The CaNerdian

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Showing posts with label Sci-Fi Month. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sci-Fi Month. Show all posts
The Top 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies You've (probably) Never Heard Of

The Top 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies You've (probably) Never Heard Of

#2:  Dark Star (1974)




The Top 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies You've (probably) Never Heard Of

#3:  Anna to the Infinite Power (1982)




The Top 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies You've (probably) Never Heard Of

#4:  The Man From Earth (2007)





The Top 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies You've (probably) Never Heard Of

#5:  Sleep Dealer (2008)



The Top 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies You've (probably) Never Heard Of

#6:  The Quiet Earth (1985)



The Top 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies You've (probably) Never Heard Of

Previous week's entries are here:
#10: Renaissance
#9: Strange Days
#8: Outland

And now we're on to...

#7:  A Wind Named Amnesia (1990)


The Top 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies You've (probably) Never Heard Of

#8:  Outland (1981)


What It Is

Sean Connery (OH YEAAAHHH) plays Federal Marshal William O'Neil, a grizzly old veteran who has just transplanted his family from Earth to the rugged frontier of Io, where he joins the security detail of a major mining outpost.  The outpost is managed by Mark Sheppard (Peter Boyle, of Everybody Loves Raymond), a cheery fellow who prides himself on achieving maximum efficiency in the workplace.  Under Sheppard's watch, however, workers begin to exhibit bizarre and increasingly erratic behavior, resulting in several deaths.  O'Neil doggedly investigates, despite growing opposition from his wife and son, and from every single member of the station's 2,144 personnel, with one exception:  the station's chief medical physician, Dr. Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen).

O'Neil gradually uncovers the conspiracy behind the mysterious deaths, leading to a climactic confrontation with three mercenaries who are due to arrive on the weekly shuttle at 1200 hours.  Sound familiar?  No?  What if I were to replace the word "shuttle" with "train" and "1200 hours" with...oh, I don't know, "High Noon?"

OH YEEEEAAAAAHHH

The Top 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies You've (probably) Never Heard Of

#9:  Strange Days (1995)


What It Is

The cyberpunk brainchild of two people you might be familiar with - James Cameron and Kathryn before-she-was-big Bigelow - and starring a powerhouse cast that includes Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore and Vincent D'Onofrio.  Strange Days depicts a chaotic Los Angeles in 1999, on the eve of the new millennium.  Racial tensions ride at an all time high, distrust of the police is rampant and rioting is a near-daily occurrence.  In the midst of all of this is a new technology, a "SQUID" (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device) that is capable of recording or transmitting data directly to an individual's mind.  SQUID recordings are the newest and greatest thing in black market circles, with content ranging from robberies gone awry to downright snuff films.  One black market dealer, Lenny Nero (Fiennes), stumbles across a SQUID tape that depicts a horrific and politically charged crime, and must rely on the help of his friends Mace (Bassett), a bodyguard for hire, and Max Peltier (Sizemore), a Private Eye, to sort through a labyrinthine plot of double crosses and conspiracies.  Simultaneously, Nero is pursued by two corrupt LAPD officers (D'Onofrio and William Fichtner) and tries desperately to repair his damaged relationship with ex-girlfriend and singer Faith (Lewis).


It's back!

This time last year, I decided to declare April my unofficial Sci-Fi month, where I blog about my favourite genre fiction.  Last April, I did up a list of my top 10 shows and top 10 movies, one roughly every weekday.

This year, I'm going to have just the one top 10 list, but it's one that I think will intrigue even die-hard fans.  In terms of a ranking system, these are again just my personal opinions based on how I felt the movie ranked alongside its fellows.  It's also worth mentioning that - with perhaps a couple of exceptions - you would never hear these movies ranked in "Greatest Sci-Fi" lists of any kind; not necessarily because they're BAD, but more because they don't quite reach into the levels of "instant classic".

Without further ado, Look Out It Is a Blog is proud to present:

The Top 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies You've (probably) Never Heard Of

First off, the list, in its entirety, for easy access:

My Top 10 Sci-Fi Movies

10.  Metropolis
9.  A Scanner Darkly
8.  Silent Running
7.  THX-1138
6.  The Mysterious Georgraphic Explorations of Jasper Morello
5.  The Truman Show
4.  Wall-E
3.  The Rocketeer
2.  2001: A Space Odyssey
1.  Dark City (Director's Cut)

My Top 10 Sci-Fi TV Shows

10.  The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne
9.  Red Dwarf
8.  Babylon 5
7.  The Lost Room
6.  Jeremiah
5.  Futurama
4.  Reboot
3.  Tin Man
2.  Firefly
1.  Doctor Who

And Now, the Honorable Mentions


Doctor Who

Dundundun, dundundun, dundundun, dundundun,

Ooooo-weeee-oooooo...eeeee-oooooo...

BWAAADADAAAA, DAAAADADAAAAAAAAA...DA-DAAAAA...

If you have no idea what I just did, you need a little more Doctor Who in your life.

How appropriate that the show about a Time Lord from Gallifrey holds the Guinness World Record for "Longest Running Science Fiction Show".  The majority of its current viewers will likely have only heard about the series thanks to the resurgence in popularity following the 2005 revival by Russell T. Davies.



Dark City:  Director's Cut

I'll have to begin this review with a disclaimer:  I bloody love Dark City, Director's Cut or no Director's Cut.  It's not a situation like Blade Runner, where the original is nigh-unwatchable compared to the later Director's or Final cuts.

On the contrary.  What Dark City:  The Director's Cut did was make a great movie even BETTER, and frankly when I first saw this movie I didn't think that was possible.

I think this movie is colossally underrated, underestimated, and overlooked.  It had to struggle with opening against Titanic, and in the sci-fi genre it was overshadowed by the visually stunning, but ultimately shallow The Matrix.


Firefly

You knew it was coming.

You knew because it's pretty much the sci-fi show of the hipster generation.

You knew because it was made by the ever-popular Joss Whedon, who has come to symbolize a kind of underdog artistic integrity in a wasteland of cookie cutter primetime TV.

You knew because...well...Firefly.

It's hard not to gush about this show, because there honestly has never been anything like it.  This was the first science fiction show that really felt like an honest portrayal of the average working-class group of people in space.


2001:  A Space Odyssey

Well, as I move into the final days of Sci-Fi Month, I can't help but include at least one really, really well-known title.

2001:  A Space Odyssey is referred to not just as one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made, but as one of the greatest movies ever made, period.  But, it had its critics at the time of release, and it still has its critics now.  Like many of Kubrick's films, it's extremelly polarizing in critical and public opinion, and it's not hard to see why.



Tin Man

I know, I know, it's another miniseries.  I wasn't actually going to include another miniseries on here after The Lost Room, and this spot was going to go to Space:  Above and Beyond.

Here's the thing though about Space:  Above and Beyond.
1)  It's not very good
2)  It was short-lived and not well circulated
3)  Battlestar Galactica (reimagined) was better

This may also be a signal that I won't be talking about Battlestar for the remainder of my list either.  Not because it's not GOOD (it certainly is), but because I don't think I can say anything about it that hasn't been said already.

I'm getting sidetracked.  What I really want to talk about is Tin Man.


Woops!  Fell off the blogging wagon for a couple of days there.  I plead the sickness.  Back to Sci-Fi Month!

The Rocketeer

The Rocketeer is, in my opinion, one of the most criminally underrated films in Hollywood history.  Not CRITICALLY.  Critics, in fact, quite liked this film, and the science fiction community did too.  Audiences, however, passed over it in favour of other blockbusters like Robin Hood:  Prince of Thieves.

The problem, I think, was one of timing.  The Rocketeer is all about nostalgia, a throwback to pulp cliches and 40's sci-fi action heroes like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers.  Aaaand in 1991, not a lot of people were very interested in those kinds of heroes.  They were riding the high wave of prosperity, looking to a future of cyberpunk in films like Terminator 2 or the Matrix.  They were interested in modern heroes, tough female characters, and progressive ideas.



Reboot

OK, this is the last time I cheat by including a kid's program.  Probably.

Reboot rarely seems to end up on "best of" lists, and I actually don't know why.  I suspect it's due in large part to a very, very troubled distribution history.  I think it goes something like this:

1)  Canadian program is hugely successful thanks to an original idea and (at the time) groundbreaking animation techniques
2)  American network picks it up, introducing the show to a large audience
3)  American network is bought out, and drops the show due to corporate nonsense (Thanks Disney!)
4)  Canadian production continues, and is eventually bought once more by Americans, but since there is a HUGE, three-year gap, nobody understands what is going on or cares.

Which is a terrible, terrible shame.  I know that Canadian audiences ate this show up, and I think Americans did too in the first year.  Reboot was the first fully computer-animated series, and though the earliest graphics are dated, they still have a bright, cartoonish flair to them.


Wall-E

OK, I'll own this right now and admit I'm probably (definitely) going too far on this one.  Wall-E is, after all, a family film first and a sci-fi film second.

But I feel compelled to include it in my list of favourites because I think that science-fiction has a place at the juvenile level as well.  Growing up, I read a lot of YA science fiction, like Alfred Slote or K.A. Applegate.  There's a great deal of imagination put into YA sci-fi, and a lot of it flows more freely because there's no preconceptions about content going in.

The same can be said of Pixar Animation films.  The pieces this studio puts out are some of the only films I consistently look forward to seeing. With Wall-E, the wonderful people at Pixar took their tried and true formula of short films sans dialogue and stretched it out to the feature-length mark.

Futurama

What can be said about this series that hasn't been said already?  While overshadowed The Simpsons, Futurama remains a hilarious, nerdly love letter to science fiction tropes and cliches.

The jokes are brilliant.  The characters are hilarious and varied.  The music, art and direction are all top-notch.

But I think what really sets this show apart from anything else is the incredible attention paid to paying nerd homage to math, physics, and above all else the great stories that have come before.