2001: A Space Odyssey
The story tracks the discovery of a mysterious monolith on the moon's surface. The monolith prompts a space mission to a location near Jupiter. Two young astronauts, David Bowman and Frank Poole, and a hyper-intelligent computer, HAL, accompany a hibernating crew on this mission of exploration and investigation. And that's when things start to go haywire.

The Abyss
Investigating the mysterious crash of a nuclear sub, the crew of an underwater drilling team encounters weird, alien-like creatures.

Alien
This is the first of the science-fiction horror movies that made Sigourney Weaver, as Officer Ripley, a star and launched a franchise. Ridley Scott directed this original, about the crew of the commercial spaceship Nostromo during their journey home to Earth. En route they receive an SOS signal and touch down on a nearby planet, where they discover strange eggs. After a creature attacks crewmember Kane (John Hurt), putting him in a coma, the crew realizes that the planet isn't quite as deserted as it first seemed … Remember: In space no one can hear you scream.

Aliens
In this film, set 57 years after the original, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is in deep sleep, the only survivor of the extraterrestrial attacks aboard the Nostromo. She's rescued by a salvage ship and returned to Earth, but she longs to confront her fear and rid herself of the nightmares she still endures. She gets the chance when a colony of humans is discovered on the same alien planet she and her crew investigated years earlier. Along with a team of space marines and other military personnel, Ripley finds that the intense battle between man and monster has just begun.

The Andromeda Strain
Based on the best-selling novel by Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain is about a team of scientists who must race against time to destroy a deadly alien virus that threatens to wipe out life on Earth.

Back to the Future
Director Robert Zemeckis scored a huge hit with 1985's Back to the Future, which stars Michael J. Fox as the ever-so-slightly nerdy but still popular high-school student Marty McFly. Marty befriends an eccentric scientist (Christopher Lloyd) and is given the opportunity to travel back in time in a souped-up DeLorean. Marty heads back to the 1950s, where he meets his parents (Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover). But the very act of meeting them changes the course of history, and Marty realizes that unless he can get things back to normal, he'll cease to exist.

Beetlejuice
After a couple (Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis) is killed in a car accident, they return to their old home as ghosts. Unfortunately, a vile family has moved in, and when the couple's attempts to scare off the intruders fail, they turn to obnoxious, untrustworthy, loud-mouthed super-ghoul Beetlejuice.

Blade Runner
In this sci-fi classic, first released in 1982, director Ridley Scott painted a bleak vision of the future. Set in 2029 Los Angeles, the story centers around a cop (Harrison Ford) whose assignment is to identify and eliminate six 'replicants,' genetically engineered humans who have escaped into the teeming metropolis.

Brazil
Dark and chaotic, Brazil tells the story of Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), a low-level bureaucratic cog living and working in a brutal, Orwellian futuristic world, whose only respite lies in his fantasies of a mysterious woman with long blond hair. Filled with fantastic imagery richly conceived by director-co-writer Terry Gilliam, the film has a relentlessly bleak tone against which Sam's fantasies seem to offer the only chance at hope.

A Clockwork Orange
Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange tells the futuristic story of Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his pals, street punks who engage in "a little of the old ultraviolence" nightly. Alex gets nabbed by the cops for murder, though, and while in prison he signs up for aversion therapy, which leaves him incapacitatingly nauseated any time he thinks of violence or even his favorite piece of music, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind
On a lonely highway near his Muncie, Ind., home, repairman Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) has an otherworldly encounter. He becomes obsessed with the visions and the experience and is haunted by an irresistible compulsion that leads him to Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Here, he and scores of others similarly drawn come face to face with a benevolent extraterrestrial intelligence.

Cocoon
Three retirees sneak into a pool near their retirement home a few times a week for a swim, and after the new owners of the property fill the pool with strange pods, the old fellas notice that they're feeling stronger and younger. It turns out that the pods are the cocoons of aliens, which are responsible for the effect.

Contact
Based on Carl Sagan's novel, the story follows astronomer Dr. Eleanor Arroway (Jodie Foster) as she struggles to make sense of the ramifications of discovering an intelligent signal sent from aliens. The aliens' message includes instructions to build a machine for intergalactic communication, but will Arroway risk her life to try it out?

Cube
Six ordinary people (student, ex-con, engineer, social worker, cop, mentally handicapped) are trapped in a maze of interlocking cubes with no apparent way out. They have no recollection of how they got there or why they were chosen. They have no food or water and upon further investigation discover some of the rooms are booby trapped with creative devices of destruction. After the initial panic, they come to realize that each person possesses a unique ability which may aid in their safe navigation through the rooms and a possible escape. Can they overcome personal conflict and work together? Interesting set design, moody lighting, and creative computer generated imagery add to the claustrophobic feeling of Vincenzo Natali's film, which was a hit at several festivals in 1997.

The Dark Crystal
The Dark Crystal has been broken, which tips the balance of power between the evil Skeksis and the well-meaning Mystics in favor of the bad guys. The only person who can put the rock back together again is Jen, a Gelfling who has magical healing powers.

The Day the Earth Stood Still
Beginning with a documentary style that immediately hooks the viewer, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, based on the Harry Bates short story "Farewell to the Master," becomes as much a human interest story as it does a sci-fi B-movie classic. The film soberly depicts the arrival of an alien dignitary, Klaatu (Michael Rennie), who has come to earth with his deadly robot, Gort (Lock Martin), to deliver the message that earthlings must stop warring among themselves--or else. After being shot at by ignorant, panicky military guards, Klaatu is brought to a Washington, D.C., hospital, where he begs a sympathetic but frank Major White (Robert Osterloh) to gather all the world's leaders so he can tell them more specifically what he has come 250 million miles to warn them about. Losing patience, Klaatu slips into the human world, adapting a false identity and living at a boarding house where he meets a smart woman with a conscience, Helen Benson (Patricia Neal), and her inquisitive son, Bobby (Billy Gray). Both mother and son soon find themselves embroiled in the complex mystery of Klaatu, his message, and the government's witch hunt for the alien. Made during the cold war--when Americans were obsessed with the destructive capabilities of the atomic bomb--THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, thanks to its beautiful pacing, excellent dialogue, and haunting score by Bernard Herrmann, is still a treat for contemporary audiences.

Donnie Darko
After he narrowly avoids being killed by a falling jet engine, a troubled youngster named Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) begins having hallucinations of a giant, creepy rabbit that warns him that the world will end in 28 days. As he tries to make sense of what's going on, Donnie becomes convinced that he should have died the night of the accident.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Steven Spielberg's classic tale — re-released (with additional scenes added) to celebrate the film's 20th anniversary — is about a boy named Elliot (Henry Thomas) who befriends, and later attempts to protect, an alien stranded on Earth.

The Empire Strikes Back
The middle installment of the original Star Wars trilogy finds the Empire closing in on the rebel forces led by Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher). Meanwhile, Han Solo (Harrison Ford) is betrayed by his best friend, and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) heads toward his inevitable confrontation with Darth Vader (James Earl Jones).

Galaxy Quest
Galaxy Quest is the title of a fictional TV show that — much like a certain true-life outer space adventure series — airs for just three seasons but becomes a national obsession. Loyal fans of the show, "Questarians," form clubs, circulate petitions, and hold annual conventions; the series' stars, finding themselves hopelessly typecast and stuck in dead-end acting careers, play along with the phenomenon, some in good humor and others less gracefully. Turns out the series has extra-terrestrial fans who don't realize it's just a show — after their home world is invaded by hostile bug-like aliens the peaceful Thermians send an envoy to Earth to enlist the aid of heroic Commander Peter Quincy Taggart (Tim Allen) and his brave crew.

Gattaca
In Gattaca, Vincent (Ethan Hawke) is one of the last humans not to be genetically engineered to perfection. As a result, he's put in a lower working class. To achieve his dream of being an astronaut, Vincent fakes his identity with the help of Jerome (Jude Law), a formerly flawless man who is now bound to a wheelchair.

Ghostbusters
Three scientists (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis) find themselves laid off from their university research jobs. They decide to set up shop in an old firehouse and open a business tracking, capturing, and disposing of ghosts, specters, poltergeists, and other supernatural pests. Soon their business is booming, but the Ghostbusters are challenged when they discover that a gateway to another dimension is about to open, releasing a very powerful, very evil demon.

Independence Day
In Independence Day, the planet is faced with destruction when a number of seemingly impenetrable alien spaceships begins an assault on the world's major metropolitan areas.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
A small-town California doctor begins to notice that more and more of his patients seem oddly affectless, which eventually leads him to the discovery that pod creatures from outer space are taking over the town. The plant-like aliens precisely replicate the townspeople and then kill them in their sleep. Is there any way to stop the horrible invasion?

Jurassic Park
Two paleontologists are invited to an island resort off the coast of Costa Rica, where a wealthy entrepreneur has cloned dinosaurs from DNA recovered from prehistoric mosquitoes. When a storm hits the island, the dinosaurs get loose and chaos theory begins to be validated.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The Dark Lord Sauron seeks to enslave the free peoples of the mythical realm of Middle-earth by recovering a mighty ring of power he forged in the fires beneath Mount Doom. After many generations, the ruling ring, cut from Sauron's hand by the human hero Isildur, has fallen by chance into the keeping of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm). Guided by the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and assisted by companions representing the free races of elves, dwarves, men, and hobbits, Bilbo's heir, Frodo (Elijah Wood), embarks on a perilous quest to destroy the ring before Sauron's minions can recapture it. The film is based on the first volume of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
The final film in Peter Jackson's adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy trilogy follows hobbits Frodo and Sam as they push farther into the land of Mordor to destroy the ring of power. Traveling with them, in an uneasy alliance, is the deceitful Gollum, who brings them to the very heart of Mount Doom. The warrior Aragorn, revealed to be the lost King of Gondor, travels to Minas Tirith with an army of undead soldiers and the remaining members of the fellowship to rescue the ancient city from Lord Sauron's grasp.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Picking up where The Fellowship of the Ring ends, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is the second film in Peter Jackson's epic adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy trilogy. The fellowship has divided, with hobbits Frodo and Sam continuing toward Mount Doom to destroy the one ring of power and the trio of warrior Aragorn, dwarf Gimli, and elf Legolas pursuing of a party of Uruk-hai warriors who have captured the fellowship's two other hobbits, Merry and Pippin. Meanwhile, Lord Sauron, in collaboration with the corrupt Saruman, continues to build his forces in the land of Mordor for the coming war with the free races of Middle-earth. The wizard Gandalf, previously thought dead, has returned, but will he be in time to reunite the fellowship against Sauron?

The Man Who Fell to Earth
An alien (David Bowie) from a planet dying of drought is dispatched to the Earth to figure out a way to get some of the planet's plentiful water supply back to his home world. The longer the alien stays on Earth, however, the more he falls in love with the planet and its inhabitants.

The Matrix
It's 1999, and Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is a pretty normal guy, just minding his own business and doing some occasional computer hacking. One day, he's contacted by a man calling himself Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), who informs Thomas that the world he knows is merely a software program, called The Matrix, designed by machines to distract humans while they're used for fuel. The program perfectly simulates everyday life, creating an alternate universe down to the smallest detail. Morpheus tells Thomas, a k a Neo, that he is the only one who can hack into The Matrix and free humankind.

Men in Black
In Men in Black, agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) recruits a cop (Will Smith) to join a super secret agency in charge with monitoring extraterrestrials living on Earth. The pair then must track down an intergalactic assassin whose unauthorized activities on Earth could result in the planet's destruction.

Metropolis
The story is set in the year 2000, when subterranean humans slave away earning money for the rich, above-ground classes. Freder, the son of a wealthy tycoon, falls in love with Maria, one of the toiling masses, and begins to campaign for the rights of the lower classes. To thwart his efforts, a rich magnate creates a robot double of Maria, which he uses to mislead the rebellious proletariat.

Minority Report
In Washington, D.C., in 2054, a technologically advanced Department of Precrime has been created to detect and prevent murders before they're committed. As the respected Detective John Anderton, Tom Cruise plays one of the cops who bust potential murderers. He's a respected officer hired by his even more admired mentor (Max von Sydow). But an aggressive and arrogant Department of Justice agent (Colin Farrell) begins nosing around looking for corruption and thinks he finds it when signs point to Anderton as a future killer. The movie is based on a story by Philip K. Dick.

Pitch Black
A spaceship crash-lands on a desolate desert planet, and the survivors of the crash try to find other humans. Instead, they encounter the nasty indigenous inhabitants of the planet, who have a taste for blood. Because the creatures fear the light, the survivors think they're in the clear … until they discover that a solar eclipse is imminent.

Planet of the Apes
Colonel Taylor (Charlton Heston) crash-lands his spacecraft on a planet ruled by an advanced race of apes who are hostile to humans. Taken into custody, he escapes with the help of sympathetic simians only to come face to face with his true destiny.

Predator
Major Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) leads a team of U.S. Army commandos through a Central American jungle on a mission to rescue operatives captured by terrorists. But when Dutch and his crew arrive, they make a grisly discovery: All of the operatives have been butchered. The commandos wipe out the enemy camp and their duty seems done. But as they're waiting to be airlifted to safety, a strange and scary thing starts to happen to Dutch's squad: An invisible force, which turns out to be a powerful, camouflaging alien, is killing them one by one.

Return of the Jedi
The final chapter in the original Star Wars series finds the familiar characters in rough spots. Han Solo (Harrison Ford) is entombed by Jabba the Hutt, who's also keeping Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) captive. The new Death Star is nearing completion. Can the Rebels prevail? With the help of fuzzy Endorian forest creatures called Ewoks, they just might stand a chance.

The Road Warrior
After World War III has rendered Australia a complete wasteland, Max (Mel Gibson) drives through the barren countryside looking for gasoline. He finds a small community whose citizens run an oil refinery, and Max must protect them from bandits looking to steal their fuel.

Robocop
A Detroit police officer is killed in the line of duty and brought back to life as a partially robotic supercop. Within a short period of time, he rids the city of crime, but he's still got a hankering for revenge on the bad guys who rubbed him out.

Signs
A widowed Pennsylvania farmer, Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), discovers strange 500-foot crop circles in his corn fields. Were they created by pranksters or … aliens? Along with his brother, Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), and his two children, daughter Bo (Abigail Breslin) and son Morgan (Rory Culkin), Graham searches for the answer, and it's not long before others are searching, too.

Sleeper
Miles Monroe (Woody Allen), a 1970s health food store owner, is unfrozen in 2173 by a group of scientists who need his help in overthrowing the Big Brother-ish government. In trying to make sense of the future and escape the government forces, Miles poses as an android and is sent to work for Luna (Diane Keaton). Eventually, he joins the resistance and (we're not kidding) kidnaps a nose.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
The second Star Trek film follows the crew of the Starship Enterprise as they try to prevent the evil Khan, previously frozen in the 20th century, from using a mysterious weapon to exact revenge upon Capt. Kirk.

Star Wars
In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) discovers his true destiny through the teachings of Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) and joins Princess Leia and the roguish Han Solo in an epic struggle between the good Rebel Alliance and dastardly, powerful Empire, led by the menacing Darth Vader.

Starship Troopers
In a fascist future, Earth's military fights a race of giant alien insects. This film follows the story of one military recruit as he goes through training and eventually finds himself on the battlefield.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day
In the sequel to James Cameron's surprise 1984 sci-fi hit, Arnold Schwarzenegger reprises his role as a killer Terminator cyborg from the future. The mechanical assassin beams back in time to protect John Connor — the future leader of a rebellion aiming to dethrone the machines that rule the Earth — rather than kill him. Robert Patrick plays the villainous T-1000, a new, highly advanced generation of Terminator.

The Terminator
In 2029, the Skynet computer system is waging a war on the last remnants of humanity. It has created a nearly indestructible type of robot, the Terminator, and sends one of them (Arnold Schwarzenegger) back in time to murder Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), who will eventually give birth to John, who will become the leader of the human resistance movement in the future.

Them!
Atomic radiation once again manages to transform tiny harmless creatures into gigantic holy terrors. Probably the best of the '50s phenomenon, this top-notch thriller witnesses an invasion of giant ants using the sewer systems of Los Angeles like a vast ant farm. Academy Award Nominations: Best Special Effects.

Twelve Monkeys
In this futuristic sci-fi tale, partly set in 2035, Bruce Willis plays James Cole, a prisoner who volunteers to be sent back in time to help uncover the source of a mysterious virus that wiped out nearly all of humanity and sent the survivors underground. While in the year 1990, he meets a psychiatrist (Madeleine Stowe) and the nutty son (Brad Pitt) of a virologist (Christopher Plummer). Cole has to try to convince the psychiatrist that he's not insane and simultaneously discover what caused the plague, which may turn out to be the mysterious Army of the Twelve Monkeys.

The War of the Worlds
Scientists race to develop a weapon that's effective against an army of Martian invaders waging war on the Earth.

The X-Files
In The X-Files, FBI agents Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate a devastating terrorist bombing of a Dallas federal building and a mysterious virus, which may or may not be associated with an ancient, non-terrestrial race.