30) Wall-E
With its overarching theme of consumerism and a downright adorable lead character at its core, Wall-E packs brain and beauty in equal measures. Andrew Stanton’s follow-up to Finding Nemo is a unique, heart-warming tale of the titular Wall-E, who is doomed to exist on a bleak, post-apocalyptic Earth 700 years after the human race jumped spaceship and left.
As Wall-E goes about his daily routine with typical quirkiness, he falls for an extraterrestrial robot named Eve, sparking one of the most endearing, memorable relationships you will see on film. As with all the other films atop Pixar’s resounding pantheon, it’s ultimately the story that shines brightest against the inky-black sky.
The opening 40 minutes of the film have little to no dialogue and, ironically, Wall-E packs more humanity and emotion into this space of time than most A-list actors fit into an entire feature film. In the end, you won’t want the credits to roll, because as a computer animated film, it’s stunning. But as a fable concerning the power of nostalgia and love, it’s timeless.
29) Primer
Two questions for you, reader. One: If you discovered a way to go back to yesterday and do it better, would you? Two: Why? These are the questions at the heart of Shane Carruth’s Primer, a low-budget masterpiece of social science fiction.
Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan) are engineers. By day they work for a large corporation. By night they run a small engineering firm of their own with the help of their wives and two friends. On their own time, Aaron and Abe try to build an anti-gravity device. In the process, they accidentally invent time travel. After figuring out how their unexpected discovery functions, the two engineers decide to use it to play the stock market. They’ll get the day’s stock results, go back to earlier that morning, move some stock, and profit. For a little while, all goes as well as it can. And then Aaron decides that he wants to use the time machine to be a hero.
Primer is a movie that demands and rewards patience. Carruth explains very little, trusting his audience to pay attention at all times. Those who do will get to bear witness to his thoughtful, ethical exploration of the nature of power. Aaron and Abe are men who, for all their brains, are treated as cogs in the wheel at work and unextraordinary men outside of it. They live undistinguished, middle to upper middle class lives. Their time machine provides an opportunity for rapid financial and social advancement, but at the cost of their manipulating not only time and space, but their friends and family. Aaron and Abe’s differing reactions to this problem form Primer’s story and emotional arcs. Both of these are, in their own quiet way, excellently done.
And on a pure filmmaking level, Primer is something of a miracle. Carruth wrote, directed, shot, produced, edited, composed the score for and starred in Primer, and did so for a scant $7,000.
28) RoboCop
“Part man, part machine, all cop.” That was the promise of the movie poster for RoboCop, Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi action movie about a police officer who is nearly fatally wounded in the line of duty but revived by a nefarious corporation as part of their bid to replace human cops with robotic ones.
The film takes place against the backdrop of a ruined, crime-ridden Detroit. Unfortunately, that part is barely fiction. Instead, it’s a setting that makes the film more of a near-future than distant-future dystopian nightmare. It’s here that the Omni Consumer Products (OCP) corporation is pushing to privatize the police force, even as the police force is fighting that privatization. Then they stumble upon the idea of RoboCop and, well, everything works out OK and the movie is over.
No, not really. Things start to go wrong for OCP really quickly, of course, and the heart of their problem is that their new half-man, half-machine creation still has a conscience from that half-man part of him. The whole allure of the robot cop was that it would not have a conscience and would do only what its programming from OCP told it to do. When that turns out to not be the case, the results are literally explosive.
Like Verhoeven’s other well-known sci-fi movie, Starship Troopers, RoboCop is full of some pretty sly satire. Whereas Starship Troopers satirized jingoism and warmongering, RoboCop satirizes the corrosive effects of capitalism, and in particular the rise of rampant commercialization and privatization. Basically, it’s a middle finger in the air to the idea that the free market can do things better than the government.
27) A.I. Artificial Intelligence
A.I. Artificial Intelligence is Steven Spielberg’s most under-appreciated and misunderstood film. Despite its difficult, despairing subject matter set amidst a bleak dystopian future, many critics and viewers thought that Spielberg had sentimentalized a project that director Stanley Kubrick had conceived and developed for much of his career. (After Kubrick’s death, Spielberg gained creative control over the project, which was based on a short story by Brian Aldiss.) The awe that typically orients a Spielberg film is mostly gone from A.I., but the film remains a striking hybrid of his (and Kubrick’s) strongest qualities as directors.
Haley Joel Osment gives a devastating performance as David, a Mecha prototype living in the late 21st century, built with the ability to love. However, he wishes to have the same qualities and design as the humans he lives with. After befriending another Mecha, the devious Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), David tries to hunt down the Blue Fairy, who he remembers from the Pinocchio story and hopes can transforms him into a human boy.
Thoughtful, layered and atmospheric, A.I. is both too dismal and ethereal to entertain children. However, it is one of the most emotionally penetrating films Spielberg has ever made. The future is one both enchanting and miserable and the director is not afraid to explore some of the ethics of the scientific ethos from Aldiss’ original work. Meanwhile, David’s return home at the film’s conclusion is not a happy ending as many critics decried, but a satisfyingly bittersweet one.
The young Osment gives a performance that rivals (as Spielberg’s titles go) Henry Thomas in E.T. and Christian Bale in Empire of the Sun, one of encompassing wonder and sadness. It is as powerful a coming-of-age story about an abandoned, determined child as Spielberg has ever offered. A.I. is one of contemporary cinema’s most chilling and challenging fairy tales, and a poignant sci-fi drama that is almost unparalleled among the rest of Spielberg’s other, more digestible entertainments.
26) Back To The Future
Who said science-fiction had to be so heavy? Time travel is one of those sci-fi concepts almost exclusively used for dark, dramatic purposes, but in this seminal 1985 classic, Robert Zemeckis used the idea as a means to have seemingly endless amounts of character-centric fun. Big science-fiction ideas are, after all, typically best employed as springboards into relatable human-scale stories, and that is Back to the Future in a nutshell.
Time travel is not the focus of the movie, but the plot mechanic that allows teenager Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox in one of the most charismatic, compelling lead performances in Hollywood history) to meet his parents while they are in high school. Such a simple, brilliant concept, and one Zemeckis and co-writer Bob Gale exploit to its fullest extent.
Back to the Future is one of the most purely enjoyable movies ever made, and certainly among the most satisfyingly paced and arced (it is impossible to watch this movie with a crowd and not have everybody burst into wild applause when George punches Biff to the ground). And I have not even mentioned the contributions of the Doc himself, Christopher Lloyd, or composer Alan Silvestri, who has never topped the work he did here.
Back to the Future may have only loose claims to the title of ‘science-fiction,’ but if that is what we are calling it, the film certainly ranks among the very best.
25) Children Of Men
If evaluated only on a level of technical prowess, Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men would still be regarded as one of the greatest films ever constructed. It’s employ of vast, gritty sets, troubling depictions of a cruel, crumbling Earth and startling violence is amplified immeasurably by a series of stunning tracking shots. The longest of which follows Clive Owen’s Theo Faron as he traverses a deadly battlefield in pursuit of baby Dylan who has been taken by a member of militant group the Fishes, and it’s a feat to be matched. While this and an earlier “one take” during a chase sequence may have been pieced together using a series of extended shots (due to the circumstances of the composition, not out of laziness), their impact remains of one whole – harrowing, tragic and steeped in dread.
But the chief reasons these jaw dropping set pieces resonate so deeply is the varied but deep seeded philosophies of the characters and the weighty themes the film as a whole explores. From motifs centered on faith to the exploration of immigration polices and homeland security to race and religion, nothing is off the table for Cuarón and these ideals all mesh into what we see in Children of Men.
So often when things become political in films it can serve not only to alienate audiences but become a mere platform to spew the ideals of the filmmaker. Cuarón not only understands this, but balances the different themes to craft a singular world, one we believe that these events and shifting philosophies would exist. It’s a masterful achievement in filmmaking and a film so realized and grounded in a horrible alternate reality we effortlessly forget it is an effort firmly rooted in science fiction.
24) Looper
Rian Johnson’s Looper does not just represent science-fiction at its smart and provocative best, but marks a stirring evolution in what storytellers can achieve when exploring the human element of grand, culturally ingrained futuristic concepts. Time travel has rarely been put to such good use as it is here, employed not as a vehicle for action or mind-bending plot mechanics, but to ask some vast ethical questions about how personality and identity are forged through time.
The film is, of course, an aesthetic marvel on all fronts, and what action beats there are play absolutely marvelously, but Johnson puts character and theme front and center at all times. The top-notch cast – headlined by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, and Emily Blunt – matches or surpasses the best efforts of their respective careers, while the audience is continually led to states of moral and emotional turmoil. Few films in recent memory, regardless of genre, asked this much of their audience, or gave as much back in turn – but that, of course, is the power of great science-fiction, a power Looper possesses in spades.
23) Brazil
An argument can be made that Brazil is Terry Gilliam’s tour de force, the culmination of everything he’d been working for up until that point. Gilliam poured heart and soul into the dystopian tale of Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), a bureaucrat who, through several acts of kindness (and a few acts of mistaken identity), finds himself an enemy of the state.
Brazil is Blade Runner on acid by way of Tom Stoppard. Lowry begins life as a quiet pencil-pusher, indulging in daydreams of saving a beautiful damsel while he lives a dour bureucratic life, and lorded over by his plastic-surgery addicted mother (Katherine Helmond). The crux of the story is a single mistake – a man named Buttle is executed as a terrorist, when it’s actually Tuttle (Robert DeNiro), an air-conditioning specialist who refuses to do paperwork, that the authorities want. Lowry can’t resist trying to make things right, especially when Jill (Kim Griest) steps into the picture. Michael Palin is also on hand in one of the most diabolical roles he’ll ever play.
The insanity of Brazil is the insanity of bureaucracy. It’s a blatant criticism of industrial society and red tape, as people are tortured and murdered for a bureaucratic error. The finale – which was changed several times for various releases – mirrors Blade Runner, but if you happen to catch the right version of the film, there’s no happy ending. It’s escape and imprisonment of the mind, a dystopia where we’re all tied down not by an all-powerful Big Brother, but by dull little men in dull little suits crunching numbers.
22) 12 Monkeys
It was interesting to hear that there are plans for a 12 Monkeys TV series, especially since one of the takeaways from the movie is the notion of predestination and how nature is cyclical; you know how it ends even if you don’t know that what you saw is the end. How does an open-ended TV show accomplish the same feeling of rebellion in the face of absolute, certain doom? That’s a good question, but it’s inconsequential because 12 Monkeys the movie is already so good to begin with.
Anchored by Bruce Willis, who was in the midst of one of his experimental phases following Pulp Fiction, and Brad Pitt, the newly minted movie star after roles in Se7en and Legends of the Fall, 12 Monkeys seemed to set itself up as a thematic sequel to director Terry Gilliam’s earlier cult hit Brazil.
Like the film, 12 Monkeys deals with a dystopic future, the nature of reality, and anxiety over technological advancements. In the future of 12 Monkeys, humanity has been remanded to live underground after a virus wiped out most of the population. Prisoners, in exchange for pardons, are sent back in time to the year 1996 to uncover the virus’ origin, which is linked to an organization called “The Army of the 12 Monkeys.” Of course, it’s not that simple.
Like any good sci-fi head-scratcher, one’s assumptions are tested at every turn, and just when you think you have a handle on reality, the rug is pulled out from under you. What you enjoy the most about the film is the way the story subtly starts to bend back on itself as it heads into the third act, clues left along the way start to make more sense, and conclusions you thought were true turn out to be red herrings. Great performances from Willis as the time-travelling Cole and Pitt as the slightly mad Jeffrey Goines, as well as some impressive art design and brilliantly realized world-building, all combine to make 12 Monkeys a one of a kind sci-fi treat for the mind that stand out amongst the 90s popcorn flicks.
21) Donnie Darko
When Donnie Darko had its first screening at the Sundance Film Festival on January 19th, 2001, it was widely acknowledged to be outstanding. However, when it finally got a limited release in the US in October 2001, it did very little business. Most would attribute this to it being a movie that features a jet engine falling from the sky, released just a month after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
For Donnie Darko is an excellent film, achieving near cult status since its DVD release in 2002. Featuring an apocalyptic countdown, time travel, tangent universes, and the concept of inevitable, inescapable fate, first-time writer/director Richard Kelly delivers that rarest of treats – a well-crafted, original film that leaves the audience to figure it out for themselves.
The film is filled with an undeniable atmosphere of slow-building, menacing tension, channelled most impressively through an astonishing central performance by a young Jake Gyllenhaal. Every supporting player hits the right note with their roles, as Donnie Darko showcases a mix of veteran talent – including Katherine Ross, Mary McDonnell, and Patrick Swayze – along with the promise of then-young faces that would soon become household names, including Gyllenhaal and his sister Maggie, Jena Malone and Seth Rogen.
