Two from your "Haven't Seen" list that you really should:

The Andromeda Strain
Dark City

The others are good (there're a few I haven't seen either) but these two are standouts.

How about Buckaroo Banzai?

Where are we going?
Planet Ten!
When are we going?
REAL SOON!

Character is what you are in-a the dark!

Now, get off-a my planet, monkey-boy!

Soylent Green was pretty good too! Check it out if you can!

Don't read Pierre Boulle's book then. It certainly isn't the movie.

This is one of my all time favourite films. I think it's the music which draws me in. And the make-up and costumes and the architecture are amazing for any century.

Don't forget Heston's awesome overacting.

I always thought that that was a requirement for truly good sci-fi.

One of my all time favorite movies that I can watch at any time.

Is this same movie that is still in you honorable mentions list?

Unless Cars or A Bug's Life is on there, all of his picks prominently feature primates.

Fair point. I hate using the phrase "lower-order primates," though. Can't just use "monkeys" (inaccurate).

For a time travel movie I highly recommend As Time Goes By

A fantastic flick, good performances from Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt. Shame they get wasted in so much crap like Die Hard I-LXVI and Oceans 11-12-13-14-15....

Now, you're breaking my heart.

Read Brian W. Aldiss' original short story.

This Speilberg massacre isn't worth the celluloid it's printed on.

I dont know if I can keep on reading, this is the movie that almost makes me go out of the cinema, I stayed, because I think it was close to end, and boy, was I wrong.

The two worst wasted hours of my entire life..

Yep, this movie was weaksauce.

I didn't think it was all that bad, however, I will nNEVER be able to watch it again. My wife had just gone through a long series of CHOP (the most evil blend of chemotherapy you can imagine) to treat lymphoma, and I had kept a stiff upper lip for the whole 4 months, but now it was over and she was starting to recover, I guess it caught up with me.

The scene where he is staring at the blue fairy underwater.. something just broke apart inside of me and all the horror and pain of watching my wife go through the chemo and radiation just overwhelmed me finally. I think I cried for a solid hour.

Maybe not relevant to the list, but I just had to throw this out in defense of the movie...

The ending was so remarkably disappointing. I hate parroting what others have said, but - the brilliant moments in this film make it kind of a have-to-see, but the bad moments are so bad as to make me unable to recommend it to anyone.

And piling Pinocchio references on with a trowel was annoying from the start.

Bicentennial man is pathetic and over-the-top from the very start, so it's better than that.

This is my all-time favourite sci-fi film. Umm my avatar might be a give away. I want my very own Robbie the Robot.

Probably my all-time favorite as well. Released in 1956, though, not 1941.

Unfortunately, I saw Naked Gun (the first 3 or 4 in the series) before seeing this movie, so I could barely stop giggling every time I saw Leslie Nielsen... ZAZ trio - you spoilt my Forbidden Planet experience!

And a precursor to the original Star Trek.

Respectfully

Falloutfan

I was watching Forbidden Planet in a repertory theater in Newport Beach, CA, when the audience broke out into an impromptu "yell jokes at the screen" event. This was years before MST3K.

"What, no space pay!"

My aunt and her boyfriend took me to see this when it was first released in the U.K (1956 by the way, not 1941). I was ten, and had nightmares for a week.
-a fantastic film.

Good film, bad science. If the Invisible Man was truly invisible, he'd be blind. The light would pass through his retina without being absorbed. If the light was absorbed, there would be a visible shadow of his two retinas floating in the air.

Claude Raines was awesome in this movie. His voice is so distinict that it really made the character. Very few actors could pull this off (maybe James Mason with his distinict voice). Without Claude Raines, this is just an okay movie, with him it is the best of the old time Universal Horror genre. A true classic.

Ever see a shirt make a phone call?

I know this is nitpicky but it actually take place here on earth in a futuristic San Franciso. I highly recommend the book "Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep" by Philip K. Dick which the films was based from.

I can top you for nitpickiness. Although Dick's novel does take place in San Francisco, the film takes place in Los Angeles. (One of many changes from the novel. Dick's book is a truly different experience and I second your recommendation!)

The replicants return to Earth from offworld, the film clearly treats Earth as a spaceport, hence it is a space film.

That's not science fiction- this is science fact! Humanity really is on the decline and headed for a kind of Bladerunner-ish future, which is closer than most people think (but maybe without flying cars because of the price/shortage of gasoline).

Actually set in future L.A., not San Francisco.

I just got finished watching the Final Cut, and it is beautiful. Worth it just because the video quality on previous DVDs was so bad.

The Ridley Scott commentary was a huge disappointment,
however.

This movie is very suspenseful and doesn't overplay the gore. It's well directed, well filmed, amazingly detailed (like Star Wars, Blade Runner, 2001, and POTA) and it's been copied many times. The other Alien movies can't hold a candle to this one.

Alien, one of my all time favorite movies.

Aliens, also one of my all time favorite movies.

So different, yet each so good in their own way.

Acid bleeding aliens rule!

Both Alien and Aliens are outstanding films. I would say that those who seem to be quick to dismiss Aliens have seen too many modern "action" movies and thus are simply lumping it in with them. There is such a HUGE difference between Aliens and the vast majority of action that comes out that it is hard to even know where to begin.

Aliens is a brilliant sequel precisely because it does not try and re-due the original. It goes in a new and interesting direction with the story and the characters. I think it does a great job setting up the fact that no one besides Ripley is taking this mission seriously. The troops certainly are not and thus they do stupid things. I mean, it's not like there isn't any precedent in real warfare for one side to not take the other seriously and take a beating because of it and/or make stupid decisions. This is especially the case when a military unit or perhaps a police unit is going on what they believe is just another waste of time mission or wild goose chase.

The film does a great job setting up the troops' failures. The scene where the survivors have to put the storm shields down on the widows again in the main office complex is great because of how the story has unfolded. The Bill Paxton character is great as both boastful comic relief early in the film but also as his feelings change when reality sets in. The film is full of memorable lines.

I'll stop now. I know I'm not going to convince anyone of anything. No one ever does on the internet.

Fun list to read!

Alien - Horror/suspense movie
Aliens - Action Movie
Aliens 3 -More of a British character piece
I haven't seen the fourth one so cannot comment.

Aliens was better. One of the few times where the sequel is better than the original. The other one that comes to mind is Empire Strikes Back.

I was 5 years old the first time I saw this. At that age I wasn't old enough to understand that there were other x-wing pilots besides Luke. In my 5 yrs old mind Han flew the millennium falcon and Luke flew the
X-Wing. So in that final battle in the death star trench as we start to see x-wings blown up left and right a 5 years old Todd suddenly got very, very worried. Everytime one would blow up I would grab my Dad and ask if that was Luke's ship. That is my earliest star wars memory. Now here is a question for you all. If the death star can blow up planets, why didn't they just blow up Yavin then shot the moon instead of wasting 20 min orbiting the Planet.

Actually, one of the many things I always wondered...

They clearly show, in the "mockup" when the process to blow up the Death Star was shown, and also when Luke and others attempt it, that there was absolutely nothing above the shaft that the torpedoes went into (i.e. no blocking).

Given that, why did they need the whole trench sequence, save for the suspense? Come down on the exhaust port from above, and shoot right down at it. That's gotta be easier than having torpedoes make a sharp 90 degree turn.

Star Wars is probably my favorite movie, but I would say it's science fantasy not science fiction. (However, introducing the miticlorians as the basis of the Force does tilt it back into sci fi territory. I hated that addition, personally.)

Besides being great fun to watch, Star Wars is also modern mythos - a story about the "hero's journey" archetype. See http://ffh.films.com/id/11017/The_Mythology_of_Star_Wars_wit...

I never get tired of watching Star Wars or getting myself somehow involved in the Saga, like through gaming etc.
But I´m so very tired to hear all the same type of arguements over the movies over and over and over again...so tired!

"I say we are in range now."

A great film, but one you have to watch in a specific mood. It's a bit slow, and the book is so much better. This one would probably go in my top 10 list, but at a much lower place.

I love Sci-Fi. I respect this film for its importance to the genre but I am one of those that cannot force myself to stay awake all the way through it. I ussually nod off shortly after the bone becomes a ship and wake up again when Hal is trying to kill the crew.

And here is where you hit the dichotomy that is science fiction as cinema, and movies in general.

I agree with everything you say about this movie, Rowdy Ray, and yet it's obvious how little respect this movie gets from the bulk of its historical viewing audience.

I sometimes think the only opportunity this movie has to be appreciated for what it does and is, as science fiction, lies somewhere in the future, centuries from now. It just won't hold up, in the public eye, to the cheesy, action-filled crap that dominates the SF cinema scene.

It came out when I was a kid. But I did not see it until years later. When I was a kid everyone I knew that had seen it was disappointed by it. So when I finally did see it my expectations were very low. I saw it on a big screen and it floored me. This movie was simply beautiful and filled with wonder. It is so unlike every other science fiction/action film out there. There is no action. It is incredibly slow. But the film is all about mood, mystery, unanswered questions, the richness of the visual details, the music.

This film is filled with scenes that are part of me. "open the pod bay door" entering the space ship without the space suite, the scene where the hero is going through hyperspace and the colours on his eye change as he blinks, the coldness of HAL's voice and the stare of his eye, the scene where HAL reads the lips, the jogging in a 360 degree loop, the end of the movie where the hero ages everytime the camera angle changes, "a bicycle built for two, When the space ship lands on the moon and there are people in all the small windows, etc etc. What a wonderful film. Years ahead of its time in visuals.

Unfortunately few young people will ever appreciate it for it is too slow for the modern viewer. And anyone who goes in expecting a great film because of the rave reviews will also be disappointed. Yet this is a brilliant film.

In about the same years I saw Star Wars. I was a science fiction lover. I was excited about Star Wars but when I saw it I was disappointed. I must be about the only person in the world who thought Star Wars was just average. The visuals are great, the sets are great, the pace and action are great. But the story is corny. That took away a lot for me. I wanted a more serious film and got a story written for a child. I know, I know, I should have just sat back and enjoyed, but I didn't. C3P0 and R2D2 are too cute. The bar scene was silly. The battles were taken from WWII aircraft carrier movies. The light sabers were a dumb weapon for the future. Can you imagine fighting with swords against lasers. The Death Star was too large and why can't such a powerfull weapon defend itself. etc etc. I guess I am a spoilsport when it comes to Star Wars.

Star Wars is set in the past.