Non blockbuster sci-fi films that show up on streaming platforms: S/D

High brow, low brow, no brow, mid budget, low budget...

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Life (2017) - 'alien' on the international space station. stars jake gyllenhaal and ryan reynolds but not a blockbuster.
Sputnik (2020) - 'alien' in a russian prison, does something a bit different with the story.
Oxygen (2021) - a tight high concept thriller with two excellent big reveals.
Time Trap (2017) - a couple of my friends hate this but i'm not really sure why! admittedly it starts off like a terrible soap opera but it goes to very entertaining places with its unconventional time travel premiss.
The Endless (2017) - another unconventional time concept, not saying any more. Keeps its cards close to its chest for a long time, ends up in quite a disturbing place.

Destroy: Cycle (2013). wtf man. 95 minute ps2 cutscene written by - nope, 'written' is too strong a word.

i fuckin LOVED time trap. extremely b-movie, extremely pulp, and i honestly had no idea what was going to happen next. really really good imo and some scenes that i still think about from time to time.

Phew, glad I haven't completely lost my critical faculties. When we finally see the battle at the fountain of youth :DDD

Life was so bad, and could’ve been so good

the low budget Spanish time travel movie Los Cronocrímenes is excellent, not sure if it's streaming anywhere though

The Irish low-budget sci-fi flick LOLA is out on streaming now and I highly recommend - two 1930s English orphans invent a heath Robinson machine for receiving radio and TV signals from the future, and wind up watching the totp Ziggy debut in 1938. They end up involved in the British war effort with cataclysmic consequences. Goes off the rails a bit, but great use of stock footage, antique cameras etc. Amusing soundtrack by Neil Hannon in case that's a deal-breaker.

Sounds fun, will look out for it. And I'd happily watch Los Cronocrimenes again.

ARQ (2016) - how to escape a time loop. Not at all highbrow but reasonably clever & entertaining. Hits the ground running, you can probably tell if you're going to love it or hate it after five minutes.

what I found quite amusing about Time Trap was future people don't gaf about saving the neolithic cave people or the 16th century conquistadors or whoever else is trapped in there... nah fuck 'em

Since The Endless and Synchronic are both streaming free, hoping Something in the Dirt lands soon.

oh I didn't know synchronic was those guys. it didn't work half as well as the endless, imo. definitely well shot & edited though, especially the unconventional match cuts.

Lapsis (2020) - struggling gig worker takes on new job, pulling cable through the woods to connect up a "new quantum trading network." Stuff happens and the ending is open to interpretation, but when the satire connects it's really funny. I loved it.

Event Horizon has probably reached a large audience by now, but at one time it was an obscure treasure.

Hell, a 2011 German-Swiss production, is good.

Timecrimes a 2007 film from Spain, was fun.

Triangle (2009) is a good timey wimey horror caper where her off Home and Away and a bunch of other people end up on an abandoned cruise ship that seems to warp time. Currently available on Freevee.

xp

that's what I referred to upthread using the Spanish title Los Cronocrímenes because I'm very fancy. I've re-watched more than a few times because it's ace.

don thave anything to contribute atm but thanks for this thread i love this stuff

Aniara (2018 - Sweden) - ambitious space opera epic about a fully packed star liner that's blown off course, and the societal devolution of the passengers and crew over the years as they drift helpless through the galaxy

Woah - had no idea there was a movie version of Aniara! (it was a book length sci-fi poem written in 1956 by Harry Martinson)

xxp Oh yeah, sorry, I blew right past that.

I suppose it's a party foul to mention Primer.

Elvis - I haven't read the poem but knew that was the source material... you should check out the film, though I have to say it's pretty darn heartbreaking at times

Second the recommendations for Aniara, Life, Sputnik. I also liked Stowaway, about four people on a rocket built for three.

Would High Life fit in here? Doesn't seem like it was a blockbuster, but there were a couple big stars

I liked it even though it was really fucking weird

The Navigator, maybe?

flight of, or something else?

yeah stowaway was good, quite thoughtful. primer definitely fits, might as well have it here for completeness!

I'm definitely intrigued by aniara & high life, trouble is I rarely rent films, my wife doesn't like this stuff and I don't often have a night in by myself - I can sometimes fit in something over a couple of days but the 48hr rental period is a bit risky so I just look for stuff on netflix.

Lapsis is decent, probably heresy to post this but I enjoyed it much more than Loach's gig economy movie.

that evil little automated big trak menacingly looming past the worker and stealing his route and a phone that speaks "rest prohibited" every time they stop - good stuff but quite possibly not fiction.

i saw the navigator at the london film festival in 1988! (full name these days: the navigator: a medieval odyssey)

it was vincent ward's much-anticipated follow-up to VIGIL (1984) -- which is grebt but not scifi at all. ward was then pencilled in to direct alien3 but got bumped when the navigator didn't do very well, which is a pity IMO as part of his concept was the the prison planet in alien3 was entirely made of WOOD

i have never forgotten this piquant detail

Search The Fare (2018). It's a time loop mystery/suspense/romance that plays like a really good feature-length Twilight Zone episode. Despite it's obvious low budget it manages to be both scary and romantic at the same time.

The producers at Brandywine discussed the logical problems of creating and maintaining a wooden planet in space

didn't they realise they were only making a film?

as part of his concept was the the prison planet in alien3 was entirely made of WOOD

I remember reading this at the time too, either in Empire or the very short-lived zine Fantasy Zone.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81q24V3yRML._AC_SL1500_.jpg

(Many xps) Yeah, I meant the medieval Navigator, which I think could fit this thread because of the time travel elements.

Search The Fare (2018). It's a time loop mystery/suspense/romance

there seem to be a heck of a lot of romantic time loop/time travel films, glad to hear at least one of them is worthwhile!

There was a fair bit of noise at the time, but does The Vast of Night fit here?

it's a s/d thread so if it's good or terrible it fits!

Stowaway was mostly inert for me, except for maybe the last 10-15 minutes which were kind of breathtaking/beautiful.

Coherence is like a poor-man's version of Primer, but not a bad entry into the no-budget creepy vibes genre.

The Vast of Night absolutely fits imho, a fantastic little movie.

Ever Since the World Ended (2001): documentary about the community made by the 186 people living in San Francisco after a massively lethal global pandemic, really nicely judged
Devil's Pass (2013): mildly schlocky but still quite good time-travel/Dyatlov Pass conspiracy thing
Without Warning (1994): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZFRLepmmdU -- pretty good TV movie which is basically the live news coverage of a possible alien invasion
These Final Hours (2013): surprisingly effective and touching movie about Australian loser trying to achieve some sort of redemption just before a massive asteroid hits the planet and kills everybody
Smallpox (2002): mockumentary about the the terrorist smallpox attacks of 2003 that killed a measurable chunk of the world's population -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_iifJyP4ZA
Ravenous/Les Affamés (2017): actually very good Quebecois zombie apocalypse movie

argh,, sorry for horrible formatting

Ultrasound (2021) is the post Primer post Momento genre piece that fits well here.

its available in the UK on the Amazon with ads service, and is well worth a watch.

its based on a comic, which I havent read.

Another Earth (2011) is also worth putting here.

Pandorum (2009) is a fun space madness flick.
Lockout (2012) aka The Space Jail Movie is worth it for Guy Pearce's performance.
both on prime in canada.

Don't know if it's approaching blockbuster status either here or in China, but The Wandering Earth (2019) was a good laugh. Haven't seen the second one yet.

is that based on the cixin liu?

yep

THE WANDERING EARTH (流浪地球)

(this is not exactly a non-blockbuster tho)

I know I watched Pandorum but I have no memory of it.
Lockout, though, was a lot of fun. It's basically Escape From New York but set on an orbiting space prison and yeah, Guy Pearce is having a great time playing Kurt Russell.

Oh, having a recovered memory of liking Duncan Jones' Moon (2009) with Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey... can anyone concur that this was decent?

Yes, it was surprisingly decent.

Me and my bass player got completely obsessed with Circle on Netflix, which would definitely fit here - it's not a good film but it is a GREAT film for drunkenly watching at 4am.

yeah Circle is rather stupid and bad - but also quite good fun.

Moon is good, yes

This was fun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLYhM95dMx8

OK that has shot to the top of my to-watch list.

Thank you for the LAPSIS rec, that was really good.

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes - great fun, cuet, I lolled at least twice, beautifully compact. Must have been a real headfuck to script, and then to film it in a single take! Nice to see a little bit of all that over the closing credits.

currently lingering in my netflix list, probably won't get round to them before they disappear: warriors of future, space sweepers, jung_e. clearly I don't pick based on title alone.

Slash/Back - fun alien monster movie that's what-if Attack The Block, but set in a town on Baffin Island in the Canadian arctic with a mostly Inuit/indigenous cast of kids. Reviews are mixed, I suspect some folks wanted the movie to be something more than it is, I think? I dunno - who needs a complex version of this? I thought it was good and did a lot with whatever limited budget it had.

TPTV showed something called Deathsport last night. from the fist two minutes it seems to be Kirk vs Gorn: the motion picture. Roger Corman. title music was synthtastic, at least.

the very first thing mentioned in this thread, Life, is on film4 on Sunday

T.I.M on Netflix, very poor, like a Black Mirror episode written by a 12-year-old, script/acting also weirdly bad.

The Endless (2017) - another unconventional time concept, not saying any more. Keeps its cards close to its chest for a long time, ends up in quite a disturbing place.

loved this. wish I had known it was a partial sequel to Resolution, which I still might watch, but on its own it's incredible anyway.

hated Time Trap. so cornball, awful effects, and felt endless despite being short as hell.

Sputnik was on Film4 last night. about 5 minutes in and the song is very familiar, have i seen this before?

I liked Time Addicts a lot - like Phil K Dick if he grew up a Melbourne junkie.

(i had seen sputnik before it's the one where the infected person is kept in a lab and the alien comes out of him at night)

I like the look of Time Addicts, but will patiently wait until it hits the torrents.

i saw on a listicle a few actual pkd adaptions I didn't know or had forgotten about or just haven't seen - screamers (1995), imposter (2002), paycheck (2003), next (2007), radio free albemuth (2010), adjustment bureau (2011). any of them any good?

just watched paradise on netflix. good premise, kind of a standard thriller but enjoyable and a satisfying ending.

Adjustment Bureau is genuinely fun, very light.

is there a thread like this for TV series shows? we are hooked on these, watched Travelers, Locke & Key, and currently on The 100

welllll oh well

sorry wrong thread

talk about TV shows on here by all means, it's not the most active thread.

Sci-Fi not the main genre, however ’Totally Killer’ is bags of fun and I can just about forget that it’s not Sally Draper who’s the lead.

Ok it's a blockbuster but I don't know where else to put this - The Creator (Gareth Edwards 2023). Just offensively bad on almost every single level - thematically, narratively, logically, emotionally, morally, politically - but most of all intellectually. So much that makes absolutely no sense and is clearly only there for naked emotional manipulation or because it looks cool.

I'd agree

The movie and half the sets are very slick but it's ten pounds of completely incoherent moral and philosophical ramblings in a five pound bag. I wondered while watching how many of the set design people he poached from his Star Wars work, or if it was explicitly a direction to make it look like that.

I can definitely see why Rogue One had a bunch of rewrites/reshoots with Tony Gilroy in charge of the edits

Watched 20 minutes of Voyagers w/ Colin Farrell & Lily Depp. It was awful but also seemed to share a plot with the equally terrible series The Ark.

(xp) gpt started going mainstream in 2019, when the creator was starting development. probably it would have been too prescient then to see ai becoming a soulless drudge for the dread hand of capitalism, but to see it presented now as simply humanoid robots with thoroughy human feelings - and a particular predilection for becoming buddhist monks - is pretty embarrassing.

the ai bombs, dustbins with arms and legs who say "it's been a pleasure to serve you ma'am" before running into enemy lines and exploding themselves, were when I knew for sure the film was beyond hope.

The Creator (Gareth Edwards 2023). Just offensively bad on almost every single level

Yes! I watched about 2/3 of this on the plane, constantly goggling at how corny it was. This shit got 66% positive on Rotten Tomatoes?? And by the way I *like* shitty somewhat-corny SF, but this was ponderous sludge that didn't rise to the entertainment level of e.g. a random episode of Fringe.

europa report (2013). makes the mistake of being scripted and shot like an actual documentary. talking heads, technobabble, unremarkable characters, very low on action. documentaries are interesting because they're about real things - if this were a real documentary it would be fascinating, as a piece of fiction it's a snoozefest.

i tried to watch The Creator on the plane. unfortunately it was a United flight, and the version I was watching was entitled "The Creator (HD)" which is of course on the face of it hilarious given the size of the screen i was watching it on. But reader, hilarity turned to tragedy when it became clear that the little infotainment unit just could not cope with the number of megabits the "HD" version was throwing at it. after 30 seconds or so the audio just started drifting out. after a few minutes entire lines would go by in advance of the images that were supposed to accompany them. very disorienting. I watched the first 5-10 minutes of that movie about 5 times. my review: not great

Netflix is a big let down on this front at the moment - I guess there's a few space marine / invasion earth style things I haven't seen on there but they're not so much my cup of tea. Luckily we've just got a new smart tv and the Rakuten app has some promising titles, plus there's Plex which has a seemingly endless list of ultra low budget IP borrowing barrel scrapers (zombie terminators, anyone?), maaaaaybe there's some gems hidden in there. I'll search for some of the titles mentioned upthread anyway. Here's a couple I've just seen:

The Signal (2014) - three MIT l33t hackers discover who is worse, aliens or the gubbermint. Slow becomes ponderous becomes boring, with one moderately entertaining reveal. Would have been better if the big twist at the end was the second act twist instead, followed by some cliched action. Laurence Fishburne's easiest paycheck ever, the entire role description = look condescending in a hazmat suit. The story doesn't really add up. Dud.

Vivarium (2019) - not SF at all really but kind of ballardian twilight zone conceptual horror. Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg in the most transparent metaphor for family life written by a terminal misanthrope, the ending captures the feeling of the futile horror of existence you get after watching too many nature documentaries. 6/10.

I still think about TIME TRAP. as Neands says, super corny, but somehow i was incredibly invested. genuinely didn't know where it was going at any point

Yeah I don't get why it's so polarising, sure it's a bit corny but it's a pretty interesting and original idea (unlike time loops where there are a zillion examples) which it explores with gusto. I'll have to rewatch it some time.

Spectral, on Netflix, is GREAT. Interesting idea, well-executed and acted. Would be cool to see a sequel, but not sure how they'd do it.

Agree that The Signal would have been improved by delivering the twist earlier. Not a big fan of the "we don't know how to end it" end. Maybe they were aiming for The Signal 2, and it never happened.

I thought Spectral was pretty lol. My favourite parts were our guy making two dozen 100% professional and production ready futuristic plasma rifles with custom magazines, sights, and full face protection out of whatever shit they had lying around and a soldering iron, and the climax of the film being our guy trying to unplug sixteen plugs.

The central idea is original certainly. And ludicrous.

Brandon Hardesty on Youtube does indie sci-fi recs from time to time. I always put some in my watch list then never watch them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMkBxSv0GLs

time loop (2020).I should read reviews before going into these zero budget things. either the title means it's the last word in the genre (the best genre) or the writer had used up his small reserves of imagination. sadly it's the latter. it's like a bad cheap soap opera, the acting is appalling, the story is utterly low stakes and uninvolving - about the most exciting thing that happens is a moped gets stolen.

Predestination (2014) starring Ethan Hawke & Sarah Snook. This one has good reviews and the trailers make it seem like an action thriller, spoiler alert it absolutely isn't. The first half is all exposition and the second is the same thing from a different POV. I found out afterwards it's based on a Harlan Ellison short story (All You Zombies) and it's incredibly faithful, it only adds a subplot about a serial bomber which is the weakest element. Really there's no reason to watch this over reading the story (or even the wikipedia summary of the story, lol).

Think of all the classics of cinema I could be watching instead of this dreck.

I liked Predestination, FTR. Hawke is always good in genre material.

Heinlein, not Ellison. The story is very good, the movie does an okay job of expanding it out but totally could have stayed under 75 mins even with the bomb plot added.

sorry, got my white male sf blowhards mixed up.

Lol