The following list is kept as concise as possible, with no more than one title per year (with the exception of a few rare cases), and no more than five per decade. This is to allow newcomers a quick introduction to the genre.
In addition, due to the recent wave of sci-fi movies this decade, there are a lot of great films to consider beyond this list and we recommend that you look them up after exhausting the titles below.
| Title | Year | Description |
| The Day the Earth Stood Still | 1951 | First contact with aliens, lots of cold war era social commentary |
| 2001: A Space Odyssey | 1968 | A sci-fi classic based on the Arthur C. Clarke novel of the same title. |
| Alien | 1979 | A thrilling classic scifi horror: alien on a ship. |
| Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior | 1981 | Post-apocalyptic on the road. |
| Blade Runner | 1982 | Loosely based on the PKD book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Harrison Ford hunts androids. One of the first cyberpunk films. |
| The Thing | 1982 | Psychological sci-fi horror, about an alien parasite. |
| Aliens | 1986 | Sequel to Alien, with a faster pace, and more action. |
| Twelve Monkeys | 1995 | Post-apocalyptic, time traveling neo-noir. |
| The Matrix | 1999 | Classic cyberpunk film. |
| Minority Report | 2002 | Based on Phillip K. Dick’s short story of the same title. |
| Children of Men | 2006 | Post-apocalyptic: nobody has children anymore. |
| Wall-E | 2008 | Proof that animated films can be just as thought-provoking and engaging as regular sci-fi films. |
| Moon | 2009 | About the crisis of a guy on the moon. |
| Europa Report | 2013 | A team searches for signs of life on one of Jupiter’s mysterious moons. |
| Interstellar | 2014 | World is coming to an end due to a blight, and humanity explores the universe for a solution. |
| Mad Max: Fury Road | 2015 | Beautiful post-apocalyptic with intense cinematography. |
| Arrival | 2016 | First contact with a unique touch on alien linguistics. |
| Get Out | 2017 | A guy goes to meet his girlfriend’s family for the first time but everyone seems to be acting strange. |