So glad “The Vast Of Night” made the list. Great little movie.
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Which of those categories do you feel that Children of Men excels at? It was a bit of a financial flop at the box office, didn’t end up winning any Academy Awards, and I’m not sure that it’s been especially influential among other filmmakers, but maybe I’m wrong on that point. Some people found it prescient with the anti-immigrant hate, although that’s just repeating a common theme we’ve unfortunately seen many times in our history. And it didn’t even make a whole lot of sense in the context of the movie: if the world economy is falling apart due to an acute lack of workers then it makes no sense that Britain is somehow doing better than everyone else by keeping immigrants out.
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I would say some of these stretch the definition of “sci-fi” for me.
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It’d certainly top my list of the most over-rated films of all time. It’s portentous, over-wrought and filled to bursting with its own importance, and the premise is ludicrous. Society collapses because women can no longer have babies? Get lost, it’s almost as silly as the Matrix.
I’d level a lot of the same criticisms at many recent SF movies though: Sunshine, Ex Machina, Interstellar, Ad Astra, Arrival, Gravity all suffer badly from taking themselves FAR too seriously.
Still, good to see Repo Man there, even if it deserves to be higher than #135, and i suppose Hitch-Hiker’s just deserves to scrape in even if the writers and director totally missed the point of the source material and took out all the jokes.
Inexplicably missing are The Artifice Girl, Super 8 and Source Code to name just the first three that come to mind.
Mercifully missing is Armageddon, the stupidest SF film ever made.
I could rant on at more length, but I have to go and teach the bomb phenomenology.
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I’d say the list is successful in it’s goal: engendering online arguments.
Any list of 150 best anything is likely going to be random numbers, given the deadline these things are created under.
If one were to endeavor to approach this seriously (and, why would you?), then there would need to be some rigor; what are the criteria? What do you count as science fiction? Is Star Wars Science Fiction? Under what criteria? What is the list trying to say? If you have Dark City, Existenze and The Matrix all on the same list, ranking them requires a clear idea of the criteria. Matrix on top? Probably a list looking at cultural impact. Or glossiest presentation.
I think Karyudo nailed it. This is a list of an old white guy’s favorite movies over time. Quatermass and the Pit only makes the list if you saw it when you were an impressionable young kid (imo). Or maybe more accurately, a list highly optimized for that cultural frame of reference.
Here’s maybe a more useful approach. I like a wide variety of movies, and I watch a lot of them. Here is one movie that I think is criminally underrated.
Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway, directed by Miguel Llansó
Not a haze of 150 nostalgic memories, one good movie you likely haven’t seen.
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(Which I think can be watched on Amazon Prime)
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I always thought of it as another sign of how much knowledge was lost, that Morpheus was simply an unreliable narrator. I admit I got bored midway through the sequels and never ended it, so I am enjoying my ignorance.
It would have been more interesting if the badly remembered war wasn’t humans versus machines, but humans against each other, and the Matrix simply an attempt by machines to keep humanity alive and jacked into their entertainment system, because without humans they have no purpose. The Matrix was a Disney creation and the machines instructed to keep them full of visitors, they simply forgot why.
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I love both films, especially Stalker (which takes openness, patience, and uninterrupted viewing.)
Per several sources, the [cancer-related?] death of several Stalker crew members – including Andrey, his wife Larissa, and writer Solonitsyn – may have been caused by the toxicity of the area they filmed in. I didn’t know about that prior to watching the film, but – being hyper-sensitized by the Safety people at my first employer – I did watch it with some unease; just the look of the place and how characters interacted with the dead factory environment.
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seriously?!? thats the one which is -in my opinion- overrated as fuck; it has all the halmarks of nutty ufo-“researchers” in the 60s and has this extremly spielbergian schmaltz and anoying eso-vibe of the 70s.
and the matrix under the first ten? I hated the pseudo-philosophy then and still hate it today. the only matrix I kinda liked was actually matrix resurrections, which is at least with its in-universe-sort-of-satire and trinity as neo-neo interesting and often just funny. its not boring.
(I get it; its subjective and its the rolling stone…but still…)
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So did Stanley Donen’s absolutely horrible Saturn 3… but the naked butt shown therein was Kirk Douglas’s. Still revved-up from Star Wars after a couple of years, the sci-fi plot (and Farah Fawcett as one of the characters) drew in me and some schoolmates.
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no. 
slowburner. eerie as fuck and absolutly fantastic! its really, really good! go watch it.
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But, but, it had a little kitten crawling up Clive Owen’s character’s leg! (Some cute symbology there.)
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and thats about it; clooney was a horrible miscast for this one. nice score, though.
wow. I could not disagree more. both are in my all-time-favorites-list with children of men in my absolutly top-ten. its not flawless, but its near perfect. I fucking love it! but thats just me, I guess.
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Wait, Ice Pirates didn’t make the list?
/s in case it’s not obvious since I realize there’s very little in that film that’s good, though the time travel sequence still amuses me and when I was young it was a good introduction to Bruce Vilanch.
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where do you got that impression? the only ones saying in the film britain is doing “better” is the fascist goverment. and its not about lack of workers, cause there isnt any. people are taking legalised suicide-pills, because everybody thinks the human race has come to its end because no children anymore.
no children, no hope. its simple.
whats silly about that? thats actually extremly belivable, especially after almost 20 years without any children anywhere.
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well, I saw the old 50s tv-bbc-series of it first time around 2012 (?) and wasnt a kid; loved it. its great acted, its provocant, pretty smart and actually not really for kids. and its waaaaay better than the hammer-film from the 60s.
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And the year was this many days old when I remember that some people don’t like jokes or to be reminded that their opinions are just that… opinions…
thanks for the reminder… gum drop?
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