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No Star Wars, No Star Trek and No Spielbug: My Top 10 Sci-Fi FavoritesJan 19 '04 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Leave a comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts. 10 SF films I admire... 10. Them! (1954) Tops in the big bug genre (Tarantula, The Black Scorpion, The Deadly Mantis, etc.). Giant ants have been spotted in the New Mexico desert and atomic radiation is to blame. Director Gordon Douglas takes a no-nonsense, straight-faced approach and the results are admirable. 9. The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) The androgynous David Bowie makes an ideal extraterrestrial. Who better to play the part than Ziggy Stardust, himself? Directed by Nicholas Roeg (Walkabout, Don't Look Now) and based on a story by Walter Tevis, the elliptical narrative is weird, to say the least, but full of captivating imagery. 8. Alien (1979) A 1950s-style monster movie allegedly inspired by 1958's It! The Terror from Beyond Space. Ridley Scott has dressed it up considerably but it's still rather minimalist and it's still a lot of fun (as is "Aliens"). The creature, designed by Swiss artist H. R. Giger, is quite impressive and if you get bored with that there's always Sigourney Weaver in t-shirt and panties. 7. Mimic (1997) A plague spread by cockroaches threatens to wipe out the children of New York City until a female scientist (Mira Sorvino) comes up with a solution: introduce a genetically-enhanced bug into the existing cockroach population in order to wipe it out. This designer bug (the "Judas Breed") does its job; the children are saved. Years later, however, new problems arise. Engineered to die out after one generation, the Judases have, instead, found a way to reproduce. It didn't work that way in the lab, but the world, you see, is "a much bigger lab." Thus the solution has now become the problem as the insects, which like to hang out underground in the subway system, have rapidly evolved into winged creatures that mimic, in size and appearance, their new prey—man. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro (Cronos, Blade II), "Mimic" rises above the standard "creature feature" by virtue of its rich themes and symbols. The uterus-like subway, for example, proves a fertile breeding ground, unlike the scientist's own, barren womb. 6. Solaris (2002) The members of a space station orbiting a distant planet are acting crazy and psychologist George Clooney is sent in to negotiate their safe return in director Steven Soderbergh's remake of Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 art film. Clooney arrives at the station (name: Prometheus) only to discover a number of dead bodies and little explanation from the remaining crew ("Until it starts happening to you there's really no point in discussing it"). Soon his dead wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone) pays him a visit. Rheya committed suicide years ago so there's no way this could actually be her, right? At its heart a love story, Solaris is bereft of action yet thought-provoking and positively recalls author Ray Bradbury (the short story "Mars is Heaven") and the films of Alain Resnais. 5. Alphaville (1965) Jean Luc-Godard's head-scratcher that Pauline Kael felt was both brilliant and no good. I love the way Godard creatively imagines a futuristic city out of (then) contemporary Paris, although a great deal of the credit ought to go to Raoul Coutard's striking black and white images (if nothing else, the film is gorgeously shot). The plot pits the brutish Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine), a private eye in traditional trench coat, against a society dominated by a computer. Caution, by the way, has arrived on the planet having crossed interstellar space in a Ford Galaxy, a clever, money-saving option to be sure (although certain to disappoint those who can only see SF in terms of FX). 4. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) A peace emissary named Klaatu (Michael Rennie) representing a "federation of planets" arrives in Washington, D.C. to issue an anti-nuclear warning (things get off to a rocky start when, emerging from his spaceship, he's abruptly shot by an over-eager soldier). A thoughtful film from director Robert Wise (Curse of the Cat People) that benefits from strong performances (Patricia Neal, especially) and its theremin-heavy score. 3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Something strange is happening to the residents of a small California town and the local psychiatrist (Kevin McCarthy) is the first to hear of it via his patients: a woman's uncle isn't really her uncle, a small boy is suddenly afraid of his mother, etc. What's happening is an insidious invasion whereby humans are being replaced by soulless duplicates born full-size from giant seedpods (they get you when you fall asleep). Directed by the reliable Don Siegel, the film moves at a fast, economic, exciting pace, which nicely conveys a sense of urgency and paranoia. And the creepy, conformist theme resonated particularly well with a fearful Fifties audience still reeling from McCarthyism. Remade in 1978 by Philip Kaufman and then again in 1993 with the abbreviated title "Body Snatchers". 2. The Thing (1951) Many seem to prefer John Carpenter's version, but what exactly does Carpenter add besides repulsive special effects? If you're a fan of the 1982 remake might I suggest that that, in fact, is what you are responding to? For those seeking something a little subtler, you can't go wrong with this version. A menacing alien crash lands in the frozen arctic and terrorizes an air-force crew until the woman (Margaret Sheridan) in the mix gets an idea on how to kill it. Howard Hawks deserves most of the approbation here although Christian Nyby (his editor on 1948's Red River) ostensibly directed it. Everything about "The Thing", however, indicates Hawks: fraternal group portrait, fast pace, eye-level camera, poetic sense of action. Highly recommended. 1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Stanley Kubrick's visionary masterpiece remains as enigmatic today as when first released. The principal plot concerns a manned mission to Jupiter after the discovery of an alien monolith on the moon. There's a crew (some in hibernation) but the spaceship is primarily run by a lip-reading supercomputer, HAL (replace each letter with the next one in sequence and you get IBM). The rectangular black monolith, an alien marker of sorts, appears throughout the film but is first seen in the "Dawn of Man" sequence. Here our distant, ape-like cousin makes a significant evolutionary leap when it comes to understand the arm-extending qualities of a bone. The bone (man's first tool) is cast into the air where it becomes a spaceship (another tool) four million years in the future. It has been said (correctly) that the most interesting character in "2001" is HAL. The film, as Roger Ebert points out, "fails on the human level but succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale."  |
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