h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

every now and again when i feel like watching a good sceince fiction film and want to buy a video or dvd I can never fim=nd a really good film at least not one I haven't seen

so can anyone name some?

i thought 'pitch black' was kinda interesting. vin diesel was excellent, and the choice of camera filters n stuff is really interesting. it's quite 'aliens', mind you, but heck, that kind of thing generally works, right?

Good science fiction films. (All views are personal etc.)

2001
Blade Runner
The Matrix
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Fahrenheit 451
The Incredible Shrinking Man (Not entierly sure if that title is correct)

If you've seen all them I'll try to think of some more for you.

Z

2001 I liked
the matrix I liked
Blade runner I saw not so long ago, I taped it off a channel which has a bad recption where I am, but I can't say I like it
The Incredible Shrinking Man, if its the back and white one I seen it but missed the end, not bad though

but I might give the others a try
thanks very much

Depends which blade runner you watched. The Directors cut version is far better than the original transmission version. Basically if the version you saw had a cheesy voiceover soundtrack it wasn't the Directors cut and you haveb't see BR as it should be seen.

The Incredible Shrinking Man is black and white. Seeing the ending is quite important.

Z

There are always the classics, like:

Star Wars
E.T
2001: A Space Oddyssey
Back to the Future
Metropolis

I'm not aware of any new worthwhile new scifi movies coming to the theatres soon. But I am looking forward to the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, the first of which is being released this December.

I'm not sure which version of blade runner, but I might give it another go sometime,

Metropolis, I haven't watched what is it like?

Depends on your point of view. It's a black-and-white silent film. That's how old it is! Your typical copy will include background music, but that's about it. And of course, the timing by today's standards is quite slow. There are the requisite pauses where dialogue cards are held up to the screen so you can read what people are trying to say.

For some people, this will make any movie unbearable. For the rest, the movie is brilliant and interesting in its influence on future scifi movies. Metropolis describes a world where the upper class lives in a commercial utopia, the middle class no longer exists, and the lower class lives in a dystopia marked by massive factories and poverty. Most of the upper class is unaware of the conditions elsewhere, and society is segregated in the extreme.

The story revolves around a young woman who attempts to organize the lower class laborers towards protest and possible revolt. But the upper class villains are determined to prevent her. So they create a robot designed to immitate her in every way, except the robot will lead the workers astray. They organize a switch...

And from there you'll have to get the movie.

So many good films:

2001, A Space Odyssey
Blade Runner
Twelve Monkeys
Alien
A.I.
Forbidden Planet
Planet of the Apes (original is best)
Star Wars

I'm sure I'll think of some more

Zagreb

thanks but I've seen all but AI, which i'd like to sometime

ZARDOZ
Sean Connery as the super-evolved barbarian who penetrates a colony of immortals (post-post apocalypse); the immortals are bored and impotant, fascinated by the creature who can age and die, well...
It's so dang artsy-psychedelic '70s, you just won't be able to stand it; many of the 'special effects' are accomplished (effectively) through pantomime and resonant-harmonic sounds, oh, you probably won't like it, anyway, but I've seen it more than ten times, want the wide screen edition, love it to death.
Join us at second level meditation, or be cast out as Renegade!

See also: Forbidden Planet (only if you can take the psych '70s stuff.)
Paper-cutout animation from Belgium, '73.
A pest animal (human) is adopted by a little-girl type member of a race of giants who exterminate his kind wholesale. Unbeknownst to her he benefits from her teaching devices, and eventually embarks on an oddessey to improve things for his kind.
A nightmarishly beautiful cartoon, not for kids.

I've heard about zardoz, but never giot to see it but I'm keeping my eye out for it.

forbidden planet I've seen not bad as I remember

Is it just me or does anyone else out there dread having movies made from their favorite books? I think Dune is the classic example. Loved the books - was disappointed with the movie and then the made for tv version on the scifi channel. I finally got up enough nerve to watch the Fellowship of the Ring. I was pleasantly surprised.

yeah the novels I've read, have always tended to be better, so i always have a sense of dread when they make a film of them.

When you read a book your imagination creates the characters and settings. It becomes your story. That makes it special. Once it's on screen the story is set in stone. We know what the characters look like, what they sound like, what the settings look like. Then if you go back to the book it's hard not to imagine the actors while you're reading. Don't get me wrong - I like movies. I just have to stop watching the ones made from really good books.

Have you seen the Ralph Bakshi animation as well as the Peter Jackson live action version?

"The One" Jet LI
" The Fifth Element" Bruce Willis
"Buckaroo Banzia & across the Eighth Dimension" Peter Weller
"The Matrix" Keanu Reeves
"Final Fantasy: The Spirits within" (Computer Generated)
"Blade Runner" Harrison Ford
"The Thirteenth Warrior" Antonio Banderas
These are some of my favorites (ones I own) and there are many more.

I hope this helps......

Vanilla Sky IMHO