Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Movie Madness

Following the recent theme of film topics, I'll partake in the latest bold-this-list idea generated by Jaquandar from John Scalzi's latest book. This is a list of the 50 science fiction movies Scalzi has
deemed to be the most significant in the history of film. Note that "most significant" does not mean "best" or "most popular" or even "most influential." Some of the films may be all three of these, but not all of them are -- indeed, some films in The Canon aren't objectively very good, weren't blockbusters and may not have influenced other filmmakers to any significant degree. Be that as it may, I think they matter -- in one way or another, they are uniquely representative of some aspect of the science fiction film experience.



Here is the list. I have bolded those movies I have seen.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!
Akira
Alien
Aliens
Alphaville
Back to the Future
Blade Runner
Brazil
Bride of Frankenstein
Brother From Another Planet
A Clockwork Orange
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Contact
The Damned
Destination Moon
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Delicatessen
Escape From New York
ET: The Extraterrestrial
Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
The Fly (1985 version)
Forbidden Planet
Ghost in the Shell
Gojira/Godzilla
The Incredibles
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)
Jurassic Park
Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
The Matrix
Metropolis
On the Beach
Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
Robocop
Sleeper
Solaris (1972 version)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
The Stepford Wives
Superman
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Thing From Another World
Things to Come
Tron
12 Monkeys
28 Days Later
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
2001: A Space Odyssey
La Voyage Dans la Lune
War of the Worlds (1953 version)

This isn't too bad, with a nice mix of old and new movies. I am ashamed that I haven't seen Solaris, Metropolis, or all of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (I've seen excerpts). I haven't seen much anime, thus no Ghost in the Shell or Akira. I've seen many serials from the 50's, but I don't think I saw that particular Flash Gordon storyline.

1 comment:

girish said...

I'm an amateur piano player, and really enjoy your posts.

I've seen almost no anime but Ghost In The Shell and its sequel, part II (Innocence) are absolutely wonderful, and reminiscent of 60's Godard.