Here we’ve preserved Craig Mathieson’s short and sweet reviews of some terrific sci-fi flicks, as formerly featured on our streaming guides. You can find their current streaming homes by clicking each title.
Cloud Atlas (2012)
One of the most expensive independent films ever produced, this epic—set across six eras spanning the 19th to the 24th centuries—was adapted and directed by the Wachowskis (The Matrix) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run). A stacked cast—Tom Hanks, Hug Grant, Halle Berry, Ben Whishaw, and more—play multiple roles in an ambitious treatise on human nature, the soul’s journey, and humanity’s failings.
Dark City (1998)
Fresh from the heartbreaking success of The Crow, Australian filmmaker Alex Proyas used his Hollywood pull to get this expressionist noir produced about an amnesiac on the run from the unknown controllers of a fantastical metropolis. Rufus Sewell, William Hurt and Jennifer Connelly star in the Sydney-shot mystery, which is a mixture of ravishing technique and otherworldly menace.
Deep Impact (1998)
The first of two rival Hollywood sci-fi disaster films about comets heading for extinction-level events on Earth—it beat Michael Bay’s Armageddon to cinemas by seven weeks—Mimi Leder’s considered drama moves between a space mission to save the planet, estranged families and teenage lovers. The visual effects tragedy comes with genuine compassion.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
If you’ve ever wanted to see a Tom Cruise character get whacked, this alien invasion time-loop thriller is the film for you. As a craven officer busted to trooper, Cruise goes into battle one time after another, dying but slowly improving under the tutelage of Emily Blunt’s ripped super-soldier. It’s macabre but laced with momentum—director Doug Liman at his best.
Elysium (2013)
Neill Blomkamp’s follow-up to District 9 is this tactile 22nd century action film, starring Matt Damon as a worker on an earth ravaged by climate change and inequality, whose only hope of survival is to reach the orbiting space station where the wealthy now reside. The plotting is protracted but the set-pieces are accomplished, mixing technology and desperation so that the narrative shudders with every clash.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Science-fiction and magic realism are interwoven in Michel Gondry’s tender and tragic masterpiece. When Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey’s couple break up, they decide to have all trace of each other wiped from their memories. When he reconsiders, they go on the run in his fertile subconscious.
Equals (2015)
Set in a sombre future dystopia where feelings have been controlled and eradicated—there’s an obvious debt to Aldous Huxley’s—Brave New World—this low-key drama stars Kristin Stewart and Nicholas Hoult as workmates who realise that they’re starting to experience emotional responses. The stakes for love are high when it’s a criminal offence.
I Am Legend (2007)
Mostly shorn of other actors to bounce off, Will Smith gives one of the finest performances of his career as a U.S. Army virologist who believes he’s the last person alive in New York, after a mutated cancer cure kills most of humanity and turns the rest into vampiric night stalkers. Isolation and pessimism drag his survivor down, letting Smith subvert his screen persona before the thrills kick in.
Interstellar (2014)
Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar is a vast science-fiction epic, balancing—sometimes—humanity’s survival in the stars, theoretical quantum physics, a father’s unstoppable love for his daughter, and a really cool robot. Matthew McConaughey is the astronaut who leaves his family behind on a ravaged Earth to search for mankind’s new home, allowing for many dimensions where wonder is overwhelmed by sentiment.
The Invisible Man (2020)
A classic science-fiction tale has rarely been better rewritten for the times than in this terrifying and timely update of H.G. Wells’ novel by Australian filmmaker Leigh Whannell. Elisabeth Moss, an actor of formidable emotional amplification, is the victim of a violent, coercive relationship who escapes, only to realise her ex is stalking her. Impeccable technique makes the unseen gaslighting and abuse terrifyingly palpable.
The Iron Giant (1999)
The Incredibles director Brad Bird announced himself with this heartfelt animated tale, in which a young American boy growing up in the Cold War-infused 1950s tries to hide a gigantic robot (yes, that’s Vin Diesel’s voice) from outer space that he discovers and befriends. Bestowed with the open-heartedness of a child, it’s a parable of bridging otherness that packs an almighty emotional wallop.
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Lana and Lilly Wachowski returned to science-fiction with this weird and sometime wilful space opera, which has Mila Kunis as the galactic princess unknowingly living on Earth and Channing Tatum as the interstellar warrior with canine DNA who helps restore her birthright. It’s not good, but it’s memorable, whether it’s the vertiginous flight scenes, unexpected bureaucratic satire (hello Terry Gilliam!), or Eddie Redmayne giving a hilariously mannered villain’s turn.
Jurassic Park (1993)
When you think in terms of images never previously seen on a screen, then science-fiction has to be a recurring destination for Steve Spielberg. Research goes awry to terrifying effect in this breakthrough CGI blockbuster, where a tropical theme park with revived dinosaurs are the attraction that quickly spins out of control and Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum have to run for their lives.
Life (2017)
The horror of a rapacious alien organism overwhelming humanity is a sci-fi staple. Director Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) and a solid cast—Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds—give it a ticking clock immediacy, a mission to Mars bringing a new multi-celled lifeform to the International Space Station. Calamity naturally ensures.
The Matrix (1999)
Gravity was driven by computer code and special effects bent reality’s rationale in the movie that rebooted science fiction and the action movie for the looming 21st century. Keanu Reeves is the everyman who becomes a digital warrior in a rebellion against a machine regime; Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s blockbuster remains masterfully complete.
Paul (2011)
As both writers and lead actors, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost took their British genre appreciation across the Atlantic for this alien encounter road comedy, playing a pair of English geeks journeying to Comic-Con who stumble upon an escaped grey (voiced by Seth Rogen). Many comic mishaps ensure, complete with a rollcall of notable American co-stars.
Pacific Rim (2013)
Guillermo del Toro got all his giant robots fighting alien monsters energy out with this bespoke blockbuster set in a near future where, well, giant robots fight alien monsters. While looking to give the vast digital effects a physical heft, the director works in Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi’s pilots, a save the world speech by Idris Elba, and scurrying side-plots that provide spurts of kaiju horror.
Riddick (2013)
Watch on NetflixThe third and most recent instalment of Vin Diesel’s other franchise—as the taciturn intergalactic antihero created in collaboration with writer and director David Twohy—jettisons the science-fiction pomp for a gnarly tale of survival. Riddick and a band of B movie bounty hunters, played by the likes of Katee Sackhoff and Matt Nable, fight to survive on an inhospitable alien world.
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
The second—and best—of the Star Trek franchise’s 2010s reboot, with Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock, explores the militarisation of space and the perils of buried history, as terrorist attacks lead the Starship Enterprise to alien space and Benedict Cumberbatch’s bravura antagonist. J.J. Abrams directs, lens flare and all.
Soylent Green (1973)
A dystopian procedural whose 1970s ecological fears now appear prescient, Richard Fleischer’s drama is set in the New York of 2022, a bulging city of 40 million people on a planet increasingly devoid of resources. Charlton Heston is the police detective investigating the murder of a powerful elite, unearthing a conspiracy whose savage logic still packs a punch.
Wallace & Gromit: A Grand Day Out (1989)
The Moon has loomed large in the cinema since George Melies ground-breaking A Trip to the Moon wowed novice audiences in 1902, making it a fitting setting for an early stop motion animated adventure featuring Nick Park’s legendary claymation duo. Motivated by cheese, Wallace and Gromit’s lunar journey is an eccentric delight balanced by tactile technique.
War of the Worlds (2005)
Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise put a modern spin on H. G. Wells’ science fiction classic, with the latter as the estranged father trying to safeguard his children after towering alien tripods create havoc. The scale is suitably vast, but what endures is Spielberg’s fascination with imagining lines of fearful refugees on American roads. He depicts the remnants of society with painterly care.
