40) Gravity
Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity hit me about as hard as any film ever has, for although this is one of the great technical achievements in cinematic history, Cuarón’s aesthetic accomplishments are employed to realize and empower a fundamentally simple – and extraordinarily profound – message about the significance of life in an existence where we are so utterly dwarfed by the scale of the cosmos. Sandra Bullock gives the performance of a lifetime as a first-time astronaut faced with the severest of physical and existential crisis, and for all the perfectly paced and flawlessly realized intensity she undergoes, it really is the emotional and thematic depth of her story that wound up breaking me by the end.
It is rare to encounter a film that so beautifully encapsulates and reflects one’s own personal beliefs on life, or to feel such a strong personal connection with such a major commercial hit, but in its profound and innovative cinematic power, Gravity is both an extraordinary and ubiquitous masterpiece.
39) A Scanner Darkly
No one does paranoid quite like Philip K. Dick, and the adaptation of A Scanner Darkly is the film which most perfectly captures that. This is helped tremendously by the rotoscoping, the method of animation where animators trace over filmed footage, which lends a contorted view of the world and where nothing is truly as it seems.
The scramble suit which allows the characters’ identities to be constantly in flux is what drives the sci-fi aspect of the movie, which focuses on drug takers whose overuse of Substance D has zapped their minds into a state where they constantly question reality. As with all Dick’s work, nothing is what it seems and in the end nothing is going to work out happily.
Linklater’s formal experiment pays off wonderfully, but amid it he never loses sight of Dick’s story and characters. It is cast absolutely perfectly and features Keanu Reeves’ finest and most emotionally expressive hour. Given that it’s from a Philip K. Dick source novel, A Scanner Darkly is ultimately a bit of a downer, but it has so much going for it that it is impossible to ignore.
38) Solaris (2002)
You risk running into dangerous territory with critics and scholars when you run afoul of the hugely acclaimed and revered Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. But there is an argument to be put forward that Steven Soderbergh’s reinterpretation of Stanislaw Lem’s novel surpasses Tarkovsky’s 1972 adaptation and is one of the most underrated movies of the noughties. It has all the existential philosophy without the slow burn pretension.
For one, it cuts the running time nearly in half, resulting in an experience which is altogether more intense, more atmospheric and more oppressive than that of the slow burning original. This is appropriate for the existential space station thriller, which has the central character experiencing chilling hallucinations that get more and more dangerous as the film progresses.
It is a different beast but one which went sorely unnoticed at the time of release. George Clooney is working at his best here in a sublimely nuanced performance that is perfectly matched by the tone of the film. Cliff Martinez’s score is also one of his best, an eerie tone setter which compliments Soderbergh’s equally chilly imagery.
Solaris is sci-fi that isn’t about the science or the space, it is a profound piece of work that one day will hopefully be regarded alongside the original as being just as valid and just as good a piece of cinema as its predecessor.
37) La Jetee
In the 2012 Sight & Sound critics’ poll of the Greatest Films Ever Made, La Jetee, Chris Marker’s extraordinary film, was the only short film to place in the Top 50. An impressive feat and one that is totally deserved.
Set in a post-apocalyptic Paris following the aftermath of a Third World War, the film follows survivors who are housed below ground and tested to see whether they can withstand time travel in order to prevent the end of the world. The only one who has a link with the past and can therefore stomach time travel is a prisoner who dreams of a woman standing on an airport observation platform.
If this sounds familiar it is because the film was used as a basis for Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys, which expands brilliantly on Marker’s original vision. But its influence does not stop there, as many filmmakers in the genre have pointed to Marker as a key influence for their work, from Shane Carruth to Michel Gondry.
Told mostly in a series of still images accompanied by avant-garde sound design, effective use of simplistic props and bookending voice over, La Jetee is storytelling stripped to its bare bones whilst being at its most ambitious. If you haven’t seen this remarkable work, it is easy to track down online, will only take 28 minutes out of your day and is seriously worth your time.
36) Dark City
Before The Matrix blew up the sci-fi genre with its mind-bending plot about machines enslaving humans within a prison of their own minds, Alex Proyas’s Dark City did something eerily similar with its mind-bending plot about aliens enslaving humans within a prison of… well, you can probably see where this is going. Dark City might not be quite on the level of The Matrix overall, especially given that it was a much lower-budget affair, but there are a few things it did better. For instance, it did not have a pair of increasingly disappointing sequels to tarnish its reputation.
Dark City follows the story of John Murdoch (played by Rufus Sewell), who wakes up in a bathtub suffering from amnesia. You can probably guess that any story that starts with amnesia is going to get steadily crazier from there, and that is certainly the case as Murdoch receives a phone call from one Dr. Schreber (played by Kiefer Sutherland, who really hams it up in this movie), urging him to flee in order to escape a group of shadowy pursuers.
Those pursuers are the Strangers, and not unlike the Agents of The Matrix, they cause considerable difficulties for the protagonist. As Murdoch pieces together clues about the world around him, it becomes increasingly obvious that things are not what they seem. Then someone called the Oracle tells Murdoch he’s The One, and… no, just kidding about that part.
It’s worth noting that along with Proyas, one of the writers of Dark City’s screenplay was one David S. Goyer, who would go on to co-write Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. In other words, there was some considerable talent at play in making this film, and it shows. While it may never have become a huge mainstream hit, Dark City has remained a cult classic among sci-fi fans.
Any particularly knotty detective movie can make the average audience member feel they have the memory of goldfish when trying to keep up with the plot, so it takes a lot of faith in said audience to layer heavy questions of “who are you” on top of a ‘50s stylized whodunit. Unsurprisingly, 1998’s Dark City didn’t take the box office by storm with its distinct noir aesthetic and identity-bending premise, but it wowed many sci-fi fans and critics alike, with Roger Ebert becoming the greatest champion for this high concept head-scratcher that did the whole existential-genre-film thing a full year before The Matrix.
That Rufus Sewell hasn’t blown up since starring in the film actually helps make coming back to Dark City easier, as you’ll both be asking the same question when amnesiac and murder suspect John Murdoch looks in the mirror and thinks, “who is this guy?” With cops and trench-coated corpses chasing him all across a city that never sees daylight, John’s search for his identity takes him deep into a conspiracy that might take you a few viewings just to fully get your head around. Director Alex Proyas creates an amazing look for the movie that more than makes up for digital effects that haven’t aged as gracefully, but it’s the ideas at the heart of Dark City that really make it tick.
35) Star Trek II: Wrath Of Khan
One cannot discuss the history of American science-fiction without touching upon Star Trek – and one cannot talk long about Star Trek before arriving at this, the franchise’s absolute finest hour. Everything that makes Star Trek great can be found in this one perfect movie, which for this writer’s money surpasses just about any big-budget ‘genre’ film ever produced in the Hollywood studio system.
Wrath of Khan is expertly, tightly arced, presenting through the characters of Kirk, Spock, and Khan a legitimately, devastatingly powerful exploration of what it means to not only to be human, but what it means to truly live – and how death, horrible and terrifying as it is, plays an undeniable part in the value we place on our living experiences.
Major philosophical concepts like that have always been at the heart of Star Trek, and they hit home here as hard as they ever have, existing alongside some of the most thrilling space action sequences ever to grace the silver screen. J.J. Abrams may disagree, but real Star Trek action is all about slow-paced, nautical warfare in space – intellectual, not bombastic, in nature – and the tension elicited by director Nicholas Meyer and his team throughout the film is a wonder to behold. So it goes for the film as a whole – Wrath of Khan may well be one of the greatest films ever made, and certainly one of the best pieces of sci-fi cinema ever produced.
34) The Day The Earth Stood Still
Notable for presenting cinema-loving earthlings with the idea of benevolent aliens, The Day the Earth Stood Still did just that on its release. To start with, what a title. It’s epic, it’s huge, and it’s perfect for what the film is about. As sci-fi concepts go, this one is pretty simple – what happens when a giant spaceship lands in President’s Park, Washington D.C.? And what could they possibly want? When Klaatu, a surprisingly humanoid alien emerges, accompanied by an enormous robot named Gort, Earth is primed to receive his message.
The film is nothing short of masterful: instantly creating a sci-fi icon in Gort (and the definition of the strong, silent type), the robot who can shoot lazer beams from his giant eye, and redefining alien invasion movies in its own cheerful image, it ripped everything up and started again. There’s barely any destruction, little-to-no bloodshed, just aliens with a message for Earth.
Although the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) at the time had a problem with the parallels drawn between Klaatu and Christ, the film was otherwise a runaway success, both critically and popularly. Several well-known broadcast journalists appeared as themselves including H. V. Kaltenborn, Elmer Davis, Drew Pearson, and Gabriel Heatter, adding an air of realism to the proceedings. It’s an incredibly modern sci-fi drama, with a more permissive and tolerant attitude than you’d expect for a film from 1951. It’s still stunning to this day, and its influence can still be felt.
Disregard the 2008 remake, that’s allowed. It’s terrible. Just make sure you watch this, the original.
33) Logan’s Run
Only in science fiction could you premise a movie on the idea that a hedonistic future city full of hot young people would qualify as dystopia. The last remnants of humanity living in 2274 might be stuck inside a big computer-run dome city, but it’s one that houses so many pleasures, you’d never want to leave. But, as its deliciously coy tagline tells you, there’s just one catch to living in the world of Logan’s Run, and it’s a doozy: once you hit thirty, you and your fellow birthday buddies have to take a ride on a “carousel” that’s light on rotating horsie seats, and big on population control via death lasers.
Logan’s Run nails amusement park sci-fi, using its high concept premise as the guide rail for a glitzy and goofy adventure. It’s Star Trek-through-a-kaleidoscope aesthetic proves that just because the future is bleak, that doesn’t mean it has to be colorless, something a lot of modern sci-fi (and likely the film’s long-in-development remake) forgets. Just one look at the costuming lets you know this a film more interested in style than substance, but there’s a terrifying, and thought-provoking world hiding under all those metallics and onesies.
32) The Terminator
Can you believe there was once a time when there was only one Terminator movie? It’s true. It was a pretty good one, though, unlike Terminator Salvation, which was kind of a hot pile of steaming garbage. Those were simpler times. There was only one unstoppable killing machine, and he was a joyously apolitical Arnold Schwarzenegger. The special effects were simpler and CGI-free, and the sole focus was on the action and the characters.
While The Terminator was not by any means Schwarzenegger’s first film appearance—he had played both Hercules in Hercules in New York and Conan in Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer—but it is certainly the film appearance that catapulted him into super-stardom and made him a household name. It also introduced Linda Hamilton as the original—and still the best—Sarah Connor, ass-kicking mother of humanity’s savior.
The idea of a race of sentient machines so advanced that they can travel back in time in an attempt to squash any human resistance is certainly a premise that struck a chord with movie-going audiences. What makes The Terminator so great, though, is that the threat of humanity’s annihilation only exists in the background of the film, there to raise the stakes in the story of one woman trying to escape being murdered by a seemingly unstoppable killing machine. The notion that if this one woman dies, all of humanity may die with her adds to the existing tension of Sarah Connor being relentlessly stalked and makes the movie the classic that it is.
Terminator 2 would later usher in the age of big-budget Terminator films with its liquid metal Terminator and its epic action set pieces, and it was a pretty great movie in its own right, but there is something about the simplicity of the original film that makes it particularly memorable. Let’s hope that when the next Terminator film is made, they can recapture some of what made the first movie a sci-fi classic.
31) Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Michel Gondry’s psychedelic exploration of love, memories and the loss of those things was a huge success on release, and it still stands up nearly ten years (can that really be right?) later. Its reliance on in-camera or practical effects means that the film seems timeless to modern eyes and the French director’s characteristic inventiveness has arguably never again reached these dizzying heights.
It’s easy to forget just how strong the cast was. You’ve got Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, who everybody remembers, but what about the young and alluring Kirsten Dunst? The idiotic and easily led Ellijah Wood? A bequiffed Mark Ruffalo? It’s easy to forget the side-story with such inventiveness elsewhere in the film, but every insane moment needs a steady moment as its anchor. The reality of the story’s quieter moments allowed the insanity full rein.
With a story that could only have come from the mind of Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the product of great artists and performers at the top of their respective games. Jim Carrey has never turned in a performance with the same humour, energy, and emotional resonance as he did here, and while Kate Winslet has gone on to become the doyenne of modern-day cinema, winning awards left, right, and centre, she was never sexier or funnier than when she played Clementine, promising to meet Jim Carrey’s Joel in Montauk.
Published: Sep 23, 2014 04:19 pm