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keepquestioning

What's another underrated SciFi?

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Dark City (1998)

It was a box office bomb but a real sleeper classic, it's highly rated in some circles, unknown in others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_City_(1998_film)

There are others.

Be sure to watch the director's cut with that one.

The original theater version has an opening narrative (added by the producers) which spoils much if the plot.

Cypher - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284978/

Primer - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/

Quiet Earth - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089869/

At the risk of courting downvotes, Brazil from 1985. Not 100% sci-fi, as there are some comedy/fantasy/horror elements, but boy is it just wild. I don't know where Terry Gilliam gets his inspiration from.

I'd say its a fine suggestion. A dystopian movie portraying a futuristic, overly bureaucractic government which is highly dependent on unreliable whimsical machines paired with a hyper consumerist society.

Robocop and Running Man portray similar scifi futures / society.

They each have a big corporation pulling the strings, OCP and ICS.

Real-life bureaucracy?

This is one of my favorite films, maybe my favorite sci-fi film. The "steampunk" way in which future technology is depicted is one of the reason Brazil aged so well IMO.

I would actually consider it to be a free adaption of Orwell's 1984.

Brazil is so billiant because it depicts a technologial socity where the technology is full of bugs and often malfunction - just like reality. Most dystopian sf assume technology just works but is used for evil purposes.

Brazil suggest the terrorist bombings are really just explosions caused by bad plumbing.

12 Monkeys is also a great sci-fi Gilliam movie, not underrated though :)

Is there some dislike for Terry Gilliam? Can't think why anyone would want to downvote Brazil here.

I love Brazil and nagged lots of friends to see it. I now see through their eyes that it's pretty long if you're not enjoying the scenery.

Every time I watch Brazil, I am surprised to discover Robert De Niro in it.

Every time.

Not at the level of Gattaca or Dark City but a few good ones filmed around the same time period - -Thirteenth Floor -The Cell -Strange Days -Frequency -Event Horizon (The Shining in deep space but very gory, especially the recording they find)

Rufus Sewell from Dark City was also on a sci-fi show called The Man in The High Castle. A great series to start but the last season was awful.

I’ll also add Children of Men, Primer, Looper, and The Thing though I don’t know these are as underrated these days.

This is a good list, although I don't remember The Cell being that good. Might be wrong :)

I would add Cube and Donnie Darko.

I'll add some films that I enjoyed. Some might be flawed, some constrained by their budget etc, but overall I enjoyed watching them. Ordered alphabetical (I hope).

The more mainstream ones:

- Brainstorm (1983)

- Gamer (2009)

- Midnight Special (2016)

- Pandorum (2009)

- Outland (1981)

- Possessor (2020)

The more low budget/indie ones:

- Alien Arrival (2016)

- Chariot (2022)

- The Endless (2018)

- Galaxy of Terror (1981)

- Honeymoon (2014)

- The man with the magic box (2017)

- The Objective (2008)

- Senn (2013)

- The Signal (2014)

- Time Trap (2017)

- Welcome the Stranger (2018)

Moon (2009) escaped many people's notice and was really good.

Don't read too much about it, there's a component of mystery that's better if it's not spoiled.

Totally agree. Very good film. What a plot twist.

Yes. Criminally underrated, I come back to it often.

There is a big budget Hollywood movie with an A-lister that many claim has totally jacked the Moon concept. I noticed that myself without any suggestions, but I can't say anything more because it will spoil it.

Yeah, I know the one you mean. Not a bad movie either, though I think Moon did that part (and most things) better.

I looked it up and they _say_ the other movie was written before Moon came out, so it couldn't have copied, but feels like a pretty shallow denial to me. I suspect they just saw the screenplay or something, but what do I know.

The studio execs literally went "well, we can't just have one dude in the movie, so let's add sex appeal by making GERTY an actual hot woman - but she is tied to the place and can never leave the premises, just like that robot".

This is an example of why I think "underrated" is such a difficult word in the context of movie recommendations.

In my view, Moon wasn't underrated. It was very well received overall by both critics and those who saw it[1], which is inline with how I felt about it.

However, it wasn't a blockbuster, and so the chances are there are many who don't know about it and who would enjoy seeing it.

[1]: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/moon

Yeah that's a good point. I couldn't think of any actually underrated movies I've seen in a while.

There's some I've enjoyed that got poor ratings, but not like they were objectively better than their reviews suggested, I was just willing to overlook their flaws.

I'm not sure if this is due to movie criticism improving, or my tastes just more closely aligning with modern trends or what. Feels like it didn't used to be true. Only thing I can guess at as a turning point was the existence of rottentomatoes.com.

> I was just willing to overlook their flaws

For me personally I think that's a large part of it. For example I loved Dark Star, even though the main "monster" is literally and very obviously a beach ball. There was just so much else that I liked that the beach ball didn't put me off.

I've seen many movies with relatively poor ratings that I enjoyed quite a lot.

I'd say, 'The Man from Earth'

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/

Great film, but skip the "sequel".

What 'sequel'? I've never heard of this.

The Man from Earth: Holocene - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5770864/. The story seems to be that the writer of the original film's son tried to write a sequel, but failed to understand why the original worked. The imdb user reviews are pretty accurate.

I guess you couldn't call it underrated (93% rotten tomatoes) but Vast of Night was my favorite sci-fi movie I saw this year.

Brazil, The man from Earth, Moon, The fountain, Ad Astra, Donnie Darko, Ender's Game, Edge of tomorrow, Solaris (the old one), Westworld (70s), Metropolis (the japanese anime), Dark Star (trippy, 70s, great end), Firefly series and Serenity movie, Attack the block, Fifth Element, planet of the apes (the old one), ex machina, children of men

Timecrimes ... a spanish movie, its superb ... they executed the time loop concept really well.

If you want a non-serious fun movie "Summer Time Machine blues", a japanese movie is also a pretty good watch

Primer (2004) is good time travel movie too. Low budget that was written, directed and acted by the same few people if i remember.

Never hear people talk about it but Upstream Color by the same director is also excellent. Probably more bio-punk than sci-if though.

Wonderful film.

Another Japanese soft sci-fi film is Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14500584/ (edit: which seems to be by the same writer)

Pitch Black starring Vin Diesel.

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