One of the curious things about science fiction is its way of commenting on the state of the world in the present day. It’s as if putting a mask on the world makes its complex situations more palpable for a viewer. Jean-Luc Godard, places private detective, Lemmy Caution (a fictional character created by crime writer Peter Cheyney), in a future world called Alphaville. Emotions, art, and poetry are banned in there and anyone who exhibits feeling is promptly interrogated and executed. A computer by the name of Alpha 60 controls the population assimilating everyone, thereby shunning individual thought. Caution, under the guise as a journalist, has come on a mission to disrupt and destroy Alphaville and unexpectedly falls in love with one of its programmers.

Alphaville is an art house film threaded with poetic nuance through its camera work and dialogue. Most of the scenes were improvised by the actors and while the settings are in 1960s Paris, modern glass buildings are used for the film’s interiors. Godard makes old interiors look austere and futuristic.

The Hidden (1987)

Director: Jack Sholder // Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Claudia Christian, Michael Nouri

Ever wanted to see Kyle McLachlan come out of nowhere and don a flamethrower? Well, you can find that is this movie and a hell of a lot more. The Hidden is most likely a poster or a DVD cover you’ve seen in passing, but never really picked up. It is Jack Sholder’s follow up film after Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge.

Detective Thomas Beck and the LAPD find themselves investigating various murders that somehow are connected, but they don’t know why. The truth is that there’s a shape shifter alien in town and there’s only one man who can help Beck get to the bottom of it, FBI Special Agent Lloyd Gallagher.

It’s a neat thriller with a great 1980s rock soundtrack and awesome car chases. The chemistry of Michael Nouri as Beck and McLachlan as Gallagher drives the film through its unique comedic turns and cool views of retro Los Angeles.

Orion’s Loop (1981)

Director: Vasili Levin // Cast: Leonid Bakshtayev, Gennadi Shkuratov, Anatoliy Mateshko

The appeal of watching Soviet Bloc films is that when there’s little freedom given to a people, the imagination is where it all goes. The mind becomes a space in itself where truly anything is possible. If you take a look at Russian films, especially shorts, sci-fi, and animation the ideas are completely out there, but so very human in nature. This is why a film like Orion’s Loop (also known as Petlya Oriona), stands as a sort of period piece.

A space crew of humans and their identical android doubles has been sent out to investigate a strange anomaly called the Orion’s Loop. Many who have found themselves there have been driven insane and died as a result. The crew’s investigation leads them into hallucinate actual people from their lives who really aliens in disguise.

Director Vasili Levin deals with themes of duality and memory throughout the film. It is interesting to note that in many ways this movie was made during a time that encountering extra-terrestrial life was thought to be entirely possible. Orion’s Loop deals with the consequences of that and the moral dilemma the world might face if it becomes a reality.

Beyond The Black Rainbow (2010)

Director: Panos Cosmatos // Cast: Eva Allan, Scott Hylands, Michael Rogers

Canadian filmmaker Panos Cosmatos was inspired by the VHS covers of video rental stores to make Beyond The Black Rainbow. If you were a kid in the 1980s, you would see extraordinary cardboard VHS cover design as one way studios would draw audiences for their films. Sometimes the films were nothing like what their covers portray, but nonetheless it would do its job if it got someone to take that film off the dusty shelves. This film is like a compilation of the images Cosmatos saw in those covers as well as his dealing with his personal present.

Sometime in the 1960s New Age researcher, Dr. Arboria, builds the Arboria Institute, a place where humans can integrate science and spirituality to find eternal happiness. His top student, Dr. Barry Nyle takes over the institute in the 1980s and holds Dr. Arboria’s psychic daughter, Elena, prisoner within the institute’s walls. Nyle subjects Elena to daily sessions where he pushes her psychic boundaries.

I guarantee you will be left with some interesting questions and in need of the acquiring the retro electronic soundtrack after a viewing.

La Jetée (1962)

Director: Chris Marker // Cast: Hélène Chatelain, Davos Hanich, Jean Négroni

Chris Marker is the father of the avant-garde approach to video essays, a way of presenting a thesis to a film audience and working through it with them as a way of filmmaking. La Jetée is composed in a series of film stills that are brought together by a omnipresent narrator. It is a short film, but an important sci-fi treasure that won the Prix Jean Vigo and inspired Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys.

The time is post World War III in Paris and the surviving members of the human race live in the underground. Scientists enlist a prisoner in their time travelling experiments to send an SOS into the future to anyone that could help. He travels through his memories and eventually ends up in pre-war France where he locates a woman who leaves a deep impression in his mind. She becomes an anchor to his travels to the future and ultimately prepares him for what is to come.

Dark Star (1974)

Director: John Carpenter // Cast: Dan O’Bannon, Brian Narelle, Dre Pahich

This low budget space movie is a hilarious play on the sci-fi genre and it spun out of a student film project by John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon. A reminder this was made in a time before CGI and modern special effects, thus model work may be inferior to now, but it is quite the feat for a film made with little money.

The time is about 22nd century and humans have the ability to colonize other planets in the far reaches of outer space. The crew of the ship Dark Star are sent on a long time mission to destroy unstable planets in humanity’s path. A crewmember adopts a beach ball-like alien and plays pranks on his fellow astronauts. Goofs happen and everything on the ship goes haywire resulting in a poignant tragic comedy set in what is ultimately the chaotic unknown.

Stalker (1979)

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky // Cast: Alisa Freyndlikh, Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, Anatoliy Solonitsyn

We end our list with an Andrei Tarkovsky film, but as it is with this director, it’s a beautiful feast of the senses. Based on Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s novel, “Roadside Picnic,” this stark film proves to be minimalist science fiction film with hugely philosophical bent.

Sometime and someplace in the future, a person called a “Stalker” guides people to the “Zone.” In the Zone, all laws of reality are gone and it contains a place, “The Room,” where any person can make a wish and it will come true. The government keeps this place secret, but the Stalker is paid great money by those looking to find it. The Stalker takes two men, ”The Writer” and “The Professor” into The Zone and there they explore the paths and their individual psychological crises.

This is film is a test of endurance, but a satisfying one until the very end. It is filled with slow takes and long views of dystopian settings. If you are able to view the newly restored version for the first time, be prepared for a gorgeous think piece.