The MoFo Top 100 Sci-Fi Films: Countdown

Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) - I still like this film and give it the same rating I did at the theatre, but watching it after Strange Days made it seem slightly less significant than the first time. While being thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking, I've decided that Nolan needs to lighten up a bit to allow his best attributes to breathe.

OK, break out the tar and feathers.

Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)


This long, sometimes hypnotic film is more of a meditation on humankind's yearning to be connected to something than a sci-fi film. True, it involves aliens on a space station, but based on this movie (not the novel), I still don't even know what or where Solaris is, and I watched it three times. The film involves lonely astronaut Kris (Donatas Banionis) who goes to the space station to determine if the Solaris project is worth continuing. Almost all of the people who have been on the station have died or seemed to have suffered some major delusions. Shortly after Kris arrives, he finds his wife Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk). The problem is that she died on Earth much earlier.

Tarkovsky is certainly a cult director, and I've seen many of his films praised here and elsewhere. He just doesn't strike me as a director who is very inviting. Even though his films present the human condition, the talkiness and extreme length tend to make me feel icy toward him. It's funny because many people feel that Kubrick is a cold director, and he occasionally may be, but he seems warmer to my sensibility. My fave Tarkovsky films are among his earliest (The Steamroller and the Violin, My Name is Ivan), but since they are less-experimental, they are undoubtedly less-personal

Although I do find Solaris exhausting, I also find several unique scenes. The opening in the water-filled countryside is evocative, and then the scenes showing what happened to an earlier Solaris astronaut add some mystery. The scene involving fast driving on a freeway is very trippy, and many of the scenes on the station, especially between Kris and "Hari", even I would consider moving. Then there's the ending, which can be interpreted more than one way, and which I might even consider to make the film cyclical and all a flashback. So, yes, I recommend it, especially to many people here, but somehow the entire 168 minutes just doesn't need to be there. It probably just went over my head or maybe it is a case of overkill in the totality of my acceptance of pregnant pauses. I mean, I did invest about eight-and-one-half hours in viewing it during the last month.

I was just about to post a Solaris review, but I don't want to seem like I'm piggybacking.

Just wondering - with the original Solaris coming in now, does that mean the re-make will come in higher OR (more likely) that it didn't make the list at all?

Btw, is Pacific Rim totally screwed out of any chance of getting on the list, you think? Because if it is, I'd boot Avatar off the list and letting Pacific take its place.

Just my thought, though.

Seen 59/78

On a similar note, I wonder if Godzilla (in any form) will show up. As with superhero movies, a lot of people don't put giant monster movies within the genre of sci-fi. But the original Godzilla is a sci-fi movie complete with warning about nuclear weapons & power.

I really just want you all angry and confused the whole time.