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I long-ago affectionately re-titled this one Dork City. It's brilliant.
I thought it was Siskel who loved Dark City?
yeah, pretty much this. I came to this same point with Angelina Jolie years ago, although I think it's more about the choice of roles she's made rather than her acting.
Terminator
T2
Alien
Aliens
Blade Runner
Star Wars
Empire
Matrix
Really running out of room here. 2001, Day the Earth Stood Still, Firefly, I'd consider Robocop...
What are we doing, listing the greatest sci-fi of all time or something?
1. A Clockwork Orange
2. Metropolis
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey
Honorable mention, as not quite sci-fi: 2046
4. Alien
5. Blade Runner
6. Star Wars
7. Aliens
9. Back to the Future
Okay, that's just off my top 100 list, which I did over a year ago. Not sure that I've seen anything since then that would crawl in, or what the 10th movie would be.
I mostly liked Minority Report, but the ending was a mess and I think that put a lot of people off.
I might need to watch it again, a lot people I know talked it up before the first time I saw it and I thought it was ok, but was underwhelmed.
Even if you consider this to be science fiction (and I don't think everything set in a dystopic future qualifies but YMMV) I don't think this ranks among the best. I love Kubrick but of all his films I feel like this is the one that holds up most poorly over time (unlike Barry Lyndon, which gets better every time I see it).
"Primer" and "Moon" are other great sci-fi movies probably a notch below the ones you guys have listed. I think "The Prestige" is pretty good too although I recall having a divisive conversation about that on here.
I don't agree that it holds up poorly over time, as I rank it as both the third-best Kubrick and third-best film of all time -- though I did used to rank it first or second. But I've downgraded it more because of appreciating The Shining more than appreciating Clockwork less. (Barry Lyndon is #1.)
Page practically ripped a hole in the movie screen in Hard Candy. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything else like her performance in that film.
As everyone has decided not to care that Captain America was once the Human Torch in TWO previous inferior films, I'd like Whedon to grab the former Kitty Pryde for the Wasp
I don't think it's been mentioned, but I really love Primer. A film that's really about time travel, instead of just using time travel to frame the story.
I really liked it, but I think requiring only two doctorates in math to understand it - instead of three or four - wouldn't have made it a worse film.
I found Minority Report to be soilidly average.
Me-oww! It was a top of my head list... I might very well put 2001 on a well-thought out list, but I do have to admit that from a cinematic perspective, there are times when I feel like it drags. I love the concept, I like the execution - and I'd say I think the same of most of Kubrick's films, but there it is.
When you've got 90 to 120 minutes to entertain me, I generally prefer you to keep me on the edge of my seat the whole time. When I read, I'm perfectly happy to ponder larger questions and let my own mind roll the ideas around like a fine wine, but yeah -- in a film, I'm a shot and a beer type.
Just my take on the differences in the two media -- doesn't mean films can't be smart, thought-provoking, or wondrous... just means it's a much tougher road to travel.
Not so much. Ellen Page is tremendous.
This movie is an unappreciated camp masterpiece. I haven't seen John Carter (yet???) but this is probably the template they should have used.
Also, if you liked John Carpenter's The Thing (which by all that is holy, you should have), you should see the new Norwegian one. It's kind of a prequel-homage-remake and - while not perfect - is quite good.
Top 5 Sci Fi (mine, unordered):
Alien
Thing
Empire Strikes Back
Terminator
Wrath of Khan
Gee, I like 80s metal and punk, too. I am thinking that there is a generational bias at work here. (Duh)
* EDIT: Alien was, of course, 1979. But it was ahead of it's time!
100 Star Wars (let's just say IV and V as one)
88 Inception
87 Alien
85 Being John Malkovich (sci-fi?)
84 Ghostbusters
83 Back to the Future
81 Children of Men
81 Star Trek II
78 Aliens
78 Blade Runner
78 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Sort of a cross between Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine, I recently saw "Cold Souls" with Paul Giamatti, and was fairly disappointed.
As mentioned earlier "Moon" is another one I could easily slide into that list.
Hot Rod (really I just pretend to be embarrassed, this is a great film)
Love Actually (the embarrassment is real here)
Dead Man on Campus
Heathers
The Kevin Costner Robin Hood (in many ways my brain has been set in stone from the age of 9)
And a slightly different list, movies that likely aren't in anyone else's top 10% but I will defend to my dying breath
Starter for 10
Who Loves the Sun
The Impostors
Super Troopers (though surely there are many who recognize its genius)
Go
The Lion in Winter
The Big Kahuna
Jesus' Son
Peter's Friends
Not exactly. Jack Burton is a perfect 80s-style action hero, but the problem is that he's stuck in a kung-fu movie. He's a genre-savvy hero that happens to be in the wrong genre.
I've heard people describe the character as "a sidekick who thinks he's the protagonist," but he is really the hero. He has to be the one to kill Lo Pan.
1. My Darling Clementine (Fonda / Mature)
2. Tombstone (Russell / Kilmer)
3. Gunfight at the OK Corral (Lancaster / Douglas)
4. Hour of the Gun (Garner / Robards)
5. Wyatt Earp (Costner / Quaid)
But really, none of them is entirely satisfactory. Part of the problem is that Doc Holliday has always been miscast. In fact, the better films tend to have the weaker Hollidays. You'd think that something Hollywood has done so often they would finally get right, but it's evidently been very hard to do right. Jeff Guinn's recent book The Last Gunfight is really good, and might serve as the basis for a revisionist OK Corral movie that would finally do it well.
It's more splatter-horror than it is sci-fi, but Peter Jackson's early Braindead/Dead Alive in NA falls into this category... Some friends and I were perusing a mom&pop; video store for something to go with our keg and bong one summer evening, this beauty happened to be on the 99 cent shelf. True story - we also rented "Nowhere" that same evening solely based on the tag "Like 90210 on acid".
That remains the greatest evening of random movies that were unplanned and just grabbed off the shelf I've ever had.
My 10, no particular order:
- Star Wars / Empire Strikes Back
- Blade Runner
- The Matrix
- Terminator 2
- Alien / Aliens
- E.T.
- Godzilla (1954 original)
- Back to the Future
- A.I.
- WALL-E
I wish I could find a place for Inception and 2001 and The Day The Earth Stood Still and the Star Trek reboot, but I already cheated, and at the end of the day a great movie really should be fun to watch as well, and those are. (A.I. is NOT fun to watch, but I walked out of the movie theater convinced that it's a brilliant movie, and repeated viewings have only confirmed that impression. I am the only one I know who thinks this.)
What's to be embarrassed about? Who doesn't like Heathers?
I'm embarrassed to admit that I'll watch Armageddon anytime I see it on TNT or FX or something.
I love Dune.
You're not - I think it's a brilliant movie... I don't much care for the ending, but it's an excellent film.
I wonder how Prometheus will turn out along these lines.
Watch this movie or Pablo's thugs will shoot this dog.
Busier than hell here at work the last couple of days till about an hour ago, so just now going through this thread, & probably this gets mentioned later ...
... but while I'm sure the reference was to the big-budget '80s flick, there was indeed a parody called Flesh Gordon about a decade before that. First (quasi-)porn flick I ever saw, in fact. Quite fun.
Ever seen the sci-fi channel mini-series? It gets more grief than the opus original, but I'm a big fan of both... and I didn't even finish the book.
Yep. Makes me wonder what the hell PepTech & his companion do for viewing thrills -- watch Andy's illegally recorded episodes of Davy & Goliath?
I guess it's the degree to which I love Heathers. If I was a super-hero Winona Ryder would be my super-weakness.
It had slipped my mind, but I think I may have to make room in my list for Close Encounters, good call!
I actually haven't seen ET.
Really? I hated the Lynch one and loved the mini-series.
Nah. Pretty solid, I thought.
Geez -- didn't know he did that one. Good flick.
+1. You can almost tell the point at which Speilberg took over. I enjoyed the film immensely regardless.
The problem with the Lynch movie (most Dune fanatics hate it), is that the world is so freaking complex that it spends too much time explaining the world that it rushes through the story while simultaneously failing to explain the world very well. There's a director's cut narrated by Frank Herbert that was pretty good, actually, and helped me to understand quite a few concepts from the book (such as folding space).
Still, the movie is aesthetically pleasing to me: the desert scenes are impressive, the music is grandiose, the actors are top-notch. I don't even mind the weirding module stuff.
I'm fine with the miniseries because it tells the story better, but sets and costumes are cheap and ridiculous (Sardaukar with floppy hats, what in the hell is Reverend Mother Mohiam wearing?), the actors are not nearly as good (William Hurt as Leto is dreadful IMO; the petulant Paul annoys me) and the insipid rhyming Baron drives me insane.
When I reread Dune I always have the actors from the Lynch movie in my head, and I just love thinking of Gurney Halleck as Patrick Stewart.
1. Paths of Glory
2. The Killing
3. A Clockwork Orange
4. Full Metal Jacket
5. 2001
6. Dr Strangelove
7. Lolita
8. Spartacus
9. The Shining
...
N. Eyes Wide Shut
I must say I think all nine are pretty good; no disrespect to The Shining. Eyes Wide Shut is exhaustingly unwatchable.
The one that has slipped a few rungs for me is Dr Strangelove. I must have seen it first when I was in high school, in the early 1970s, when the Bomb was a day-to-day possibility. It struck me then as incredibly audacious and brilliant, and continued to do so through the Reagan years. It has dated quickly since, though I still think it's well-made. I only wish it had dated a whole lot sooner ...
I did, too. Spielberg is a pro, obviously. His movies are always beautifully made and there was a lot to like about AI.
It's just that that movie, told through Kubrick's view of humanity, could have been absolutely amazing.
As far as the actors in the mini-series, I would follow Julie Cox to the end of the earth.
As noted a few posts above, I liked it fine. Within the last few days, though, I've watched The Specials & Super, both of which blew me away. Had no idea that both were written by James Gunn till I started watching Super.
To crib from a couple of my posts within the last few hours on comicbookresources.com' "Classic Comics" forum, I don't think I've ever been so whipsawed by a movie as I was by Super; in just the last 16 minutes or so I actually found myself saying "Oh, god" out loud in shock at one scene, flinching with revulsion at a couple of others, & then genuinely tearing up at the final scene.
There's a definite edge of, for want of a better word, nihilism in Super, especially as compared to the extremely fun Specials (which I'd never heard of till a well-respected comics pro, Stephen Bissette, mentioned on Facebook that he was going to re-watch it as an alternative to the crassly corporate Iron Maus Studio's Jack-Kirby-desecrating Avengers, which so many people here & elsewhere have cynically ponied up their bucks to see, shamefully enough.)
The only thing I found regrettable about Super is that I now feel obligated to watch a movie I would otherwise continue to stay well away from, Kick-Ass, based simply on my distaste for the first couple of issues of the comic it's based & for every fiber of comics creator Mark Millar's odious, smarmy, self-obsessed being. They feature very comparable concepts, though according to Gunn's commentary he came up with his script back in 2003. (Both films came out in 2010, Netflix tells me.)
Added point of interest for me -- about 99 percent of the flick was shot in Shreveport, where I visit every December & where I spent more time than I care to think about when I was growing up about 90 minutes away. (My dad's family is from that area; he died in a motel room across the river in Bossier City just before I turned 8.)
As for Specials, I like what Bissette said about it -- it's the movie Mystery Men wanted to be.
I'm also very, very fond of the unrelated (superhero flick Special, as it happens.
I knew I had seen her in something else!
I just watched "The War Bride" the other day. It had Cox and Molly Parker (who I adore), and is set in Canada...so I wanted desperately to like it. But it was 18 shades of terrible.
My experience was very similar, with the added bonus that my room-mate walked in about half-way through the movie and I suggested he stick around for this zany, light-hearted film. Then things took a bit of a turn...
I don't think a movie's hit me that hard in a long time.
I'm pretty sure he didn't
goes to IMDB to check...
Gregory Hoblit (never heard of him... apparently did a lot of Crime/Police TV series...
There is a great scene in that movie where the demon is jumping from person to person so he can taunt/freak-out Denzel Washington's character.
I dunno about that. For all of Kubrick's brilliance his films can often leave you feeling cold. Spielberg's ability to connect on an emotional level with his audience is unmatched, and A.I. needed that touch to highlight the blossoming humanity in the non-human characters. The film is better off having gone in that direction, and I don't think Kubrick would have done it that way.
Clearly, someone lacks a grasp of horror.
Clearly, someone else lacks a grasp of horror.
(Actually, all sorts of veteran horror fans have expressed hatred of one or both of those. Poor, imagination-challenged souls.)
I don't think Dune (Lynch's version) is watchable unless you've read the book, one problem is it needs a ton of exposition to work- and Lynch tried to do that through letting you hear the characters' thoughts, which really didn't work, he probably should just have gone with a narrator (which worked very well in Goodfellas, and badly in Bladerunner.)
With regard to the miniseries, I much preferred the rhyming Baron to Lynch's ogre...
I agree that Patrick Stewart = Gurney Halleck
The Sardukaur looked awful in both films
Clearly, someone's grasp of any sort of ideology or principle stops where their 2 hours with a popcorn box starts.
I think Eyes Wide Shut might be my favorite Kubrick movie - that's probably overstating it, but it is up there with 2001 and Dr. Strangelove (probably actually my favorite) for me. I think it is an unheralded masterpiece. But people expected it to be about sex - to be more tawdry or salacious - but it really wasn't, it was confounding. I think a lot of people expected to see an entirely different movie. It's long but I'll leave it here, this is one of the best film analyses I've ever read. The AV Club New Cult Canon entry on it is also good.
I think of this era as Tom Cruise's peak as he did Magnolia, Vanilla Sky, M-I:2, and Minority Report at about the same time - EWS and Magnolia are probably his two best roles. I actually kind of like him as far as movie stars go. And I adore Nicole Kidman.
How the @#@!#!@ do you spell 'Kwasitz Haderach"? And what the hell was the name of that order, "Benny Jesuit"?
Alas that particular twist was sort of ruined by how I saw the movie- I saw it back to back on TV, I picked it up about 1/3 in- got to where Denzel has shot Goodman, Goodman dies, the demon jumps to Denzel (who is dying after smoking arsenic laced cigarettes) and frantically starts running, collapses- cut to commercial... I leave room, come back later, closing credits are running (condensed into a corner of the screeen...). I assume that both Denzel's character and the Demon are dead, fair enough ending for this type of film.
Movie comes on again 5 minutes later, shot of Denzel dying in the snow, voice over, Denzel's voice, "Let me tell you about the time I almost died...)
Me, to screen, "But you did die, that was the only way the demon could possess... oh... it's the Demon that almost died"
I didn't know about the cat until sometime later, not that it matters that it was a cat
I remember a review from back then positing that Lords of Flatbush featured a breakout, surefire superstar ...
... Perry King.
Oops.
It happens to be very near the top of my Blockbuster queue (Netflix doesn't get it for another month or so), but things got screwed up a bit when I had to report Super missing because it took like 6 days to get to Montgomery from Atlanta (2 1/2 hours away). Which means I'll probably have a 2nd copy of Super in my mailbox when I get home in about an hour.
By coincidence, I watched The Source a couple of months back. It was ... not great.
This. Nice soundtrack, though.
A+
1. Barry Lyndon
2. The Shining
3. A Clockwork Orange
4. Full Metal Jacket
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey
A
6. Paths of Glory
7. The Killing
8. Eyes Wide Shut
9. Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
A-
10. Lolita
B
11. "Day of the Fight"
B-
12. "The Flying Padre"
C
13. "The Seafarers"
C-
14. Killer's Kiss
Deliberately Buried (though I have seen it, it's an F or F+, maybe a D- if I'm feeling generous)
15. Fear and Desire
Unranked due to spurious parentage: Spartacus (it's a C+, but anything to do with the Romans is a B+ or A-)
I'll admit that the last third is my least favorite part of the movie, but that is more than made up for by the completely awesome ending. I'm not sure why people would harp on the last 35 of the last 40 minutes of the movie and ignore the fact that the last five are pretty f'in cool.
Ghost in the Shell deserves at least a mention as an all time great Sci-Fi movie. I would easily put it in my top ten (everything else has already been mentioned I think). It had a massive influence on American sci-fi, particularly the Matrix movies and it is really breathtaking to behold the first time. It's also got a pretty good blend of making you think and putting you on the edge of your seat. If you are sci-fi fan and haven't seen it, it is on Netflix, it is 89 minutes long and you ought to watch it.
Also, Paprika is more mindbending than Inception, has a better story than Inception, looks better than Inception and came out like 6 years earlier. But it does not have Leonardo DiCaprio. Not sure I would call it an all time great, but it is a favorite of mine.
Thank ####### god you didn't write that yesterday ... though if you had, as noted previously I wouldn't have had a chance to read it. But if I'd read that before I watched the movie after work yesterday evening, I would have hunted you down &, OK, not killed you. But scowled at your really, really darkly.
FWIW, my line is almost a direct quote from John Carpenter. Think about it... Wang is more knowledgeable and competent than Jack at virtually everything, including fighting. Jack spends most of the climactic fight unconscious after getting bonked on the head, and mostly bumbles and stumbles his way into the successes he does have. Wang gets his girl and Jack doesn't. That said, I think your analysis is plausible too. Some grad student should produce a dissertation on BTiLC.
Did I miss it or did you also not rank Strangelove?
Really? I loved that one.
That's just me being an idiot. I fixed it.
Actually The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms ... unless there's a parody or something I don't know about.
Sorry. Some of us take silly things like rights &/or respect for creators seriously. Jejune of us, I know.
(And rest assured that I'm no Kirby fanboy. Unlike a lot of my fellow comics fans, I have little use for anything he did after 1969. Of course, by then he'd created, with some assistance from Lee, just about every damned character & concept in The Blockbuster That Conquered the World.)
Cool. I was just curious to see where you had it.
You may get a chance to scowl at me after all!
I guess I felt like it never moved beyond the underlying concept. Like I could have watched the movie, or had someone explain the premise and plot to me in 5 minutes and it would have been the same experience. But I'm as yet a novice when it comes to movies, so I'm sure I'm missing a great deal. My on-going project the last two years has been to see as many movies as possible and try to piece together some kind of coherent articulation of what I get out of film. Chalk this one up as part of the process.
EDIT: Also, I think "hunted you down and bopped you on the head with a wrench" would have been apt too.
Bob, have you read Bucking the Tiger by Bruce Olds? Very interesting take on Holliday, I thought.
For what it's worth, Jack Kirby's name is listed in the credits as a co-creator.
EDIT: Also, didn't a suit by Kirby's family on the issue lose in court just recently? Here we go.
From what I've read, that happened only after cranks like me complained about the absence of same.
Stan Lee has addressed the absence of Avengers co-creator Jack Kirby from the credits of the new movie adaptation.
All that is required for corporate evil to triumph is for apathetic fans to go to the movies.
Whatever. Don't watch the movie. You'd really enjoy it, the story does great justice to Kirby's/Lee's characters, and it'll probably become a cultural touchstone since it's generated so much money and will spawn another generation of comic book movies, but that's not important. Righteous anger uber alles!
UPDATE: After attending a NY press screening, Moviefone can confirm that Jack Kirby's name is listed in the end credits as a co-creator.
Dur. Hunger weakness.
Clearly, someone's grasp of any sort of ideology or principle stops where their 2 hours with a popcorn box starts.
The tangible difference between this and what you wrote is where your fun got lost.
I didn't know of it, but it's on my "wish list" now. Thanks!
Probably I wouldn't, actually, because most of those characters I stopped paying any real attention to around 1978; with a few it was more like 1969. Caught Captain America on Netflix earlier this year & liked it a lot, mainly because of an abiding affection for the character, but I never got around to seeing any of the Spider-Man movies but the first one (because it happened to be on cable when I happened to have the TV on, about 8 years ago), either Fantastic Four flick, any of the X-Men movies, Thor, either Iron Man, any Hulk film, etc. etc. etc. Ditto for DC's properties -- saw the first two Christopher Reeve Superman outings when they were out, but that's it. (I do have a vague memory of seeing the first Burton Batman after taping it off cable back in '89 or so, but clearly it didn't make much of an impression.) Again, no real interest in Superman or Batman or Green Lantern or whomever since I was a kid.
Basically, I don't watch movies to see comics any more than I read comics to see movies. My recent enthusiasm for films like Super & Special & The Specials -- hell, even fluff like Sky High -- is quite surprising to me; I gather that I like the superhero-movie format as long as previously established (in my mind, at least) characters aren't being portrayed &/or (IMHO) adulterated.
Otherwise, the actually comics-based flicks I've seen (& liked) haven't dealt with superheroes -- Ghost World, American Splendor, Blade (though the title character might as well be one, I guess), V for Vendetta (ditto). That last one is the only one I read before seeing the movie (still haven't read Clowes' book or anything of Pekar's, as it happens). Wesley Snipes' Blade, of course, bore no particular resemblance to the characters in Tomb of Dracula, which I did read back in the '70s.
It's certainly not to me, on the grounds just outlined.
I need to get home &, for once, eat at a reasonable hour, but IIRC this sums it up fairly well.
I saw it, but didn't pay as my room-mate works in a cinema and I got into a staff-viewing. Am I in the clear?
Eyes Wide Shut - never understood why it got such hate - I thought it was a good but not great movie.
Heathers - there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of in liking this movie
I know it's a comedy, but no love for Galaxy Quest in these top sci-fi movie lists?
It seems as though, for the past 48 hours, I've heard nothing but corporate hype and personal praise for THE AVENGERS. I'm sure it's a terrific film (and I'll see it when all the hubbub dies down a bit) but it's kinda difficult for me to get excited. First off, Jack Kirby co-created all but two (Black Widow and Hawkeye) of the central characters but he only get buried credit for co-creating Capt. America and the Avengers (the team, not the individual characters). Disney's treatment of Kirby's contributions stinks in general. Secondly, I think there have been waaay too many superhero movies, and the mediocre-to-bad one far outweigh the good 'uns. And third, as a kid, I never once wondered "What if ______ (any superhero) was in a live-action movie?" I like comic book superheroes because they're fun and colorful and wildly exaggerated. To me, live-action w/ CG effects only trivializes them.
As long as you didn't put money into Disney's already bulging pockets (is that a record box office, or are they just glad to see us?), consider yourself absolved. Hell, if I did want to see the movie, I'd buy a ticket for something else & then slip into the showing anyway, just to keep from rewarding what I regard as bad behavior. I thought about doing that with Captain America, but I go to so very few films (as opposed to watching 300+ a year in my living room) that such a ploy never came into play.
As I told Sam H. (via Facebook) he might as well do after he burbled on about the movie, why don't you go give some cash to Dick Cheney while you're at it? Maybe he'll do something to entertain you, so that would be totally cool.
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