SF films of note

A personal list of SF films worth watching!

• Metropolis (1927, as restored)

  Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou’s masterpiece. If you haven’t seen the most recent restoration, which restored broken or missing storylines, you need to see the movie again. This new, restored version is truely stunning to behold, and tells a complex and gripping tale.

• The Man in the White Suit (1951)

  This old Ealing comedy features Alec Guinness as an eccentric inventor of a spotless fabric. Very, very funny.

• The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
  Michael Rennie was ill, …
• War of the Worlds (Geo. Pal, 1953)
  The strange cross between flyng saucers and martian tripods works, and the story still works even transplanted to the US.
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
  Who can forget the shot of the man, running down the road, trying to warn people?
• Forbidden Planet (1956)
  Robby the Robot! Shakespeare! Flying saucers!
• The Time Machine (1960)

  I admit it, I just loved the gorgeous design of this Time Machine.

• Alphaville (1965) une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution
  Jean-Luc Godard film about a totalitarian city of the future. Very unsettling
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

  Kubrick captures the grandeur of space. Lots of fun watching the Star Wars generation puzzling over the apeman opening!

• Charly (1968)

  A very nice adaptation of the short story Flowers for Algernon

• A Clockwork Orange (1971)
• The Andromeda Strain (1971)

  The clock is ticking as a bunch of scientists deal with an infestation from space.

• Dark Star (1975)

  I first saw this at Aussiecon, then screened it the following year in Adelaide. A funny and clever film about the mental hazards of deep space with a small crew.

• Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)

  a beautifully filmed version of Roadside Picnic, and a meditation on the sadness in the Russian soul. Possibly a tad too slow for modern audiences, but there’s actually a lot happening.

• Alien (1979)

  Ridley Scott, and Sigourney Weaver as Ripley!

• Blade Runner (1982)

  Ridley Scott’s beautiful and intelligent adaptation of PK Dick’s Do Android’s dream of Electric Sheep? set a high standard for SF films.

• Fifth Element (1997)

  Luc Besson’s glorious space opera romp, beautiful to behold and fun to watch.

• Dark City  (1998)

  Classic 1950s man into superman story. Filmed around Central Station in Sydney.

• Minority Report (2002)

  Spielberg film of another PK Dick story. Max von Sydow is excellent!

• A Scanner Darkly (2006)

  Richard Linklater doing SF! Based on the PK Dick story. Very interesting rotoscoping of the actors.

• District 9 (2009)

  Intelligent SF commenting on Apartheid and racism.

• Inception (2010)

  Entering people’s dreams to embed/steal ideas. The question is, how do you know when you’re awake? A nice caper involving layers of “reality”.

• Attack the Block (2011)

  Unlikely heroes save their block from alien invasion