In 1902, stage magician and filmmaker Georges Méliès created Le Voyage dans la Lune, considered the first science fiction movie ever. With its surreal story and pioneering special effects, it remains a cinematic masterpiece. The editors of Rolling Stone put it at #45 on the magazine's new list of "The 150 Greatest Science Fiction Movies of All Time." It's a fine list but some surprises lie within. For example, #1 is (obviously) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) but my favorite movie of all time, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, comes in at #3.
Interestingly, Stalker (1979) is #2 here. I've never seen it but will check it out post-haste.
From Rolling Stone:
#2: Stalker (1979)
"There's no telepathy, no ghosts, no flying saucers," says the Writer, one of three haunted men venturing into "The Zone," a mysterious realm where the laws of reality bend. No special effects, he might have added. And no action either.At a moment when Hollywood was chasing glimmers of the galaxy far, far away, the Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris) went looking for something deeper. Loosely based on the novel Roadside Picnic, his totemic 1979 allegory is basically an anti-space opera: a terrestrial dirge of heady conversation and meditative quiet, filmed across verdant rural stretches and decaying urban corners of Eastern Europe, real places granted the wonder of an alien landscape. While the genre turned towards zippy fun, Tarkovsky chased a heavy, unfashionable science fiction of ideas.
And here are the top #10 in the list:
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
2. Stalker (1979)
3. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
4. Blade Runner (1982)
5. Alien (1979)
6. Under the Skin (2013)
7. Children of Men (2006)
8. Metropolis (1927)
9. Star Wars (1977)
10. The Matrix (1999)
