Science Fiction Films

Here's a more or less complete list of science fiction movies I've watched, classified by how much pleasure I derived from them. Let me know if I've missed a great title that you haven't!

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First, my top favourites. The most emotionally satisfying, and complete: they ticked boxes that I wasn't necessarily aware of. Most have an utterly mindblowing premise. The storylines are riveting, the filmmaking first-rate.

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• A.I.
• Children of Men
• Forbidden Planet
• Gattaca
• Her
• Inception
• Interstellar
• The Man from Earth
• Minority Report

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These I thoroughly enjoyed. Mostly, the ideas are very clever. Some are recycled material.

• Arrival
• Back to the Future series, especially Part II
• The Cell
• Dark City
• Enthiran
• Frequency
• Gravity
• Mad Max series, especially Parts III & IV
• The Martian
• Okja
• Oxygen
• Predestination
• Robocop
• Snowpiercer
• Strange Days
• Source Code
• Westworld

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These I have no complaints about.

• 2010: The Year We Make Contact
• Abyss
• Another Earth
• Ant Man (I consider it science fiction.)
• Bladerunner 2049
• Cloud Atlas
• Dredd
• Enthiran 2.0
• Equilibrium
• Fantastic Planet
• Galaxy Quest
• The Fifth Element
• Idiocracy
• The Iron Giant
• Jurassic Park
• Knowing
• The Lobster
• Looper
• Men in Black series
• Moon
• Next
• Pi
• The Planet of the Apes rebooted series
• Prey
• Primer
• Star Wars (OK, more of a space opera, and I like it more for the story arc than for the premises.)
• Time after Time
• The Time Traveler's Wife
• Timecrimes
• Tomorrowland
• Wall-E

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These are curate's eggs that I enjoyed in parts but found wanting in other parts, diminishing my satisfaction.

• Ad Astra (borrows too heavily from 2001 only to botch the ending; the father-son trope gets tiring)
• Alien (more like Monster)
• Avatar (too predictable)
• Bladerunner (didn't like the gimmick of ambiguity in the climax)
• The Congress (an amazing premise, but fizzles out in the third act)
• Contact (ending too crazy)
• The Day the Earth Stood Still (too many improbabilities and absurdities. Why Klaatu is human [he even dies once from bullet wounds] is never explained. A robot [again, inexplicably humanoid] with practically limitless power walks like a geriatric. You'd think a science-defying spaceship that is the talk of the whole world, parked in a field and open to public gaze, would atttact heavy audience from around the globe. Instead it is accorded the curiosity reserved for a new icecream shop. It is so badly monitored [usually by just 2 soldiers, and always zero video cameras] that a human, a robot and an alien all enter it unnoticed.)
• District 9 (not sure SF is the best avenue to satire so weighty a subject as apartheid)
• E. T. (turning an alien into a pet didn't quite work for me, though I liked the film as a children's fable)
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (did not feel the romance between Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, wasn't quite happy with how premise was explored)
• Ex Machina (fineness dampened by unoriginality of premise)
• The Lake House (predictable)
• I am Legend (weak logic)
• Jumper (forgettable plot)
• The Matrix series (not terribly original, also the fate of our existence coming down to kung fu showdowns is offputting)
• Metropolis (too political)
• Mr India (fun and charming, but like most Indian films, could use tighter writing)
• Prospect (has its moments, but mostly dull and predictable)
• Ready Player One (unoriginal and lacks the warmth expected in a Spielberg)
• Silent Running (premise resonated, doesn't take off)
• Sleeper (too jokey)
• Sunshine (why oh why did the final act devolve into mindless horror? Such a waste of an absorbing idea.)
• Tenet (bad exposition: felt like reading a poorly written paper whose results are nevertheless correct; a few subplots could've been avoided given the density of material)
• Terminators 1 & 2 (time travel paradoxes not satisfactorily resolved)

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These productions I disliked:

• 7aum Arivu (stretches itself thin by trying to do too many things)
• Brazil (convoluted)
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (lacking in original ideas & substance)
• Deep Impact (a clinic on how to make a bad movie)
• Dr Who (plain mediocre and often dumb)
• Elysium (cliche-ridden)
• High Life (violence too graphic, premise too contrived)
• Independence Day (cliches galore; the hovering megaships were lifted from Childhood's End, to Clarke's dismay)
• Total Recall (just didn't work)
• Zardoz (haha, what?!)