Blade Runner. Agree! A classic. “Existentialist,” one of my college dorm mates called it.
Twelve Monkeys. Good writing never hurt any sci-fi. But I wish I had gotten to see that art film it was supposed to be based on…the one made up completely of still pictures…what was it called and how can I see it…?
Fifth Element. Entertaining, witty, never dumb or boring. Again, no sci-fi movie was ever hurt by good writing. Or good character acting (Gary Oldman, Milla).
Brazil. A cartoonish dystopia. One friend of mine called it anti-Asian(?) and racist. Another friend, the one I came to see it with, spent five minutes explaining to me in the theater how he hated the movie and was going to leave. I just wanted him to hurry up and get the hell out of there so I could get back to watching the movie in peace.
Dark City. Kinda dumb, but it’s got memory loss, sinister beings altering reality behind the scenes, a seemingly impossible struggle to understand one’s fate, and a flat earth that has an edge. Plus Jennifer Connelly and a groovy naked chick.
GATTACA! An underrated classic! Not yet mentioned in this thread! Subtle acting, almost no special effects, a sort of European feel, and big-time heavy existential themes.
Cube. People wake up to find themselves trapped in a nightmare where they can literally die horribly at any time. Dialog’s a bit hokey, but the deathtraps (and their solutions) are AWESOME. This would certainly qualify as a prison escape movie, but nobody’s mentioned it in that thread.
My sentimental favorites are the ones from my childhood (late 60’s and early 70’s).
Escape From the Planet of the Apes (the first one I saw). Talking chimps, freaking out the humans. Enough for any kid!
Andromeda Strain. An underground complex and a self-destruct deadline. Hey, it’s a Michael Crichton thriller, what more do you want?
Soylent Green. “The scoops are coming!” Gotta be the most cold-blooded yet efficient means of crowd control ever devised. Meet the future, where too many people are the problem, and the less there are the better. The “hero” cop, firing at a villain, accidentally hits a homeless woman and it’s OK. A nightmare written by Zero Population Growth. “They’re turning people into food! You gotta stop them!” “Yes…we’ll stop them.” Yeah, right.
Silent Running. My God. How much more early 70’s can you be? A fable of loneliness, despair and environmentalism. A man kills all his friends and himself so that one little patch of green earth will survive, tended forever by one faithful little robot guardian. Like another poster said: bawwwwwwww.
Hey, almost all of these movies are about bleak dystopias of the future! What’s the matter with me? Raised on a diet of early-70’s sci-fi, I guess the new optimistic tone of epic space operas (like Star Wars) was foreign to my system, and never really sank in.
Now, there’s one you guys gotta help me with. I know I saw it as an infant. Does anybody remember a late 60’s or early 70’s movie about a family that lived in the ocean in what looked like an undersea flying saucer? Instead of an airlock, they simply had a pool in the middle of their living room, through which smaller vehicles could surface. “That’s a cool place to live,” I thought. Swedish Modern decor and big picture windows all around, like a live-action version of the Jetsons, only under water. What was the title???
