Mind boggling Futuristic movies
by musback | created - 08 Feb 2016 | updated - 08 Feb 2016 | PublicSpace or futuristic themed gems that caught my attention over the past few years. I always aim for 'mind-boggling' , existential crisis' or 'high suspense in deep space' when I look for sci-fi. I tried leaving out comedies and family movies with so called hilarious puns or lovable characters of which you're supposed to buy novelty toys. (you get my point)
(The list is in no special order)
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1. Ex Machina (2014)
R | 108 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A young programmer is selected to participate in a ground-breaking experiment in synthetic intelligence by evaluating the human qualities of a highly advanced humanoid A.I.
Director: Alex Garland | Stars: Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, Sonoya Mizuno
Votes: 590,004 | Gross: $25.44M
2. Europa Report (2013)
PG-13 | 90 min | Adventure, Drama, Mystery
An international crew of astronauts undertakes a privately funded mission to search for life on Jupiter's fourth largest moon.
Director: Sebastián Cordero | Stars: Sharlto Copley, Michael Nyqvist, Christian Camargo, Embeth Davidtz
Votes: 75,532 | Gross: $0.13M
3. Interstellar (2014)
PG-13 | 169 min | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi
When Earth becomes uninhabitable in the future, a farmer and ex-NASA pilot, Joseph Cooper, is tasked to pilot a spacecraft, along with a team of researchers, to find a new planet for humans.
Director: Christopher Nolan | Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Mackenzie Foy
Votes: 2,101,738 | Gross: $188.02M
4. Contact (1997)
PG | 150 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Dr. Ellie Arroway, after years of searching, finds conclusive radio proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, sending plans for a mysterious machine.
Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt
Votes: 293,202 | Gross: $100.92M
5. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
PG | 138 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
Roy Neary, an Indiana electric lineman, finds his quiet and ordinary daily life turned upside down after a close encounter with a UFO, spurring him to an obsessed cross-country quest for answers as a momentous event approaches.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon
Votes: 216,972 | Gross: $132.09M
6. The Abyss (1989)
PG-13 | 140 min | Adventure, Drama, Mystery
A civilian diving team is enlisted to search for a lost nuclear submarine and faces danger while encountering an alien aquatic species.
Director: James Cameron | Stars: Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn, Leo Burmester
Votes: 193,488 | Gross: $54.46M
7. Sphere (1998)
PG-13 | 134 min | Action, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A spaceship is discovered under three hundred years' worth of coral growth at the bottom of the ocean.
Director: Barry Levinson | Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Coyote
Votes: 112,532 | Gross: $37.02M
8. The Man from Earth (2007)
Not Rated | 87 min | Drama, Fantasy, Mystery
An impromptu goodbye party for Professor John Oldman becomes a mysterious interrogation after the retiring scholar reveals to his colleagues he has a longer and stranger past than they can imagine.
Director: Richard Schenkman | Stars: David Lee Smith, Tony Todd, John Billingsley, Ellen Crawford
Votes: 200,258
9. Area 51 (2015)
R | 91 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Three young conspiracy theorists attempt to uncover the mysteries of Area 51, the government's secret location rumored to have hosted encounters with alien beings. What they find at this hidden facility exposes unimaginable secrets.
Director: Oren Peli | Stars: Reid Warner, Darrin Bragg, Ben Rovner, Jelena Nik
Votes: 15,177
Don't let the lower rating fool you. Start with an open mind and enjoy the ride. It's a great thriller with very cool atmosphere
10. Apollo 18 (2011)
PG-13 | 86 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Decades-old found footage from NASA's abandoned Apollo 18 mission, where three American astronauts were sent on a secret expedition, reveals the reason the U.S. has never returned to the moon.
Director: Gonzalo López-Gallego | Stars: Warren Christie, Lloyd Owen, Ryan Robbins, Michael Kopsa
Votes: 57,985 | Gross: $17.69M
Pretty cool horror flick, with incredibly realistic camera-work.
11. Apollo 13 (I) (1995)
PG | 140 min | Adventure, Drama, History
NASA must devise a strategy to return Apollo 13 to Earth safely after the spacecraft undergoes massive internal damage putting the lives of the three astronauts on board in jeopardy.
Director: Ron Howard | Stars: Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise
Votes: 315,720 | Gross: $173.84M
12. Pi (1998)
R | 84 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
A paranoid mathematician searches for a key number that will unlock the universal patterns found in nature.
Director: Darren Aronofsky | Stars: Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman, Pamela Hart
Votes: 186,485 | Gross: $3.22M
13. Predator (1987)
R | 107 min | Action, Adventure, Horror
A team of commandos on a mission in a Central American jungle find themselves hunted by an extraterrestrial warrior.
Director: John McTiernan | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Kevin Peter Hall, Elpidia Carrillo
Votes: 455,084 | Gross: $59.74M
Sorry, but this is an all-time classic. :-D
14. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
G | 149 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi
After uncovering a mysterious artifact buried beneath the Lunar surface, a spacecraft is sent to Jupiter to find its origins: a spacecraft manned by two men and the supercomputer HAL 9000.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter
Votes: 719,875 | Gross: $56.95M
15. 2010 (1984)
PG | 116 min | Adventure, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A joint USA-Soviet expedition is sent to Jupiter to learn exactly what happened to the "Discovery" and its H.A.L. 9000 computer.
Director: Peter Hyams | Stars: Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Helen Mirren, Bob Balaban
Votes: 57,291 | Gross: $40.20M
The sequel to the all time classic 2001. Less people know of this film, but it's also quite good. Not Kubrick-good, but the story remains of the same author.
16. Forbidden Planet (1956)
G | 98 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi
A starship crew in the 23rd century goes to investigate the silence of a distant planet's colony, only to find just two survivors, a powerful robot, and the deadly secret of a lost civilization.
Director: Fred M. Wilcox | Stars: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen, Warren Stevens
Votes: 53,236 | Gross: $3.00M
Forgive the goofy FX, but the story is solid as a rock. I'd like this move being remade to today's standards.
17. Futurama (1999– )
TV-14 | 22 min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy
Philip J. Fry, a pizza delivery boy, is accidentally frozen in 1999 and thawed out on New Year's Eve 2999.
Stars: Billy West, John DiMaggio, Katey Sagal, Tress MacNeille
Votes: 261,073
In case you never gave it a try. God how I love this series.
18. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014)
TV-PG | 43 min | Documentary
An exploration of our discovery of the laws of nature and coordinates in space and time.
Stars: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Christopher Emerson, Keythe Farley, Piotr Michael
Votes: 128,748
Obviously worth a watch
19. Cube (1997)
R | 90 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A group of strangers awaken to find themselves placed in a giant cube. Each one of them is gifted with a special skill and they must work together to escape an endless maze of deadly traps.
Director: Vincenzo Natali | Stars: Nicole de Boer, Maurice Dean Wint, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller
Votes: 247,713 | Gross: $0.50M
20. Dredd (2012)
R | 95 min | Action, Crime, Sci-Fi
In a violent, futuristic city where the police have the authority to act as judge, jury and executioner, a cop teams with a trainee to take down a gang that deals the reality-altering drug, SLO-MO.
Director: Pete Travis | Stars: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Lena Headey, Rachel Wood
Votes: 294,515 | Gross: $13.41M
Amazing soundtrack, brutally good (imho) action movie. Futuristic!
21. Prometheus (I) (2012)
R | 124 min | Adventure, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Following clues to the origin of mankind, a team finds a structure on a distant moon, but they soon realize they are not alone.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Noomi Rapace, Logan Marshall-Green, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron
Votes: 644,437 | Gross: $126.48M
22. Mission to Mars (2000)
PG | 114 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller
When the first manned mission to Mars meets with a catastrophic and mysterious disaster after reporting an unidentified structure, a rescue mission is launched to investigate the tragedy and bring back any survivors.
Director: Brian De Palma | Stars: Tim Robbins, Gary Sinise, Don Cheadle, Connie Nielsen
Votes: 76,508 | Gross: $60.88M
23. Solaris (2002)
PG-13 | 99 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance
A troubled psychologist is sent to investigate the crew of an isolated research station orbiting a bizarre planet.
Director: Steven Soderbergh | Stars: George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Ulrich Tukur, Viola Davis
Votes: 86,284 | Gross: $14.97M
24. Moon (2009)
R | 97 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Astronaut Sam Bell has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resource that has helped diminish our planet's power problems.
Director: Duncan Jones | Stars: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott, Rosie Shaw
Votes: 376,803 | Gross: $5.01M
25. Pandorum (2009)
R | 108 min | Action, Horror, Mystery
Two crew members of a spaceship wake up from hypersleep to discover that all their colleagues are missing. Despite this, it appears that they are not alone.
Director: Christian Alvart | Stars: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet, Antje Traue
Votes: 159,579 | Gross: $10.33M
Just a nice spacey action flick, nothing too exceptional; but entertaining!
26. Sunshine (2007)
R | 107 min | Sci-Fi, Thriller
A team of international astronauts is sent on a dangerous mission to reignite the dying Sun with a nuclear fission bomb in 2057.
Director: Danny Boyle | Stars: Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Cliff Curtis
Votes: 267,574 | Gross: $3.68M
27. Troll Hunter (2010)
PG-13 | 103 min | Drama, Fantasy, Thriller
A group of students investigates a series of mysterious bear killings, but learns that there are much more dangerous things going on. They start to follow a mysterious hunter, learning that he is actually a troll hunter.
Director: André Øvredal | Stars: Otto Jespersen, Robert Stoltenberg, Knut Nærum, Glenn Erland Tosterud
Votes: 79,578 | Gross: $0.25M
Neither space nor aliens, but trolls (so sci-fi ;-) ). Exceptionally cool flick if you ask me.
28. Alien (1979)
R | 117 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
The crew of a commercial spacecraft encounters a deadly lifeform after investigating a mysterious transmission of unknown origin.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright
Votes: 951,404 | Gross: $78.90M
29. Aliens (1986)
R | 137 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Decades after surviving the Nostromo incident, Ellen Ripley is sent out to re-establish contact with a terraforming colony but finds herself battling the Alien Queen and her offspring.
Director: James Cameron | Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Paul Reiser
Votes: 763,409 | Gross: $85.16M
30. Alien: Resurrection (1997)
R | 109 min | Action, Horror, Sci-Fi
Two centuries after her death, a powerful human/alien hybrid clone of Ellen Ripley aids a crew of space pirates in stopping the aliens from reaching Earth.
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet | Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Dominique Pinon, Ron Perlman
Votes: 263,544 | Gross: $47.75M
Notice how I left out Alien³? Because it was boring and tasteless. My advice: Skip #3
31. eXistenZ (1999)
R | 97 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.
Director: David Cronenberg | Stars: Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ian Holm, Willem Dafoe
Votes: 107,247 | Gross: $2.84M
What starts off as a bit of a B-movie, becomes a quite solid story. Not for everyone, but a quite good movie!
32. K-PAX (2001)
PG-13 | 120 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
PROT is a patient at a mental hospital who claims to be from a faraway planet named K-PAX. His psychiatrist tries to help him, only to begin to doubt his own explanations.
Director: Iain Softley | Stars: Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Mary McCormack, Alfre Woodard
Votes: 193,074 | Gross: $50.34M
33. Extraterrestrial (2014)
Not Rated | 101 min | Action, Horror, Mystery
A group of friends on a weekend trip to a cabin in the woods find themselves terrorized by alien visitors.
Director: Colin Minihan | Stars: Brittany Allen, Freddie Stroma, Jesse Moss, Anja Savcic
Votes: 16,764
Not fantastic, but sci-fi fans with special interest in aliens will like it.
34. Infini (2015)
R | 110 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
An elite 'search and rescue' team transport onto an off-world mining-facility to rescue Whit Carmichael, the lone survivor of a biological outbreak.
Director: Shane Abbess | Stars: Daniel MacPherson, Grace Huang, Luke Hemsworth, Luke Ford
Votes: 15,114
Nice deep-space rescue mission/thriller/horror.
35. Parallels (I) (2015)
Not Rated | 83 min | Action, Sci-Fi
A mysterious building is the gateway to infinite parallel Earths.
Director: Christopher Leone | Stars: Mark Hapka, Jessica Rothe, Eric Jungmann, Constance Wu
Votes: 15,053
Can't say it's the best movie I've ever seen, but definitely worth the watch. Interesting concept
36. The Signal (2014)
PG-13 | 97 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
On a road trip, Nic and two friends are drawn to an isolated area by a computer genius. When everything suddenly goes dark, Nic regains consciousness - only to find himself in a waking nightmare.
Director: William Eubank | Stars: Brenton Thwaites, Olivia Cooke, Beau Knapp, Laurence Fishburne
Votes: 69,283 | Gross: $0.60M
37. The Matrix (1999)
R | 136 min | Action, Sci-Fi
When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker Neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth--the life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber-intelligence.
Directors: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski | Stars: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving
Votes: 2,054,268 | Gross: $171.48M
38. The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
R | 138 min | Action, Sci-Fi
Freedom fighters Neo, Trinity and Morpheus continue to lead the revolt against the Machine Army, unleashing their arsenal of extraordinary skills and weaponry against the systematic forces of repression and exploitation.
Directors: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski | Stars: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving
Votes: 630,873 | Gross: $281.49M
39. The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
R | 129 min | Action, Sci-Fi
The human city of Zion defends itself against the massive invasion of the machines as Neo fights to end the war at another front while also opposing the rogue Agent Smith.
Directors: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski | Stars: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving
Votes: 543,730 | Gross: $139.31M
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