depressing? Just wait for the rest of the plot) when he discovers a new hyperintelligent computer program that works as a personal assistant (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) but actually functions more like a virtual friend, and Theodore eventually falls in love with her. The inevitable breaking down of the relationship explores some uncomfortably relevant elements of our current lives with empathy and tact: how much do we depend on technology? How does technology impact our IRL relationships?

Director: Alex Garland

Stars: Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, Sonoya Mizuno, Alicia Vikander

The Turing test seems, at least initially, like an innocent intellectual exercise: it is a test to determine a computer’s intelligence, wherein a computer and human are asked a series of questions and another human is asked if he can distinguish who answered which set of questions. Should they be indistinguishable, the computer would be considered to have human intelligence, and that’s pretty scary. Ex Machina, one of the smartest indie sci-fi films in recent memory, is about a programmer who is tasked to give the Turing test to a human-like robot. The result is a very intelligent take on technology and humanity, with a knockout performance from Alicia Vikander to boot.

Director: Ridley Scott

Stars: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña

There have been quite a few top-billed original space exploration movies in the past decade—movies like Interstellar, Gravity, Prometheus, and all the new Star Wars films tend to lean on the fantastical and unknown elements of space exploration. The Martian, a movie about Matt Damon attempting to survive after being abandoned alone on Mars after a failed mission, does, of course, base its premise on our undying curiosity about the unknown just beyond our atmosphere, but it’s more smart and genuinely funny than it has any business being. Scientists have lauded the film as being one of the most scientifically correct sci-fi films ever made, and coupled with a surprisingly witty and unpredictable script (yes, potatoes can grow on Mars), The Martian ranks as one of the most original and entertaining space movies ever made.

Director: Dennis Villeneuve

Stars: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma

Arrival takes a less combative and more intellectual approach to the oft-visited idea of what would happen if extraterrestrials landed on Earth. While most movies (understandably) imagine a violent and gory affair, Arrival asks: what if they weren’t violent? How would we communicate with them? It’s a fair question, and it’s one that Amy Adams, who plays Louise Banks, one of the top linguists in the world, seeks to answer before the world’s patience runs out. Arrival is not exactly a sunny and hopeful affair, but its unique perspective on alien life helps pose unique questions about life on Earth, how we relate to each other and our past, our memories, and our traumas.

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

​Stars: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

Although Cuarón shied away from describing his Oscar-winning Gravity as a sci-fi movie, instead calling it a “a drama of a woman in space,” Gravity incorporates all the elements of a sci-fi movie set in outer space, but then elevates all of them. The story is simple: two astronauts are left stranded in space after their space shuttle is destroyed, and must work to find a way back home even though every single option goes wrong. The movie’s overarching mood, then, is one of survival in a hostile environment, a struggle to persevere when the easiest thing to do would be to give up and die. Gravity is also one of the most visually stunning movies of the decade, leaving viewers with a sense of overwhelming awe that only science fiction can provide.

Director: Fritz Lang

Stars: Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Gustav Frohlich, Fritz Rasp

Without Metropolis, this list would be threadbare. Phenomenally ahead of its time, German director Fritz Lang's dystopian marvel was the most expensive flick ever made in Germany at the time of its release, and every dollar shows up on screen.

Viewing Metropolis today, it's incredible to think that the damn thing was made way back in 1927-the effects, as well as the pacing and overall imagination, rival most of the sci-fi films released in modern times.

A certified silent film era classic, Metropolis takes place in a futuristic dystopian society in which classes are separated between rich folks and grunt workers, but the story is the least of the film's concerns. Lang's magnum opus is a feast for the eyes, inspiring awe with its large-scale cityscapes, overcrowded setpieces, and iconic shot of a female robot given life through Frankenstein-style electrical experimentation.

If you're unfamiliar with the kind of attention a silent film demands, have no fear. Metropolis is that rare example of a non-talky picture that's too immense to bore less savvy moviegoers. If someone does nod off during it, just tell them to use their limited attention span to see The Hangover Part II.

Director: Andrew Stanton

Stars: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, Sigourney Weaver, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy

Like Up, another one of Pixar's more recent achievements, Wall-E has a bravura opening. Ingeniously unfolding without dialogue, the film's first scenes treat the post-apocalypse like a silent slapstick comedy, only the Little Tramp has been swapped out for a squat robot with expressive eye cams. Wall-E is a robot on Earth after its become Trash Planet, a garbage strewn nightmare (and perhaps our  future if we don't shape up?). Wall-E compresses the world's trash into tiny cubes using his chest compartment, and then creates epic pyramids of detritus. Until he falls in love.

From there, the film transforms into something more conventional, though still beautiful and moving. (Folks that are afraid of the technology should ignore this one, as it asks you to sympathise with two robots who really care about each other.)

True-story side bar: This writer was once a substitute teacher in a past life, and while subbing at middle school that used block scheduling (side bar within a side bar: Middle school students are monsters) had to screen Wall-E for a number of classes. Because of the long class durations, the film would run in its entirety.

After 48 hours had elapsed, I had seen Wall-E six times. The Hollywood version of this story would see each classroom tamed by the brilliant Pixar feature. Instead, what happened was the kids caused havoc while I was intermittently moved to the point right before the point where you'd say you were on the verge of tears watching Wall-E cry out for his beloved.

Real talk.

Director: Franklin J. Schaffner

Stars: Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, Linda Harrison

Fans of The Twilight Zone should easily comprehend what makes the original Planet of the Apes so great. Co-written, and spearheaded, by Zone capo Rod Serling, this post-apocalyptic action/adventure channels everything that made the show powerful: intelligent social commentary, rich characterization, nerdy genre touches, and a whopper of a twist ending that's as wild as it is thought-provoking. Not bad for a movie about damn, dirty apes, huh?

Charlton Heston stars as an astronaut who crash-lands in a world where humans are treated like filthy primates, caged up and used for entertainment purposes, while overgrown apes govern with an iron fist. The makeup work is cheesy, covering the actors in excessive body hair that begs more for a surplus of BIC razors than flea baths. And a subplot involving Heston's growing attraction to a sensitive female ape is pure camp.

But those aspects of Planet of the Apes only add to the film's enjoyment factor, masking its undercurrent of messages about the ills of oppression. Certainly not monkey business as usual.

Director: Andy and Lana Wachoswki

Stars: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Joe Pantoliano, Marcus Chong

Every now and then, a movie comes along that's so bold, creative, and technically advanced that it leaves audiences in a state of oh-shit wonderment, saying to themselves, "Hollywood still has it like that?"

Back in 1999, that's exactly what the Wachowski brothers' sucker punch of a sci-fi revolution known as The Matrix did, enduring through some incoherent plot points with camerawork and effects that redefined the genre. Not to mention, the remarkable achievement of turning Keanu Reeves into something more than a vapid acting drone, if only momentarily.

n The Matrix, the Wachowski bro's influences are on front street: kung fu cinema, Japanese anime, Philip K. Dick ideology, cyberpunk. It's all there as computer hacker Neo (Reeves) fights his way through cyber-tyrants in an alternate dimension, a freedom mission that the directors stylize with filmmaking previously unseen, such as now-infamous, and often rehashed, bullet-time camera trickery. When reflecting upon the impact of The Matrix, it's wisest to completely disregard both of its ball-dropping sequels, which sadly proved that the Wachowskis were as overzealous as they were slightly overrated.

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Stars: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Caine, Danny Huston, Clare-Hope Ashitey, Charlie Hunnam

Alfonso Cuarón, director of the awe-inducing dystopian masterwork Children Of Men, isn't one to show off. Full of technical wizardry, his adaptation of P.D. James' 1992 novel moves at such an alarming rate, and with such character-driven grace, that it's easy to overlook each of Cuarón's virtuosic touches. Viewed a second time, though, the film's two insane single-take sequences stand out as much as the crags in Clive Owen's weary face.

One is a riot's attack on a car, shot with a 360-degree-turning camera inside the vehicle, and the other is a siege on a warehouse building that's without an edit for 10 minutes. Those scenes alone should tell every other working filmmaker, in a loud and emphatic tone, "Step your games up."

The science fiction in Children of Men happens before the movie begins; 18 years prior to the story's 2027 setting, a fertility crisis resulted in no more babies being born, which caused London's officials to enforce a tight anti-immigration policy as the world's population slowly dies off. Clive Owen plays a former activist tasked with leading a pregnant African immigrant, and eventually her newborn baby (the only one in the world), out of the country. The idea behind Children of Men is the end-of-the-world as caused by mankind itself, not an alien invasion or nuclear holocaust. Cuarón's darkly lit chamber piece is a downer, sure, but it's also one of the best films of the last 10 years.

Director: Ridley Scott

Stars: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, M. Emmett Walsh, James Earl Jones, Daryl Hannah

The dystopian Los Angeles of Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner (which, LOL, is supposed to be 2019) is a dark, gritty, complex meditation on what it means to be human. A huge corporation creates robots that are nearly indistinguishable from humans, and puts them to work (read: slavery) in exploring new planets; Harrison Ford plays a jaded cop of sorts who is an expert at finding the human-like robots who manage to escape. For those of you too young to have seen it and who need a more modern frame of reference, imagine Westworld as a cosmopolitan city, brimming with all the intrigue and capitalist greed a big city is entitled to, but all the robots are well aware of their place in society. Watch it before the dope-looking sequel with Ryan Gosling comes out later this year.

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Stars: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester

2001: A Space Odyssey isn't really a movie—it's visual transcendence. Covering all of humanity's existence, from the "dawn of man" when apes partied in rock pits to an unidentifiable future, Stanley Kubrick's monumental examination of technology, evolution, and outer space doesn't follow a streamlined narrative structure, or pander to minute attention spans. By the end of its nearly three-hour running time, 2001doesn't answer any questions and has no more than 100 or so lines of dialogue. Basically, it's Kubrick at his fuck-the-status-quo peak.

So what's the point of it all? If you're interested in scientific accuracy and existential theories, 2001 is cinema's ultimate case study in implication; if you're more apt to spark a doobie and watch movies in hopes of enhancing the high, it's a never-ending eye-gasm. Even before the extended laser-light show that sends one character into the future and looks like a Windows Media screen saver on PCP, 2001 assaults the senses through pioneering special effects that, essentially, revolutionized not only sci-fi movies to come, but the entire medium of moviemaking.

Now that we've slathered 2001 with a thick coat of well-deserved praise, is there any further justification needed for its topping this list? We think not. Remix "The 50 Best Sci-Fi Movies" in the year 2061 and, chances are, it'll still reign supreme.