My Top 199 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.

When almost the entire planet of Earth gets blown up,
then it's time for we humans, as a species, to roll up our sleeves, get our sh#t together and then go kick E.T.'s ass.

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.

A modern take of the Frankenstein lore but one which I thought didn' venture too far from what we've seen many times already. And for me, if someone is gonna do anything diffrent from the source material, I prefer it to be something much more unique or distinctive than what Depraved has to offer.
Still, the makers of this modern minimal-monster motion picture do get points for putting forth the effort of presenting a fiend friendly flick in the world of today. It's not gonna go down as a classic, but it's worth a watch at least once (or twice)during these times when, compared to the other classical feature creatures, a Frankenstein movie is something that we rarely witness "come alive" anymore.

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.

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 charm-sprinkled 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?

I know that this isn't really considered all that great, in it's story or just as a movie over-all. But what it does have going for it are a kick-ass looking alien race of giant insectoids and some pretty decent battle scenes (not to mention the dramatic debut of the ultra-fine Denise Richards).
Starship Troopers is definitely what you'd call a beer and popcorn movie.
Preferably more beer than popcorn.

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.

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.

Yep, we live in a time when science fiction films are expected to be star-faring vehicles of blockbusting escapism more than cosmic catalysts for provoking thought. And the truth is, it was for the latter that the genre was invented in the first place.
Gattaca is a film that goes back to the roots of what fiction written through the use of futuristic fantasy was originally dreamt for.
Set in the ever popular "not too distant" future, it tells the tale of a social system founded on the belief that genetic superiority is "valid" and the best means in which to effectively run a Dystopia.

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.

If there's one thing that can strike fear into the very core of any man, it's the idea that a part of his body is shrinking. The only thing worse would be that every part of his body is shrinking.
And the only thing worse than that would be that every part of his shrunken body was on the menu of a house spider in the basement that he had to run down to in order to hide from the cat after it made the attempt at making him its din-din.
It's a pretty common fear amongst men, actually.
I think that's why they made it into a movie. It's a fear we all can relate too.

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?

It a post apocalyptic planet Earth, and in France, supposedly like everywhere else, meat is scarce. So when circus clown Louison comes to work at a local butcher shop, his hopes are high on attaining a steady means of living with the delicatessen's delicacies as a benefit of the job.
Only soon to find out that it could be the very opposite of those things that he may "end" up with.
Delicatessen is an "after the big one" small story that comes off a bit more charming that one would expect based on it's subject matter. Especially, if you're a vegetarian.

For those of you who haven't seen this movie, no, it isn't an x-rated movie about some perv who likes to have sex with snowmen (or snowwomen).
It's actually a futuristic tale of about a snowy dystopia in which humanity's only survivors exist on a train, the Snowpiercer, that continually circles the globe. And on this train, people are divided up by class, and each class is put in a different section of the train. Obviously, the lower the class, the farther back on the train they are positioned.

I'm sure that many of today's kids would look at this movie and wonder what the heck is it that the generations before them saw in this big ol' rubbery, radiation blasting, clumsy-looking dino-phenomena.
Well, the only way I can explain it is by saying that, even with the scars of WW2 still visible and the lack of big budgetry in their film industry, Japanese cinema knew how to make do with what they had. And it was this can-do/make-do attitude that helped them to make a big footprint in the arena of 50's colossal creatures genre that was raging in film at the time. And it's what also helped to give Godzilla the long standing reputation as the King of all Kaiju Monsters.

After catching fire with the previous Hunger Games movie, Mockingjay Part 1 slows the pace down a bit, mostly because it works more as an establishing platform that is set to lead into what will follow in the 2nd part.
Also because, from what I've heard, since I never read any of the books, this final chapter in the saga of Katniss Evergreen's revolution is considered by fans as the weakest of the series.
So, even though this film is a notch down from what we've seen so far, it's still enough of a grand epic that fits the mold of what we expect from these kinds big budget blockbusting franchises.

Yo, you wanna make a modern, low-budget, b-movie about a big ass spider? Then take a look this flick. And don't just look at it, study it. Every eight legged part of it. Because, in the beginning, the whole beauty of those rarified b-movies that have since earned the status of classics or cult films is that, despite their small budgets and other limited resources, somehow they were able to rise above the restrictions of their paltry production pennies and still create a magic of guiltless entertainment that is the center of many cheapskate cinophiles' tastes. Not since 1955's "Tarantula!" has a film been able to stretch out it's meager means to create a web-weaving wonder of whale-sized wallcrawlers.

Here's an anime movie with a very conventional anime title but with a very unconventional plot. Written by Katsuhiro Otomo, most famous for Akira, Roujin's premise is set in early 21st century Japan, about the invention of a type of hospital bed that has been super-mechanized to provide all around care for the patients who are unfortunately targeted to lay in it.
It is a story that is told with a kind of originality that is usually reserved more for the graphic hardware of these kinds of productions (although there is enough of that to still meet the quota of the genre). What is missing are the post-apocalyptic destruction, fairy-tail folklore fantasy or female characters running around in schoolgirl outfits that usually tend to get in the way of the moral messaging mindset that Roujin Z atypically wraps itself around in.

Over at the SETI Institute, they've been scouring the skies for years, in search of any signs of communique from extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI by the way stands for search for extraterrestial intelligence). However, what they don't realize is that the extraterrestrials have already arrived. Not only do they walk among us, but they've have already begun the process which will terraform our planet into a more suitable environment for their kind of physiology.
And the only person who knows of their plan is Charlie Sheen.
But does he have the right amount of tiger's blood in him that's required in order to stop them?
Watch this movie and find out.

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.

After a common house fly buzzes it way into an experimental transportation device, it's DNA mixes in with the creator of said device, and in typical 50's b-movie fashion, results in a macabre hybrid of the two. And it will take more that a can of raid or a fly-swatter to keep females from screaming at the top of their lungs at the sight of him. Lord knows what their frightened reactions would be if the results of the skewed experiment had caused him to evolve into a "spider-man" instead. Or even worse, a human centipede.

Hector and his wife are living a regular life, spending their time doing things like redomesticating their domestic home. When he investigates a minor incident that he witnessed from afar, things start to go from minor to major, and soon, he is caught in a bizarre series of time loops, which continually place him in contact with his alternate selves. And as we all know by now, according to the butterfly effect, the nature of science considers that a crime where the laws of time travel are concerned.
Timecrimes is a science fiction indie film that doesn't allow itself to get wrapped up in it's limitations of budget and production constraints. Instead, the story uses it's minimalistic techniques as a way to jump from one chronological situation to the next, with an urgent confidence that sidesteps the theoretical physics, and shifts it way quite through a surprisingly effective thriller and let's the loopholes in the fabric of spacetime be damned.

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.

Anyone familiar with the history of space exploration knows that Sputnik was the very first man made object that was placed in Earth's orbit. Built and set off to space by the Russians, and , it was symbol of mankind's lofty aspirations to fly outside of the planet's atmosphere and beyond, despite the Cold War rivalry of the great space race. Sputnik's only function was to circle the globe and send continual beeping transmissions down to Earth. It was a harmless piece of machinery that in the end, demonstrated that when it came to ingenuity of humankind, the sky was truly the limit.
Sputnik the movie, was also created by the Russians, in 2020, long after the thaw of the Cold War. But in this film, the "Sputnik" in question is an alien with parasitic tendencies and a taste for human flesh. And with it's ability to control it's host to meet it's appetital demands in a rather macbre version of "how to serve mankind", this Anti-Sputnik shows that it when it comes to human race acting as an "all-you-can-eat" buffet, this orbital nasty is much more of a symbolpc statemants that says that what's down here on the ground is what truly is the limit.

After directing the successful reboot of Star Trek franchise back in 2009, Hollywood mogul J.J. Abrams takes a crack at the most successful of all the space operas, the Saga of the Star Wars.
And just as he did with the voyages of the Enterprise, Abrams proves that, despite the fan-disparaged prequels, the Force is still awake and still strong, when helmed at the hands of one who still believes in it.

After several failed attempts of updating the King of Monsters on the cinema screen, first from Toho Studios during the 80s, then by American film producers in the 90's, a combination between the two sides changed all that for the new millenium. With the rise of the "cinematic universe" franchise movement at the offset of the 2000's, and the record numbers they began to bring to the box office, the stage was set to bring Godzilla back.
And now, while the old skool cheese lovers are the ones who are missing the rubber suited look of the atomic age city stomper, the kaiju king that started it all is once again raging his way thru the blockbuster genre, but with giant feet that aren't so floppy like they used to be.

Christopher Reeve, the guy who played Superman, stars in this film as a playwrite who comes to learn that writing plays is not his only gift. But also, that he possesses the super-human ability to self-hypnotize himself through time, and thus capture a heart of a love that exists somewhere else in time.
Or maybe the superpower is on the ravishing Jane Seymour's end. A classical actress who's luminous beauty is enough not only to stop time but to travel through it, too.
Hey, there's an effective bar pick-up line in their somewhere.

The classic sci-fi serials of the 30's and 40's are bought back to life on the silver screen, but presented here as full length feature extravaganza. And despite it's homage-like center, this dieselpunk production is filmed with the advanced digital technology of today. Sharp, crisp, clear generated artifically visuals provide the reality of Sky Captain, and builds a world of tomorrow that would make even more experienced captains of the sky, like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers, go "Wow".

Despite what seems like a direct movie title,
this is actually more of a love story with a backdrop of giant alien monsters, of which we probably don't see enough of.
I gotta give credit to this movie for trying to do something different by intermingling a romance "road trip" plot within the setting of a War of the Worlds type premise, without getting too many of the tentacles all tangled up.
A journey through a world in the process of alien invasion, it's a tuetonic tale that borders on far reaching aspirations of using it's "monsters" as a metaphoric device to help two people from different worlds find love. For my tastes though, I think I would've preferred seeing the makers of this movie make the matters of the heart material go more major in it's proportions. Still, in the end, it was worth seeing such a serious effort by all involved, including the actors, putting in the effort required to push a "little love story" to go a bit bigger.

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.