Sci-Fi Movie of the Millenium

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I love this genre. I would watch anything remotely sci-fi for unfathomable reasons (at the moment). It might be difficult to name top 10 considering so many out there, but definitely worth a try.

[Marc]

Equilibrium
Pitch Black
Aliens
Star Trek 4

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I got a few I like, some of them are also dystopic/apocalyptic however..

::::::::

Equilibrium
The Core
Men in Black I
Alien
Starship Troopers
Stargate
Chronicles of Riddick
Terminator 2
Final Fantasy iii (animated)
Ghosts of Mars
Contact (even if it's a bit long)

yay I got to 10, I can't remember a few more...

[Bill]

Which millennium, this or that?

PS: Why is 'millennium" so hard to spell? I never get it right the 1st time...

[Usako]

Dune

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any millennium will do...:D

[Phillip]

how about the next millenium?

[Sooz]

Phillip wrote: "how about the next millenium?"

i hesitate to suggest any of the sci fi books i've really enjoyed for fear of how they will end up being presented on the big screen. that said, i've often thought Ender's Game or, better yet a really good adaptation of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow would make a movie that would be really accessible to mainstream audiences and therefore likely popular/ successful.

on the less accessible (so likely less popular) i personally would like to see a film adaptation of either Star Fish or Blindsight by the Canadian author Peter Watts. he comes highly recommended to American sci-fi readers who may not have heard of him.

[Atlas]

i know its an obvious choice but come on no one has mentioned the wars?

Star Wars
Starship Troopers (woot woot)
Star Trek (thats right the new one)
Road Warrior
Predator 1 and 2
Terminator (only the original and salvation)

and of course the greatest movie ever made Plan 9 From Outer Space (said with great sarcasm)

[Atlas]

and district 9

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Starship Troopers is such fun!

[Geoffrey]

The original TIME MACHINE with Yvette Mimieux.
THE HIDDEN
2001/A SPACE ODYSSEY
BLADERUNNER

Sorry, I am not particularly impressed with the more recent spate of sci-fi. They are too married to the suspense/horror genre to get my vote, only my goat.

[Baxter]

I'd have to say Moon is the best sci-fi movie I've seen in a LONG time.

[Phillip]

Baxter wrote: "I'd have to say Moon is the best sci-fi movie I've seen in a LONG time."

i'd agree with that.

[Phillip]

science fiction films from the last millennium (in chronological order):


1) metropolis (is it sci-fi? - i think so)
2) them!
3) the day the earth stood still
4) 2001 - a space odyssey
5) stepford wives
6) thx 1138
7) 1984
8) alien
9) solyaris
10) stalker

this millennium:
a scanner darkly
moon

[Robert]

Stalker. Definitely. Solaris, Delicatessen, and The City of Lost Children running neck and neck for the #2 slot.

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keanu reeves definitely liked him sometime back, wonder what he's upto now post the day the earth...the movie had a little bit less action and alittle bit more philosophy than i expected, even matrix wasn't that slow though it was huge on the thought structuring.

I liked the new Star Trek and watched a few other british canadain movies no one knows of and they were pretty decent, just need more star power, so far in this millennium. Lookingout for moon!!

[Tom]

1. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
2. METROPOLIS
3. The good parts of THX 1138
4. SOLARIS (Tarkovsky's version, although Soderbergh's doesn't entirely suck).
5. STAR WARS & EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
6. A TRIP TO THE MOON
7. TWELVE MONKEYS

And assorted others. There are lots of films I could add to the list to pad it out to a full ten, but I don't know if I can put ALIEN on the same level as TWELVE MONKEYS or 2001. Much as I love it, it ain't exactly the deepest movie out there. Of course, TRIP TO THE MOON misses profundity by several million miles, but I think it has an historic importance that makes it necessary on my list.

So Philip -- why ask if METROPOLIS is sci-fi? Is there any doubt?

[Cindy]

Let's see...I'm going with a mix of science fiction in the classic sense and dystopian/futuristic....

In no particular order --
METROPOLIS
FRANKENSTEIN - yep, this feels like sci-fi to me
THEM!
ALIEN
THE TERMINATOR
BLADE RUNNER
5 MILLION YEARS TO EARTH
THE ROAD WARRIOR
THE THING -- the original, but the remake is cool too
FORBIDDEN PLANET
WAR OF THE WORLDS -- the original, of course
PLANET OF THE APES

Tom, are you referring the Melies' A TRIP TO THE MOON? That's a cool film, and so important to the sci-fi genre.

Haven't seen DISTRICT 9 or MOON yet, but I know I will eventually. They've gotten too much good press from people I trust to pass them up!

[Mary JL]

IN no particular order:

War of the worlds--original version
Forbidden Planet
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 only1)
2001: a Space Odyssey
Star Wars
ThX1138
Star Trek II--The Wrath of Khan

[Robert]

Tom wrote: "SOLARIS (Tarkovsky's version, although Soderbergh's doesn't entirely suck)."

I saw it back when it came out and loathed it (I think I said something like "Tarkovsky's version is the holy grail, Soderbergh's is a leaky Dixie cup"), but haven't revisited it since. I have been thinking about it over the past few months, as it seems to be experiencing some sort of critical revisionist history over the past year or so. Tell me what I should be looking for?

[Tom]

TRIP TO THE MOON -- yeah, the Melies film. Kind of amazing little movie.

SOLARIS -- Soderberg's version. If there's a re-evaluation of the film it is probably of the "wait a minute, this isn't as bad as we thought it was" variety. Well, it is no masterpiece or anything, and the ending is a major disappointment that aims for poetic ambiguity and misses by a very wide margin. But it has things to recommend it, I think. A very elegant production, fine performances, and a script that avoids the pitfalls of the kind of Heavy Philosophical content that can make Tarkovsky such an ordeal to sit through: all too often Tarkovsky's characters sound like they're reading from textbooks rather than behaving like people, I find.

[Robert]

Tom wrote: "If there's a re-evaluation of the film it is probably of the "wait a minute, this isn't as bad as we thought it was" variety."

Yes, exactly.

and a script that avoids the pitfalls of the kind of Heavy Philosophical content that can make Tarkovsky such an ordeal to sit through

Ah. I fear I will not be part of that re-evaluation, then... this is exactly what I loathed about it; it took all the wonder of the original out and made it into a space-based rom-com.

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Some of the movies we have been talking about would be more like based on classics, like books turned into movies into new movies...

Time Machine 2002
War of the Worlds 2005
Journey to the Centre of the Earth 2008
Planet of the Apes 2001

And among the also rans

Minority Report 2002
Sound of Thunder 2005

Interestingly, there were a load of movies from the 80-90s that I would just like to say had fanatstic sci fi based concepts but were not really big sci fi sci fi like

My Stepmother is an Alien 1988
Honey I Shrunk the Kids 1989
Bill and Ted's 1989


lol Is Superman a scifi movie???
Christopher Reeve seemed quite dashing when I was an impressionable child of ten or less , can't remember...so umm, Superman is an alien and has superpowers and well he is not exactly human so that would make him a sci fi hero taken in the context of aliens living among us a bit like that inane 90s show on TV, Third Rock from the Sun.

[Phillip]

tom,

no, there isn't any real doubt that metropolis is science fiction ... i was attempting humor at an early hour (for me) of the day....oh well.

i think i get what you're saying about alien - which is hard to categorize. it's sort of a horror film lodged in a sci-fi setting.

i forgot 12 monkeys; dang. i think brazil should also be on my list, along with a trip to the moon (damn, I'm forgetful!).

[Tom]

Philip, cool about METROPOLIS.

The thing for me about ALIEN is that, as good as it is, it is pretty much just a thriller. An excellent, beautifully made thriller, no doubt, but it doesn't have the weight of a TWELVE MONKEYS or even the first two STAR WARS films.

I'd even, depending on how generous I was feeling, include the good parts of Spielberg's WAR OF THE WORLDS and A.I.

[Phillip]

Tom wrote: "The thing for me about ALIEN is that, as good as it is, it is pretty much just a thriller. An excellent, beautifully made thriller, no doubt, but it doesn't have ..."

part of the definition of science fiction is to examine problems in our society by creating fantastic models of imagined futures. 1984 and blade runner are good examples, as is metropolis.

true, you don't get much social commentary in alien apart from the way the crew of the nostromo (and subsequent crews in the remakes) must band together to beat the creature. in this respect, i have often questioned whether alien is indeed sci-fi; but ultimately, that doesn't diminish my regard for it.

[Tom]

On the other hand, ALIEN does have some tasty anti-corporate de-humanization stuff, to be fair. All the blue-collar folks being used as human bait for the Alien, with the literally mechanical science officer doing the Company's bidding and making things easier for the cast to be picked off one by one.

And it really is gorgeously acted. Ian Holm's active distaste for Sigourney Weaver is always fun to watch.

[Robert]

Tom wrote: "And it really is gorgeously acted. Ian Holm's active distaste for Sigourney Weaver is always fun to watch. "

Even if it is completely non-understandable. After I first saw that movie I had a crush on Sigourney Weaver ten miles long.

Oh, wait, thirty years later, I still do.

[Phillip]

corporate evil is indeed threaded into the first alien film, albeit subtle (three cheers for subtlety!). the sequels work this motif with more vigor .... in aliens you also get to see how expendable military "grunts" are in the pursuit of the prize.

[Tom]

"Even if it is completely non-understandable. After I first saw that movie I..."

Oh I think it is eminently understandable. Weaver's Ripley is the one person on board who actively questions Holm's Ash on anything, their little scene where she confronts him about having let the Alien onto the ship in the first place is pretty unambiguously unpleasant. Later, when he builds the little device to track the Alien, Weaver asks him what the device keys on. Holm gives this little pause, and delivers these words "micro-changes in air density" with as much veiled contempt as any actor could put into those four words.

Wow. I'm talking myself into liking this movie a lot more than I did when I wrote my list. Maybe it belongs there after all.

Gratuitous Dead Horse Rant: And the more I think about it, it is exactly things like that little scene in ALIEN, the little interactions among people that make them into more than mere cardboard placeholders, that elevates films like ALIEN into a class far far above something like INCEPTION, and makes Ridley Scott's best work far more interesting than anything Christopher Nolan will ever come up with.

[Robert]

Tom wrote: "that elevates films like ALIEN into a class far far above something like INCEPTION"

I thought I was the only person on the planet who thought Inception wasn't the best thing evar. Score! (I've had many, many people disagree with my assessment that it wasn't nearly as deep as it thought it was. Thankfully, they're not as passionate about it as those who disagree with that same assessment, when I made it in the nineties about The Matrix...)

[Tom]

Check out the thread on INCEPTION for some comments about it, you're not alone...

[Phillip]

not by a long shot.

[Jim]

Nothing to add to the lists above. I'm gonna mark INCEPTION on my to see list and maybe give solaris another chance.

[Reads with Scotch]

I didn't care for inception or district 9. Both are vastly overated in my book. In fact I think I will go as far to say they were terrible movies.

Starship troopers is a great fun movie; intentionally over the top.

The Island: I have a soft spot for clones.

Total recall: cheesy but I loved it.

I don't know if this counts as sci-fi but I really liked Dark City.

[Robert]

Servius Heiner wrote: "I don't know if this counts as sci-fi but I really liked Dark City. "

Oh, it absolutely does. Phenomenal film.

[Tom]

Why wouldn't DARK CITY qualify as sci-fi?

[Geoffrey]

Yes, DARK CITY is excellent.

As for Sigourney Weaver, yes she is a much underrated actress. Check her out in THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY if you can get pass Mel G. And she is in THE VILLAGE as well, if you can get past the polemics.
And then there`s the flic with Meredith Griffiths in the starring role, WORKING WOMEN, I believe.

[Phillip]

geoffrey - you mean melanie griffith in working girl, methinks.

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What? working girl here in this thread, i guess you just had to mention Melanie Griffiths...

Total Recall is cool, it has all those weird mutant characters who socialize in a creepy martian bar or something.

I love the over the topness of Starship Troopers, the bug and the brainness of it...!!I had a big crush on Casper Van Diem after watching the movie.

Alien wow!!!!!!! Ripley's unbelievable, leaves Sharon Stone miles behind in toughness.

I can't reemmber the Village though, is it that one where they invent ghosts to keep people from running away, if so that was a stupid movie but it got spoofed really well in a Scary Movie.

[Robert]

St[♥]r Pr!nc:$$ N[♥]usheen, pictures, pictures wrote: "I can't reemmber the Village though, is it that one where they invent ghosts to keep people from running away"

That would be it. One of the few times I half-seriously asked for my money back.

[Cindy]

Servius Heiner wrote: "Total recall: cheesy but I loved it. "

I would have liked this film a lot more if the "outdoor" climactic scenes hadn't been so stupid. The part where the air clears and the sun comes out -- or whatever it was, it's been millenia since I saw it -- reminded me of some kind of life insurance ad.

[Phillip]

the ending of total recall was very different than the book, so it disappointed on first viewing. i grew to like it more over the years, but it's not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination.

the fact that scwarzenegger was voted in as governor of california on a "recall" elections has cracked me up ever since he took office.

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really? is it like poetic justice or just ironical? haha

And ...so? what next?

[Mawgojzeta]

(Love anything Sigourney Weaver is in, even if it is bad)


My list, in no particular order:

1. Alien ("s", 3, 4 - love them all)
2. Metropolis
3. Dark City
4. Moon
5. The Fifth Element
6. The Time Machine (original)

I was only going to pick 5, but I love so many of the hundreds of science fiction and fantasy movies I have seen, so I had to pick at least one more.

@ Atlas: Haha! I almost listed "Plan 9 from Outer Space" - it's just so bad I love it.

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pick away!!! no one's counting i know i am not and if anyone else is/was no one's said that here, so...


I don't know what Ghost Busters is but it is sure funny and SWeaver is in it.

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i feel robocop is more of a dystopic movie than sci fi cos it projects a social time gone warped somehow and evil is creeping out of corporates (?) kinda like the first time anyone ever made a robot and possibly had nightmares about losing their jobs to machines...well i may have said a lot but i do think i made some nice points there.

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well, dystopia can be about a society in the past or in the future so i guess some of it can be classified as sci-fi especially with all the gadgets in robocop and murphy working for a robotic super powerful corporate however it didn't even have a single spaceship worth boasting of or even a large hovercraft/airborne UFo type, so...

[Δx Δp ≥ ½ ħ]

2001: Space Oddyssey
The Matrix
Primer
Pi
Inception
The Day Earth Stood Still (original version)
Moon
District 9
Avatar
Jurassic Park
Back To The Future
Metropolis
A Clock Work Orange
E.T.
Aliens
Planet of the Apes (original vers.)
Starwars