20. “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back” (1980)
We tend to side with Joss Whedon on this: while you could make the argument that “The Empire Strikes Back” is the best episode of the now-eight-strong “Star Wars” series, we wouldn’t call it the best movie. But what an episode: thanks to writers like pulp legend Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, it’s more exciting, funny, sexy and surprising than its predecessor, embellishing the universe with real humanity until it drops one of cinema’s biggest narrative bombs at the end.
19. “The Fly” (1986)
Remakes Are Good, Volume 2: the original 1950s B-movie might have found the idea, but it needed David Cronenberg to see it through to its conclusion, with his utterly gruesome take on the scientist (Jeff Goldblum) who accidentally melds his DNA with the humble insect and loses his humanity with it. The same isn’t true of Cronenberg, though: as gloriously and uncompromisingly gross as the director gets (his biggest studio movie contains some of his most horrifying imagery), keeping the focus as much on Geena Davis ensures that this has the pathos of the very best monster movies.
18. “The Terminator” (1984)
Time travel, killer robots, nuclear apocalypse: when James Cameron got the chance to make “The Terminator” (only his second movie, and the first he didn’t get fired off), he didn’t leave much on the table. And yet for all its far-out sci-fi stuff, it works — and how it works! — because Cameron gives it the lean focus of a chase movie, while leavening it with a genuinely swoonsome love story. All that, and one of the movies’ greatest villains.
17. “Back To The Future” (1985)
From the franchise-heavy world of 2017, it feels impossible that “Back To The Future” would ever get made, let alone become a massive hit: it’s a movie about a teenager who goes back to the 1950s when Libyan terrorists try to kill the scientist he hangs out with, and then tries to stop his mother from fucking him. But Robert Zemeckis’ execution is so great, his screenplay with Bob Gale so perfect, the turns from Michael J. Fox and others so charming, that it’s also impossible to think of a world where a film this funny, well-constructed and unexpected wouldn’t be a smash, too.
16. “Akira” (1988)
Its international success might have ensured that we got a lot of terrible anime over the years, but that’s no reason to blame “Akira” — Katsuhiro Otomo’s seminal cyberpunk animation about a biker trying to stop his friend from unleashing a psychic apocalypse, was and is a stone-cold classic. With visibly high production value, stunning action, an extraordinarily well-envisioned future that’s just as influential as “Blade Runner,” and a total command of tone, it’s a landmark that will live hundreds of years beyond its copycats.
15. “The Thing” (1982)
Again, if we were talking horror movies, John Carpenter’s genuinely horrific Arctic-set remake of “The Thing From Another World” might have broached the Top 10 — it’s probably a better horror than it is a sci-fi, its vice-tight paranoia the dominant tone. But it does what even relatively few films here manage, and finds an alien creature that’s genuinely, horrifyingly alien, an invader that seems unstoppable and incomprehensible, thanks to Rob Bottin’s still-legendary creature effects (and, of course, Carpenter’s impeccable handling of the rest).
14. “Under The Skin” (2013)
Adapted, very loosely, from Michel Faber’s book, Jonathan Glazer’s utterly unique mindbender sees Scarlett Johansson (in a remarkable, opaque performance) as an alien in disguise who stalks Scotland in search of prey. But as unknowable as she is, and as chilly as the film can be, it’s ultimately, like the best films in the genre, a movie about humanity, from the indelible baby on the beach sequence to the oddly moving finale that finally delivers on the promise of the title.
13. “E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982)
Famously, the film that became, at the time, the top-grossing movie ever began life as a sort of home-invasion horror called “Night Skies,” until Steven Spielberg’s love for the friendliest of the creatures sprung off into its own thing. In the process, it became not just one of the best films about an alien visitor to earth, but also a great film — Spielberg’s first of many — about childhood, as influenced as much by “The 400 Blows” as by “Star Wars.” Only the most stone-hearted can hear John Williams’ theme without crying today.
12. “The Matrix” (1999)
It could have, maybe even should have, been a “Jupiter Ascending”-sized mess. A mash-up of superhero comics, cyberpunk, video games, martial arts, John Woo, 90s computer hacker movies, post-apocalyptic fiction, and whatever else was running through the Wachowskis’ brains at the time. But “The Matrix” still thrills with its totality of vision, its giddiness that they’re being allowed to get away with it, with the flair and with which it’s executed. Good thing they never made any terrible sequels to sully the legacy, right?…
11. “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” (1991)
Speaking of terrible sequels, the “Terminator” series continues to knock them out every five years or so to increasingly diminishing returns. It’s a franchise that probably should never have been a franchise, but when the first sequel is as impeccable as “Terminator 2,” you can hardly blame them for continuing to try. Maintaining the relentless chase-action pace, and the pathos (this time about a near-orphan boy and his relationships with his actual mother and surrogate cyborg father), it also cleverly flips it on its head, while ramping things up to an level of action that was previously unthinkable (for better or worse, the modern blockbuster was in most respects born here).