Best Sci-Fi movies 1980 onwards...(ok 1979)

Loved this when I was 10. It’s unwatchable now.

God, love that movie, just watched it a few months ago. Still totally holds up.

What about Day of the Animals? Animals go crazy and start to take over the earth. Because, you know, the ozone layer. Rats, dogs, wolfs, a couple of cougars, a whole mess of different birds, snakes, spiders. A bear. The bear, in fact, stops Leslie Nielsen from becoming a raper after the ozone layer makes Leslie Nielsen him go insane. Leslie Nielsen take off his shirt, kills another man with a stick, yells a lot, calls some poor kid a “cockroach” several times, and then decides to become a raper. Luckily, the bear comes along in time to save the day.

Oh, wait, that was 1978, so it doesn’t qualify.

-Tom

Tom, how long have you been waiting to work Day of the Animals into a conversation?

Since about 1978.

-Tom

I hope the wait was worth it.

Bleh. The Black Hole isn’t a timeless classic (way dated, no doubt) but time-period genre tropes aside, it’s a fairly dark and adult Disney movie when that was almost unthinkable, and also has some fantastic visuals as well.

No love for Repo Man?

And Stalker. I’m pretty sure that was released in 1979. Only one of the best goddamn movies ever made.

More recently, Primer.

Mars Attacks!

also hasn’t been mentioned yet.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I had no idea Stalker was a movie long before it was a game.

Off the top of my head and a fair few mentioned already:

Serenity
Moon
District 9
Back to the Future
Source Code
Another Earth
Melancholia
Sunshine
Gattaca
The Matrix
Blade Runner
Aliens
AI (haven’t seen it in years but I remember thoroughly enjoying it)
The Thing
Akira
Wall-E
The Abyss
Contact
The Terminator 1 & 2
Jurassic Park (good call)
The Fly

Edit: Pre-1980
2001
Alien
Stalker
Silent Running
Star Wars 1-3

No one mentioned E.T.? Of course I haven’t seen that in many many years, so maybe it doesn’t hold up. I sure enjoyed it during my childhood, though.

I have never seen blade runner. Can you all forgive me?

No.

45

What? Here, go buy this:

http://www.amazon.com/Runner-Anniversary-Collectors-Edition-Blu-ray/dp/B008M4MB8K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355507447&sr=8-1&keywords=blade+runner+blu-ray

And watch it as soon as you get it.

Yes, but which version does he watch first?

I don’t really think of Repo Man as a sci-fi movie. I love it, and yeah, technicallly, it has aliens and weird stuff, but those bits aren’t realy what it’s about. In a way, the sci-fi stuff feels more like a manifestation of the outsider status and mindset of a repo man than anything else.

(Also, that trailer was pretty damn cool.)

Huh, I’d say the theatrical one with the voice over, then the director’s cut. That’s the way a lot of folks originally saw it.

Time for a list (I’ve still a lot to catch up):

Nr Title Rating
1 - Outland -
2 - Serenity -
3 - District 9 6.0
4 - Terminator 2 8.5
5 - Videodrome -
6 - They Live -
7 - Re-Animator -
8 - The Fifth Element 9.0
9 - The Matrix 8.0
10 - Back to the Future 7.5
11 - 12 Monkeys 10.0
12 - Solaris 7.0
13 - Looper -
14 - Blade Runner 5.0
15 - The Prestige 7.5
16 - Brazil -
17 - Star Trek II 0.0
18 - The Man Who Fell To Earth -
19 - Children of Men -
20 - Gattaca 9.5
21 - Inception 8.5
22 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -
23 - Sunshine -
24 - 28 Days Later 8.0
25 - Dark City -
26 - The Thing 9.5
27 - Enemy Mine -
28 - The Empire Strikes Back 8.5
29 - Alien 7.5
30 - Escape From New York 4.0
31 - Robocop 8.5
32 - The Terminator 8.5
33 - The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max II) 9.0
34 - Minority Report 6.5
35 - Jurrasic Park 8.0
36 - Flash Gordon -
37 - Alien Nation -
38 - Tron -
39 - Last Starighter -
40 - Dune -
41 - Idiocracy -
42 - Cloud Atlas -
43 - Galaxy Quest -
44 - the Star Trek reboot -
45 - Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country 0.0
46 - Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension -
47 - Strange Days 8.0
48 - Contact 6.5
49 - Cube
50 - Starman -
51 - Pitch Black -
52 - Frequency -
53 - Spaceballs ?
54 - Apollo 13 disqualified
55 - Day of the Animals disqualified
56 - Mars Attacks!* 6.0
57 - Moon -
58 - Source Code -
59 - Another Earth -
60 - Melancholia -
61 - Aliens 9.0
62 - AI 5.5
63 - Akira -
64 - Wall-E -
65 - The Abyss 9.5
66 - The Fly 8.5

QT3’s most liked Sci-Fi movies (in no particular order):

Brazil
Dark City
District 9
Moon
Serenity
Terminator 2
The Abyss
The Terminator
Aliens
Blade Runner
The Matrix
The Thing

NOOOOO.

Don’t ever go near the original theatrical release of Blade Runner. The Director’s Cut completely overrides it. Then watch the Final Cut version to see the few changes added (mostly cleaning up effects shots).

Edit: obviously, I was responding to Brian Rubin’s post there.