My Top 150 Favorite Sci-Fi Movies... Of Like, Ever

What happens when the Martians start to get nasty around the holiday season?
They end up getting a nice big ol' can of whoop-ass for Christmas from none other than Santa hisself.

Oh, and you'll notice that the B-movies and/or guilty pleasures are closer here on the end of the list.
The quality of films will get better as we get nearer to number one.
I promise.

The aliens are through klowning around (torturously kliche bad pun intended).
They're hungry for human flesh. Or in this case, human soup(?).
And so in order to satiate their appetites, they're taking out the big guns. Or in this case, the big balloon animals.

Okay,
so maybe there really isn't all that much as far as compelling story-line goes in this cyber-epic-fantasy. But, boy, those visuals were unlike anything we had seen before. The science of computer graphic effects were fully upon us and in a land not too far away, the force known as CGI was gestating to become the meat that would make the eyes of sci-fan's drool from here to the eternity of this genre's future.
I won't try to convince anyone out there that this is a great film on any level, but I do feel that it's a step in science fiction that was inevitable.

This version of Snatchers might not be able to live up to the prestige of the original (might as well include the 1993 remake Body Snatchers with this entry.
Along with 2007's Invasion starring Nicole Kidman.
And any other future sub-standard remakes from the idea-deprived Hollywood machine decides to crank out....),
but still, that shot of the dog with the human face really creeped me out as a kid. Enough so as to make me cross the street whenever I saw a stray pooch heading in my direction.

A camp infested B/W sci-fi flick filled to the brim with a heaping sense of guilty pleasure.
To keep this entry short, here's another list that I made which includes Plan 9 and explains why I like it: www.listal.com/list/guilty-pleasures-thecelestial

Even when they're dead, aliens can still become a marauding, world conquering nuisance by hanging around as hordes of a massive spirited phantom plague (and how's that for a theme for a sci-fi horror flick disguised as a video game film?).

Just like I did with Tron, I'll admit that, despite the potential locked in the idea of this movie, the story came off as pretty boring. And because motion capture technology was still in it's early stages, the people ended up looking stiff and very "wooden, despite the advanced leap in the amount of pixels per image.
But still, at the time of it's release, the visuals were really something to behold. This was a major stepping stone that would eventually lead to some of the most high tech images we are seeing not just on movies screens today, but also, in the crossing over of video-game technology.

Elderly owners of a small, crumbling tenant building are threatened with eviction, but are saved by tiny sentient flying saucers.
A Mini-Me version of Close Encounters Of The 3rd. Kind, with just a splash of Cocoon, for flavor.

Back in the mid seventies, director and writer John Carpenter was just starting his career and developing a reputation as someone who was able to produce films on a shoe-string budget. And to be honest, when a film utilizes a beach ball as an alien life form,
a budget doesn't get any more shoe string than that.
Dark Star is Carpenter's first full feature release, and like most of his early work during this time, this black comedy sci-fi has earned a solid membership into the club of cinematic cult classics.

The King of All Monsters takes on a giant shambling mountain of red-eyed sludge that terrorizes the island of Japan by transforming itself into a flying smog-billowing force of pollution incarnate.
Kinda makes you want to start recycling, huh?

Ants.
Atomic radiation.
The process of mutation.
The desert.
You do the math.

Anyone else remember this space-faring, ice-stealing, Urich-starring, not-so-classical sci-fi 80's film-fare?
Anyone...?



Anyone....?




...Bueller...?

Okay,
maybe not the most exciting sci-fi film ever,
and not even the best of the Trek franchise.
But as someone who wasn't a fan of the TV show,
for me it was kinda cool to see it updated on the silverscreen with a blockbuster budget.
And, for what it was, I did enjoy it.
Besides, it did eventually lead up to the Wrath of Khan, Voyage Home and, of course, the awesome 2009 "reboot".

Growing up with the first three Star Wars movies that made up the original Trilogy, I, of course, was not the biggest fan of the later films. But, I was still able to enjoy the visuals of these new millennium flix, particularly, the diversity of kick-ass looking aliens and otherworldy creatures (my favorite aspect of the franchise, actually).

Where does one even begin to describe this movie?

I guess you could start by saying that if one could imagine the concept of a cyborg geisha that could transform into a wall-clinging half battletank in order to fight a multi-tiered pagoda that transforms into a giant daikaiju-style rubber-suited robot
and then
if one could imagine fried shrimp being used as a deadly assassin's weapon
and then,
threw in every kind of Dali-esque type of violent Asian outrageousness possible,
then you might be able to capture a vague resemblance of a description for this movie.

I still have a hard time believing that I actually saw this film and that it wasn't part of some 'shroom-induced nightmare.

They say what you don't know can't hurt you.
And in this movie, this applies to idea of aliens as well.
Extra-terrestrials have not only touched down to Earth, they are living amongst us and have been doing so for quite some time. So, how did we get by for so long without knowing?
The MIB, a secret organization that makes sure that unidentified flying objects remain unidentified and that extra-terrestrials remain "extra" (I hope that makes sense...).
And it's not a conspiracy, it's for you're own good.
These black suited, dark sunglassed agents know that if any of us average joes were aware of the fact that we had been being visited for years now, it would be too much information for us to handle.
In short, to save from us being taken away by the men in white, we need the Men In Black.
We just don't know it.

Another modern take on the idea of aliens walking the Earth.
Well......
this is actually more of a love story with a backdrop of giant aliens monsters, of which we probably don't see enough of.
But still,
I gotta give credit to this movie for trying to do something in it intermingling of genres.
For my tastes it wasn't as successful in efforts as I would've like it to be, but I truly admire the quality in which this project was approached by it's creators.

Spoiler alert!

In this particular Frankenstein movie, Doc Vic's creation enters the Toho universe & goes from being just a plain ol' human-sized Frankenstein's Monster to becoming a giant several stories tall Frankenstein's Kaiju Monster. Well, at least, in his heart he does.
And here's the spoiler alert part; despite what the movie title suggests, Frankenstein doesn't really actually conquer the world. But at the height of 300 feet, he does end up covering alot more landscape than before.
And in keeping with the theme of mashing up the madcap with the macabre, Mary Shelley rolls over in her grave.

In any professional sport, the chance of losing is just part of the nature of the game. But, in certain particular sports, there is the chance of losing more than that.
F'rinstance, in hockey, once players skate onto the rink, they also take the chance of losing some teeth. Meanwhile, in a sport like Rollerball, when a participant skates into the ring, he stands the chance of losing not just points and/or some teeth, but more importantly, his life.
But in a dystopian future fraught with overpopulation and disfranchised people, that's just all considered as part of the game.

Death Race 2000's premise is very similiar to anther movie that came out this same year, Rollerball. Both have to do with a sport that takes place in a dystopian future and in which the loss of the game could result in the ultimate loss, death. and both sports, Roller Ball and the Death Race, are past-times that were invented just so the fans of each particular sport could satiate their thirst for blood.
However, I think that the theme worked better here in Death Race than it did in RB because, since this film was produced by Roger Corman, it didn't shy away as much from the violence and it's relationship with the kitsch of it's concept. Therefore, giving the gratuitous graphics more of a role than just it's gratuity in whatever slivers of a statement might be interpreted spewing out from it's tackily tricked-out torque.

During the height of McCarthyism and the Red Scare,
comes yet another sci-fi film taking advantage of the attitude scoring across the country at this time.
A big red mass that keeps getting bigger and bigger, terrorizes a small American town, swallowing up innocent denizens of democracy.....
get the symbolism?
Or is that stretching a metaphor farther than what an extended slimy flesh-disintegrating tentacle can reach?

Here's a movie that is also known as the "The McPherson Tape" but was originally planned to be called "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner", until they found out that that title had already been taken.
A Thanksgiving family get-together gets interrupted by big-eyed visitors from, well... I'm sure most of you know by now where this is going.
Upon deeper reflection of this film's holiday theme, I think that the story here might be an allegory of what happened to the Native Americans after they had the Pilgrims (i.e. White man) over for a turkey dinner. The McPherson family is supposed to represent the Natives and the aliens, the white man.
But I'm not sure.
I may have just made that up to sound allegorically astute for this post.

Back in the early 80's, I wasn't the biggest fan of anime. Even those few that reached a high level of acclaim had a hard time of gettiing me to sit through 'em.
Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind was one of the first that finally began to open my eyes to the potential that lay within the paints and brushes that colored the cells of these films.
An ecological fable that treated it's premise with the maturity that's found in most adult oriented fantasy books and yet with the innocence of the Disney flicks, Nausicaa was able to strike a uniquely fine balance that appealed to kids and adults alike.

It's the year 1997 and the city of New York has been converted into a giant prison, because in the not-so-distance future crime has become an epidemic of national proportions. And if that wasn't bad enough for the people living in 1997, Air Force One has crashed right into the middle of the rotten Big Apple thus entrapping the President of the United States at it's core. And if soldier-turned-criminal Snake Plissken can save the day, his reward will be a presidential pardon, a page in the future's history books and an entry into the annals of cult movies of the past.
So the government turns to soldier-turned criminal Snake Plisskon for help. They promised him a full presidential pardon, but only if he can save the Prez and save the day. Thus begins the quest to get out of New York and into the annals of cult movie history.

For the first time ever, Godzilla, Minilla, Mothra, Rodan, Gorosaurus, Anguirus, Kumonga, Manda, Baragon, and Varan, all together in one movie, kicking all sorts of ass with their big, floppy rubber feet (or any other appendages of like-minded floppy purposes).
And it's all because of those stupid aliens!
This is the original Monsters Versus Aliens epic,
not to mention, the battle royale of all battle royales! With cheese!
So, y'know....
RUN!!
Run for your lives!!!!

To be really honest, for a movie called Mad Max, I kinda expected this story to be a lot more violent/action packed than it was.
I found it to be much more tame than I expected, even by late 70's standards.
However, this is the flick that introduced the character who would eventually become one of the most bad-ass personas to ever race across on the big screen and provides a look into what "drove" the "Road Warrior" during his "pre-post apocalyptic" days.

So, even though, on its own, it is still a solid dystopian story about the not so far flung future, I don't even have to go into further detail as far as describing this movie, other than to just to give it major props as the first chapter in the saga of one my favorite cinematic characters ever.

As a film, K-PAX weaves through it's various "less epic" identities of E.T., Starman, and even of a fluffier version of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.
But, as with most sci-fi movies with the "aliens walking amongst humans to better understan humankind" theme, it tries to end with a life-lesson that teaches us more about us than it does "them".
In this case, no matter how crazy our individualized inner-scars can make us,
sometimes, all we need is a hopeful hand extended in friendship to help brings us back down to Earth.
And if that lesson comes off sounding as a bit too "spacey-headed", please take into account what Hollywood writers of these types of scripts have in common with people from K-Pax: They both tend to be a buncha distant souls that live amongst the stars.

A community of pink houses with white picket fences and wives who all "properly" know their roles. A mid 70's tale of the American Dream coming in the form of battery powered domestic bliss.

A teenage kid discovers that the video game he has mastered is secretly a celestial training simulation program, when he is notified by an alien who reveals to him that he is a gunner/star-soldier in an intergalactic war between good and evil.
So, to all you video gamers out there, don't listen to society when it tries to convince you that all those hours spent on your x-box, gameboy or psp will eventually accumulate into a vast amount of wasted life.
For all anybody knows, you could very well be the last starfighter.

Therefore,
feel free to grab your wii and play with yourself as much as you like.
The future of the galaxy may depend on it.

Enemy Mine is a film that starts out as a "bad alien" movie and then evolves into a "good alien" movie by intergalactically pondering the question of "Why can't we all just get along?"
The truth is, no matter what planet one is from, when it comes to reaching racial harmony, even on an interplanetary scale, we all need to follow Jerry Seinfeld's advice and try to take a bite out of both sides of the black & white cookie.
Look to the cookie.
We must all look to the cookie.
Oh, and to all you sci-fi geeks out there,
that's cookie,
not wookie.
So don't start looking towards Chewbacca for any kind of sage words on the subject.

An uneven film that contains separate moments of good stuff. Enough of 'em, that, despite it's unstitched story flow, hits on a few certain plot points that were interesting enough to keep my attention. As a big fan of Stanley Kubrick's work, I can't help but look at this movie with the potential that it held if the original director had lived to make it.

A tale of romance and time travel that was hopefully successful enough to warrant a whole series of follow-up sequels ( The Time Traveler's Kids, The Time Traveler's In-Laws, The Time Traveler's Mistress, The Time Traveler's Drunk Uncle, The Time-Traveler's Pet Retriever, The Time Traveler's Guy He Knows To Get High End Jewelry Below Manufacturer's Cost, The Time Traveler's Four People Who Lead Him To Kevin Bacon Under Six Degrees......
well....I'm sure you get the picture).

In the first Jurassic Park, modern science demonstrated it highest possibilities to date by genetically re-introducing the dinosaurs of the Jurassic era to our time. Then, it went about creating an island theme park in which to inhabit these prehistoric ganstas of giant monsters, in the speculative hope that the general public would eat them up.
As it turned out, it had the opposite effect. It was the park that began eating up the public.
So, in this 2nd installment of the series, we find out that there was a spawning ground for all those back-in-the-beasties before they were transported to the ill-fated amusement park.
Named "Site B", it's the setting for the prehistoric pandemonium that "naturally' ensues from the lessons not learned.

How does one gain the World Championship title belt of Badassery? Come down from another planet, in full tilt battle-gear and kick the the combined asses of "Apollo Creed", "the Terminator", Jesse "The Body" Ventura and that one guy who played one of the corrupt cops in Payback.

A light and airy love tale starring the ever adorable Meg Ryan, and featuring not only the concept of time travel, but also, the two guys who, in a later film, would portray two mutants characters from the X-Men, Wolverine and Sabretooth. Which I guess is enough to make a comicbook nerd such as myself to be cool with this movie (though the fact that is pretty decently written could be another reason of why it's on this list).

One of the things I liked about the Toho daikaiju was their ability to incorporate really cool and creative story-ideas into the middle of the rubbery cheese that was running amok thru the cardboarded streets and buildings of Nippon.
Mothra being my favorite example. Two tiny little beauties act almost as their familiars, who communicate telepathically with great godlike beast. Also, Mothra is usually treated as a Phoenix-like entity, in that every time it dies, it is soon resurrected as a giant egg, soon to hatch into it's larvae form (almost as equally formidable as it's adult moth stage).
For me, it's the over-all mythological slant that accompanies this particular kaiju that sets it apart from it's floppy-footed counterparts and therefore makes it one of my more favorites of the eastern-themed genre.

In this intellectual remake of the 50's classic, Jeff Goldblum portrays a professor whose experiments metamorphisizes him into a large, hairy, decayed-flesh ridden and just plain gross housefly. And in the process, still gets to score with super-fly 80's beauty, Geena Davis.
*sigh*....only in the movies, I guess.

Paul is one of those typical big-eyed, big-headed aliens that we've grown accustomed to believing are hiding in Area 51.
Although, as we get to know him in this story, we find that he completely disproves the mythical stereotype that he and his kind are here on our planet in order to circle our crops, mutilate our cows and probe our anuses.....

Paul shows us that all he wants to do is to share with us what he knows about the galaxy and to smoke a doobie.
A really good doobie.
The kind of doobie that killed Bob Dylan.

I've never actually read any of the books from this series, heck, I didn't even know what is was supposed to be about.
After watching the movie, I still don't feel any inclination to read any of the printed material (unlike the Harry Potter films, which did get me interested in the books), but I did find it as a good introduction to the post-apocalyptic world of Panem and it's people's obsession with adolescent battle-to-the-death games.

A dark film with a plot that literally isn't all sunshine. Which is why it's called "Pitch Black".
A group of space-farers find their intergalactic journey interrupted when they are marooned on a planet of perpetual daylight, with the exception of the periodical cycles of ecliptical darkness.
And during these few shifts of nightfall,
the major form of alien life are hordes of flying meat-eating whatchamacallits.
And to these nocturnal beasties, humans make a pretty tasty midnight snack.

During the eighties, the buddy-cop was at it's highest caliber. An this particular one, the genre goes intergalactic. A New York detective finds himself teamed up with an out of this world partner on the case of a serial killer from beyond the stars.
An alien that's smart enough to realize that if it wants to infiltrate into the society of this big blue marble that we call Earth, that it must remain hidden.
Which is what probably inspired the producers of this movie to give it the title that they did.

How do you get a former priest whose lost his faith to "open his eyes" and believe again?
Try sending down an alien or two to start forming big ol' circles in his crops.

Through the combination of ingesting mushrooms and confining himself within an isolation tank, a scientist finds himself devolving into not just a neanderthal state, but into an actual neanderthal.
It's funny how I can do the exact same thing whenever I take psychedelic drugs while locked away in my room, all by myself.
And I ain't no frikkin' scientist.

As a fan of the first Godzilla flicks, I used to watch those old Kaiju movies as a kid with the anticipation that one day the technology of special effects would catch up to grandness of giant monsters and robots duking it out in the midst of ill-fated Tokyo downtown districts.
And even though, because of modern movie audience's shrinking ability to suspend their belief for this kind of stretched out subject matter, it took longer than I would have liked, Pacific Rim finally came along and sated that almost life-long anticipation.

Despite how the modern advancements in animation technology now make Heavy metal's visuals looked dated today, back when i was in high school, this was the first adult animated flick I had ever seen and to my virgin eyes, the movements of the animation came off as very realistic and flowing. Although my tastes have matured along with my ability to recognize more sophisticated techniques of making painted figures move on film, HM was the catalyst that really opened up my eyes to the potential of new horizons that could be (and eventually would be) done not just with animation, but also with it's integration into story-lines. With and end result that could engage as well as entertain even those of us who should've grown out of this stuff a long time ago.

The Dali-esque/surreal journey through time travel of a high school teenager turned reluctant "superhero" Donnie Darko and his spiritual sidekick Frank the bunny.
Believe me, despite having the ability to perceive warps in the timestream,
these two guys ain't no dynamic duo.

In the not too distant future, an entire grade level of high school students are planted on a island and forced to either kill themselves or defend themselves, until there's only one left standing.
A system of discipline to show 'em how to respect authority that might prove to be more efficient than staying after school cleaning erasers or detention, but probably won't be as enduring.
Cuz, y'know....
the kids would all be dead an' stuff.

A movie about a big giant glob of pink snot that only gets bigger and bigger as the storyline progresses.
Could somebody hand me over a city-sized piece of tissue, please?

Once again, science fiction meets horror in this tale of other-worldly bug-eyed beasties and beastly bugs entering our world via a mysterious mist that, as the lead characters soon find out, is probably not the result of any natural weather pattern known on this planet.

A cool psychological thriller that takes a journey into the psyche of a mind through the use of really creative, surreal and stunning visuals.
And when I say "creative, surreal and stunning visuals", contrary to what all of y'all might be thinkin', I am not referring to Jennifer Lopez's big ol' onion booty.

Y'know what....?
I'm not even gonna try to describe this movie.
Lemme just say that, outside of Stanley Kubrick, I don't usually like these types of vague, artsy films.
However, this one, felt to me like there was a kind of instinctual "dreamy" theme that pieced together what was going on with the story in this flick. Like I was watching someone's bad dream as it fluctuated between levels of surrealistically disturbing to full blown nightmare, to one that just made 'em toss around in their sleep.
The large amount of interpretive ambiguity that the story expresses is made up by the fact that the visuals were very artistically structured and quite effectively striking.

File under "Not for everyone".