SciFi top 10 Movies

[YankeyMCC]

In case you'd like to vote:

From http://www.scifi.com/sfw/news/sfw_news_20080218.html

Pick SCI FI Wire's Best SF Films

The American Film Institute has come up with a list of 50 SF films that it deems among the best ever; it will pick 10 as the best SF movies of all time for a TV special that will air on CBS in June.

But readers of SCI FI Wire don't have to wait until then to come up with their own list of the best SF movies of all time.

Pick from the list below of your top 10 and send it to SCI FI Wire before March 1 with "Top 10" in the subject line. Editors will post SCI FI Wire's Readers' Choice list of the top 10 that week.

If your favorite movie isn't in the list below, feel free to add it to your choice and SCI FI Wire will run a separate list of the top 10 most underappreciated SF movies of all time.

The AFI defines "science fiction" as a genre that marries a scientific or technological premise with imaginative speculation. It has selected the following 50 movies as contenders for the best, in alphabetical order (in the case of movies that have been made more than once, we've designated by date which version the AFI has selected):

A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Alien, Altered States, The Andromeda Strain, Back to the Future, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Blade Runner, Children of Men, A Clockwork Orange, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cocoon, Contact, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Destination Moon, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Escape From New York, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Fantastic Voyage, The Fly (1986), Forbidden Planet, Frankenstein (1931), The Incredible Shrinking Man, Independence Day, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Invisible Man (1933), It Came From Outer Space, Jurassic Park, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, The Matrix, Men in Black, Minority Report, Planet of the Apes (1968), Repo Man, RoboCop, Rollerball (1975), Silent Running, Soylent Green, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Star Wars: Episode IV--A New Hope, Starman, The Stepford Wives (1975), Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Them!, The Thing From Another World, The Time Machine (1960), Total Recall, Tron, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The War of the Worlds (1953), Westworld. --Patrick Lee, News Editor

Email: [e-mail]

Here's what I sent, and I'm sure there's room for criticism for my picks but restricting myself to the list of 50 from AFI and doing it quickly this is what I cam up with. The top 5 I'm pretty confident about as the list goes down I'm less confident I picked correctly.:
Forbidden Planet
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Star Wars: Episode IV--A New Hope
2001: A Space Odyssey
Alien
Altered States,
Blade Runner
A Clockwork Orange
The Matrix

My "honorable mentions of sorts"

Children of Men - I left this out only because I thought Clockwork Orange sort of filled the niche in a limited top ten list.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Not sure why I left this off, it was pretty influential and well done.

Contact - Great story and well done but probably not influential or ground breaking enough for top ten.

Destination Moon

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Fantastic Voyage

The Fly (1986)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) - I'm not sure I should've left this out, I just didn't know which movie to replace in my final top ten.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome - I feel similarly about this as my comment on Invasion

Men in Black - I kinda would've liked to include this or the Back to the Future movies as an example of SF fun and comedy.
RoboCop - Similar comment to the Invasion and "Mad Max" comments.

Rollerball (1975)
Silent Running
Soylent Green
The Andromeda Strain
Back to the Future

[Dr. Strange]

1. That was hard.

I had to force myself to chop off some good movies to get down to this:
Alien
Blade Runner
Fantastic Voyage
The Fly (1986)
The Matrix
Planet of the Apes (1968)
RoboCop
Rollerball (1975)
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars: Episode IV--A New Hope

[Touchdown]

2. my picks

The Day The Earth Stood Still
Star Wars: Episode IV
E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
The Matrix
Time After Time
Robocop
Fantastic Voyage
King Kong (1933)
Frankenstein (1931)
The Abyss (Special Edition)

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

3. No fans of Videodrome?

I thought it was brilliant, but I know it's not a film for everyone.

[comrade snarky]

10. Loved it!

Hadn't seen it in years, then I ran into it by chance and watched again. It explained a lot of why I'm so weird.

Let's see, 14 year old insomniac watching Videodrome every other night on late night HBO.

Yep, that'll do it.

[SheilaT]

4. Twelve Monkeys

1995, with Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, Madeleine Stowe, Christopher Plummer. It is, for my money, the most purely science-fictional movie ever made. For me, it really works. I did rent La Jetee, the French movie it's supposedly based upon, and La Jetee was a terrible, stupid, made-no-sense movie.

The Arrival is another one, never mentioned in lists which I find extraordinarily good.

I think that 2001 is hilariously bad, vastly overrated, and cannot figure out why it's so revered. The original story it's based on, Arthur C. Clarke's The Sentinel is very good and well worth reading.

The real problem with many science fiction movies is that they're made by people who really know how to make movies, but who don't for the most part, know squat about science fiction.

[salvorhardin]

5. You think 2001 is bad? Why?

Just curious and I'm not looking to argue. Personally, I love the film but to each their own.

[SheilaT]

8. There's a pretentiousness

that is actually hilarious. Plus, of course, they had it right about Pan Am's load factors -- remember how someone takes the Pan Am space shuttle to either a space station or the moon, and he's pretty much the only passenger? Sort of like the way commercial flights often flew half or three-quarters empty during the 1970's. And they way it goes off into the Universe at the end makes no real sense. The original story -- and you really should read it if you haven't -- is incredibly good. Scary in fact.

It's filled with a sense of its own importance, and the pre-humans in the first section are so obviously Men in Monkey Suits that it's quite silly.

I used to think that my problem was essentially that I didn't see it in first release on a big screen, even though I was a young adult already. So it's not as though I'm simply too young to have caught it that way. And I'm guessing that most of those who put it on their Best S-F Movies list might have originally seen it back in first release, and maybe even were happily stoned when they watched it. I don't know. But I'm a life-long reader of science-fiction, which means at this point I've been reading the stuff for a little over fifty years. There's so much really good science-fiction out there that's never been made into a movie it makes me a little crazy. One of my original hopes for the sci-fi channel was that they'd take the opportunity to make a lot of movies of the "classic" sci-fi and show it on that channel. But it hasn't happened.

One more comment, unrelated to what anyone thinks of the movie. Clarke wrote the original short story they used as the core of the movie. What he wrote later was a novelization of the movie, not an original novel. Just to set the record straight.

[NewHampshireDem]

6. A Couple They Overlooked

Brazil
Dark City
Pi'
Primer

I think I've listed them in order of largest budget to smallest budget. Ironically, I think they get better as you go down the list--though the worst of them could be #1 on any reasonable top 10 list of sci-fi films.

BTW, if you haven't seen Primer, stop reading this and get thee to Blockbuster ... or at least add it to your Netflix queue.

[kentauros]

9. Here's a few more overlooked ones...

...though it may also be because they are not American/British made:

Fantastic Planet, aka La Planète Sauvage (French/Czech animated feature)
Solyaris
Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution
Metropolis (silent)

I would have liked to have seen more animation on those lists. Some of the best anime is the science fiction kind, like Akira or Ghost in the Shell, the kind that makes you think and isn't just action.

Now, I would include for English-speaking animation the wonderful animated feature The Iron Giant. To me, it's great on so many levels and it does make you think :) Contact would be another choice of thought-provoking fare...

TCM aired one this week I'd never seen called The Tunnel and it's in the genre of movies like Things to Come and Metropolis. Not great, but still visionary.

[Babel_17]

7. The 5th Element

and THX 1138.