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What are the best science fiction movies?

Today I discovered a movie called "Zardoz".

I might need to watch it ... I might also need to be on drugs to watch it.

Here's the opening scene ... it gets even stranger going by the review I watched... :crackup::crackup:

The review I found:

 
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Anyone know of any good Sci-Fi movies out in the last year I can watch online?
 
Well the qualifier of 'good' is often the problematic variable. :)
Because it seems like most SciFi, usually falls back to the nefarious evil theme in one form or another. I had high hopes for Prometheus, but it still centered around the nefarious theme. Although the titillating tentacled beast hearkened back to good ole' Frankenstein's meme of turning on it's creator, in this case the weaponized faction of the 'Engineers'. And again this titillating tentacles can be be attributed to the original 'Aliens' franchise with H.R. Giger's peculiar artworks forming the basis. And in a way I feel that Giger's inspiration can again be traced even farther back to H.P. Lovecraft's 'Cthulhu'. So the TT's have been with us for awhile longer than most other types of alien cryptids. The serpent nature of tentacles being firmly entrenched in the collective subconscious as a flight response inducing reflex.

That brings up another aspect of the way the modern SciFi franchises all seem to play out. They premier with a storyline and if successful, they all seem to regress into a sequel/prequel hodgepodge mess. With subsequent installments often presenting a slicker more refined (cgi) presentation than the pilot installment. This is for the most part pretty lame on the part of Hollywood. One of the few well done sequels IMHO was Kubrick's 2001 :A Space Odyssey and the follow up 2010 :The Year We Make Contact. Although it probably could have used a different form of tensioner than the well worn cold war scenario. But as most productions usually reflect, mirror and amplify the current human condition, at the time that 2010, was produced (1984) the actual cold war was in fact winding down, and using this movie as a vehicle reflecting that real world shift was in the final analysis acceptable, as the franchise remains one worthy of classic status. Sort of ironic too is the production year of 1984, was also the coming of age IRL the benchmark of a previous meme- George Orwell's 1984. And the major movie of that year was 2010- The year we make contact.

After a quick review of this thread and another classic that I didn't notice mentioned was from 1955 'This Island Earth'. And another more recent flick from 1980 Lol! was 'Hangar 18' which can actually be viewed free on youtube.

About the vehicles of productions often reflecting the current conditions. Since around Y2K there have been quite a few feature films and documentaries with regards to Mars. One of these that I've yet to view that looks interesting is from 2016 'Approaching Mars' and another that I'd like to view is 'Passengers' as neither one seems to employ any schlock worthy nefarious evil titillating tentacles. To me tentacles notwithstanding, there are few things more terrifying than what lurks in the dark recesses of the human psyche. And this also brings back to mind another flick that doesn't seem to have been mentioned- from 2009 'Pandorum'
 
Eloquent, as usual. I did see Passengers, I thought it was a very worthwhile and enjoyable flick. I need to check This Island Earth, never heard of that one.
 
Didn't realize how long it had been since anyone posted to this thread. Then I looked at diachi's last post and it all started flooding back. Talking about bad movies that are so bad they are actually good like "Zardoz" is an old western that my cousin in law and I actually made a point of seeing many times on TV back in 1977 called "Death Rides a Horse". This dog is so bad the score is basically someone strumming an open guitar over and over while the theme of the movie, if you could call it that, is incomprehensible and is just terrible gratuitous violence with no plot that could be discerned from watching this dog probably more than half a dozen times in the space of maybe 6 months. Still, we seemed compelled to watch it every chance we got as, for reasons that still escape me, this movie was offered up nearly weekly that year. It is bad. I mean really bad. I don't even know if it is still available, but if it is.... it might be worth a watch. If not just to see how bad, bad can be.
 
Personal favourites of mine:

Interstellar. It does a pretty good job of sticking to realistic science, stunning visuals, fantastic soundtrack, and does a good job of realistically portraying some abstract scientific concepts such as wormholes, black holes, and time dilation.

Star Trek: Nemesis. A lot of people apparently don't like it, but despite some moments I dont particularly care for (the whole Troi mind rape thing weirds me out), the intense battle of the Enterprise vs Scimitar, the beginning of something of an alliance with the Romulans, and Data's sacrifice make it an enjoyable movie to me.

Pacific Rim. Is it some compelling deep movie about the morality of fighting monsters with giant mechs? Hell no! Its about the sheer enjoyment of watching giant robots get into fist fights with deep sea aliens. But its well enough written and acted, with excellent VFX and action scenes to keep me happy, even if its not some glorious cinematic masterpiece.
 
I don't recall any scifi movies of recent years to be particularly good, though there are some reasonably watchable ones for sure. Something like the movie 'life' is the current status of scifi i suppose, and in itself not even that bad despite obvious plot flaws.

I found 'ghost in the shell' fairly boring, but hope there will be some better movies to come. Perhaps there will be some really novel ideas :)
 
Ha, I'm an easy customer then, watched that last night and enjoyed it.
 
I didn't mean to say it was not worth watching, just that is not that exciting as far as the plot goes.

It's all a matter of personal preference though. Typically i dislike series with weird continuity gaps, but i do like dr who. I guess the storyline isn't that strong there but it's all so well put together that episodes still grab your attention.

Sometimes you just lose interest too, for the that happened with 'the 100', which i liked for the first seasons but have yet to see anything of the current season (might watch it if i have time to kill, probably on a plane or something).

Then again i like fairly idiotic things like 'dark matter', not that the plot is particularly good or anything, but it at least makes me wonder what the next episode will bring. The whole concept of a crew with amnesia opens up a lot of options there.
 
ped said:
I was ashamed of myself after realizing I actually really enjoyed this movie. I was expecting to hate it but I didn't :/

Mine are :-

1) Aliens (Special Ed)
2) Alien
3) ST Voyager series.
Click to expand...

It's a good tv movie.
 
2001 A Space Odyssey.
Creator
Somewhere in Time
Time After Time.
Plus many of what others have mentioned
 
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That ghost in the shell probably makes a better read than the movie, what i liked about the movie were the beautiful graphics and that woman, wow, so beautiful. i don't mind a slower pace, at near 60 i'd like life to slow down a bit seems to be going faster and the end of the rope getting too close.
 
diachi said:
Today I discovered a movie called "Zardoz".

I might need to watch it ... I might also need to be on drugs to watch it.

Here's the opening scene ... it gets even stranger going by the review I watched... :crackup::crackup:

The review I found:

Click to expand...

Good movie.
 
The graphics on ghost in the shell are actually very good, and having Johansson as the lead character clearly doesnt hurt either ;)

As for the alien series: I never really liked it, maybe apart from the first movie. This is a personal thing though, i'm not a fan of horror as such, which might be a reason for people to like these films.

One movie that combines horror and scifi i do like is 'event horizon' - it's 20 years old by now but could probably cause me to have nightmares when i watched it these days :)
 
I watched Oblivion last night, never heard of it before, enjoyed it. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGbuU4FGZMc

Madskaizer, I watched the trailer for "A Scanner Darkly" and might watch that later, the way they converted video into an anima appearing format reminds me of 2001 "Waking Life" which is a very trippy move I watched a long time back and liked.
 
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