A funny thing happened in the 1960s. Well, lots of funny things, really, but for our purposes here a very specific thing happened: sci-fi became cool. There may have been sexy, intelligent sci-fi fare before but not like what was seen with Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. Rather than the over the top creature features and overblown alien invasions that dominated '50s science-fiction films, modern iterations have been more reflective, more concerned with the human and technological element of the equation.
Spectrum Culture has compiled a list of the best sci-fi films from the last 40 years, works that illustrate this evolution in the tone of sci-fi itself. The most difficult issue was establishing the parameters for the list. Television and mini-series were not eligible, hence the lack of Battlestar Galactica. Similarly questionable subgenres like the recent rise of the superhero film were also eliminated. This is a list more concerned with works that are aware of the structures and themes of sci-fi and attempt to rewrite them in a new image. Some, like Alien and Blade Runner, have a defining aesthetic that has had an enormous influence on films even outside the genre; others, like Dark Star and Brazil, are post-modern in their commentary on advancement itself, crafting a bleakly humorous examination of where humanity might actually be heading; and still others force viewers to question what the boundaries of sci-fi even are, such as Dead Ringers and 28 Days Later do.
Admittedly some years left us with hardly anything to choose from, while others like 1982 had us fighting over multiple worthy entries. Even at its goofiest, modern sci-fi is a genre that creates more questions than it answers, creating What If? scenarios and predictions that aren't meant to be accurate so much as they're meant to be warnings, or commentary on where we as a civilization are right now. Taking a look at this list, you may detect trends in certain decades, or notice that other years suddenly become backwards-looking. Maybe some films will seem somewhat laughable now while others seem scarily accurate. And really, isn't that all part of the fun? - Morgan Davis
1968: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Dir: Stanley Kubrick)
As long as there have been movies, there have been dreamers who have taken us to other worlds and introduced us to alien creatures, stretching our very human, manifest dream beyond the confines of our own atmosphere. However, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey stands as a monolithic turning point where once seen, like the ape men in the film's "Dawn of Man" sequence, the science fiction genre has never been the same since. If we look at prior science fiction masterpieces such as Forbidden Planet or The Day the Earth Stood Still, most feature the same plot structures, conflicts and conventions as any other earthbound studio film (Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man is a glaring exception). In 2001, Kubrick makes an abstract tone poem to our place in this universe. This is not an easy film to get mindlessly lost inside, though the final space voyage beyond Jupiter influenced an entire generation of stoners to see the film over and over under the influence of different opiates. No, Kubrick's icy, inhuman depiction of outer space floats before us like the work of Mark Rothko. Some may call the scenes drawn-out, but Kubrick is possessed with the minutiae of his voyages from ape to the moon to Jupiter and beyond.
There is so much about 2001 that has influenced science fiction. From its design of spaceships to the use of stately classical music to the meditative silence of its vacuous space, you can see traces of 2001 in classics from Star Wars and Alien to films years later like the recent Moon. Though 40 years have passed since the release, it is easy to forget that we hadn't even landed on the moon in 1968. Kubrick and 2001 leave so many indelible images burned into our consciousness: the first encounter of the apes with the Monolith, the drifting of spaceships to Strauss' "Blue Danube," the dying pleas of HAL, the Star Child. Like the best of the genre that followed in its heavy footprints, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not about merely entertaining the masses. Like the evolutionary steps traced within its 139 minutes, 2001 served as the gateway to new possibilities in film, the impetus that allowed filmmakers to dream and a pathway to take us beyond the norm. - David Harris
1969: The Illustrated Man (Dir: Jack Smight)
The film version of The Illustrated Man, has only a vague similarity to the collection of Ray Bradbury short stories of the same name about a mysterious drifter whose entire body is covered in mysterious tattoos. Carl (Rod Steiger) is the vicious title character obsessed with finding the woman who covered him in "skin illustrations"... so he can murder her for it. See, each tattoo comes to life as a story and director Jack Smight uses them as a springboard to a series of interlocking vignettes.The Illustrated Man is steeped in the grainy, overheated imagery of the late '60s- even the illustrations are vaguely psychedelic. But as a story, it's all Bradbury. His infectious sense of adventure, fear and nostalgia permeate every scene, bridging the great gap between the golden age of pulp science fiction and the increasingly self-aware and cosmically reaching permutations slowly taking over the genre. In just a few brief vignettes of homicidal, independent children, planets with rainstorms so powerful and constant they can drive a man mad and Edenic futures doomed by a universal dream, Bradbury's visions show how some of the most powerful stories can be those of an older time. - Nathan Kamal
1970: Colossus: The Forbin Project (Dir: Joseph Sargent)
Filmed just before détente with the Soviets, Colossus: The Forbin Project gives a glimpse of the logical conclusion of a society already willing to imprison itself to survive the Cold War. Colossus is the predecessor of the The Terminator's SkyNet, a self-sufficient computer designed to have sole control over America's nuclear arsenal. The specter of annihilation seems to have weighed so heavily on the minds of government officials and scientists that there is rejoicing when the fate of the world is pawned off to an amoral toaster oven which develops a taste for control and the belief that its superior will must be forced on civilization.
Social commentary only really works in science fiction if it can be addressed from the cradle. The threshold for one constitutes a reasonable society must be a fairly high one or else its populous will suffer a host of horrors. Colossus finds its voice by showing a world in its last paces before lurching into tyranny. As the American and Soviet leadership scramble to foil Colossus, they are defeated by the weapons which they didn't trust themselves with in the first place. The scientists and politicians who are portrayed as heroes come across as dead-eyed pragmatists which aren't much better than the villainous computer they aim to foil. By the end of the film we see them as Colossus does; as inhuman automatons who must be mastered and threatened to achieve stability. Their abdication of the struggle of peace is on par with original sin with the manipulation of knowledge used to fill a void once occupied by empathy. - Neal Fersko
1971: A Clockwork Orange (Dir: Stanley Kubrick)
So how exactly is A Clockwork Orange science fiction? There are no aliens, no spaceships and no magical weapons. Yet, much like George Orwell's 1984, Stanley Kubrick's take on Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel is a satiric look at a dystopia where amoral violence is countered by unethical State-sponsored therapies. As a look at dehumanization using different tracts of aggression- physical, emotional, sexual- A Clockwork Orange poses the question does violence beget more violence. True, many people will be turned off by its keen depiction of wanton cruelty, but how can one depict a society putrefying from the inside out without being graphic? As we follow Alex (a stunning Malcolm McDowell) and his howling pack of Droogs from one violent encounter to another, Kubrick dares us not to the blame the young men, but the apathy and negligence of a society that allowed them to reach this level of reckless behavior. Once Alex is incarcerated, his captors castrate him of his violent tendencies. Rather than root out the societal source, they only focus on the destruction of the individual. Much like Orwell, much like Huxley. However, A Clockwork Orange would not be the same harrowing vision without the bravura of Kubrick's direction and the inclusion of classical works ranging from Beethoven to Puccini, not to mention Walter Carlos' haunting score. As incarceration becomes a booming business today, perhaps Kubrick and Burgess weren't too far off. There's money to be made from crime. You just have to be on the right side of the law. - David Harris
1972: Solaris (Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky)
Andrei Tarkovsky's collaboration with Stanislaw Lem, author of the film's source novel, was buoyed with tension, because his will was to deviate from Lem's work in order to create something that would stand as a work unto itself, rather than an adaptation of another. His film focused more on his characters' internal worlds than the scientific oddities that they faced. What resulted was a science fiction film that, rather than being propelled by and for a scenario of scientific speculation, was driven by the metaphysical implications of what it presented.
Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis), is a psychologist sent on a mission, light years away, to a space station orbiting just above the planet Solaris. What's unusual about this planet is its apparent sentience, which has driven the station's crew mad, accessing their memories and using them against its intruders. While they experienced mere hallucinations, however, Kelvin is forced to face the physical manifestation of his harshest demons - he wakes up next to his long-dead wife, Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk), who killed herself years earlier after a heated argument with Kelvin. This manifestation doesn't recall herself as he does, but as she learns more about her supposed past, she attempts to enact it again, only to find that, as a living vision, she is immune to death. As the film progresses she begins to forge an identity separate from that of the woman she resembles and Kelvin struggles with the prospect of falling in love with a new version of the same person.
What results is an uneasy, hallucinatory science fiction exploration of self, love and regret. Tarkovsky's trademark long takes, languorous pacing and obsessive production design result in a haunting work that can truly be considered otherworldly. He was never fully satisfied with the film, feeling that it hadn't successfully transcended the genre of science fiction to stand on its own as a unique form of cinematic expression, but he was being uncharitable with himself. It's certainly his most accessible film, but that's no slight against it. It was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes that year, became a worldwide sensation, and, despite the fact that it played on only five screens in all of Russia, was something of a hit in the motherland as well. - Andrei Alupului
1973: Fantastic Planet (Dir: René Laloux)
Released in France under the much cooler title La planète sauvage, Fantastic Planet has never been much more than a cult film in these United States, distributed by Roger Corman and mostly unnoticed, despite its special jury prize win at Cannes. If you want to see its lasting legacy, you need only turn to some of MTV's classic Liquid Television shorts or some of the current crop of shows on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block, like Superjail and Xavier: Renegade Angel; animation that's primarily conceptually driven, unfolding one new surreal idea after another with relentless pacing.
The story takes place in the future, on the home planet of a giant (around 100 times bigger than humans) race of humanoid aliens called Draags, who've taken people, known as Oms, as pets. While the film does have a narrative thrust - it primarily tracks one human named Terr, who manages to escape captivity with a great deal of information on the Draags, ending up in a rebel human village located in a tree, where he helps lead an uprising - it's also notable for the way that this narrative unfolds, which is only with a passing interest in plot. There's a way that this film compels you to glaze over expectations of narrative, and the primary appeal is in the level of detail and thought that's put into the environment itself and the customs of the beings and creatures you are watching. In a lot of ways, it feels like an animated anthropological documentary, with the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch as one of its primary visual influences. - Andrei Alupului
1974: Dark Star (Dir: John Carpenter)
Even if Dark Star was a horrible film, it'd still be a milestone for modern sci-fi because it introduced John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon to the world. Carpenter went on to create revolutionary works that were as likely to make you laugh as they were to make you curl up in terror all throughout the '70s and '80s and O'Bannon is the primary creative force behind Alien. The blueprints for what both of these geniuses would later explore are visible throughout Dark Star but the film is more than just a stepping stone for two of the most dynamic careers in film history.
Like so many other sci-fi classics, Dark Star is about humanity's fascination with technology ultimately being its own undoing. However, a key difference between the technology of Dark Star and something like 2001 is that here technology functions as it does in present day: not very well. Just like the dishwashers, refrigerators and photo copiers of today, the smart bombs and spaceships in Dark Star are dysfunctional messes, usually more irritating than they are helpful. Luckily, we don't have to prove to the Xerox machine that we deserve to live as Dark Star's characters ultimately have to do with the damaged smart bomb in their hull. The struggle of man trying to convince machine that life is important is such a simple idea yet it offers more than even the most complex plot. Dark Star didn't have a gigantic budget or mind blowing special effects, it simply had a concept everyone could relate to and laugh at even as they felt a little anxious at the not-too-fantastic notion that technology may one day take us all out. - Morgan Davis
1975: A Boy and His Dog (Dir: L.Q. Jones)
During the Cold War the idea of a world devastated by nuclear bombs wasn't so hard to believe. Post-apocalyptic films were a thriving sub-genre but until the '70s they mostly centered around humanity's dubious ability to rise above anything. The Harlan Ellison novella that A Boy and His Dog was adapted from was written during the peak of this paranoia at the end of the '60s. In true Ellison style, its characters are nearly all insufferable assholes, including its protagonist, Vic, and the titular dog, Blood.
Unlike most adaptations of Ellison's work, the film retains the novel's dark tone. Vic, played by future Miami Vice cop Don Johnson, is concerned only with fulfilling his base desires, namely eating and sex. The problem, of course, is that in this world both food and women are scarce. In later years the film would come under fire for its supposed misogynist overtones and brutally violent atmosphere but the fact remains that in the type of world depicted in A Boy and His Dog, morals wouldn't exactly be in high supply. Like the Road Warrior films it would directly influence, A Boy and His Dog is harsh but it by no means glorifies or celebrates the violence of its reality. It is instead concerned with showing that humans aren't necessarily basically good and argues that morals are the creation of civilization and once civilization is removed from the picture, there's no reason for them to remain, especially if no one is left to instill law or ethics. The alternate history of the film allows the movie to break away from the tradition of predicting apocalypse and this in turn helps it make its intentions clearer. It doesn't matter when or if humanity destroys itself, the fact remains that at their core, people are always capable of awful things. - Morgan Davis
1976: The Man Who Fell to Earth (Dir: Nicolas Roeg)
David Bowie (appropriately) plays Thomas Newton, a visitor to Earth who uses his alien technology to secure numerous patents that help form a massive conglomerate to fund his trip to his home planet. But most of this is understated background in Nicolas Roeg's film, which emphasizes Newton's experience on Earth as he couples with a simple hotel worker called Mary-Lou (Candy Clark) and attempts to deal with life on Earth in the most satirical way possible: by drinking and watching TV. With his bright red hair, pale skin, feminine figure and British accent Newton sticks out. We can see The Man Who Fell to Earth as a film about immigration and culture shock.
Much like how George Lucas intended THX 1138 to be a movie from the future, Roeg fashioned The Man Who Fell to Earth as a film seen from the eyes of the alien. Its timeline is unclear and cut up: Newton doesn't age, but his human counterparts do, so for the viewer they become markers of time. We're confused by the narrative as Newton is confused by our planet, the only stark clarity coming from the flashbacks to Newton's home planet, which depict his family in space suits approaching some kind of interstellar tram. To us and to Newton, this is the only thing that makes sense. The Man Who Fell to Earth is, above all, about bodies, what they do, and where they end up. Some start innocent and end up deteriorated by the years while others find themselves at the liquor store on Christmas Eve. Still others, despite their noble intentions, find themselves fallen, stranded somewhere they never meant to stay, too drunk and downtrodden to look to the stars. - Danny Djeljosevic
1977: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Dir: Steven Spielberg)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out the same year as Star Wars, showing late '70s filmgoers two extremes of what science fiction can depict -- the latter a fantastical space opera, the former an earthbound drama of alien contact -- yet both delivered the same childlike sense of wonder. Spielberg's film was a critical and financial success, but was overshadowed by George Lucas' space-faring pulp adventure. Close Encounters never invented a subculture but is a landmark sci-fi film nonetheless.
While the film in its final 1998 director's cut is overlong and spends way too much time on Richard Dreyfuss' nebbish schlub going alienatingly mad with his UFO obsession (the cinéaste/hard sci-fi enthusiast in me begs for more of François Truffaut's French scientist to identify with), but the film's final half-hour proves the ultimate payoff: the alien spaceship lands and government scientists communicate with the visitors via synthesized tones and colorful lights. It's a tense sequence playing off of our preconceived notions of what aliens do in cinema that eventually gives way to uplifting positivity towards the future of humankind. In Close Encounters you can see seeds for future Spielberg sci-fi films. The wide-eyed interaction of child and alien resurfaces in E.T. and A.I. while the frenzied evacuation scenes, the ruined countryside and the alien musical calls become signature moments in Spielberg's flawed War of the Worlds, which is, in many ways, a pessimistic remake of Close Encounters. - Danny Djeljosevic
1978: The Boys From Brazil (Dir: Franklin J. Schaffner)
It's funny how some films can be soaked up by the cultural consciousness in a manner that makes new viewers feel they've already seen the work. The Boys from Brazil is no exception and, as is the case with nearly every work based off an Ira Levin novel, it has been spoofed and parodied beyond all recognition over the years. While that may somewhat diminish its impact and lead to the material being funny when it shouldn't be (and lord knows the upcoming Brett Ratner redo will not help things), the thing is any work that receives heavy saturation through parody or referencing had to have something in the first place.
For The Boys from Brazil, that something is the ultimate What If situation everyone has heard and thought about: given the chance, would you kill Hitler when he was a child? Except, in this case, there is no time travel scenario, there is no chance that doing so will halt the Holocaust we are all intimately aware of nearly a century after the fact. No, the hypothetical in this particular scenario is a new beast altogether and features a technology that, unlike time travel, we not only have the capacity to one day use in every day life but which is already in existence: cloning. The Boys from Brazil is sometimes rightfully criticized for its overblown climax, but that doesn't change how revolutionary its concept was in its time and how relevant it still is. Yes, 30 years on everyone has come across those hilariously inept works that feature a resurrected Hitler but The Boys from Brazil did it one better with its literal Hitler youth, all technically blank slates who may have the potential to do monstrous things but haven't yet. It's the ultimate nature versus nurture argument. So, what would you do? - Morgan Davis
1979: Alien (Dir: Ridley Scott)
Picture this- two grown men in the middle of a bright summer afternoon, watching a movie nearly three decades old and still getting scared. That's just what happened to my best friend and me when we last watched Ridley Scott's seminal work of science fiction terror. Despite the hour of the day and our laughter afterwards, both of us still jumped out of our seats at that scene when the alien is RIGHT BEHIND Tom Skerrit. Developed and rewritten from a comedic scene in 1974's Dark Star, the simple tale of desperation in deep space and the terrifying force of the eponymous, H.R. Giger-designed beast still resonates through all these years. Perhaps it's the sheer enormity and darkness of the labyrinthine spacecraft Nostromo or maybe the grisly, almost-familiarity of the Xenomorph, which comes close to having human characteristics while remaining resolutely unknowable. It could even be how the implacable greediness of the crew's employer uncomfortably mirrors the eventually unstoppable massacre. But whether it's the strange organics of the visuals, the convoluted and revolutionary sexual politics (personified by Sigourney Weaver as near-perfect survivor Ripley) or the simple pleasure of gloom and doom, Alien is something special and horrifying. I guess it's true that in space no one can hear you scream, but our neighbors could sure hear us. - Nathan Kamal
1980: The Empire Strikes Back (Dir: Irvin Kershner)
My early childhood can practically be measured by the original Star Wars trilogy. I can't even remember a time when I did not have an encyclopedic knowledge of all three movies, but it's always been the Irvin Kershner-directed middle installment The Empire Strikes Back that has merited the most devotion from me, as well as most diehard fans. Whereas A New Hope wore its Kurosawa devotion a little too on the sleeve and Return of the Jedi admittedly contained teddy bears defeating the most feared crack commandoes in the galaxy, Empire is the height of space opera. This is the movie where the heroic aspects of science fiction fully exploded into mythology and the grime of playfulness suddenly became true tragedy and loss of innocence. Time has allowed the entire trilogy to permeate the popular consciousness so fully that no aspect of its story has not already been commented on, parodied and examined- but it's very easy to forget the overwhelming darkness of Empire. Throughout the film, our protagonists are harried, wounded and betrayed; they lose faith in themselves, are tortured and outwitted at every turn. Everyone may remember Darth Vader's climactic, iconic revelation, but it's more difficult for an audience to acknowledge that their heroes lost. And that's Empire's great achievement- to enrapture us even while we lose hope for our beloved protagonists. - Nathan Kamal
1981: The Road Warrior (Dir: George Miller)
The Road Warrior is the middle and best of the Mad Max trilogy. Like Evil Dead 2, it's similar to the first entry, but far superior. Plenty of films have imagined the future, but few have offered such a credible vision. Here, the future is a bleak, sparsely populated, barren and violent version of the Australian outback. And everybody's dressed like they raided the only thrift store/leather shop left standing. In a somewhat prescient move, the chief commodity people battle over is oil. One of the main qualities that makes The Road Warrior so good is that there's something primal, elemental, about it. The filmmakers pare it down to just essentials and it has a powerful, single-minded austerity to it. It's unburdened with excess of plot, character or dialogue. There's nothing superfluous added. Yet it's not without a certain oddball sense of humor and one of the many qualities that separates it from run of the mill action movies is the abundance of quirky, colorful supporting characters, such as the leather boys and the gyro pilot. At the center is Mel Gibson, playing a futuristic update of Eastwood's Man with No Name. In what could be Gibson's defining role, he's hard-eyed, unsparing and coiled, just like the film. The climax is simply one of the most exciting and best staged car chases on film. It recalls classic chases from movies like The General, Stagecoach and The French Connection, but it has a raw energy and ferocity all its own. The use of the landscape is highly effective, the score is by Queen guitarist Brian May, and there's a nifty twist at the end as well. One of the finest action sci-fi movies ever made. - Lukas Sherman
1982: E.T.--The Extra-Terrestrial (Dir: Steven Spielberg)
While compiling this list, 1982 proved to be one of the milestone years of modern science fiction film. How can one choose between the nihilistic darkness of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, the cuddly alien of E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial or the gore-splattered shape shifter of John Carpenter's The Thing? Well, we decided to deal with Blade Runner later (see Part Two of the list) but that leaves innocent, cuddly E.T. versus the gnashing teeth of The Thing. Hipster cool be damned, but Steven Spielberg made the better film. Maybe too big of a deal is made of certain filmmakers inviting us to re-capture the youthful innocence of our childhood, and like the recent Star Wars franchise proved, infantile does not necessarily equal innocent. Though some may consider Spielberg's tale of the alien left behind to be too saccharine, there is a darkness burbling under its glossy surface. Xenophobia, divorce, the lost magic of growing up and the tenuous bonds of trust and friendship are explored as Elliott (Henry Thomas) and E.T. try to find a way for the alien to get back home. This is not just some Happy Meal cash grab. Spielberg's fondness for film lore (just look for his John Ford homage- it's not that subtle), rich characters and his sense of propulsive pacing make the film gripping, deep and engaging. Perhaps his biggest achievement of all is allowing us to believe that a piece of plastic and rubber is alive, that bicycles can fly and that cut fingers can be mended with the touch of a true friend. - David Harris
1983: Videodrome (Dir: David Cronenberg)
David Cronenberg is the king of psychosexual, insectile, post-modern creepiness and Videodrome is one of his cold-shower-inducing crowning achievements. Optimized for maximum discomfort at all times, this thriller starts sleazy and creepy and only gets worse. Max Renn (James Woods) runs a scummy TV station in Toronto, gaining most of his audience via softcore porn, but on the hunt for something "harder." When one of his employees draws his attention to a snuff show called "Videodrome," broadcasting out of Malaysia, Renn starts to pirate the signal and runs it on his network. Only later does he realize that the show itself broadcasts waves that give its viewers malignant brain tumors that result in violent hallucinations. As the story carries on we meet a character who exists entirely within a television, and uncover a vast conspiracy centered entirely around the manipulative powers of television and the attempts to create a new species of television-integrated humanity.
It's a fucked up, ugly, horrifying movie that is also simultaneously a cultural studies student's wet dream. Octave Mirbeau by way of Thomas Pynchon, this film plays with the way that television has integrated itself into our lives in both fantastically literal and subtle ways, and, while its concepts swirl around each other loosely, they're sealed up within an airtight container. It's a definite product of the '80s, and that's part of its strength as well. Back when TV consisted primarily of airwaves rather than digital signals, there was a sense, much like with radio, that you were allowing people into your home. The signals were more easily hijacked and the prospect of picking up things you weren't necessarily supposed to see was more probable. A lot of the film's creepiness stems from these feelings, and indeed the germ of the film came from Cronenberg's childhood, when he tried to pick up signals from New York while above the border in Canada, and felt an unease about what he was watching - a sense of lingering danger that something ugly could come up at any moment. In the case of Videodrome, it often does. - Andrei Alupului
1984: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Dir: W. D. Richter)
In 1984 the sci-fi genre was awash with both the good and the bad. Classics such as Terminator and Dune rubbed theatrical shoulders with The Alien Dead and The Brother from Another Planet. Then there was The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Buckaroo is a larger than life character: lead singer in a rock band, brain surgeon, comic book character and all around hero - and he just happens to stop aliens from inter-dimensional war. Peter Weller plays the title character, tasked to defeat the evil aliens from a planet in the 8th dimension. The Hong Kong Cavaliers make up his side kicks, whom, when not protecting earth from destruction, are his back up rock band and all around snappy dressers. John Lithgow plays Dr. Lizardo whom later becomes the evil alien Lord John Whorfin. From beginning to end, this movie is strange and yet enjoyable strictly based on how off beat it is. With a cast that includes Christopher Lloyd, Ellen Barkin and Jeff Goldblum, the action is quick and generally non-stop. Though the film didn't have the best special effects for its time, it did have plenty of odd characters and an original storyline that holds its own, with good acting and plenty of directional changes. Although Buckaroo flopped in theatres, it has gained a large cult following, with numerous websites, bootlegs with alternate endings and unauthorized soundtracks, as well as actual comic books and two failed attempts at a TV version. Pick up the DVD and give it a second try. It just might make its way into your favorites. - Josh Vietti
1985: Brazil (Dir: Terry Gilliam)
Before Brazil could anyone have predicted Terry Gilliam's career? Prior to his masterpiece, Gilliam was the least visible member of the Monty Python crew, rarely appearing in sketches but responsible for their animation as well as co-directing their features. Sure, Jabberwocky and Time Bandits had beautiful moments, though the former is an outright mess and the latter is a relatively light affair. With Brazil, Gilliam revealed himself to be one of the most imaginative directors in years.
Brazil is any number of things: a dystopian satire, a humorous look at the extremes of British bureaucracy, a cautionary tale about letting fantasy consume your life. It's also a gorgeous, surprisingly intimate look into an artist's imagination that twists classic storytelling techniques and archetypes until they're hardly recognizable. The bumbling hero who could save the day if he could just gain a spine, the damsel in distress who's actually much stronger and capable than the man trying to "save" her, the forces of darkness trying to keep the status quo no matter the cost. Two decades later, Brazil feels new; its design and aesthetic still revolutionary and influential, its story still fresh and as rooted in reality as it is in sci-fi and fantasy. Despite the outlandish sets and sheer size of the production, the story is intimate and human. The characters, from Jonathan Pryce's wage slave Sam Lowry to Ian Holm as his helpless boss Mr. Kurtzmann to Kim Greist's would-be love interest Jill Layton, are deeply flawed and troubled. Brazil remains Gilliam's greatest work; he blends his more whimsical tendencies with a darker commentary on society without feeling pretentious or bloated, asking if any dream worth having is one worth dying for. - Morgan Davis
1986: The Fly (Dir: David Cronenberg)
Part "Science Gone Mad" horror flick and part body horror gorefest, David Cronenberg recasts the 1958 Vincent Price monster movie as a more intimate account of bodies and disease. The general idea is the same -- scientist puts himself in a teleportation device but gets his genes spliced with a housefly -- but where the original's Andre Delambre suddenly appears as a monster, Cronenberg's Seth Brundle undergoes a mutation that is slow and gradual like a disease. A film about disease in the 1980s where the love interest wants an abortion rather than let her baby suffer the same fate as the protagonist? While seeing it as an AIDS allegory is sound interpretation, The Fly is also about bodies and aging. Brundle, a man who maintains a uniform wardrobe to save time picking clothes, invents teleportation to save travel time. As he slowly transforms into a monster, he goes from child (energetic, hopped up on sugar) to teenager (zits, mood swings) to adult (slightly more clearheaded, regretful of his actions) and beyond as his hair thins and his body begins to literally fall apart. When he finally transforms into the fly monster (oh, please tell me you saw it coming the moment you heard the title), he has crossed a threshold; he has become death. The other characters are desperate to keep away from him, slow him down and struggle to make him go away permanently. The Fly is a film about life and existential horror: she wants to abort the baby because she does not want it to die. - Danny Djeljosevic
1987: RoboCop (Dir: Paul Verhoeven)
Written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner, RoboCop seems remembered by kids who grew up in the '80s as a goofy, fun thrill ride, albeit an ultra-violent one; violence in late '80s action films was utterly gourmet and the always-polarizing Paul Verhoeven was the Jacques Pepin of this particular gastronomy. I beg these kids and anyone else to take a second look at the film now; this was made 20 years before Blackwater or Halliburton ever became household names and 20 years before corporate free-reign led the country into the overwhelming financial pit most of us find ourselves in today. America presently medicates itself with dumbed-down media just like RoboCop's popular TV program, a "Benny Hill-like" tawdry romp, with scantily clad models engaging in naughty hijinks, before the pedophiliac comic relief exclaims, "I'D BUY THAT FOR A DOLLAR,}" much to all viewers' delight. Just as today, conspicuous consumption is played up as a moral ideal in fake ads Verhoeven inserts into the film; the most lusted-after car is the mammoth 6000 SUX which delivers its driver a whopping nine miles to the gallon. This is roughly 20 years before Mike Judge's Idiocracy, a much less subtle satire of where we're going as a society, should we continue to eat the bullshit that's fed to us.
Though the allegorical satire of corporate America, neighborhood gentrification, and the obsolescence of human labor is hard to outdo, the cast is priceless. Peter Weller actually studied with a world-famous mime to become comfortable with robotic body language and both Ronny Cox and Miguel Ferrer (as the up-and-coming executive who designed RoboCop) play the weaselly, WASPy, Good Old Boys they'd also play in every other of their movies but never better than here. Though much of the credit here is due to Kurtwood Smith, whose beady-eyed, balding Boddicker struts it like a thug half his age, even wearing a black scarf as a fashion accessory- and pulling it off. Boddicker is a classic, underrated cinema villain made unforgettable and completely deviant by Smith's seemingly small touches; during a business deal with a cocaine distributor, Boddicker, mid-conversation, sticks his fingers in the man's wine then pulls them back for a quick sniff.
Though its impact may have been sullied by two flat sequels, a children's cartoon and a short-lived syndicated TV series, RoboCop is getting its due as a visionary statement made through the vocabulary of science fiction. In what is perhaps the only way Hollywood can show its appreciation for a work, the film is under development to be remade, this time directed by Darren Aronofsky. Don't look for Weller to be involved; he refuses to discuss anything RoboCop related, instead showing up as a "Renaissance Era Expert" on The History Channel in between episodes of 24. Hey, business is where you find it. - Chris Middleman
1988: Dead Ringers (Dir: David Cronenberg)
Dead Ringers cannot be completely defined by a single genre category; it's at once a drama, an art film, a horror film and, given the major role played by the themes of technology and machinery, an elusive sci-fi mind fuck. Despite the great financial and critical success of The Fly, David Cronenberg had to fight studio development executives who felt men in blood red suits operating on mutant women with medieval-looking surgical instruments was an inaccessible concept. After 10 years and repeated requests that he make the twins lawyers, Cronenberg got the money.
Gynecologists, Elliot and Beverly Mantle's (Jeremy Irons) interest in infertility stems from a yearning to understand their own mutancy as identical twins, but more significantly, the source of their mutancy, their mother and thus women as a whole. Dead Ringers demonstrates Cronenberg's critical eye for sexual politics as he places himself in the operating room, immediately connecting women's anxiety over their fertility with the filmmaking process itself. "We make women fertile, and that's all we do," concedes Beverly with pride; ultimately though, their technological mastery over the body as broken machine can do no more than repair women without understanding them. Love interest (and point of contention between the twins) Claire's body is a site of surplus capable of ingesting both massive quantities of pills and emotional abuse. Just as William Burroughs suggested, the body makes its own junk. Fertility and addiction collapse into one another, and it's exactly this excess the Mantles want to master and be mastered by. Dead Ringers is fascinating and difficult yet measured and balanced. The striking and frighteningly sympathetic performances and mature approach to unnerving taboo material forces audiences out of their comfort zone. Cronenberg deftly explores the male mind and the female body in the most literal of senses, avoiding middle class sensibilities and revealing secrets about the human self--our bodies, our sexual identities, our addictions--that few other artists could handle with even a fraction of his success. - Teri Carson
[Graphic: Brian Raquipiso]
