#1 Close Encounters With The Third Kind, 1977

Nothing like a classic aliens and kids movie, Spielberg’s Close Encounters was harsher and stranger than the films he made afterwards. The film got released in 1977 and had stunning visual effects and the musical notes used to communicate with the UFOs were a genius stroke from John Williams. The film is much more than a naive wonder and whimsy at the prospect of visitors from another planet.

#2 E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, 1982

A classic sci-fi family film is laden with sweetness of friendship between two life-forms from different planets. The basic plot is just like any other alien movie: E.T. is left behind on Earth and ends up befriending a 10-year old kid, ensuing in shenanigans. Still, E.T. is, in many ways, much different from other films with a similar conceit as Spielberg focused more on childhood and emotional bonds.

#3 Alien, 1979

Alien was directed by sci-fi pioneer Ridley Scott and struggled to get funding in its initial phase of conception until Star Wars showed up to turn the tables. Set in classic sci-fi inspired claustrophobic atmosphere, it is a story of a commercial spaceship that encounters a deadly Alien that leaves a death-trail and destruction in its wake. The brilliance lied in the terrifying way used to build suspense and never show the full horror.

#4 The Terminator, 1984

The year is 1984 and a cyborg assassin sent from 2029 to kill a woman whose son could be the savior of humanity in the post apocalyptic future! This film was “The Film” that propelled Arnold Schwarzenegger’s and James Cameroon’s career for greatness. Relentless and violent pace covered up for the cheesy script and the film got celebrated in the pop culture.

#5 Back To The Future, 1985

Reflecting the spirit of the age, though Back To The Future lacked a little seriousness of its 80s sci-fi contemporaries, Michael J Fox’x vision of fanciful 2015 with DeLorens and hoverboards, self-tying shoes and flying cars, but he did not stop there. He released its second part in 1989 followed by the final instalment of the trilogy in 1990 with a western spin on a tried-and-tested formula.

#6 Jurassic Park, 1993

Directed by Steven Spielberg, Jurassic Park was, for the audience, a venture into the extinct. With amazing visual effects and extreme detail, Spielberg almost convinced us that such a thing as bringing back the extinct was quite possible. The plot of the story is set in the world where people go to Jurassic Park for amusement where they keep all kinds of dinosaurs and, as expected, one day the hell breaks loose.

#7 Contact, 1997

The genius of Carl Sagan drools out of his novel Contact, which later got adapted to be a film, but with the same title. The story beautifully touches the questions of science and religion in the process, where Dr Ellie Arroway works at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, attempting to contact the extraterrestrials. Eventually, a repeating system appears from Vega Star System, and she enters an international race to decipher the code, to be chosen to respond to the message.

#8 Men In Black, 1997

This comic-based and fun-filled film questioned the contemporary ideology of serious sci-fi cinema. The story follows a secret organization that goes by the name ‘Men In Black’ where they are tasked with supervising aliens on Earth and make sure they get into no trouble and they use “neurolyzers” to erase human memory. This film turned into a franchise with a lot of spin-offs, but couldn’t beat the original one.

#9 The Truman Show, 1998

Today, The Truman Show, released in 1998 might not seem like a sci-fi movie. It discussed the anxieties related with mass surveillance. In today’s world, we might have become a little more welcoming to the never-blinking electronic eyes, this movie follows Jim Carrey as he realizes that his life was a reality TV show and every incident was scripted. This film had a huge cultural impact and even inspired the name of a psychological condition.

#10 The Matrix, 1999

The movie that established Keanu Reaves was an ultimate fusion of modern science and philosophy of existence and perception. The film is set in a world where everyone is hustling in their daily lives which is actually inside a computer program. Intense action scenes that drew from martial arts and Japanese animation makes the film a treat to watch.

#11 Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, 2004

The plot is set in a contemporary world that shows terrifying aspects of technology on a large scale. Story follows Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) who meet on a train and fall in love, only to later realize that they had lived that experience already. Film charts memory-erasing firm, the relationships between its employees and their difficult decisions. Beautiful and dreamy with uncharacteristically heartfelt performances earned it a cult following and widespread acclaim.

#12 Inception, 2010

One of the most acclaimed and hard-to-grasp films of Christopher Nolan, it feels like a James Bond movie in a heist film. Near-perfect screenplay executing every dreamworld with precision, flair and humor, the film is an experimental masterpiece. The hero of the movie builds a team of people who understand the dreamworld and uses technology to infiltrate into powerful people’s dreams. Hans Zimmer’s music and DiCaprio’s performance is a mind-bending story is an amazing cinematic piece.

#13 Source Code, 2011

Director Duncan Jones’s Source code was his another critically acclaimed hit after his debut in Moon. Jake Glynhaal plays the character of a US Army who wakes up in someone else’s body, who is a school teacher in a commuter train. Later, train explodes and he wakes up inside a cockpit where he is told that he is in a simulation and on a mission to go back and find the bomber within an eight minute window.

#14 Limitless, 2011

Dismayed by his bleak future facing unemployment and girlfriend’s rejection, Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) tries an experimental nootropic drug known by the name NZT. This drug gives him a razor sharp mind and as he rises to the top of the financial world, he attracts the attention of a tycoon Robert De Niro. But to the down-side of the drug, it has deadly side-effects and a dwindling supply.

#15 Snowpiercer, 2013

Snowpiercer is an exciting take in the apocalyptic genre. Tightly woven plot with a touch of claus-trophobia, the film is set on a train barrelling towards end of humanity, where an attempt to curb climate change goes wrong and creates a new Earth where the train is carrying the last living people are wrecked by a mutiny. In the hands of less capable writers and actors, it would have been just another action film with an ambitious plot line.

#16 Her, 2013

Director Spike Jonze built a romantic story around a depressed writer, Theodore who lives a lonely life in futuristic version of LA. He upgrades an operating system which introduces him to an AI virtual assistant that calls itself Samantha. While going through an impending divorce, Samatha’s influence on his life stretches past purely practical and rather than delving into sci-fi tropes, ‘Her’ explores sweetness of intimacy and technology, puts the film in a new dimension.

#17 Gravity, 2013

Alfonso Cuarón didn’t set out to write a film about space, he wanted to showcase human adversity and resilience. Story revolves around two scientists who get stranded in space orbiting the Earth and what they must overcome to return to the Earth safely. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney delivered amazing performances and brilliant visual effects made it a less straightforward sci-fi and a complex masterpiece.

#18 Interstellar, 2014

Christopher Nolan’s another masterpiece that tells the story about a mission to find a new world for humanity to sustain. The story is more emotional than philosophical, and one could drive a bus through the gaping paradox of its time and gravity bending ending. One of the rare super successful films with brilliance of Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway with Hans Zimmer’s soundtracks and depicting Earth in final throes of global ecological collapse adds to its scale and drama.

#19 Lucy, 2014

Set in a world run by the mob, street gangs, drug addicts and corrupt cops, Lucy (Scarlett Johans-son), who lives in Taipei, is forced to work as a drug mule for a mob. A new drug is implanted in her stomach which leaks into her system and changes her to a superhuman, accessing more than the normal 10% of brain capacity.

#20 The Martian, 2015

Clever plot and believable actors saved the film from looking like a dreary attempt at intellectual sci-fi. The main character Matt Damon is stranded on mars and the hope of his rescue is feeble. Even NASA ended up advising on technical details in the script and collaborated for its marketing as well. The film was even a screening at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston.

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