10. “Children Of Men” (2006)
For all the wit and bravura vision with which it was told, “Children Of Men” almost seemed too bleak on its release eleven years ago. But what already felt like one of the best movies of its decade has only, in an era of immigrant paranoia, Brexit and the rest, come to feel even greater. And yet as grim as its vision of the future/our almost-present is, Alfonso Cuaron’s visual gifts (that car scene!), his compassion and his tonal dexterity makes it as deeply watchable as it is depressing.
9. “Metropolis” (1927)
If Melies’ “A Trip To The Moon” conceived what we think of the sci-fi film, it was Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” that brought it to term. The silent Expressionist masterpiece, set in a fiercely economically-divided city where the rich live lives of leisure and the poor are oppressed and exploited (*gestures arms around to present day*), and the robot figurehead who sparks a revolution, remains as fresh today as it did when it premiered 90 years ago, the totality of its vision matched only by the fire in its belly.
8. “Aliens” (1986)
Like “The Terminator,” history has proven that “Alien” probably shouldn’t be a franchise unless James Cameron is involved. The trick that made “Aliens” almost as good as its original was that Cameron switched genres, going from focused haunted-house horror to all-out Vietnam-influenced action, while retaining everything that made Ridley Scott’s original so special. As always with the director, he doesn’t forget to give it heart with the introduction of Newt, but it’s the way he melds shock-and-awe action-horror with character that makes it a classic.
7. “Brazil” (1985)
It proved as difficult to bring to the screen as anything else that Terry Gilliam ever made, but in the end his Orwellian, Kafkaesque satire proved to be entirely worth it, at least for the audience: the story of bureaucrat Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), his dreams of escape, and his attempts to rectify an administrative error is probably the director’s finest hour. Visionary in the world that it builds, decidedly Python-esque in its humor, and oddly optimistic despite everything, it might not have been appreciated in its time, but it’ll likely never be forgotten now.
6. “Alien” (1979)
As this week’s “Alien: Covenant” makes clear, even when you’re working from the template, the alchemy that makes “Alien” so good is a near untouchable bar to get over. Nearly 40 years on, it still grips like it was made yesterday, so lord knows what it must have been like to see everything for the first time: that slow-burn, character-heavy first half, the shocks of seeing the facehugger, the acid blood and the chestburster for the first time, the sheer, primal body horror of H.R. Giger’s creature and its invasive reproduction, that the woman who had a bit part in “Annie Hall” turned out to be the heroine. It’s perfection in a way that, most likely, will never be replicated.
5. “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind” (1977)
While pal George Lucas was channeling pulp fiction and Saturday-morning serials, Steven Spielberg was putting out his own take on the genre, a more grounded, human, yet equally as awe-inducing take. Focused on a number of UFO-watchers or victims, most notably Richard Dreyfuss’s obsessive Roy Neary, it’s a film of impressive scope and scale, of Spielbergian wit and terror and magic, but more than anything else, it’s a film of wonder, that makes the existence of other lifeforms seem not terrifying, but glorious.
4. “Stalker” (1979)
Eerily predicting Chernobyl and Fukushima while doing so much so besides, Andrei Tarkovksy’s haunting adaptation of Arkady and Boris Sturgatsky’s novel “Roadside Picnic” sees three men journey into a restricted area known as the Zone, which has the ability, supposedly, to fulfil your utmost desires. As with “Solaris,” the filmmaker is here using a sci-fi conceit to explore the deepest recesses of the human mind, resulting in something that however many times you see it, continues to give you new rewards.
3. “Star Wars” (1977)
George Lucas’ accomplishment with his 1977 game-changing blockbuster was in creating not just a universe, but virtually a genre: “Star Wars” is now as much a setting as a Western is, in many ways. But for the gargantuan feat of imagination he pulled off, one shouldn’t forget simply how fucking brilliantly “Star Wars” (don’t call it “A New Hope,” you’ll only encourage him) works in and entirely of itself. It’s a visually gifted, utterly compelling piece of storytelling that knows fable and fairy tale backwards and forwards, and turns out a story that doesn’t so much feel like a movie now as it does a myth.
2. “Blade Runner” (1982)
We’re all now holding our breath for Denis Villenueve’s 35-years-on sequel, but it would be a Herculean feat for it to turn out even half as good as Ridley Scott’s iconic original. Adapted from Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep,” the film that birthed cyberpunk builds a world that didn’t just influence a hundred other films, it practically influenced the present. But it also creates a compelling noir-mystery, a pulse-pounding action-thriller, a meditative film of ideas, a deeply strange arthouse picture, and a curiously moving love story.
1. “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)
Honestly, we did think of putting something else in the top spot — Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” is such an obvious choice. But really, nothing else that could take its place has the same ambition — spanning from the dawn of time to the transcendence of man — the same level of craft, the same curiosity and intimacy, technical invention, trippiness, and sense of wonder. 80% of the films here wouldn’t exist without it, and literally 99% of them simply aren’t as good.
As we said, we excluded superhero movies which are kind of a genre onto themselves these days (“Superman,” “Spider-Man 2,” “The Dark Knight” and “Guardians Of The Galaxy” would have been among the most likely contenders), and there were a few other films that sit on the fantasy/fable/other borderline that ultimately didn’t make the cut more for classification reasons than any indication of quality, like “Ghostbusters,” “Doctor Strangelove,” “The Prestige,” “Holy Motors,” “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind” or “The Truman Show.”
More traditional sci-fi movies that we thought about, but ultimately didn’t make the cut, include the original 70s “Westworld” and Michael Crichton’s earlier “The Andromeda Strain,” Mike Judge’s all-too-prescient satire “Idiocracy,” Charlton Heston in “Soylent Green” and “The Omega Man,” Joseph Losey’s underseen “The Damned,” the underrated “2010,” the still-enjoyable “Men In Black,” giant ant picture “Them,” and killer plant movie “The Day Of The Triffids.”
There’s also “1984,” “Logan’s Run,” the original “The Thing From Another World,” “Enemy Mine,” “City Of Lost Children,” David Cronenberg’s “eXistenZ,” and some more recent fare like the two recent “Star Wars” movies, “Beyond The Black Rainbow,” “Melancholia,” “Monsters,” “Edge Of Tomorrow,” “Interstellar,” “The Mist,” “Signs,” “Hard To Be A God,” “The Martian,” “Coherence,” “Serenity” and “The World’s End,” to name but a few.
Anything else you’re missing, even with a hundred-strong list? Let us know in the comments.