Top ten sci-fi movies

Director Ridley Scott's atmospheric classic Blade Runner has stood the test of time and graces nzherald.co.nz's top ten best sci-fi flicks. Photo / Supplied

Peter Jackson-produced hit District 9 has taken the box office by storm with its slick and sophisticated take on the alien movie.

In celebration of celluloid close encounters, we cast an eye over some of the best sci-fi movies to grace the big screen:

10. E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial
Sugar-coated schmaltz-fest it may be, but there's no denying that director Steven Spielberg's ode to little green men is a family classic. Nominated for nine Oscars, it went on to bag four.

9. Terminator/T2: Judgment day
The futuristic robot sci-fi franchise that put director James Cameron on the map and launched Arnold Schwarzenegger's career. Slick, fast-paced and cleverly conceived, the Terminator movies feature rip roaring action adventure firing an arsenal of thrills.

8. The Matrix
Cyber thriller The Matrix features Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne leading the fight to free humankind from a web of deception spun by all-powerful machines of artificial intelligence that control us. With techno-slamming visuals and megakick action, it's a movie you'll watch again and again - in fact you'll need to, just to get your head 'round the plot.

7. Alien
Alien is probably one of the most popular sagas in science fiction history. Starring Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, the iron-willed woman destined to battle the galaxy's ultimate creature, an acid-blooded alien with malice in mind.

6. Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away... The opening chapter in the fabled Star Wars saga, A New Hope, set the benchmark for inter-stellar big screen action and kick-started one of the most popular sci-fi franchises of all time.

5. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Steven Spielberg's mesmerising sci-fi thriller about Earth's encounter with spaceships and alien beings as experienced by one ordinary man. Richard Dreyfuss is Roy Neary, a man who, after encountering an unexplainable phenomenon one night, becomes obsessed with discovering more. Which he does - much, much more...

4. War of the Worlds (1953)
Director Byron Haskins' landmark adaptation of the H.G. Wells classic novel that focuses on the invasion of the earth by Martian war machines. It's a work of frightening imagination, with its manta-ray spaceships armed with cobra-like probes that shoot down the human race. The kind of spectacular that inspired Spielberg and still packs a punch - delivering eye-popping thrills and unrelenting, edge-of-your-seat suspense.

3. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
A spacecraft lands in Washington D.C. and an alien emerges, flanked by a menacing robot with destructive capabilities far beyond anyone's imagination. So begins the science-fiction thriller The Day The Earth Stood Still, a classic "atomic movie" from the 50s that would go on to inspire alien-invasion films for decades to come.

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
With thematic elements of human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life, 2001 is a veritable mind-bender of a movie which virtually redefined the parameters of the cinema experience. Timelessly provocative and thought-provoking, this is director Stanley Kubrick at his finest.

1. Blade Runner
Ridley Scott's science-fiction masterpiece has Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) prowling the steel-and-microchip jungle of 21st-century Los Angeles, stalking genetically made criminal replicants. Visually spectacular, intensely action-packed and powerfully prophetic, Blade Runner is a timeless classic.

- NZ HERALD ONLINE