Favorite sci-fi movies?

[James Y]

The Abominable Snowman (AKA, The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas; 1957)

This movie was way ahead of its time. It was produced by Britain's Hammer Films, which made a lot of horror films in the 1950s and 60s. It straddled the line between horror, sci-fi, and psychological thriller. Not an action-packed movie, but it showed that there is a lot more to the 'Abominable Snowman'/yeti phenomenon than mere 'unclassified dumb apes'. Surprising, especially for a movie of its time. It also co-starred one of my favorite old-time actors, Peter Cushing.

https://youtu.be/Qlza-B78TPQ

Jim

[James Y]

Night of the Demon (1957)

Another movie that (kind of) straddles the line between genres; supernatural horror and maybe a little sci-fi. Also a movie ahead of its time.

The one issue I've always had with this movie is how boring, arrogant, and unlikable the protagonist (played by Dana Andrews) is. It makes it extremely difficult to root for him. On the other hand, the villain, an evil, satanic cult leader, is very interesting and entertaining in his scenes.

https://youtu.be/-rwfiJpyFrI

Jim

[max808]

20th century favorites mentioned so far:

Metropolis (1927)
King Kong (1933)
The Invisible Man (1933)
The Thing From Another World (1951)
War of the Worlds (1953)
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
Them! (1954)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
Gojira/Godzilla (OG1954)
Forbidden Planet (1956)
Radon/Rodan (OG1956)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
20,000,000 Miles to Earth (1957)
The Abominable Snowman (1957)
Night of the Demon (1957)
The Mysterians (1957)
Earth vs the Spider (1958)
The Fly (1958)
The Blob (1958)
Mysterious Island (1961)
Atragon (1963)
Frankenstein vs Baragon (OG1965)
Queen of Blood/Planet of Blood (1966)
War of the Gargantuas (1966)
Quartermass and the Pit/Five Million Years to Earth (1967)
Barbarella (1968)
2001: a Space Odyssey (1968)
The Omega Man (1971)
The Andromeda Strain (1971)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Escape From the Planet of the Apes (1971)
Silent Running (1972)
Solaris (1972)
Soylent Green (1973)
Damnation Alley (1977)
Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Time After Time (1979)
Alien (1979)
Mad Max (1979)
Flash Gordon (1980)
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Humanoids from the Deep (1980)
Galaxy of terror (1981)
Mad Max 2: The road warrior (1981)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Escape From New York (1981)
Outland (1981)
Star Trek II:The Wrath Of Khan (1982)
Tron (1982)
Blade Runner (1982)
John Carpenter's The Thing (1982)
Swamp Thing (1982)
Forbidden World (1982)
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983)
2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)
Night of the Comet (1984)
Starman (1984)
Terminator (1984)
Dune (1984)
Brazil (1985)
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
Back to the Future (1985)
Re-Animator (1985)
Aliens (1986)
From beyond (1986)
Killbots/Chopping Mall (1986)
Night of the Creeps (1986)
Predator (1987)
Prince of Darkness (1987)
The Running Man (1987)
Not of this Earth (1988)
They Live (1988)
The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension! (1988)
Akira (1988)
Brain Damage (1988)
Tremors (1989)
The Abyss (1989)
Back to the Future II (1989)
Total Recall (1990)
Terminator 2 (1991)
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
Fortress (1992)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Demolition Man (1993)
Stargate (1994)
12 Monkeys (1995)
Mars Attacks (1996)
Contact (1997)
Le Cinquième Elément (1997)
Event Horizon (1997)
Dark City (1998)
The Matrix (1999)

21st century is next...

[James Y]

Here's three more:

Queen of Blood (AKA Planet of Blood, 1966)

This was a low-budget film, but as a kid I didn't know that, and back then, the vampiric female alien gave me the creeps. I read somewhere that it might have been an inspiration for Alien (1979).

Outland (1981)

Cloverfield (2008).

Cloverfield is one of the very few 'found footage' films that I've really liked, and that didn't give me motion sickness.

Jim

[legOFwhat?]

Jim, Cloverfield and Chronicle are my 2 favorite found footage movies.
Couple more;
the running man,
forbidden world 1982,
Galaxy of terror 1981
Humanoids from the deep 1980
Not of this earth. 1988
Shockem' dead 1991

[max808]

Keep em coming gents!

Up next is my review of Barbarella, which I promised my buddy we'd watch when he comes over tonight. Feel free to share your reviews of your favorites. First time in probably 40 years I'll be watching this Roger Vadim classic. Those razor teeth dolls scared the living daylights out of me when I first saw it on tv as a lil boy. Demons to face it was high up on my list...

[Manixguy@1994]

No list is complete without some serious sci fi drama . Dan

[Manixguy@1994]

!How could we forget Ed Wood ? Dan

[max808]

2] Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy (1968)

by Roger Vadim & Dino De Laurentiis
runtime 01:38:00
aspect ratio 2.35:1
released 25/10/1968 BE
budget > $9 million
box office > $5.5 million

Rewatching it now it still has that creepy vibe with Pygar looking like he came flying in from another dimension and quite preposterous & hilarious at the same time. Perhaps Luc Besson saw it as a child and was inspired to start writing the Fifth Element, which after Flash Gordon in 1980 could be considered it's creative successor. It sure inspired Duran Duran, who took their name after the movie's mad scientist. You know, the one who built a wurlitzer looking jacuzzi of joy that ends up getting %$#€¥. One thing I hadn't noticed as a kid was how juvenile and silly the whole thing really is with phallic references left and right. The exaltation transferrence pill reminds me of that scene in Demolition Man where they engage in a similar activity using headset technology. Both are hilarious scenes and quite fitting Barbarella being a special agent of love. Sent by the president of Earth to locate and arrest the most evil Dr. Durand Durand, spitting image of Dr. Rotwang from Metropolis, thus preventing him from destroying Earth's inhabitants with his Positron Ray. In his own words "to replace them in the 4th dimension...". So don't go into this expecting a life altering experience but if it's sixties kitsch & camp you're after, this is as hokey as it gets and pretty hard to beat. Jane Fonda in her 30 year old prime also hard to beat. Costume change every other scene courtesy of Paco Rabanne is the cherry on top.

[max808]

!How could we forget Ed Wood ? Dan

Excellent choice Dan. I still proudly own that one on VHS cassette tape. Will get added soon.

[James Y]

Jim, Cloverfield and Chronicle are my 2 favorite found footage movies.
Couple more;
the running man,
forbidden world 1982,
Galaxy of terror 1981
Humanoids from the deep 1980
Not of this earth. 1988
Shockem' dead 1991

Larry,

There's a few more found footage movies I like:

Trollhunter (2010, Norway)
Willow Creek (2013)
Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018, South Korea)

Although I don't think any of these movies can be classified as sci-fi. More like horror, or in the case of Trollhunter, fantasy/horror.

In Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, I hated the first 20 to 30 minutes of it, but it actually turns into a pretty well-made, creepy film (IMO). I would recommend not watching any trailers of it, to avoid spoiling it.

Willow Creek is a fairly realistic Bigfoot movie. Not perfect, but mostly pretty believable. But people who want an action movie with guns and roaring CGI monsters will be sorely disappointed. This is one movie that people will either really like it or really hate it.

Not a found footage film, but my overall favorite werewolf movie is Dog Soldiers (2002). But again, I don't think this falls into the sci-fi category, as it's more military action/horror. The werewolves were played by stunt people in cool-looking werewolf costumes or prosthetics that had built-in stilts to make them taller, instead of CGI monsters.

Alas, I think I'm styaying too far off of this thread's sci-fi movie theme. My apologies, Max.

Jim

[legOFwhat?]

A few more that popped into my head are: Explorers (1985), Flight of the navigator (1986) and how can we forget E.T.(?)

Me and my wife watched Explorers last year, she had never watched it. Ethan Hawk, River Phoenix again as kids was quite enjoyable.

Sometimes my memory of a movie is better than the actual movie and after looking up titles I watched, I'm glad so many of them were "edited for TV" growing up.

[max808]

No worries Jim, I've been revisiting my top 10 and writing some reviews to post on here. Bear with me though, they can be quite unhinged and all over the place really so here goes nothing...

3] Alien (1979)
by Ridley Scott & H.R. Giger
theatrical cut > 01:56:37
aspect ratio > 2.35:1
premiere > 25/05/1979 USA
budget > $11 million
box office > $106.3 million

Can't remember when I first saw this but I was too young to realize the impact it would have on pop culture. The franchise it spawned is made of legend and for good reason when you look at the box office. Love every Alien movie, the first one's a bit tame compared to later installments and by the time you get to Prometheus and Covenant, which are actually prequels to Alien, our crew faces not only xenomorphs but also a ruthless and sadistic android. Alien vs Predator are some of my favorites, in fact I would strongly suggest Ridley Scott acquire the rights to Terminator and create an Alien vs Predator vs Terminator universe. Lance Henriksen has always been my favorite ever since Millennium and he really brings gravitas to any character he portrays. Having seen both AvPs on blu-ray, the immersion you get with them is awesome and I find myself rooting for both protagonist and predator. When you finally get to the *spoiler alert* queen mum on ice finale our gorgeous protagonist has bonded with her initial captor, who considers her a noble adversary and even forms an alliance with her. By the end she has clearly earned the respect of the Yautja people and its elders in particular who have come to collect their fallen. Our cute protagonist now wears the mark of a fullfledged Yautja hunter and receives an articulated spear to prove it. What a jumpoff for AvP3! Instead of bickering about what's canon and what not do like Marvel and put them all together in a multiverse, where the matrix has finally become self aware and Thüring has been defeated in favor of a singularity. Even the owners of these franchises and their creative writers sometimes sin against canon but in a multiverse anything is possible. Luke Skywalker and princess Leia are brother and sister all of a sudden? Also, time travel dude. In stark contrast allow me to present this rather elegant cinematic equation:

H.R. Giger© + $ir Ridley $¢ott™ + $chwarzen€gger® + Lan¢e H€nrik$en
= awesomeness on a level not seen before!

I rest my case.

[max808]

4] Blade Runner (1982)
by Ridley Scott & Michael Deeley
final cut > 01:57:36
aspect ratio > 2.35:1 anamorphic
premiere > 25/06/1982 USA
budget > $30 million
box office > $41.6 million

Seen this so many times and it's a jawdroppingly beautiful film everytime but equally haunting. It's the one classic I enjoy watching the least cuz it's quite a chore getting through it and despite all the eye candy it really gets under your skin as it devolves into a gutwrenching finale. There's about half a dozen cuts of this masterpiece available and going from a director's cut DVD to a final cut blu-ray recently, there is a noticeable difference in that high definition presentation. The original director's cut was haphazardly concocted by the studio as a cashgrab and never was signed off on by an unhappy director so Ridley Scott considers this final cut his director's cut. There was some stiff competition though in the summer of 1982 with John Carpenter's Thing, Disney's Tron, Toby Hooper's Poltergeist or Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and I guess Blade Runner was considered a failure by critics since it basically bombed at the box office. Little did they know it would end up a cult classic and probably one of the most influential films in any genre, not just sci-fi. The production design and world building are very accomplished and the photography is universal, reason why the movie holds up to this day. After looking for several years on the secondary market in the triple digits, my prayers were answered when they released that final cut in 4K on steelbook at a reasonable price, so I picked up 3, sold one to a girlfriend at a discount and kept one sealed just in case...

[max808]

5] Dune (1984)
by David Lynch & Raffaella De Laurentiis
uncut > 02:16:46
aspect ratio > 2.35:1 anamorphic
premiere > 14/12/1984 USA
budget > $45 million
box office > $37.9 million

Just rewatched this the other day and It's as beautiful and confusing as the first time I saw it. Lots of people seem to prefer Villeneuve"s remake and having seen both I have to say the remake stays very loyal to David Lynch's juicy/creepy masterpiece, it's just a more sanitized and polished version of the original, also the photography and visual effects are more accomplished, largely on account of nearly 4 decades of artistic and technological progress. The remake is also incredibly boring and takes itself way too seriously with all the messianic references in my not so humble but honest opinion. I much prefer to watch the original in all its magnificently cheesy/super nasty eighties/punk/disco splendor. Curious to find out what happens when Hollywood hands David Lynch a blank check around the same time Mick Jagger and David Bowie were dancing in the streets? Let's dive right in...
- galactic emperors oozing cosmic juice from every orifice, check
- crazy knifefights in which Special Agent Cooper nearly gets stabbed in the scrotum by Logan's Run while wearing Picasso looking forcefields, double check
- remotely controlled supersonic syringes with poison needles, triple check my friend
- Sting as a space ninja in skimpy outfits... you got it and he's ripped too ladies
- Max von Sydow/Exorcist and Judge/Jürgen Prochnow together in this surreal tale of noble endeavors & treacherous deceipt, of intergalactic imperial ambitions & mastery of timespace, of divine medicine & eternal life, just awesome
- fremen rebel scum high off spice with electric blue eyes led by Hank the tree guy and driven by a thirst for revenge against their Harkonnen oppressors, which were always my favorite faction in the game cuz they had Tesla coils that would disintegrate charging enemies and were only rivaled in downrange effectiveness by said fremen scum, we got you covered son
- subtler and less messianic subtext and more focus on Ghostbusters level VFX which didn't all age that gracefully but are very entertaining nonetheless, part of the package and charm of this most noble and epic David Lynch film
By far my favorite of his, I was lucky enough to find a mint copy earlier this year. Arrow video put together a 4K steelbook that a collector practically gave me considering current aftermarket prices. Unable to watch 4K discs yet, the 1080p full HD transfer on the Arrow blu-ray looks impressive on my 55" Sony XG95 with deep blacks and saturated colors that ooze off the screen and vividly capture David Lynch's visionary magnum opus. Don't take my word for it though, watch Eraserhead instead of this and see which one you prefer... either way in good absurdist tradition anything you watch by him will have you confused but in awe most of the time so just buckle up and enjoy the ride on the highway to DaDa-Land...

[max808]

6] Back to the Future II (1989)
by Robert Zemeckis & Steven Spielberg
theatrical cut > 01:47:59
aspect ratio > 1.85:1
premiere > 20/12/1989 BE
budget > $40 million
box office > $333 million

Let's explore some of the dialogue in this time travel masterpiece:

- Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads...

- The future... unbelievable. I gotta check this out Doc!

- Aha... precisely on schedule.

- All the kids in the future wear their pockets inside out.

- All I want is a Pepsi.

- Hey McFly! Yeah I seen you around... you're Marty McFly's kid aren't you?
- Biff?
- You're Marty Junior... tough break kid. Must be rough being named after a complete butthead.

- Hey gramps, I told you 2 coats of wax on my car, not just one.

- Hey kid say hello to your grandma for me.

- Whoa, since when did you become the physical type?

- Something very familiar about all of this.

- Hardly recreational reading material Marty.

- Marty! I didn't invent the time machine for financial gain. The intent here is to gain a clearer perception of humanity, where we've been, where we're going, the pitfalls and the possibilities, the perils and the promise... perhaps even an answer to that universal question: why?
- Hey Doc I'm all for that but what's wrong with making a few bucks on the side?

- So Doc Brown invented a time machine...

- How's grandpa?
- Oh he threw his back out again.

- Nobody calls me chicken Needles, nobody!

- McFry!!!
- Fujitsu-san, konichuwa!

- Eat lead slackers!!!

- I just wanna say one thing, God bless America.

- Look at him, he's a butthead just like his old man was.

- He was right and I was wrong. I had it coming, he's my husband and he takes care of all of us, and he deserves our respect.

- Obviously the time continuum has been disrupted creating this new temporal event sequence resulting in this alternate reality.
- English Doc.

...and off to the fifties we go for a recut of the original...

- Ooh La La... Ooh La La?!?


Some footnotes:
- All gadgets and appliances in the future (2015) sound like Stephen Hawking
- They tend to leave Marty's girlfriend passed out by herself wherever and whenever it's convenient, like that was a good idea even in 1985
- Art Center Pasadena was possibly involved in the production and vehicle design, going off their Texaco vignette
- The 2 police motorcycles in the background that pull up at the courthouse are very similar to Judge Dredd and in my opinion the better design, possibly serving as inspiration for the comics and later adaptations
- This sequel made an incredible 700% return on investment, no wonder Spielberg and Zemeckis are so prolific to this day and as close as Hollywood gets to a safe bet
- Add George Lucas, James Cameron, Ridley Scott and a few others to that list of directors who dominated the box office in the seventies and eighties and have now achieved god-like status, worth their weight in gold and then some
- My trilogy steelbook offers decent full HD picture quality but the age and grain of the film are very evident in this transfer, people who don't like that can always resort to DNR and I think cinema settings on most modern TV's will also help to mitigate that film grain
- This one has always been my favorite in the trilogy on account of its futuristic setting and exploration of alternate realities, which reminds me to look for a copy of Altered States which is supposed to be a trip...

[James Y]

Hi, Max.

*For anyone who hasn’t seen the Back to the Future franchise and plans to, there’s a spoiler ahead.

I love the Back to the Future movies, especially the first one. TBH, my favorites of the series were parts 1 & 3. For me, Part 2 just felt like filler, and I didn’t care for Marty McFly revisiting 1955, which he’d just worked so hard to successfully leave in Part 1.

Jim

[max808]

Hi, Max.

*For anyone who hasn’t seen the Back to the Future franchise and plans to, there’s a spoiler ahead.

I love the Back to the Future movies, especially the first one. TBH, my favorites of the series were parts 1 & 3. For me, Part 2 just felt like filler, and I didn’t care for Marty McFly revisiting 1955, which he’d just worked so hard to successfully leave in Part 1.

Jim

I feel you Jim, back to the fifties felt like filler and likely shot/pieced together from the original. There's actually several easter eggs referring to the third one, which is an ok movie, I just don't care for westerns much. A new trilogy/reboot would definitely spark my interest but Spielberg to this day refuses to oblige, even though it's money in the bank on account of all the now middle-aged fanboys looking for a nostalgia trip. The way I understand it, pop culture has shifted into a nineties retro revival, where the eighties have become vintage and the fifties and sixties are just plain ole antique, leaving the seventies lingering somewhere in between as some kind of twilight zone with lots of gems hidden in the mist. Westworld ironically top of my still to source list, with Yul Brynner's mesmerizing T-1000 performance avant la lettre etched on my young retinas.

[max808]

7] Terminator 2 (1991)
by James Cameron & Stephanie Austin
theatrical cut > 02:17:07
extended collector's cut > 02:35:55
aspect ratio > 2.35:1 anamorphic
premiere > 01/07/1991 LA, USA
budget > $102 million
box office > $520.9 million

Let's take an anecdotal look at how influential Terminator 2 really was in filmmaking and culture in general...
- as the title Judgement Day suggests the film deals with an apocalyptic war, in this case between robots and what's left of humanity after a military A.I. becomes self aware and preemptively wipes out billions of people
- visions of a nuclear holocaust very much en vogue right now and the patriot/prepper/survivalist has become somewhat of a modern archetype often associated with apocalyptic events of all sorts
- opening inferno credits likely inspired Roberto Rodriguez for his Troublemaker Studios logo
- rockbar/biker/mc cliches have been redone in many action movies since then, transforming from one dimensional villains to the complex
anti-hero/protagonist we see today
- greaser leathers, shades and a black Harley
- Can't let you take the man's wheels, son. Now get off before I put you down...
- product placement increasingly implemented over time to the point of shameless plugs nowadays
- rebellious teenage punks on a Honda minibike ripping ATMs with a legacy Sinclair, visionary for the times and actually plausible these days
- also see every autistic hacker genius character since then who always carry their special kit on them to perform miracles on the move and oftentimes end up saving the day, hacking their way in and out of most military installations with relative ease
- brilliant but overly ambitious scientist who is on the verge of a revolutionary breakthrough but ends up opening Pandora's box and dooming mankind cliche present in many sci-fi classics prior and since
- mysoginist/abusive/rapist hospital personnel trope abused to no end, usually resulting in the audience feeling helpless initially but euphoric once the cowardly rapist gets his comeuppance and meets his grisly demise more than likely
- Terminator spawned a legion of subpar and often blatant ripoffs and actually rendered this man vs machine concept quite mainstream or at least established it as a genre in and of itself and an undercurrent in most sci-fi films since
- Annihilator (1986)
- Eliminators (1986)
- The Vindicator (1986)
- The Retaliator (1987)
- Lady Terminator (1987)
- Alien Terminator (1988)
- Russian Terminator (1989)
- Alienator (1990)
- Cybernator (1991)
- Terminator 2 made a 400% return on investment, obviously making a lot of people happy and further cementing James Cameron's reputation as a cash machine, who actually borrowed from some of these low budget trademark violations for his masterclass sequel
- as mentioned in my first review, Fritz Lang's Metropolis is to my knowledge still the origin of that universal class struggle theme and Terminator 3 is actually titled Rise of the Machines, further exacerbating the existential threat machines potentially pose to humanity
- also cold/hard/clinical/stainless steel vs
warm/soft/organic/flesh & blood
- since Spielberg's 2001 A.I. more care has been taken to explore the moral/mental/psychological implications of these artificial intelligences and their lack of emotions, pretty much culminating in the feature-length Thüring test that is Ex Machina but my personal favorite is I Robot based on Asimov
- I know now why you cry, but it is something I can never do.
T-800 Terminator final words to John Connor

[max808]

Just as a blanket disclaimer for this thread:
*Spoiler Alert!*