The 100 Best Sci-Fi Movies Of All Time

A cheery blend of anti-government paranoia, haywire sociology, and good old-fashioned grindhouse sleaze, Escape From New York takes the famous New York Daily News headline, "[President ] Ford to City: Drop Dead," and goes crazy with it.

The year is 1997 and crime is so rampant that the island of Manhattan has been declared a federal prison. Recidivism rates are low considering the philosophy is taken straight from the Roach Motel: Prisoners go in but they don't come out. When a band of terrorists hijack the president's plane, and the president winds up trapped in the walled-off 212 area code, only Kurt Russell's eye-patched Snake Plissken can save him.

Past the initial premise and some cool-for-its-day opening computer graphics, Escape From New York is a film that's actually better in your memory than in reality—though nothing can take away from the chandeliers fixed to the hood of Isaac Hayes's car.

Does scientific research have boundaries? When is it moral to play God? And under what circumstances is it okay to have sex with your adoptive killer cross-species mutant child? (I can't answer the first two, but I think I have a pretty good answer for number three.)

If only all bioethics debates were this gruesome and perverse.

Joe Cornish's funny, poignant, and slick film about killer blue things from outer space dropping in on the wrong British housing estate goes to some unexpected places. It is secure enough in its own storytelling to introduce its heroes in an unflattering light, knowing that you will come to grow and love them by the movie's climax. And just when Attack the Block is in danger of getting too poignant for its own good, Cornish introduces slow-motion shots of dudes blasting away at sharp-toothed creatures.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's second feature collaboration with Marc Caro was, in many ways, what brought the steampunk aesthetic into the mainstream—as much as any film in which Ron Perlman battles a kidnapping mad scientist, mechanical Cyclopes, and a brain in a vat can be considered mainstream.

The villain can achieve immortality but has lost his ability to dream, which is essential for staying young. He must therefore steal the dreams of children, but because the children are all scared, they provide him only with nightmares. Despite the clear good-versus-evil nature of the story, this movie is extremely French, so the kids are a little more sinister than the usual movie moppets, and the baddies are a tad seductive.

If you thought that the episode of The Simpsons in which the robots of Itchy and Scratchy Land go on a killing spree was ripped from the TV movie Kiss Meets the Phantom, you were incorrect. It was ripped from the surprisingly good Richard Benjamin vehicle Westworld.

Written and directed by Michael Crichton, Westworld recognizes that its own premise is a little goofy, but it still has some legitimately frightening moments. At the "adult" Disneyland, vacationers can live out their Roman, Medieval, or Old West fantasies with none of the risk—until a malfunction sends a cyber Yul Brenner on a relentless path of destruction.

Westworld offers up a mixture of early '70s pop psychology and a jaundiced view of unchecked technology. It is also currently being adapted into an HBO television series with the same name.

Joss Whedon's wonderful coda to the cult show Firefly probably wouldn't exist if that show hadn't been prematurely canceled—a layer of irony that seems to fit the always jocular but never sarcastic tone of the film. The movie works for those new to the franchise, though, succinctly introducing all the major characters and themes in a tour-de-force opening.

Whedon's futuristic wild West of space pirates and psychic ingenues shows how an ostensibly benevolent government can transform into an evil empire. Despite the will of the entire Internet, there will never, ever be a sequel, even though Orson Scott Card has called this the best science-fiction film ever.

A difficult film that still rides waves of backlash and reverse-backlash, The Black Hole was Disney's costly attempt to make its own Star Wars. But back then Disney had no idea how to make live-action movies, and the result is a strange hodge-podge of kid-friendly robots, awesome special effects, 2001-esque psychedelic freak-out and Ernest Borgnine in zero gravity.

Those of us who are old enough to see this in the cinema may recall an afternoon of equal parts joy, boredom, and terror—and an annoying feeling when later reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and realising that it's missing a giant red robot named Maximilian.

You'd think that blowing up the entire planet at the end of Beneath the Planet of the Apes would mark the conclusion of the series—but never underestimate the power of a money-making franchise.

Without question the most droll of the Apes cycle (perhaps the most droll in this entire list), Escape yanks two of our favourite ape characters (Kim Hunter's Dr. Zira and Roddy McDowell's Dr. Cornelius) and a new ape played by Sal Mineo and shoots them back to our time. Here they take the concept of the original Planet of the Apes and spin it on its head, and inadvertently set the whole series in motion.

In between the time paradoxes and social commentary, there's plenty of room for fun, like a montage including a very '70s shopping spree and Zira's introduction to "grape juice plus."

A cri de coeur for environmentalists, this take on interstellar preservation manages to be both whiz-bang fun and an early example of what would become sci-fi tropes. While protecting the last surviving plant life, Bruce Dern scoots around a giant spacecraft and plays cards with fun helper robots. Silent Running's adorable bots came years before Star Wars, and the massive "last chance for humanity" ships predate Battlestar Galactica.

The film was co-written by Michael Cimino, who would later make The Deer Hunter, and Steven Bochco, who would later make, among other things, Hill Street Blues. The director, Douglas Trumbull, is one of the most respected special-effects wizards out there, getting his start with short films for the 1964 World's Fair and continuing on to projects such as Tree of Life. Just be warned; a dreadful Joan Baez song nearly ruins the entire film.

John Carpenter's They Live may seem like science fiction, but many of us know it to be documentary truth: Advertising is actually the work of belligerent space aliens intent on subduing and exploiting the populace. Oh no. I've said too much.

If we were ranking the top sunglasses-related, endless fight scenes, we'd list this film much, much higher.

H.G. Wells's 1898 novel is perfect source material for a paranoid 1950s technicolor adventure. Yes, the filmmakers bleached most of the social commentary from the novel in favour of simple thrills. For sequences of pure earth annihilation, though, few films from the era can compare. The organic-looking ships and laser sound effects set the aesthetic tone for many films to come.

There are many different iterations of this Wells text, from Orson Welles's radio play to the esoteric 1978 rock opera featuring members of the Moody Blues to Spielberg's 9/11-informed film version. This version is still the best.

Although Galaxy Quest received the forceful endorsement of none other than George Takei, who called it "a powerful piece of documentary filmmaking," I was at first resistant to see the film because I was afraid it would be another "get a life" pop-culture wedgie for sci-fi fans. In truth, Galaxy Quest proved to be a loving, if lovingly tongue-in-cheek, ode to Star Trek and its fandom.

Even with Tim Allen's Shatner bravado and Alan Rickman's Patrick Stewart/Leonard Nimoy superciliousness, it is hard not to get caught up in the actual space adventure behind the satire. That's this film's true magic: Behind all the geek-culture sarcasm, it's still a ripping good yarn.

The last truly whacked-out film from the master of body horror, David Cronenberg's eXistenZ was a prescient look at the way role-playing video games will take over our culture. Okay, so the immoral side-missions in Grand Theft Auto aren't quite of this life-altering nature, but I do think there are gamers out there who would manipulate their nervous systems if it meant a more immersive environment.

eXistenZ is icky and gooey in just the right places, featuring a lot of gross stuff going into and coming out of Jude Law's mouth. It is certainly of a piece with Cronenberg's earlier Videodrome, each with a relatively incomprehensible ending.

From one angle The Fountain is historical fiction. From another, it is a medical drama. A third angle, however, shows a far-out, heavy sci-fi flick as a bald Hugh Jackman floats through nebulae in a translucent sphere on his way to chat with God. Or something.

I can't sit you down and explain to you what The Fountain is about. I only know that between the music, gorgeous photography, and deeply heartfelt performances, I end up a blubbering mess by the movie's end. If Rachel Weisz were my lost wife I'd sit under a tree and mediate for a thousand years, too, if it meant getting her back.

Infamously chosen over Spielberg's E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial by Columbia Pictures, Starman may have been an unwise business move, but it was hardly a creative disaster. This touching love story between Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen is like E.T. for grown-ups, mixed with notes that later show up in Contact,Ghost, and maybe Rain Man.

Starman is a prime example of sci-fi that people who don't like sci-fi love. Once past the premise (dude from space looks like dead husband), it's hard not to cheer along as our heroes embark on a road trip to safety with the big bad government in hot pursuit. The follow-up TV series with Robert Hays may not have been the best idea, however.

The difficult issue of migrant labor gets a dystopian spin in this not-so-unbelievable tale of capitalist power.

A young man from rural Mexico goes to Tijuana to find work and get vengeance against those who destroyed his family. In the city, if he can find a "coyotek," he can have his nervous system hacked to gain the ability to plug into a grid that will use him as a suspended virtual-reality drone. In the cyber sweatshops, young Mexicans dangle and make robotic motions as actual machines build things in El Norte.

Despite a microbudget and some special effects that, to put it politely, cut corners, Sleep Dealer is an effective piece of agitprop that also has a number of well-developed ideas about future tech.

Few movies have captured the fun, zany spirit of 1950s pulp while also managing to be so, well, good. The groundbreaking effects, sharp script, and solid performances from Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith made Men in Black an instant classic.

This movie is also great for anyone who has ever driven into Manhattan from Long Island. It's hard to look at those dilapidated structures from the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens, and not imagine what squiggly, slobby aliens might be lurking among them.

In Andrei Tarkovsky's trippy film Stalker, the Zone is a forbidden wasteland where the usual rules of perception and physics are not sacrosanct. In the heart of the Zone is "the Room," and inside the Room is where, so it is said, one's deepest wish becomes a reality.

To get there, a person must hire a guide (called a Stalker), and the road is fraught with endless takes of slowly moving rivers laden with symbolic iconography. Tarkovsky's deliberate camerawork and evocative tone creates some weird, moody cinema.

In Dreamscape, Dennis Quaid has the ability to enter other people's dreams. At first it seems like he'll be able to help them combat their psychological issues in a series of cool colour-saturated fantasy sequences. Then he uncovers a plot to start World War III and must stop the evil powers the only way he knows how: by taking a nap.

One thing I do know: All movies could use a dash of David Patrick Kelly as a lizard monster.

One the newest entrants on our list, Rise is a remarkable essay on the elasticity of consciousness, evolutionary thresholds, medical ethics, and oh-my-god-did-you-see-what-that-monkey-did moments.

In all seriousness, though, Andy Serkis's performance may well be remembered as the moment motion-captured performance was elevated to the level of true dramatic art.