Less known, but brilliant Sci-fi movies
by UlrikOldenburg | created - 19 Jul 2011 | updated - 6 months ago | PublicA Small list of sci-fi movies I love but are not that popular, or generally known. If you like this, check out some of my other lists.
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1. Timecrimes (2007)
R | 92 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A man accidentally gets into a time machine and travels back in time nearly an hour. Finding himself will be the first of a series of disasters of unforeseeable consequences.
Director: Nacho Vigalondo | Stars: Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernández, Bárbara Goenaga, Nacho Vigalondo
Votes: 68,767 | Gross: $0.04M
2. Eden Log (2007)
R | 98 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
A man wakes up in an underground cave, next to a dead body. He has no memory of how he got there and starts to try and work his way to the surface and escape from the network of tunnels, which seem to be some kind of ancient civilisation.
Director: Franck Vestiel | Stars: Clovis Cornillac, Vimala Pons, Zohar Wexler, Sifan Shao
Votes: 6,844
3. Enemy Mine (1985)
PG-13 | 108 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
During a long space war, the lives of two wounded enemies become dependent on their ability to forgive and to trust.
Director: Wolfgang Petersen | Stars: Dennis Quaid, Louis Gossett Jr., Brion James, Richard Marcus
Votes: 51,430 | Gross: $4.27M
4. The Man from Earth (2007)
Not Rated | 87 min | Drama, Fantasy, Mystery
An impromptu goodbye party for Professor John Oldman becomes a mysterious interrogation after the retiring scholar reveals to his colleagues he has a longer and stranger past than they can imagine.
Director: Richard Schenkman | Stars: David Lee Smith, Tony Todd, John Billingsley, Ellen Crawford
Votes: 200,165
5. Leviathan (1989)
R | 98 min | Adventure, Horror, Mystery
Perched on the hull of a wrecked Soviet freighter, a team of deep-sea miners led by head oceanographer Steven Beck comes face to face with a mutant creature that's the product of a failed genetic experiment.
Director: George P. Cosmatos | Stars: Peter Weller, Richard Crenna, Amanda Pays, Daniel Stern
Votes: 23,779 | Gross: $15.70M
6. Open Your Eyes (1997)
R | 119 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A very handsome man finds the love of his life, but he suffers an accident and needs to have his face rebuilt by surgery after it is severely disfigured.
Director: Alejandro Amenábar | Stars: Eduardo Noriega, Penélope Cruz, Chete Lera, Fele Martínez
Votes: 73,231 | Gross: $0.37M
7. The Silent City (2006)
7 min | Short, Sci-Fi
Three soldiers try to reach a city far away in a post-apocalyptic world while facing opposition on their way.
Director: Ruairi Robinson | Stars: Don Wycherley, Garvan McGrath, Cillian Murphy
Votes: 1,233
8. Rollerball (1975)
Approved | 125 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Sport
In a corporate-controlled future, an ultra-violent sport known as Rollerball represents the world, and one of its powerful athletes is out to defy those who want him out of the game.
Director: Norman Jewison | Stars: James Caan, John Houseman, Maud Adams, John Beck
Votes: 29,274 | Gross: $30.00M
9. Moon (2009)
R | 97 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Astronaut Sam Bell has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resource that has helped diminish our planet's power problems.
Director: Duncan Jones | Stars: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott, Rosie Shaw
Votes: 376,681 | Gross: $5.01M
10. Cube (1997)
R | 90 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A group of strangers awaken to find themselves placed in a giant cube. Each one of them is gifted with a special skill and they must work together to escape an endless maze of deadly traps.
Director: Vincenzo Natali | Stars: Nicole de Boer, Maurice Dean Wint, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller
Votes: 247,604 | Gross: $0.50M
11. Pi (1998)
R | 84 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
A paranoid mathematician searches for a key number that will unlock the universal patterns found in nature.
Director: Darren Aronofsky | Stars: Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman, Pamela Hart
Votes: 186,417 | Gross: $3.22M
12. A Scanner Darkly (2006)
R | 100 min | Animation, Comedy, Crime
An undercover cop in a not-too-distant future becomes involved with a dangerous new drug and begins to lose his own identity as a result.
Director: Richard Linklater | Stars: Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Rory Cochrane
Votes: 117,118 | Gross: $5.50M
13. Runaway (1984)
PG-13 | 99 min | Action, Crime, Sci-Fi
In the near future, a police officer specializes in malfunctioning robots. When a robot turns out to have been programmed to kill, he begins to uncover a homicidal plot to create killer robots... and his son becomes a target.
Director: Michael Crichton | Stars: Tom Selleck, Cynthia Rhodes, Gene Simmons, Kirstie Alley
Votes: 14,500 | Gross: $6.77M
14. Sunshine (2007)
R | 107 min | Sci-Fi, Thriller
A team of international astronauts is sent on a dangerous mission to reignite the dying Sun with a nuclear fission bomb in 2057.
Director: Danny Boyle | Stars: Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Cliff Curtis
Votes: 267,411 | Gross: $3.68M
15. Pandorum (2009)
R | 108 min | Action, Horror, Mystery
Two crew members of a spaceship wake up from hypersleep to discover that all their colleagues are missing. Despite this, it appears that they are not alone.
Director: Christian Alvart | Stars: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet, Antje Traue
Votes: 159,520 | Gross: $10.33M
16. Gattaca (1997)
PG-13 | 106 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel.
Director: Andrew Niccol | Stars: Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law, Gore Vidal
Votes: 323,177 | Gross: $12.34M
17. Solaris (1972)
PG | 167 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A psychologist is sent to a station orbiting a distant planet in order to discover what has caused the crew to go insane.
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky | Stars: Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis, Jüri Järvet, Vladislav Dvorzhetskiy
Votes: 98,242
18. The Host (2006)
R | 120 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
A monster emerges from Seoul's Han River and begins attacking people. One victim's loving family does what it can to rescue her from its clutches.
Director: Bong Joon Ho | Stars: Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-Bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doona
Votes: 132,698 | Gross: $2.20M
19. Split Second (1992)
R | 90 min | Action, Crime, Horror
In a flooded future London, Detective Harley Stone hunts a serial killer who murdered his partner, and has haunted him ever since. He soon discovers what he is hunting might not be human.
Director: Tony Maylam | Stars: Rutger Hauer, Kim Cattrall, Alastair Duncan, Michael J. Pollard
Votes: 16,624 | Gross: $5.43M
20. Casshern (2004)
Not Rated | 142 min | Action, Sci-Fi
Live-action sci-fi movie based on a 1973 Japanese animé of the same name (Shinzo Ningen Casshân). Theme song by Utada Hikaru.
Director: Kazuaki Kiriya | Stars: Yûsuke Iseya, Kumiko Asô, Akira Terao, Kanako Higuchi
Votes: 13,791
21. Silent Running (1972)
G | 89 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
In a future where all flora is extinct on Earth, an astronaut is given orders to destroy the last of Earth's botany, kept in a greenhouse aboard a spacecraft.
Director: Douglas Trumbull | Stars: Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint
Votes: 31,460 | Gross: $0.69M
22. Screamers (1995)
R | 108 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A military commander stationed off planet during an interplanetary war travels through the devastated landscape to negotiate a peace treaty, but discovers that the primitive robots they built to kill enemy combatants have gained sentience.
Director: Christian Duguay | Stars: Peter Weller, Roy Dupuis, Jennifer Rubin, Andy Lauer
Votes: 29,442 | Gross: $5.78M
23. Donnie Darko (2001)
R | 113 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a man in a large rabbit suit who manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.
Director: Richard Kelly | Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne
Votes: 849,963 | Gross: $1.48M
24. Total Recall (1990)
R | 113 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
When a man goes in to have virtual vacation memories of the planet Mars implanted in his mind, an unexpected and harrowing series of events forces him to go to the planet for real - or is he?
Director: Paul Verhoeven | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside, Rachel Ticotin
Votes: 354,499 | Gross: $119.39M
25. Hunter Prey (2010)
88 min | Sci-Fi, Thriller
A spaceship crashes on a desert planet with 3 survivors besides the escaped prisoner. Extraction's in 110 hours.
Director: Sandy Collora | Stars: Clark Bartram, Damion Poitier, Isaac C. Singleton Jr., Sandy Collora
Votes: 6,227
26. Under the Skin (I) (2013)
R | 108 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
A mysterious young woman seduces lonely men in the evening hours in Scotland. However, events lead her to begin a process of self-discovery.
Director: Jonathan Glazer | Stars: Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy McWilliams, Lynsey Taylor Mackay, Dougie McConnell
Votes: 158,190 | Gross: $2.61M
27. Primer (2004)
PG-13 | 77 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Four friends/fledgling entrepreneurs, knowing that there's something bigger and more innovative than the different error-checking devices they've built, wrestle over their new invention.
Director: Shane Carruth | Stars: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Casey Gooden, Anand Upadhyaya
Votes: 114,146 | Gross: $0.42M
28. Dark City (1998)
R | 100 min | Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A man struggles with memories of his past, which include a wife he cannot remember and a nightmarish world no one else ever seems to wake up from.
Director: Alex Proyas | Stars: Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, William Hurt
Votes: 212,259 | Gross: $14.38M
29. Westworld (1973)
PG | 88 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
A robot malfunction creates havoc and terror for unsuspecting vacationers at a futuristic, adult-themed amusement park.
Director: Michael Crichton | Stars: Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin, Norman Bartold
Votes: 62,954 | Gross: $16.06M
30. A Boy and His Dog (1975)
R | 91 min | Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi
A young man and his telepathic dog wander a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Director: L.Q. Jones | Stars: Don Johnson, Jason Robards, Susanne Benton, Tim McIntire
Votes: 19,208 | Gross: $6.90M
31. Das Millionenspiel (1970 TV Movie)
96 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
A candidate in a game show is hunted by three men. He will get a Million DMark, if he survives for a week; the hunters will get the money, if they can kill the candidate. The audience of ... See full summary »
Director: Tom Toelle | Stars: Jörg Pleva, Suzanne Roquette, Dieter Thomas Heck, Theo Fink
Votes: 1,293
32. Cocoon (1985)
PG-13 | 117 min | Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi
When a group of trespassing seniors swim in a pool containing alien cocoons, they find themselves energized with youthful vigor.
Director: Ron Howard | Stars: Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Hume Cronyn, Brian Dennehy
Votes: 68,817 | Gross: $76.11M
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