Good Sci-Fi including HARD Sci-Fi

Hard Science Fiction, very stylish, made for $7000, and possibly the best hard SF film ever made (and yes that comparison includes 2001: A Space Odessy). Shane Carruth is just a hero. His follow-up effort, Upstream Color, isn't quite as ground-breaking as Primer, but it's also just an amazing, gripping and beautiful film.

I can't actually tell you too much about Absentia without spoiling. It's low-budget, but wonderfully executed. The concept is brilliant. The tension, scares and weirdness exist aplenty. Lovely little piece of work.

Ignore the critics and haters, it's a very good film (Lucy, is not). It has about 3 plot-holes you could drive an Abrams tank through, but they don't destroy it. It's just a good film, that's all, and it's very underrated.

Low-budget, zero special-effects, subtle, stately, hard-SF masterpiece. Anyone who down-rated it is just poorly educated and too stupid to realise it. This is a brain-massaging film, so you need a brain in the first place to have it massaged. Quite tense, get's very edge of the seat as it goes on. Possibly 'Slipstream', but really it's just good, hard SF.

From the director of Moon. Has its faults. I understand the physics and ramifications of Quantum Computing, but - unfortunately - Source Code dodges its questions and smooths over the technical issues a little too much. I've brooded at great length on how to make it make sense. Doesn't stop it being a brilliant film, though. And yet again - Jake Gyllenhaal kicks ass.

Most people are not aware that 'The Omega Man' and 'I Am Legend', are based on a book from the 50's - entitled 'I Am Legend'.

This film version of the book was made in 1964, and stars a younger Vincent Price. It is the best of all the tellings, despite the limitations of the time it was made. A B&W masterpiece of dark Science Fiction.

Shane Carruth's other masterpiece (next to Primer). I say 'other' because he's only managed two films so far - both on a shoestring budget, and he did almost everything for them himself.

Stylish and beautiful, and quite tense, this film is perhaps not as 'hard' SF as Primer (actually, that's arguable), but it's just as involving. Brain massaging, and quite moving.

Anyone who doesn't like this film should be shot. And that's it, really.

Scary, tense little archetypal nightmare. SF, Slipstream, Mystery and so much more.

The acting is apalling. The story is so good it doesn't matter.

I guess it's remotely possible that some of the younger audience haven't seen the best SF space-horror ever made. Ever. If so, see it - and there is a bonus test: If any of your friends don't like it, that means they're stupid! Quite handy.

It's sequel, Aliens, is an action film and not as good, but very watchable.

Such a pity that, like the Matrix, they NEVER, EVER, made any further sequels....

Best thing Michael Crichton ever wrote. And this film is just so good, it stands up with ease even today.

Written and directed by Zowie Bowie, or Duncan Jones as he is now known - David Bowie's son (& Source Code was his follow-up effort). What do you mean you haven't seen it yet?

Most 'off-axis' films piss me off. Ie. where the main characters are not 'in' the action, they are providing a narrative that shows it from the side lines. But this one works. It really works. Some peop... idiots didn't like the ending. I found it profoundly moving. Great film.

The blerb on the back of the DVD says 'the best science fiction film of the 80s' - they are perfectly correct. Not criticising them, but Aliens is space-opera, Terminator is space-opera, and WarGames just isn't as good as this film. An abstract, hard-SF 'what if'. Acting is not fantastic, but it doesn't even slightly matter.

Made about 7 years before The Andromeda Strain, and with almost exactly the same subject material. See this one, just see it, it's SUCH a good film.

Bit overrated, and I'm not a fan of the director. But this is a film about something I have not seen dealt with in a feature before, or since - the concept that there is a point where Maths and Physics cross over, and Maths can directly influence the real world 'like magic'. This is a rather good film, even if some of the plot points are a bit naff. Worth a see.

Not even remotely 'hard', I just include it because it's one of my fave films. The stop motion is ... stop motion, but it's very good for the time, goes up against Jason And The Argonauts. The 'science' is complete rubbish, but the technology is very ahead: force-fields, powered exo-skeletons, energy weapons, and spy-UAVs.