What goes in this film festival

[cos]

Imagine a hypothetical film festival that would show:
- The Martian
- Interstellar
- Moon
- 2001: A Space Odyssey

Alien does NOT fit into this festival.
The Star Wars films do NOT fit into this festival.

What's another movie that you think belongs on the list?

No spoilers!!

Comments

[totient]

Jupiter Ascending!



These films aren't exactly all sublight SF, but they all feature space travel and none of them feature non-spin artificial gravity.

[grail76]

TV series, Men into space.
Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home.

Both deal with a problem rather than an enemy?

[flexagon]

Space is yes, people is yes, aliens are no, large cast of characters is no, AI is maybe. Endings are bittersweet.

A movie of Seveneves would be perfect...

[rmd]

Forbidden Planet, going with the theme of people who are, at some point, stuck on another heavenly body.

[rmd]

2001 fails one of those, I think?

[nacht_musik]

Gattaca, Hidden Figures, Serenity, the Black Hole (1979 Disney). If 2001 and Moon fit, Blade Runner might.

It's unclear whether Wall-E would meet your criteria. Similarly with Planet of the Apes.

Re: What goes in this film festival

[cos]

Oh yes, Seveneves would be perfect, if the movie weren't done too badly!

I think aliens could be okay, though not in the ways they're usually done in scifi movies (usually just another race of humans, or scary enemies to be fought). Now that you make me think of it, I think *Arrival* might fit in pretty well.

Interstellar has a somewhat large cast of characters, don't you think?

Re: What goes in this film festival

[cos]

Wall-E and Planet of the Apes don't seem to, though they come close... hmmm. Maybe what they lack is that they're not serious enough? Wall-E because it's deliberately designed to be for kids, and Planet of the Apes because it just didn't aim very high.

[coraline]

"contact"?

[macthud]

Destination Moon

Maybe Passengers

[eirias]

High Life?

[elusiveat]

Gravity?

(Actually haven't seen it... or any of the movies on your list except Moon, but this is my guess based on what I know about some of those movies.)

[kimberlogic]

Contact

[ceelove]

Gravity

E.T.

The “Out of Gas” episode of Firefly

Arrival

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

For a foreign film, the recent Chinese blockbuster “The Wandering Earth” (which is not actually a recommendation of the film, I didn’t care for it myself)

(I like this game, do another!)

Re: What goes in this film festival

[cos]

Close Encounters and Arrival fit my idea of what this theme is. E.T. I'm hesitant about... it has one foot in this theme and one foot somewhere else. But now I want to see Gravity, which I haven't seen. And maybe I should see The Wandering Earth even though you weren't that into it? Did you like all of the other ones you listed and all the ones I put in my post?

Re: What goes in this film festival

[cos]

I haven't seen Contact, but two of you mentioned it, so that makes me curious. Perhaps I will see it.

Re: What goes in this film festival

[ceelove]

I quite recommend Gravity, which (among other things) challenges the common one-man-against-space narrative. I like the others I listed, E.T. the least of them (and I can see why you’d disinclude it too). I loved Arrival, in my top 5 movies I saw that year. I watched The Wandering Earth in an attempt to get out of my western-centric SF movie-watching and wish I liked it, but found the scientific premise underlying the movie to be too glaringly impossible and therefore riddled with plot holes.

Of the ones you listed, I found The Martian to hold my attention the best, Interstellar interesting and thought-provoking but flawed, 2001 iconic but veeerrrryyyy slllooowww (half the movie could be cut and lose nothing), and Moon too boring to complete.