DVD Beaver rules. I'm always nabbing screenshots from them in my continuing quest to watch every Criterion Collection movie.

Cool article. I don't really consider myself much of a science fiction fan (J.G Ballard excepted), but I'd love to see several of these (especially "The 10th Victim," which sounds wild).

I'm a huge fan of "A.I." just like this guy is, and never understood why it wasn't better liked.

The Peter Watkins ("Privilege")movie sounds great- I bought that "Punishment Park" DVD and passed it around to several friends and co-workers after watching it, and every one of us was blown away by it. I'd love to see some of Watkins' other stuff.

I actually have his number 9 choice, "Stalker," on an import DVD but haven't watched it because I need to hook up my region-free player for it. Maybe this will prod me to get off my duff and do that. :)

sciurus -- dvdbeaver is awesome, the goto resource for high quality DVDs on the entire Internets, not a small accomplishment for one man with a plasma screen and a website

BP -- if your computer has a good screen, download VideoLan and watch Stalker, VideoLan is regionfree, Tarkovsky's worth it

Oooh, Metropolis is so awesome. And I love Jonathan Rosenbaum (though I sometimes disagree with him, he's one of the best critics out there, and my personal favorite).

I'll do that, matteo. Thanks!

I love (LOVE) Tarkovsky's "Solaris," though I've heard it's not typical of his other movies.

Neither Metropolis nor Zardoz have been negelected. Metropolis has been reissued several times in the last twenty years, including one version with the original score reconstructed. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is neglected - it's one of the most chair gripping thrillers ever made. The auto chase scene near the end set the mark for every chase up to Runaway Train.

Zardoz is a cult favorite and frequently comes up in film studies.

But these are really quibbles. I would add La Jetee (spoiler warning for this link) to the list. It had a revolutionary effect on film when it was released - revolutionary among filmmakers, at least, since it has never been widely seen by the public.

"La Jetee" is brilliant... I think it's available on the DVD of Gilliam's "Twelve Monkeys."

whatever intellectual mountain you may have climbed, it’s likely Marker has already been there, and rolled some footage of it. (WARNING: link contains La Jetée SPOILERS)

Agree with all the praise of Stalker. It happens to be my favorite film evar.

I can almost see a point to Spielberg's ending for AI; something about the resurrection of artificial life or what have you, but the deus ex machina (heh) he pulls to get there turns the whole thing into shit. And frankly, he's too much of a lightweight to be trusted with anything that meaty.

Hi matteo!

I can't say how some of these could fall under the category of Neglected. Also, I find any list of recommended films which includes Zardoz or A.I. to be suspect. One that contains both can be completely ignored. ;)

AI is the worst film so far this decade, imo. Zardoz was among the worst of the 70s. (How can he recommend it and with a straight face say that he doesn't like camp? WTF?)

For my money, La Jetee is the greatest sci-fi movie ever made. I'm not sure if it's on the 12 Monkeys dvd, but it's definitely on Volume 2 of Short. It's also on an R2 DVD with San Soliel, another Marker masterpiece.

Also, this out of print book (which I thankfully own) contains one still of the film per page.

I can almost see a point to Spielberg's ending for AI; something about the resurrection of artificial life or what have you

To me it was darker than that: the little boy prayed to the Blue Fairy to be human, and became human enough that he could be fooled by an illusory love from an illusory mother, just as his original family had done when they brought HIM home.

AI is the worst film so far this decade, imo

No, that is Minority Report. What a mess.

this out of print book (which I thankfully own)

3 used & new available from $712.00