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.