Scifi fans: what is your favorite CLASSIC SF movie ?

[whyterabbyt]

With today's movie tech, I cannot really understand why anyone haven't thought of turning Philip K. Dick's most excellent sci-fi thriller "Ubik" into a movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik#Atte ... _Ubik_film

Would really like to see that.

Not sure. With the approach Hollywood has had to most of his work, Im kind of glad they havent. Amazon seem to have grokked on to something with Man in the High Castle, though. Personally, though, I think "Flow My Tears" would work better than Ubik.

[IncarnateX]

Not sure. With the approach Hollywood has had to most of his work, Im kind of glad they havent.

You got a point there. Blade Runner had to be mentally seperated from Do Androids... to really work for me. Guess I mean a movie as true to the book as possible. F451 movie changed and omitted a few things as well in contrast to the book, but didn't violate the essence and message of the novel. In contrast, Blade Runner missed the point of Deckard's dehumanization, which he finally realised made him (and especially Resch) less "human" than the androids in the end. And the later discussions about whether he is an android himself in the movie totally miss this point even more. A scanner darkly worked better to me.

[whyterabbyt]

A scanner darkly worked better to me.

Yeah, that's probably the closest filmic interpretation Ive seen. Of the others, funnily enough its the somehat reviled Screamers and Impostor which stay truest to the feel (the 'who is really human' paranoia) of PKD's pulp-magazine originals, IMO.

[IncarnateX]

On the ”who is human paranoia”, I just recalled that one of the first Sci-fi I saw was a three episode Norwegian series, their very first sci-fi series ever from 1978. It was called Blindpassasjer (blind passenger) and even with the standards of that time, the costumes and scenery were rather cheesy. But the story was soooooo thrilling, even to a sci-fi skeptic like my late father, though it lend from many clichés. 5 explorers in a spaceship awake from hibernation because they are getting near Earth but finds out it has been automatically coupled to an apparently abandoned rescue capsule from another ship. They soon find out that the missing pilot of the capsule was not a human but an organism that takes over other lifeforms. Gradually they also deduce that one of them must be a clone. They report their findings to Earth and are told that unless they find out who and eliminates it, they will be nuked. Actually a missile is already on its way and will only be disarmed and redirected if they manage the task.
It was not action oriented but a psychological thriller and it kept you on the edge to the very last minutes of last episode. It was received overwhelmingly positively in the Nordic countries, achieved an award, and was taken as proof that the Norwegians actually could make tv series at all (as far as the Swedes’ skepticism concern -according to the wiki).

[thecontrolcentre]

Alien
Abres Los Ojos
Solaris
Stalker
2001 a space odyssey
Silent Running
Earth vs the flying saucers
La Jetee
Primer
The Andromeda Strain
The Day the Earth Caught Fire
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Planet Of The Apes
The Quiet Earth
They Live
Twilights Last Gleaming
The Terminator
Tetsuo The Iron Man
The Thing From Outer Space
Videodrome

[aMUSEd]

A scanner darkly worked better to me.

Yeah, that's probably the closest filmic interpretation Ive seen.

Yeah for me too, much as I love Blade Runner as a film it's not that close to Dick's book, and the rest are often so far off they are really just exploiting Dick's name to give them some credibility (eg that dreadful Cage film that was allegedly based on The Golden Man).

[SteveWZ]

A few not mentioned:

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
Pan's Labyrinth
Being John Malkovich
The Wizard of Oz (yea, it could be SF)
Brazil
Metropolis (old but good)
Wings of Desire (its a stretch)
Dr. Strangelove
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Fantasia
Jodorowsky's Dune
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

[SAW75]

Forbidden Planet

[IncarnateX]

Pan's Labyrinth

Not a sci-fi in any sense. Neither are Being JM nor Wizard of OZ nor Fantasia. If you take the science out of science fiction, you may have fantasy but not sci-fi. You miss the point then.

[thecontrolcentre]

A few not mentioned:

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

Great movie, but its fantasy not sci-fi

[chk071]

Forbidden Planet

That was a strange one. But cool.

[Numanoid]

Great movie, but its fantasy not sci-fi

Good point:

Isaac Asimov, once asked to explain the difference between science fiction and fantasy, replied that science fiction, given its grounding in science, is possible; fantasy, which has no grounding in reality, is not.

[rp314]

No love for Slaughterhouse 5?

What's interesting to me is that apparently Lem didn't care much for Tarkovsky's Solaris, while Vonnegut admired George Roy Hill's film version of his book.

So it goes...

[rp314]

I'm far from on expert on SF but a perhaps useful observation from PKD:

Now, to separate science fiction from fantasy. This is impossible to do, and a moment's thought will show why. [...] Fantasy involves that which general opinion regards as impossible; science fiction involves that which general opinion regards as possible under the right circumstances. This is in essence a judgment call, since what is possible and what is not [cannot be] objectively known but is, rather, a subjective belief on the part of the reader.

from Philip K. Dick's "My Definition of Science Fiction" (1981)

[Numanoid]

Interesting, so Asimov would be adherent to "hard" sci-fi, will Dick is "soft" sci-fi ?