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From batchix

Meme: This is the Science Fiction Film Canon, 50 most influential (not necessarily best or worst) films as listed by John Scalzi in his Rough Guide to Science Fiction Films. As usual, bold those you've seen; italicize those you want to see and strike those you have no desire whatsoever to put before your retinas.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!
Akira
Alien
Aliens
Alphaville
Back to the Future
Blade Runner
Brazil
Bride of Frankenstein
Brother From Another Planet
A Clockwork Orange
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Contact
The Damned
Destination Moon
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Delicatessen
Escape From New York
ET: The Extraterrestrial
Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers serial
The Fly (1985 version)
Forbidden Planet
Ghost in the Shell
Gojira/Godzilla
The Incredibles
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Jurassic Park
Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
The Matrix
Metropolis
On the Beach
Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
Robocop
Sleeper
Solaris (1972 version)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
The Stepford Wives - 1975 version
Superman
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Thing From Another World
Things To Come
Tron
12 Monkeys
28 Days Later
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
2001: A Space Odyssey
La Voyage Dans la Lune
War of the Worlds (1953 version)

Some things listed here perplex me. Isn't it too soon to tell if The Incredibles is going to be an influential film? Naturally, there are quite a few films I feel should have made the list but didn't. My choices...

The Last Starfighter - The first film ever to use CGI special effects on a massive scale. It paved the way for a lot of what we see onscreen now.

Them! - Along with Godzilla, possibly the only film from the 50's "Horrors of Atomic Mutation!!!" genre to transcend preachy hysteria and become an exciting, suspenseful film in its own right. Amazing special effects for its age too.

Angry Red Planet - Another extremely underrated film from the 50's. Brilliant special effects, good story, and an interesting ending.

The Black Hole and Silent Runnings - Two very different films from the 70's which quite deftly explored a theme surprisingly absent in sci-fi films: the idea that the biggest threat in outer space might not come from aliens, but from other people slowly driven to evil and sadism by isolation in the void. Both also have a running theme that robots may one day be more gentle and compassionate than humans can be.

The Dark Crystal - A film worthy of inclusion on technical merits alone.

John Carpenter's The Thing - If you don't know why it deserves inclusion, you simply haven't seen it.