Science fiction that thinks

2A

2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick, 1968

Still the benchmark for treating the audience as capable of working things out. The last twenty minutes have been argued about for sixty years.

CO

Children of Men

Alfonso Cuarón, 2006

Infertility as a slow social collapse, filmed in long takes that refuse to cut away. It has become more accurate since it was made, which is not a compliment to the world.

TT

The Thing

John Carpenter, 1982

Paranoia with practical effects that still hold up, because they are physical and the camera does not look away. Nobody trusts anybody and the film earns it.

G

Gattaca

Andrew Niccol, 1997

Genetic determinism handled without a single explosion, and the design has aged into looking deliberate rather than dated. The quietest film on this list.

S

Solaris

Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972

Lem’s novel as a film about grief rather than about first contact, which annoyed Lem and works anyway. The long driving sequence is the most science-fictional part.

H

Her

Spike Jonze, 2013

A romance with an operating system that takes the premise seriously all the way to the end, rather than using it as a setup for a joke. The pink is the point.

EM

Ex Machina

Alex Garland, 2014

Three people in a house and a test that is being run on everyone in it. Tight, and it ends exactly where it should.

M

Moon

Duncan Jones, 2009

One actor, one location and a model shoot that looks better than most modern effects. The loneliness is the subject rather than the setting.

P

Primer

Shane Carruth, 2004

A time-travel film made for the price of a used car that refuses to explain itself twice. Watch it with a diagram and it still takes three passes.

A

Annihilation

Alex Garland, 2018

An expedition into a zone where biology stops respecting boundaries, which is a genuinely new kind of threat. Not interested in explaining its own ending.

TL

The Lobster

Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015

A society that turns single people into animals, played completely deadpan, which is what makes the cruelty land. Comedy as a delivery mechanism for despair.

DP

Dune: Part Two

Denis Villeneuve, 2024

The rare blockbuster that treats its own protagonist as the danger. The spectacle is real and it is in service of the argument, which is unusual.

TR

The Road

John Hillcoat, 2009

A father and son walking through a dead world, with the horror kept in what is not shown. Faithful to the book in the way that matters.

AC

A Clockwork Orange

Stanley Kubrick, 1971

Free will versus social engineering, with the audience implicated by how enjoyable the first act is. The gloss is what makes the argument uncomfortable.

TM

The Matrix

The Wachowskis, 1999

The most influential film on this list and no longer the most interesting one, because everything since has borrowed from it. Still a near-perfect first hour.

M

Melancholia

Lars von Trier, 2011

A planet on a collision course used as a way to write about depression honestly rather than sympathetically. The second half is much better than the first.

C

Coherence

James Ward Byrkit, 2013

A dinner party, a passing comet and a group of people who handle it exactly as badly as people would. Improvised, cheap, and better plotted than most of its budget bracket.