Some that I'm not seeing here much yet:
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, War of the Worlds, Minority Report, Gattaca, Heavy Metal, Repo Man, Starship Troopers, The Fifth Element, Tron, Tron Legacy, Independence Day, Idiocracy, Predator, Star Trek (2009), Escape From New York, Galaxy Quest, Total Recall, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, E.T., Wall-E, Jurassic Park (1993), District 9, Robocop, Children of Men, Inception, and the Back To The Future trilogy,
Some of my favorites on here. Plan 9 is great to watch back to back with Ed Wood.
1953 War of the Worlds was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Those ships were super cool. FX hold up really well.
Barbarella is over the top, but still fun to watch... and credited with the band Duran Duran getting it's name. :)
1960 Time Machine was another one of my absolute favs as a kid... best Time Machine adaptation IMHO.
All great picks. Forbidden Planet trips me out because young Leslie Nielsen, as a dashing leading man, in a non-comedy role is just wild to see heh. The plot is fun and the effects actually hold up really well for the age.
A lot of great ones out there but my personal favs probably are Brazil, 12 Monkeys, Fifth Element, Event Horizon, Blade Runner in the “earnest” category, then Tokyo Gore Police, Johnny Mnemonic, Starship Troopers, Tetsuo, Total Recall, RoboCop in the campy/wild/fun category.
Ghost in the Shell (the entire collection if you have the time)
Macross: Do You Remember Love?
Akira
Galaxy Express 999
Captain Harlock
Battle Angel Alita
Serial Experiments Lain (Series)
BubbleGum Crisis Tokyo 2040 (Series)
Red Baron (Series)
Saber Marionette (Any, but J is a series that hits maturity in the second half with aplomb)
Neon Genesis Evangelion (Series)
Cowboy Bebop (Series)
The Big O (Series)
Roujin Z
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Iria: Zeiram the Animation
Steamboy
Paprika
If you're gonna do ghost in the shell, I'd also recommend Appleseed.
Akira was one of the first "adult" anime that I watched back in the day. Good stuff, ending is unfortunate. I would have loved if they just made all the books into a series of movies. The animation and soundtrack are amazing though. For Katsuhiro Otomo I'd also recommend Memories.
Golden Age (70s & 80s): Blade Runner, 2001, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, Wrath of Khan, Undiscovered Country, E.T., Brazil, Lynch's Dune, Back to the Future, The Thing, They Live, Akira, Buckaroo Banzai, The Abyss
90s Renaissance: Total Recall, 12 Monkeys, Contact, Fifth Element, Starship Troopers, Galaxy Quest, Truman Show, Dark City, The Matrix, Gattaca, π, Strange Days, T2, First Contact, Event Horizon, Jurassic Park
Some great picks. I always introduce people to Buckaroo Banzai if they haven't seen it. Love that end theme. :)
I just rewatched several Dune movies. IDK if you've seen the latest release with Clement. It's a decent watch, enough so that I'll watch part 2 when it comes out. I love the sci-fi mini-series though.. "Frank Herbert's Dune" and "Children of Dune" they did.
I guess most of the famous classics are going to be listed anyway, so to add something that most people probably haven’t seen, I suggest *batteries not included. It’s nothing grandiose (more like a family-friendly flick, I feel like it’s in the same category as Flubber or Short Circuit), but it’s really sweet, light-hearted and enjoyable.
Firefly (Is it old enough to be a classic?) is a must watch IMO.
It's more fantasy, but it has a lot of sci-fi elements (IMO): Angel’s Egg https://letterboxd.com/film/angels-egg/
Apparently, I don't know if true, it was an inspiration for some Fromsoft games like Dark Souls. It does have a quite dark and meditative mood.
Gonna just list the ones that really jumped out to me:
Event Horizon; Bladerunner & Bladerunner 2049; Pacific Rim; Johnny Mnemonic; Stalker; Solaris (1972); Robocop; Starship Troopers; Dredd; Tetsuo the Iron Man; Crimes of the Future; Pandorum; Fifth Element; Southland Tales
I'll add Alien and Terminator 1 to that list. Whether you consider the first or second better in either franchise, there's no denying all four are excellent movies
Honestly, going back and rewatching them, all the Alien movies are pretty decent. 1 and 2 are the top tier though. The only thing I don't forgive is the intro premise to 3 which I won't list for spoiler reasons.
It's a shame they never made any more Terminator movies after T2. T2 was so excellent. .and it was the last. Definitely. Take my word for it.
I just watched the original Alien the other day. I had forgotten how similar they made the ship from Prometheus to the ship in Alien. Wasted opportunity.
Looker - directed by Michael "Jurassic Park" Chricton. The first ever film to create 3D shading with a computer that produced the first ever CGI human character was the model Cindy (Susan Dey).
Westworld (1973) - also written by Michael Chricton
The Last Starfighter - another cheeseball 80s knock off of Star Wars. Also pioneered the use of CGI
Enemy Mine - Dennis Quaid bonds with an alien enemy and eventually helps him bear children. Directed by Wolfgang 'Neverending Story' Petersen. You have been warned.
The Quiet Earth - A scientist awakens to find himself alone in the world. In a desperate attempt to search for others, he finds only two who have their own agenda.
The Stuff - A delicious, mysterious goo that oozes from the earth is marketed as the newest dessert sensation, but the tasty treat rots more than teeth when zombie-like snackers who only want to consume more of the strange substance at any cost begin infesting the world. Co-stars Paul "Goodfellas" Sorvino
Miracle Mile - What would you do if you accidentally found out that the world was ending in a little over an hour? Features Anthony "ER" Edwards