The Flicker

Sci-Fi glasses

I love me a good Sci-Fi flick.  Now, I haven’t achieved fanboy status yet (for example: I’ve never been to a Comic Con) but some day I’ll get there.  And when I do, I’m wearing my Renaissance Fair outfit and equip that shit with a laser sword.  You know tights included.  But for now, give me a good futuristic action flick and my Sci-Fi glasses and I’m straight for the next 90 minutes.  So, since I’ve been on this Sci-Fi kick lately, I thought I’d share some of my ultra faves of this genre. 

 

Here ya go.  Part 1 of The Flicker’s Top 10 Fave Futuristic Sci-Fi Flicks!

 

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The second installment in the Mad Max trilogy this flick is also known as Mad Max 2.  It’s set in a depressing future where energy shortages has caused all organized governments to fail.  The baron wasteland is basically controlled by warlords and explored by drifters.  Mel Gibson is one of those drifters.  He stumbles upon a settlement in strife with a local gang and for some reason develops a conscience and decides to help.  The gang is led by Lord Humungus who looks exactly like Jason Voorhees, hockey mask included.  Also, constantly hanging around our hero, is a wild child who wields a boomerang.  And not some ordinary boomerang mate.  It’s steel.  It’s sharp.  And in one of my fave scenes some dude other than Pigpen tries to catch it and ends up going stumpy.  If all this wonderfulness wasn’t enough for you, add in some hot rods and V8 badassery.  Arguably the flick that made Mel Gibson a star, it will make you watch the first Mad Max and you might even end up sitting through the other one with Tina Turner in it.

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Another platform movie for a young growing star, Kurt Russel plays Snake Plissken an ex-military man who is on his way to jail.  And not some regular jail, no.  Our flick is set in the future where the US has seen something like a 400% increase in crime and so they decide to turn Manhattan Island entirely into maximum security prison.  For this joint there’s only one sentence.  Life.  Well, Air Force One is hijacked and is crash landed into Manhattan.  The powers that be decide to recruit Snake into rescuing the president who survived the crash and return him in time for some big important summit.  A very dark movie with a ton of action and an awesome soundtrack, Kurt Russel plays Snake perfectly with a gruff voice.  Not to mention great support from actors like Ernest Borgnine, Isaac Hayes, and Harry Dean Stanton.  To finish it off, a couple of great endings with A number 1’s demise and Snake’s intentional sabotage with a swinging cassette tape.

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Set in a distantly future New York, where humans are not all that human anymore and most are genetically altered.  There is a huge freakin’ pyramid floating in the sky and Central Park has become a no-man zone.  In fact anyone who enters catches the death.  The flick focuses on a young woman named Jill who is one of those mutant types.  She is arrested for not having any ID and we discover that mutant might be a little too light of a word to describe her.  See, they find she has no memory, all her internal organs are not in the right places, and age wise she comes in at a 3 months old.  Intrigued by what she might be, the resident doc gives her a place to stay and some ID as long as she continues to allow them to study her.  Mean time the floating pyramid actually houses a few Egyptian gods and inside the god Horus is nearing his judgement.  His may not be the best description since the body is of man but the head is a falcon.  Anyway, he’s giving a week to go down to the peeps and procreate with a meatbag.  Problem he runs into is that with all this dna trickery, these genetically altered humans can not sustain his god form.  So when he enters their bodies they go die die.  In walks our hero, Nikopol.  An activist who was sent to cryogenic prison 30 years earlier and during a mechanical mishap is accidentally let free.  Horus bumps into him and finds that his true human form allows him to enter his body without that deady poo side effect.  Nikopol meet Horus.  Horus meet Jill.  Now go make us some little godders.  What attracts me to this flick is the wonderful dance between fantasy and reality.  I’m sure this flick was made completely in front of a green screen as the actors not only interact with each other but also with the clearly CGI characters.  Aside from the god gettin some theme there are some other plot twists and governmental conspiracies to deal with.  Just a great ride and an underrated gem you must discover.

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I think we’re all familiar with the story here.  Computer programmer by day, hacker by night, our hero Neo follows the white rabbit.  Meets Morpheus, takes the red pill, wakes up from The Matrix and is taken upon the Nebuchadnezzar, learns a shit ton of fighting styles via brain implanting and joins the fight against the machines.  Quick question, who is more bad ass: an agent or a terminator?  Anyhoo, this was a break through movie which in a sense coined the term bullet time.  Even with the Wachowski brothers on fire, I think they peaked with The Matrix because the two sequels to follow could never capture that spirit, that excitement that this had.  But this one film will forever stay in your psyche, I mean seriously, who of us haven’t pantomimed the Neo slo-mo bullet evading scene?

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This early 80’s sci-fi thriller is said to have paved the way for the flick we just discussed previously and it really made the director Ridley Scott legit in the eyes of Hollywood.  Also Harrison Ford continued his streak of strong performances coming off Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark as he plays Rick Deckard a retired Blade runner.  Set in a future LA, our culture has a wee problem with what they call replicants.  See replicants are biologically engineered people.  Like people robots or what I like to call peebots.  Apparently these replicants had themselves a rise up and made us real people very nervous about having them around anymore.  They are deemed to dangerous and made illegal.  As can be expected not all of these replicants are too happy about this obsolete notice and some of them escape.  After a handful of the most dangerous types escape, Deckard is asked out of retirement to hunt them down.  In the end Deckard is both lucky and unlucky that these humanoids have a shelf life.  I love this flick for its gritty underbelly of the city.  It reminds me of a sci-fi version of Midnight Cowboy.  And to top it off, this flick is based on a novel by Philip K. Dick which is, in my mind, the greatest sci-fi author of all time.  If you’re one of the few who’s never seen this flick, dude do yourself a favor, it’s been long enough.

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So that’s 10-6!  Top 5 coming sooooooon!!