The 100 best sci-fi movies (picked by authors, etc.)

[J-Sun]

The 100 best sci-fi movies @ www.timeout.com

There are all kinds of "[l]eading sci-fi experts, filmmakers, science fiction writers, film critics and scientists" but a large number of actual writers (strangely alphabetized by first name) from Alastair Reynolds to Tricia Sullivan.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Interesting. I note some eccentric choices (Bugsy Malone?), a lot of movies I've never heard of, and a bunch of authors I've never heard of.


My best match seems to be with Ian R. MacLeod, mostly based on the top three of 2001, A Clockwork Orange, and Brazil.

 

[J-Sun]

Yeah, there were quite a few unfamiliar movies to me, too. I suppose my top 10 is something like

2001 (and 2010)
Aliens (and Alien)
Blade Runner
Buckaroo Banzai
Dark Star
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Serenity
Star Wars
Terminator (and T2)

Europa Report might knock one of those off, but I've only seen it once, so don't know how it'll hold up.

So I guess my best match is either Ken MacLeod (I also like Gattaca, Starship Troopers, and Repo Man) or, surprisingly, George RR Martin (also like The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2). My top three might well be Star Wars/Aliens/Terminator and I think the only one with that is Kim Lakin-Smith but I don't know her and the rest of our lists are almost completely different.

There are funny bits here and there - Ian R. MacLeod having a favorite movie called "Melancholia". Christopher Priest ranking The Prestige #8 instead of #1 or #1000000.

 

[Michael Colton]

Some of the lists were a bit . . . boggling. Kind of made me not want to check out the author, despite how silly that is. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, really? Lilo and Stitch?

For myself, my top three in no particular order would be : Blade Runner, Brazil, and Alien.

 

[J-Sun]

I didn't bother to check out the cumulative list based on all the votes right away but, when I did, they annoyed me. Clicking ten times on the list split into 10s wasn't enough - they split the final ten into ten more pages. I accessed the pages via google's cache and present them here in case you don't want to pump up their ludicrous page hit counts at the expense of your time any more than I did. Ridiculous. A couple of pages, okay. 19? Gimme a break.

10 The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
9 The Terminator (1984)
8 Metropolis (1927)
7 Brazil (1985)
6 Star Wars (1977)
5 Aliens (1986)
4 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
3 Alien (1979)
2 Blade Runner (1982)
1 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Anyway - based on films I have that didn't make the list, I'd nominate The Brother from Another Planet (1984), Destination Moon (1950), Men in Black (1997), Wargames (1983) and, obviously, Europa Report (2013) as a top five of films that, while maybe not all "great", are at least as good as several that did make the list. (Honorable mention to The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), though I'm not sure what to class that as.)

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Eternal Sunset is one of my favourite films, it's well worth seeing, and I think it's speculative in nature. hex wrote a 300 word story once which reminded me of it. Rocky Horror is definitely speculative of some sort, horror-sci-fi mash up, maybe? It'd make my top 10.

Let's see, then:

The empire strikes back
Star Wars
Rocky Horror
Alien
Terminator
Blade Runner
The fifth element
Groundhog day (is that speculative, I sort of think it is)
The Truman show
Being John Malkovich.

 

[dask]

When I click the link in the first post it sort of jumps away from the pointing finger so I can't activate it. Anyone else experiencing this? No big problem, I can always google the thing but it looks like a legitimate link and can't figure out why it's being such a jerk.

 

[Abernovo]

From that list:

1. Blade Runner (1982) (one of my favourite films anyway)
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
3. Contact (1997)
4. Logan’s Run (1976)
5. Back to the Future (1985)
6. Aliens (1986) (although I put it together with Alien (1979))
7. Moon (2009)
8. Silent Running (1972)
9. Serenity (2005) (except for that 'Like a leaf on the wind' scene!)
10. Metropolis (1927)

There were a few I haven't watched (somehow I've never got around to watching Children of Men or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and a few I really don't like (sorry guys, but I think The Matrix is tosh). Others, such as Ghostbusters would have gone on in an instant, but I think of them more as fantasy than sci-fi. Actually, I'm not that strict in my definitions; I was only trying to weed my list down! So many movies I do like.

 

[Rodders]

Interesting, but not much difference to the man on the street.

 

[Extollager]

Not Gravity?