Friendly alien visitors:
3. Cocoon
The aliens have touched down, and they're not here to conquer us, morph into our bodies, drain us of our energy sources, or steal our sun. They just want to take a few of their "left-overs" from their first visit, home.
And if not, at least take some of our senior citizens with 'em.
Which is fine by us.
Cuz in space, no one can hear an old man fart.
2. Starman
An alien being comes down to Earth, morphs into a human form in order to understand our species & then begins a race against time to meet with his star-faring rendevous party before the government military can get it's hands on him/it. But not before he/it can get a girl pregnant.
Simply put,
this movie is E.T. for adults.
Or at least, it's for those of us whose mind's are mature enough to understand that when it comes to traffic lights, red means "stop", green means "go" & yellow means "go very fast".
1. Contact
What Close Encounters Of The 3rd. Kind did back in the 70's, this film takes to the next evolutionary step, in terms of the actual physics & concepts of a meeting 'tween us mere mortals and any life-forms from beyond the stars.
For my money, Contact contains some of the best discussions of religion and atheism in any film ever made. It's depictions of the manner that things like general fear & politics can get in the way of a true quest for knowledge is both basely intelligent & comprehendibly poignant. This film's plot does a great job treading on the subject of how our society is constantly struggling between the comfort of what we already know & the confrontational truths about our species that can be revealed as result of the discovery of what is new, especially if seen thru the "eyes" of a life-form that's a lot smarter than us.
Unfriendly alien visitors:
3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
A great classic sci-fi horror that thrills by channeling it's chills thru the use of the fears that we tend to hold most as a general populace. The fear that we & our brethen are not we seem to be.
And rarely does the black & white look of the time capture this cultural sub-genre fear of the unknown & magnify it so that even today, Invasion makes the viewer feel the sparseness of trust that was running amok during this era of red scares & McCarthyisms.
At the time, this movie could've easily influenced anyone to view his neighbor with a questioning look of "Are you a friend, a Pinko or a pod?"
2. The Blob
A big giant glob of pink snot that only gets bigger & bigger as the movie progresses.
Could somebody hand me over a city-sized piece of tissue, please?
1. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
What happens when the Martians start to get nasty around the holiday season?
They end up getting a nice big ol' can of whoop-ass for Christmas from none other than Santa hisself.