Movies for hardcore sci-fi geeks

[Ivan Seeking]

A strange movie which is kind of cool is called "The Nines"

It's a purely story driven tale so not many special effects (but beautiful shots though etc)
I can't really reveal much about the story, but it's one of those mindbend type movies like in the mouth of madness etc.

I just watched it - Excellent! It took forever to get going but in the end was worth it.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Earlier I think I mentioned Journey to the Far Side of the Sun as one that I liked as a kid.

bleh! It was pretty much the Thunderbirds as a British Soap Opera. The miniatures were so bad that I could easily see the strings a few times.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I recently watched a few movies.

Appleseed and Appleseed Ex Machina are sci fi anime films. Both are pretty much typical scifi-action movies, they're just animated. The animation is actually rather good though. They used mostly computer animation in both. So if you would like to check out some neat eye candy these would be good.

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade is actually a rather serious movie for being anime. Imagine a cop drama except that its animated. No silly faces or hokey sound effects.
Story wise I am unsure whether or not to call it scifi. It is more of an alternate history type movie. It is set in post WWII Japan during the great civil unrest and rampant anti-government terrorism. in the story though the Japanese government creates an elite paramilitary police squad for dealing with these terrorists (Since they can not have a military). I think they are outfitted with rather advanced equipment for the time period. They are like a cross between vietnam heavy artillery men and german stormtroopers.
So maybe scifi or maybe just alternate history, either way it is a fairly good movie.

There's one more but I'll have to come back for that.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I just realized I didin't really describe the story in either of those movies.

The Appleseed movies are set in a post apocaplyptic future after WWIII has left the world nearly destroyed and humans nearly extinct. The main character, Deunan, is a female soldier who survived the war and has been fighting a guerilla war against the remnents of the enemy forces only to find out that the war has ended and most of the world has been trying to rebuild. She is taken to a city called Olympus where scientists have attempted to create a utopia and repopulate the planet by creating genetically designed humanoids called Bioroids. There has become a sort of class warfare though. To prevent future conflicts these artificial humans were designed to not possesses the emotions of hate or anger. They have come to dominate the city and politics and humans have come to be seen as a hinderence; brutish, dangerous, and untrustworthy. With high tensions the utopian city is on the verge of civil war.

In Jin-Roh the main character, Officer Fuse, is confronted by a young girl working for a terrorist cell. He is supposed to shoot her but finds he can not. She sets off a bomb she is carrying, killing herself, but Fuse survives. He becomes plagued by visions of the girl blowing herself up and questions his ability to do his job. In the mean time it seems he is being used as a pawn by a politically motivated secret sect of the Jin-Roh (the anti-terrorist police squad he belongs to) and the new Counter Intelligence Task Force who are determined to have the Jin-Roh dismantled as an outdated solution to the terrorist problem.


The other movie I mentioned was Steamboy. It is a steampunk genre anime movie taking place in Victorian England. The main character is James Ray Steam, a young boy, who finds himself being pulled between the geniuses of his father, Edward Steam, and grandfather, Lloyd Steam. Together the father and grandfather invented a nearly unlimited source of power but James' father wishes to create weapons of war with it to sell to the highest bidders while the grandfather tries to keep it away from him prefering more humanitarian uses. James is being lectured by his father on the importance of military might to secure a free country and being pleaded with by his grandfather to believe that science should only be used to help people and increase their standard of living. British Intelligence get wind of the arms dealing that is to occur at the Great Exhibition and involves themselves in attempting to steal back the powersource being employed by James' father.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Firefly was a masterpiece

Because of the praise from you, Huck, and Danger, it is on its way. Thanks. I had no idea it was so good.

 

[EnumaElish]

A.I.
I am legend
The Future Is Wild

 

[DaveC426913]

A.I.

AI was OK - if it had ended where Kubrick intended it to, instead of where Speilberg did end it.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

AI was OK - if it had ended where Kubrick intended it to, instead of where Speilberg did end it.

I liked AI. It was as much fairlytale as it was sci-fi, but enjoyable nonetheless.

What was different between the movie and what Kubrick wanted?

 

[DaveC426913]

I liked AI. It was as much fairlytale as it was sci-fi, but enjoyable nonetheless.

What was different between the movie and what Kubrick wanted?

The last 15 minutes. It should have ended with him on the bottom of the ocean.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I've actually yet to see AI because I've never heard anything good about it.

 

[Huckleberry]

I just finished watching the 'Battlestar Galactica' reimagined series by Ron Moore. It's amazing! I can't believe that I hadn't checked it out before. I think the problem was that I didn't have much hope of it going anywhere. So these people are lost in space and looking for Earth with cylons chasing them for episode upon neverending episode. I thought it would be like that, kind of like the original was. I was dead wrong! It's now one of my favorite series of all time right along with 'Firefly'.

I enjoyed the original series too, but the new reimagined series has all the good elements of that basic story and improved on everything else. The best thing is that the stories are all weaved together in a natural way that complements the basic overall story perfectly. Character motivations change without leaving the entire story disjointed and forced. Another plus is that they wrap the entire plot up nicely at the end.

It's a dark show without much hope. The addition of cylons that are indistinguishable from humans makes for some very interesting plot lines that force the viewer to question the meaning of humanity. That coupled with the struggle for the survival of the human race carries the plot along easily through to the end. The characters are easy to love and to hate and feel for. Nobody is perfect and there are no perfect outcomes, but success is mixed with failure in a fairly realistic way that drives one event into the next and carries the characters along with it. They are as much victims of fate as they are the makers of it. I even like how they revisit some of the episodes from the original series without becoming predictable and unoriginal. I couldn't stop watching the episodes. That was the fastest 80 hours of television I've ever seen, and I think I might do it again. I'd like to hear the commentaries. I couldn't give a higher recommendation than 'Battlestar Galactica'.

I was watching an interview with Edward James Olmos who plays Admiral Adama in the series. He also played Gaff, the bladerunner with an origami fetish, in the movie 'Bladerunner'. He stated that it was in his contract that if he saw any four-eyed monsters he would faint and let the writers end his role. The writers didn't even want him to see any of the hybrid cylons that were part machine, part human. Luckily, there are no freakish monsters in the series. It's a human driven story in many ways similar to the movie 'Bladerunner'.

And there is another series that is a prequel to BSG coming out this January called 'Caprica'. It begins over 50 years before BSG and Admiral Adama is just a little boy. It chronicles the creation of the cylon race, the first cylon war and the exodus of the cylons. The feature length pilot episode has already been released for download and it was good. I'm anxious to see what they do with it in January.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I just finished watching the 'Battlestar Galactica' reimagined series by Ron Moore.

I really enjoyed it. Though there were nagging little bits it was definitely good over all. I personally didn't like the ending much. And the way Baltar acted like a loon and no one really much noticed was a bit too hokey at times.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The last 15 minutes. It should have ended with him on the bottom of the ocean.

Heh, I like it when they go beyond the horizon. Same was true with the Special Edition [or whatever they called it] of Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Be bold and take us inside of that mother ship! I see it as a chance to explore the most exotic ideas. If I were writing for a movie like AI or CE [special edition], I think the most fun would be in trying to write the last fifteen minutes.

 

[DaveC426913]

Heh, I like it when they go beyond the horizon. Same was true with the Special Edition [or whatever they called it] of Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Be bold and take us inside of that mother ship!

Yes but the extra ending for CE3K was the logical next step. It completed the story.

The ending for AI was a corruption of Kubrick's message. It was Spielberg wanting to put his own ending on it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Kubrick purist or anything of the sort. I'm suggesting that there were two messages due to two visionaries. The fox that chases two rabbits gets none.

 

[siddharth]

I thought I had posted before, but I can't find it, so I'll mention Firefly again. Firefly was really special, and possibly the best TV show I've ever seen. There's also a movie based on the show called Serenity, which is pretty good.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The last 15 minutes. It should have ended with him on the bottom of the ocean.

I was reading up on this and found that point is contested.

People pretend to think they know Stanley Kubrick, and think they know me, when most of them don't know either of us," Spielberg told film critic Joe Leydon in 2002. "And what's really funny about that is, all the parts of A.I. that people assume were Stanley's were mine. And all the parts of A.I. that people accuse me of sweetening and softening and sentimentalizing were all Stanley's. The teddy bear was Stanley's. The whole last 20 minutes of the movie was completely Stanley's. The whole first 35, 40 minutes of the film – all the stuff in the house – was word for word, from Stanley's screenplay. This was Stanley's vision.

"Eighty percent of the critics got it all mixed up. But I could see why. Because, obviously, I've done a lot of movies where people have cried and have been sentimental. And I've been accused of sentimentalizing hard-core material. But in fact it was Stanley who did the sweetest parts of A.I., not me. I'm the guy who did the dark center of the movie, with the Flesh Fair and everything else. That's why he wanted me to make the movie in the first place. He said, 'This is much closer to your sensibilities than my own.'"[39]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.I._Artificial_Intelligence

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I thought I had posted before, but I can't find it, so I'll mention Firefly again. Firefly was really special, and possibly the best TV show I've ever seen. There's also a movie based on the show called Serenity, which is pretty good.

I watched the first episode tonight. I thought was okay but not great, however I can see that it has potential, so maybe it will just take a few episodes to get me hooked.

 

[Huckleberry]

I watched the first episode tonight. I thought was okay but not great, however I can see that it has potential, so maybe it will just take a few episodes to get me hooked.

You'll fit right in with the browncoats, Ivan.

 

[Borek]

Cherry 2000 was a huge disappointment Sad, as it had a good potential. It is one of these movies where to build tension main characters ignore obvious and safe solutions and instead they select the absurd ones, or they first long explain how dangerous something will be and then... it is not. I feel like few hours of work on dialogs could make the movie coherent. As it is I felt like being treated as an idiot.

Marzena felt asleep after about 15 minutes, but could be that's because we did over 50 miles on bikes earlier that day

 

[DaveC426913]

I was reading up on this and found that point is contested.

People pretend to think they know Stanley Kubrick, and think they know me, when most of them don't know either of us," Spielberg told film critic Joe Leydon in 2002. "And what's really funny about that is, all the parts of A.I. that people assume were Stanley's were mine. And all the parts of A.I. that people accuse me of sweetening and softening and sentimentalizing were all Stanley's. The teddy bear was Stanley's. The whole last 20 minutes of the movie was completely Stanley's. The whole first 35, 40 minutes of the film – all the stuff in the house – was word for word, from Stanley's screenplay. This was Stanley's vision.

"Eighty percent of the critics got it all mixed up. But I could see why. Because, obviously, I've done a lot of movies where people have cried and have been sentimental. And I've been accused of sentimentalizing hard-core material. But in fact it was Stanley who did the sweetest parts of A.I., not me. I'm the guy who did the dark center of the movie, with the Flesh Fair and everything else. That's why he wanted me to make the movie in the first place. He said, 'This is much closer to your sensibilities than my own.'"[39]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.I._Artificial_Intelligence

Huh. Go figure.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Not really hard core stuff, but I would have to include Mission to Mars on a list of favorites.

In the year 2020, a mission is launched whose goal is to carry humans to Mars for the first time. The mission's four crew members, upon arriving on the planet, discover a large mountain in their vicinity, with something sticking out of the rubble. After transmitting their find back to the command center on the World Space Station, they head for the site to try and learn more. When they arrive at the formation, they notice a strange sound, which they assume to be interference from their Mars Rover. While attempting to scan the formation with radar, a large vortex, similar to a dust storm, forms around the structure. It envelops and kills two of the mission's crew by tearing them apart, whilst a third member is killed when a large rock breaks her faceplate, exposing her to the Martian atmosphere.

After the vortex has passed, the camera zooms out to show that the "mountain" was actually a large humanoid face...

Also, I thought Sphere was quite good.

In the middle of the southern Pacific Ocean, a thousand feet below the surface, what is believed to be an alien spacecraft is discovered after a ship laying transoceanic cable has its cable cut and the United States Navy investigates the cause. The thickness of coral growth on the spaceship suggests that it has been there for almost 300 years. A team made up of marine biologist Dr. Beth Halperin (Sharon Stone), mathematician Dr. Harry Adams (Samuel L. Jackson), astrophysicist Dr. Ted Fielding (Liev Schreiber), psychologist Dr. Norman Goodman (Dustin Hoffman), and a member of the U.S. Navy is tasked with investigating the spaceship. The team (along with two navy technicians) are housed in a state-of-the-art underwater living environment called the Habitat during their stay on the ocean floor...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_(film )

As for science fiction comedy, I would have to put Mars Attacks near the top of the list.

Martians begin to surround Earth with an array of flying saucers. James Dale, the President of the United States, addresses America. The message attracts attention within the news media in New York City, employees and common goers at the Luxor Las Vegas hotel, and a trailer trash family in Perkinsville, Kansas. The Presidential scientific aides are able to set a meeting with the Martians in Pahrump, Nevada.

The Martians announce they have "come in peace" by way of a universal translator. But after a hippie releases a dove (as a symbol of peace), the Martians begin to kill the humans that have gathered. Believing the meeting to be a "cultural misunderstanding", President Dale has Professor Donald Kessler resume negotiations with the Martians. The two species decide to have a Martian ambassador address the United States Congress. However, the event goes wrong once more, leading to the total incineration of Congress...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Attacks!

I highlighted "Pahrump, Nevada" because there is a bit of hidden humor there. Art Bell, a nighttime radio talk show host whose top-rated show became UFO central for public discussions of the subject [before the internet came of age], broadcasts from his home studio in Pahrump, Nevada.

Does anyone know Mulder's apartment number?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Being that I seem to be on an alien movie kick here, as a rare addition [normally I don't think much of stuff made for TV] Tsu and I both thoroughly enjoyed the TV miniseries Taken, by Spielberg. It gets pretty sappy at times, but it was a very clever play on a variety of alien abduction stories and government conspiracy theories, with a heavy sprinkling of some truly creative ideas. These days it is rare for a TV series to fully capture my interest, but we both found ourselves anxious to see the next episode each week.

...Taken spans five decades and four generations, and centers on three families: the Keys, the Crawfords, and the Clarkes. Nightmares of abduction by extraterrestrials during World War II haunt Russell Keys; the Roswell incident transforms Owen Crawford from ambitious Air Force captain to amoral shadow government conspirator; and an alien visitor impregnates an unhappily-married Sally Clarke. As the decades go by, the heirs of each are affected by the machinations of the aliens, culminating with the birth of Allie Keys, the final product of the aliens' experimentation and the key to their future...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taken_(mini_series )

Again a bit of humor and just to complete the loop, Art Bell was [loosely] represented in this series as well. In the movie, his representitive character broadcasts from his RV while on the move.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Again a bit of humor and just to complete the loop, Art Bell was [loosely] represented in this series as well. In the movie, his representitive character broadcasts from his RV while on the move.

He did some voice acting, as himself I believe, in a video game recently about an alien invasion. I was laughing my *** off as I watched the game trailer.

I enjoyed Sphere. Haven't read the book yet. Crichton's older books all seem to be so much better than his newer ones.

The mention of Sphere reminded of The Abyss. I just checked and B Elliot mentioned it but I think it deserves another mention. Haven't seen it in years but I remember really enjoying it.

 

[Guesser7]

A really good one I would highly recommend is "Capricorn One" made in 1978. It has a really powerful cast and stars James Brolin, Elliot Gould, Sam Waterstone, OJ Simpson, Hal Holbrook and others. The plot is a manned mission to Mars that is a hoax. The supporters of the Apollo program Moon hoax theory will love this movie. Looking at the reality of going to the Moon and all that that entails, pondering why we have never been back there (if we ever did go), I would submit that it is more Sci-fact than Sci-fi ?

 

[Borek]

A really good one I would highly recommend is "Capricorn One" made in 1978. It has a really powerful cast and stars James Brolin, Elliot Gould, Sam Waterstone, OJ Simpson, Hal Holbrook and others.

Telly Savalas comes to mind. And yeah, that was a good one.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

A really good one I would highly recommend is "Capricorn One" made in 1978. It has a really powerful cast and stars James Brolin, Elliot Gould, Sam Waterstone, OJ Simpson, Hal Holbrook and others. The plot is a manned mission to Mars that is a hoax. The supporters of the Apollo program Moon hoax theory will love this movie. Looking at the reality of going to the Moon and all that that entails, pondering why we have never been back there (if we ever did go), I would submit that it is more Sci-fact than Sci-fi ?

I've actually heard the other way around, that its a good example of why a hoax would have been so impossibly difficult to perpetrate.

 

[Huckleberry]

I really enjoyed it. Though there were nagging little bits it was definitely good over all. I personally didn't like the ending much. And the way Baltar acted like a loon and no one really much noticed was a bit too hokey at times.

There was some lazy writing in the finale, no doubt. Poof... gone. What? That and they all seemed to suddenly agree on this new choice that was made for them when throughout the series they could never agree on anything. All the time they spent on those useless flashbacks could have been used to actually tell a story using characters instead of pimping them out to send whatever message was intended. I don't care about the historical innacuracies since it is a fictional world. I think many people forget that in their criticisms. However, just because of the lazy writing I could have done without the last 20 minutes or so. I absolutely loved the series up until RDM groped me like a cheap date at the end of the night.

Baltar was one of my favorites. He was a loony, manipulative, genius plagued by overwhelming guilt and a need for survival. I don't think his character development was very credible, but I did find it entertaining. Really, who elects a mumbling madman to be president besides Americans?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I would submit that it is more Sci-fact than Sci-fi ?

That is complete rubbish! See the many threads in which this claim is soundly debunked.

 

[Guesser7]

I just don't get some of these responses at times.

Of course man has never set foot on the Moon. There is not one shread of honest proof or tangible hard piece of evidence that they were there, end of... Let me give you an example. Prove that I am not sending this response from the Moon! And tomorrow when I return I am going via the Greater Antartica plateau where I will go meteorite hunting an pick up some Moon rocks, and maybe some from Mars. They get thrown up from impacts and get caught in Earths gravitational field y'know. Man on the Moon, don't make me laugh, we can't do it now never mind in the days of transistors.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Please don't derail the thread any further and go see the threads we already have. Note also that you could be penalized for making a crackpot claim.

Here are a few related threads:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=325687
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=101590
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=72825