Good Sci-Fi including HARD Sci-Fi
A list of quality Sci-Fi titles, in no particular order, with an emphasis on good science as well as good stories.
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16 titles
- DirectorShane CarruthStarsShane CarruthDavid SullivanCasey GoodenFour friends/fledgling entrepreneurs, knowing that there's something bigger and more innovative than the different error-checking devices they've built, wrestle over their new invention.Hard Science Fiction, very stylish, made for $7000, and possibly the best hard SF film ever made (and yes that comparison includes 2001: A Space Odessy). Shane Carruth is just a hero. His follow-up effort, Upstream Color, isn't quite as ground-breaking as Primer, but it's also just an amazing, gripping and beautiful film.
- DirectorMike FlanaganStarsKatie ParkerCourtney BellDave LevineA woman and her sister begin to link a mysterious tunnel to a series of disappearances, including that of her own husband.I can't actually tell you too much about Absentia without spoiling. It's low-budget, but wonderfully executed. The concept is brilliant. The tension, scares and weirdness exist aplenty. Lovely little piece of work.
- DirectorNeil BurgerStarsBradley CooperAnna FrielAbbie CornishA mysterious pill that enables the user to access 100% of his brain's abilities transforms a struggling writer into a financial wizard, but it also puts him in a new world with many dangers.Ignore the critics and haters, it's a very good film (Lucy, is not). It has about 3 plot-holes you could drive an Abrams tank through, but they don't destroy it. It's just a good film, that's all, and it's very underrated.
- DirectorJames Ward ByrkitStarsEmily BaldoniMaury SterlingNicholas BrendonStrange things begin to happen when a group of friends gather for a dinner party on an evening when a comet is passing overhead.Low-budget, zero special-effects, subtle, stately, hard-SF masterpiece. Anyone who down-rated it is just poorly educated and too stupid to realise it. This is a brain-massaging film, so you need a brain in the first place to have it massaged. Quite tense, get's very edge of the seat as it goes on. Possibly 'Slipstream', but really it's just good, hard SF.
- DirectorDuncan JonesStarsJake GyllenhaalMichelle MonaghanVera FarmigaA soldier wakes up in someone else's body and discovers he's part of an experimental government program to find the bomber of a commuter train within 8 minutes.From the director of Moon. Has its faults. I understand the physics and ramifications of Quantum Computing, but - unfortunately - Source Code dodges its questions and smooths over the technical issues a little too much. I've brooded at great length on how to make it make sense. Doesn't stop it being a brilliant film, though. And yet again - Jake Gyllenhaal kicks ass.
- DirectorUbaldo RagonaSidney SalkowStarsVincent PriceFranca BettoiaEmma DanieliWhen a disease turns all of humanity into the living dead, the last man on earth becomes a reluctant vampire hunter.Most people are not aware that 'The Omega Man' and 'I Am Legend', are based on a book from the 50's - entitled 'I Am Legend'.
This film version of the book was made in 1964, and stars a younger Vincent Price. It is the best of all the tellings, despite the limitations of the time it was made. A B&W masterpiece of dark Science Fiction. - DirectorShane CarruthStarsAmy SeimetzFrank MosleyShane CarruthA man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.Shane Carruth's other masterpiece (next to Primer). I say 'other' because he's only managed two films so far - both on a shoestring budget, and he did almost everything for them himself.
Stylish and beautiful, and quite tense, this film is perhaps not as 'hard' SF as Primer (actually, that's arguable), but it's just as involving. Brain massaging, and quite moving. - DirectorVincenzo NataliStarsNicole de BoerMaurice Dean WintDavid HewlettA 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.Anyone who doesn't like this film should be shot. And that's it, really.
Scary, tense little archetypal nightmare. SF, Slipstream, Mystery and so much more.
The acting is apalling. The story is so good it doesn't matter. - DirectorRidley ScottStarsSigourney WeaverTom SkerrittJohn HurtThe crew of a commercial spacecraft encounters a deadly lifeform after investigating a mysterious transmission of unknown origin.I guess it's remotely possible that some of the younger audience haven't seen the best SF space-horror ever made. Ever. If so, see it - and there is a bonus test: If any of your friends don't like it, that means they're stupid! Quite handy.
It's sequel, Aliens, is an action film and not as good, but very watchable.
Such a pity that, like the Matrix, they NEVER, EVER, made any further sequels.... - DirectorRobert WiseStarsJames OlsonArthur HillDavid WayneTop scientists work feverishly in a secret, state-of-the-art laboratory to discover what killed the citizens of a small town and how the deadly contagion can be stopped.Best thing Michael Crichton ever wrote. And this film is just so good, it stands up with ease even today.
- DirectorDuncan JonesStarsSam RockwellKevin SpaceyDominique McElligottAstronaut 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.Written and directed by Zowie Bowie, or Duncan Jones as he is now known - David Bowie's son (& Source Code was his follow-up effort). What do you mean you haven't seen it yet?
- DirectorGareth EdwardsStarsScoot McNairyWhitney AbleMario Zuniga BenavidesSix years after Earth has suffered an alien invasion, a cynical journalist agrees to escort a shaken American tourist through an infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the U.S. border.Most 'off-axis' films piss me off. Ie. where the main characters are not 'in' the action, they are providing a narrative that shows it from the side lines. But this one works. It really works. Some peop... idiots didn't like the ending. I found it profoundly moving. Great film.
- DirectorGeoff MurphyStarsBruno LawrenceAlison RoutledgePete SmithA scientist awakens to find himself alone in the world. In a desperate attempt to search for others, he finds only two who have their own agenda.The blerb on the back of the DVD says 'the best science fiction film of the 80s' - they are perfectly correct. Not criticising them, but Aliens is space-opera, Terminator is space-opera, and WarGames just isn't as good as this film. An abstract, hard-SF 'what if'. Acting is not fantastic, but it doesn't even slightly matter.
- DirectorJohn SturgesStarsGeorge MaharisRichard BasehartAnne FrancisA germ that could destroy life on Earth is stolen from a biological warfare lab and the thief threatens to release it into the open, prompting a security officer to act.Made about 7 years before The Andromeda Strain, and with almost exactly the same subject material. See this one, just see it, it's SUCH a good film.
- DirectorDarren AronofskyStarsSean GulletteMark MargolisBen ShenkmanA paranoid mathematician searches for a key number that will unlock the universal patterns found in nature.Bit overrated, and I'm not a fan of the director. But this is a film about something I have not seen dealt with in a feature before, or since - the concept that there is a point where Maths and Physics cross over, and Maths can directly influence the real world 'like magic'. This is a rather good film, even if some of the plot points are a bit naff. Worth a see.
- DirectorFred F. SearsStarsHugh MarloweJoan TaylorDonald CurtisExtraterrestrials traveling in high-tech flying saucers contact a scientist as part of a plan to enslave the inhabitants of Earth.Not even remotely 'hard', I just include it because it's one of my fave films. The stop motion is ... stop motion, but it's very good for the time, goes up against Jason And The Argonauts. The 'science' is complete rubbish, but the technology is very ahead: force-fields, powered exo-skeletons, energy weapons, and spy-UAVs.