Top 5 Must-Watch Sci-Fi Movies Booming on Netflix Right Now
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In the Shadow of the Moon (2007)
EW grade: A (read the review)
Director: David Sington
One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" was the phrase that echoed around the galaxy in July of 1969, when American astronauts emerged from Apollo 11 and took their first steps on the surface of the moon. In 2007, In the Shadow of the Moon, a British documentary premiered at Sundance, chronicling this history-making achievement and digging into the story behind the Apollo program through interviews with 10 astronauts from across the program's many missions. Featuring never before released footage, archival news reports, and the perspectives of some of the only people to see Earth from this remarkable vantage point, In the Shadow of the Moon is stranger than science fiction because it's completely true.
2, Oxygen (2021)
EW grade: B (read the review)
Director: Alexandre Aja
Cast: Mélanie Laurent, Mathieu Amalric, Malik Zidi
A nightmare come to life for claustrophobics everywhere, Oxygen is a French language sci-fi film that thinks outside the box in terms of action. At the genesis, an unidentified woman (Mélanie Laurent) awakens in an airtight medical unit, unsure of who or where she is. Interactions with the system's AI - dubbed M.I.L.O. (Medical Interface Liaison Officer) - provide some clarity as to her identity, but no matter what she tries, she cannot escape her prison. As she seeks to understand who placed her in the box and why, truths about her personal life and the current state of the world come into focus - but her search for context is actually a race to outwit the slowly depleting oxygen levels.
3. Project Power (2020)
EW grade: B+ (read the review)
Director: Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jamie Foxx, Dominique Fishback, Machine Gun Kelly, Rodrigo Santoro, Courtney B. Vance, Amy Landecker
What do a New Orleans police officer (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a soldier in search of his daughter (Jamie Foxx), and a rapping drug dealer (Dominique Fishback, The Deuce) have in common? They're all working to rid the streets of Power, a new drug that gives users five minutes of superhero abilities, at the risk of killing them with one hit. A science fiction action film produced by Netflix, Project Power invites audiences into a city still suffering the after-effects of Katrina, even decades after the hurricane hit. Populated by morally murky characters - like Gordon-Levitt's Detective Frank Shaver, a cop who uses the drug to level the playing field against the city's criminals, or Fishback's teenage Robin Reilly, who knows she needs to deal to get ahead in this world, but is too smart to partake of her own product - the film finds room for cultural context amidst the action sequences.
4. See You Yesterday (2019)
Director: Stefon Bristol
Talent: Eden Duncan-Smith, Danté Crichlow, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Brian "Stro" Bradley
The best way to live life with no regrets is to build a time machine - which is exactly what happens in Netflix's Spike Lee-produced sci-fi adventure film, See You Yesterday. After best friends and high school science prodigies C.J. and Sebastian unlock the secrets to time travel, they're forced to use their newfound invention in an attempt to save C.J.'s brother Calvin from a fatal encounter with the police. A modern take on Back to the Future - also featuring an appearance by the original time traveler, Michael J. Fox - the film grapples with highly relevant cultural issues like police brutality while still having fun with high school tropes and time loops. See You Yesterday might not have gotten the attention it deserved when it first premiered on the platform back in 2019.
5. Starship Troopers (1997)
EW grade: B+ (read the review)
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cast: Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Patrick Muldoon, Michael Ironside
Fascist imagery and thudding allusions to World War II-era propaganda films permeate Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, but because the provocative Dutch filmmaker didn't explicitly spell out his satire, it went over the heads of many upon its release. But time has been kind to the action-comedy, perhaps because its gleefully cynical portrait of nationalism and a war-hungry populace would resonate that much more in the years following 9/11 and the Iraq War. That said, those interested in the simpler pleasures of watching bugs go splat will also find plenty to like, from its gnarly, goo-slinging action set pieces to CGI effects that stand up to today's technology.
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Since the only movie I'm watching tonight is 200 Cigarettes, I've got my list of movies I watched for the first time this year. It's a little low (158 instead of the usual +/- 200) but... well, it's been a year.
Property is No Longer a Theft (1973, Ello Petri)
Zola (2021, Janicza Bravo)
The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021, Michael Showalter)
A Face in the Crowd (1957, Elia Kazan)
Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (2021, William Eubank)
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015, Gregory Plotkin)
Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014, Christopher Landon)
Paranormal Activity 4 (2012, Ariel Schulman & Henry Joost)
The Nun (2018, Corin Hardy)
Hell-Bound Train (1930, Eloyce & James Gist)
Family Plot (1976, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Witch of King’s Cross (2020, Sonia Bible)
Teknolust (2002, Lynn Hershman Leeson)
Giant (1956, George Stevens)
Castle in the Sky (1986, Hayao Miyazaki)
Messiah of Evil (1973, Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz)
House (1986, Steve Miner)
The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014, Adam Robitel)
A Woman is a Woman (1961, Jean-Luc Godard)
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021, Kier-La Janisse)
The Tragedy of MacBeth (2021, Joel Coen)
The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (2021, Wes Anderson)
Last Night in Soho (2021, Edgar Wright)
Thelma (2017, Joachim Trier)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956, Alfred Hitchcock)
Pig (2021, Michael Sarnoski)
In the Earth (2021, Ben Wheatley)
Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation (2021, Lisa Immordino Vreeland)
9 (2009, Shane Acker)
Chimes at Midnight (1966, Orson Welles)
WeWork, or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn (2021, Jed Rothstein)
Enemies of the State (2020, Sonia Kennebeck)
A Glitch in the Matrix (2021, Rodney Ascher)
Citizenfour (2014, Laura Poitras)
The Cremator (1969, Juraj Herz)
Angst (1983, Gerard Kargl)
Death on the Nile (1978, John Guillerman)
The Power of the Dog (2021, Jane Campion)
Nightmare Alley (2021, Guillermo Del Toro)
Mirror (1974, Andrei Tarkovsky)
House of Gucci (2021, Ridley Scott)
Free Guy (2021, Shawn Levy)
A Letter to Three Wives (1949, Joseph L Mankiewicz)
Say Amen Somebody (1982, George T Nierenberg)
Poison Ivy (1992, Katt Shea)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964, Jacques Demy)
Zatoichi (2003, Takeshi Kitano)
Pale Flower (1964, Masahiro Shinoda)
Nobody (2021, Ilya Naishuller)
A Time to Kill (1996, Joel Schumacher)
Murder by Numbers (2002, Barbet Schroeder)
Antlers (2021, Scott Cooper)
Drive My Car (2021, Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Ready Player One (2018, Steven Spielberg)
Superman II (1980, Richard Lester)
West Side Story (2021, Steven Spielberg)
Licorice Pizza (2021, Paul Thomas Anderson)
The Batman (2022, Matt Reeves)
You Can’t Kill Meme (2021, Hayley Garrigus)
Being the Ricardos (2021, Aaron Sorkin)
Summer of Soul (2021, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson)
Talk to Me (2007, Kasi Lemmons)
The Night House (2021, David Bruckner)
Here Comes the Devil (2012, Adrián Garcia Bogliano)
Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010, Paul W.S. Anderson)
The Ritual (2017, David Bruckner)
The Bye Bye Man (2017, Stacy Title)
Creep (2014, Patrick Brice)
From Within (2008, Phedon Papamichael)
X (2022, Ti West)
Moonfall (2022, Roland Emmerich)
Dead Man (1995, Jim Jarmusch)
The Purge (2013, James DeMonaco)
Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (2020, Danny Wolf)
Caligula (1979, Tinto Brass, Bob Guccione & Giancarlo Lui)
Merrily We Go to Hell (1932, Dorothy Arzner)
The Alchemist Cookbook (2016, Joel Potrykus)
Spoor (2017, Agnieszka Holland)
Cliffhanger (1993, Renny Harlin)
Runaway Jury (2003, Gary Fleder)
A Scanner Darkly (2006, Richard Linklater)
Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto (1954, Hiroshi Inagaki)
Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple (1955, Hiroshi Inagaki)
Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island (1956, Hiroshi Inagaki)
Mikey and Nicky (1976, Elaine May)
Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022, Akiva Schaffer)
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022, Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert)
Men (2022, Alex Garland)
Old (2021, M. Night Shyamalan)
Saint Maud (2019, Rose Glass)
Bernie (2011, Richard Linklater)
Pineapple Express (2008, David Gordon Green)
Voyeur (2021, Myles Kane & Josh Koury)
Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985, Alan Metter)
Conspiracy Theory (1997, Richard Donner)
Experiment in Terror (1962, Blake Edwards)
The Nightingale (2018, Jennifer Kent)
Leave Her to Heaven (1945, John M. Stahl)
Black Widow (1954, Nunnally Johnson)
The Bob’s Burgers Movie (2022, Loren Bouchard & Bernard Derriman)
Incantation (2022, Kevin Ko)
All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989, Don Bluth)
Nope (2022, Jordan Peele)
House of Bamboo (1956, Samuel Fuller)
Jurassic World: Dominion (2022, Colin Trevorrow)
The Black Phone (2022, Scott Derrickson)
The Presidio (1988, Peter Hyams)
Barbarian (2022, Zach Creeger)
Elvis (2022, Baz Luhrmann)
Vengeance (2022, BJ Novak)
Crimes of the Future (2022, David Cronenberg)
Don’t Worry Darling (2022, Olivia Wilde)
Band of Outsiders (1964, Jean-Luc Godard)
The Slumber Party Massacre (1982, Amy Holden Jones)
Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022, Halina Reijn)
Dead and Buried (1981, Gary Sherman)
Blonde (2022, Andrew Dominik)
Phantasm II (1988, Don Coscarelli)
Hellraiser (2022, David Bruckner)
The Keep (1983, Michael Mann)
Next of Kin (1982, Tony Williams)
The Funhouse (1981, Tobe Hooper)
Dream Demon (1988, Harley Cokeliss)
The Hidden (1987, Jack Sholder)
Prince of Darkness (1987, John Carpenter)
White of the Eye (1987, Donald Cammell)
Halloween (2018, David Gordon Green)
Halloween Kills (2021, David Gordon Green)
Halloween Ends (2022, David Gordon Green)
Terror Train (1980, Roger Spottiswoode)
The House by the Cemetery (1981, Lucino Fulci)
Strange Behavior (1981, Michael Laughlin)
Road Games (1981, Richard Franklin)
Final Destination (2000, James Wong)
Daughters of Darkness (1971, Harry Kümel)
Matango (1963, Ishiro Honda)
Thirst (2009, Park Chan-Wook)
Wolfen (1981, Michael Wadleigh)
The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon)
Hud (1963, Martin Ritt)
The Dark Corner (1946, Henry Hathaway)
Encino Man (1992, Les Mayfield)
The Good Nurse (2022, Tobias Lindholm)
Son in Law (1993, Steve Rash)
Madame X: An Absolute Ruler (1978, Ulrike Ottinger)
Henri-Georges Cluzot’s “Inferno” (2009, Serge Bromberg & Ruxandra Medrea)
The Blue Dahlia (1946, George Marshall)
Pearl (2022, Ti West)
Amsterdam (2022, David O. Russell)
Memories of Murder (2003, Bong Joon-ho)
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022, Rian Johnson)
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022, Martin McDonagh)
Song of the Thin Man (1947, Edward Buzzell)
Shadow of the Thin Man (1941, W.S. Van Dyke)
RRR (2022, S.S. Rajamouli)
Another Thin Man (1939, W.S. Van Dyke)
Saaho (2019, Sujeeth)
Triangle of Sadness (2022, Ruben Östlund)
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