6. Back to the Future (1985)
Hardly a controversial pick, Robert Zemeckis’ era-hopping sci-fi romp about 1980s teen rebel Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) traveling back in time to 1950s to set his parents up still holds the title for the most accessible and unabashedly fun genre movie of all time and represents in more ways than one the platonic ideal of a summer blockbuster whose enduring appeal is owed to both the sheer timelessness of its story and our collective nostalgia for it.
After being co-opted by pop culture and pilfered and repackaged by Hollywood many times over during the past 40 years, it’s easy to overlook just how ingenious, fully realized, and flawlessly executed the high-concept premise of “Back to the Future” really is unless you actually sit down and re-watch it through.
Whereas so many movies in the genre — including some featured in this list — use the hallmarks of science fiction as a jumping-off point to speculate about our uncertain future, this big-budget studio tentpole, by contrast, opted for a different approach to reflect on the past and bridge two generations together. And as multiple revisits reveal, the result is a universally beloved crowdpleaser that holds up remarkably well as S-tier cinematic comfort food you can simply throw on any day of the week at the drop of a hat.
7. Akira (1988)
Grab your pill capsules, put on your crimson jacket, hop onto your motorbike, and prepare to go for a ride under the bright, neon lights of Neo-Tokyo in Katsuhiro Otomo’s landmark post-apocalyptic anime, based on his 1982 manga of the same name.
If you weren’t part of the generation that grew up watching this film on repeat until their VHS copy wore out or snapped in half, it might be hard to grasp the outsized influence “Akira” has wielded not only on cinema and science fiction, but in contemporary pop-culture and fashion at large. Consisting of 2,212 shots and 160,000 animation cells that ballooned up its budget to $10 million, this anti-nuclear parable about a teen biker gang discovering a covert military operation that weaponizes telekinetic youngsters in post-WWIII Japan is largely responsible for speed-injecting Eastern anime into the mainstream and setting a new standard of artistic ambition in contemporary animated cinema that’s rarely been matched since.
You can still glimpse its DNA smeared all over western pop culture, from “Stranger Things” to the music videos of Kanye West, but accept no substitutes — no imitation hits the cyberpunk sweet-spot quite as “Akira”.
8. The Fly (1986)
We could easily put together a best-of sci-fi list made up entirely of titles from the personal catalog of body horror maestro David Cronenberg. But for sheer flavor and fun, today we’re making a bid for his gnarly Reagan-era remake of Vincent Price’s 1950s B-movie cult classic.
In Cronenberg’s R-rated spin on “The Fly”, Jeff Goldblum looms over the proceedings as Seth Brundle, an eccentric scientist with an oversized hubris who flies too close to the sun while testing his groundbreaking teleportation device, resulting in his DNA fusing with that of a housefly. Central to the film’s low-key poignancy and emotional gut-punch is the doomed romantic relationship between Seth and Geena Davis’ science journalist Ronnie, as well as the repulsive, state-of-the-art practical effects that somehow manage to sell the former’s repulsive metamorphosis rather convincingly even by today’s standards.
On paper, watching a nice, charming chap helplessly morph into a hideously grotesque man-fly hybrid for 96 grueling minutes may not sound like anyone’s idea of a good time, but dig a little deeper beneath the story’s genre-hybrid coating and you’ve got a genuinely thoughtful meditation on mankind’s self-destructive hubris and the inevitability of death that delivers both scares and substance.
9. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
The off-kilter genius and madcap vision of Terry Gilliam are on full display in this absolute head-scrambler inspired by the 1962 French short film “La Jetée”, which brought out the absolute best in Bruce Willis as a hard-edged convict who’s sent back in time to prevent the outbreak of a deadly virus that’s obliterated most of the human population and turned the Earth’s surface inhospitable.
The catch? Well, that mankind’s reluctant savior is accidentally sent to 1990, six full years before planned, only to end up locked up in a loony bin shortly after being wrongly accused of being a nutcase by an unassuming psychiatrist. It’s a way out-there premise with enough layers, twists, and narrative curveballs to keep your head spinning on first (and perhaps even second) viewing. But special mention goes to Brad Pitt for stealing the show and nabbing a well-deserved Oscar nom with a pitch-perfect and fearless supporting turn as a twitchy, barely coherent mental patient named Jeffrey Goines who’s clearly had one too many shock treatments.
10. Starship Troopers (1997)
Paul Verhoeven’s cheeky novel adaptation about a fresh-faced recruit gleefully joining the military in mankind’s effort to wage war and eradicate a race of interplanetary bugs is a film riddled with eye-rolling genre clichés, cardboard characters, wooden acting, schmaltzy romance, overblown set pieces, and an (ostensibly) jingoistic message. It also happens to be one of the most fun and purely enjoyable watches the genre has to offer — not despite all the above, but precisely because of it.
The slyly subversive satirical subtext of “Starship Troopers” was so blunt and on the nose that audiences somehow mistook the film as a wholeheartedly sincere shoot-’em-up — it only took them a decade-plus to re-evaluate it as the farcical send-up of right-wing propaganda, imperialism and the military-industrial complex it always was originally conceived as.
The doomer in me would like to point out how prescient and depressingly relevant the film remains today given our current state of affairs. As usual, though, the reality is somewhat more complex: Verhoeven’s winking satirical tone and anti-totalitarian sentiment isn’t particularly subtle, sure, but that hasn’t stopped us from eagerly anticipating another healthy dose of unhinged, over-the-top human-versus-bug carnage on rewatches. We’re doing our part, are you?