5 Movies That Makes Me REALLY wonder

5 best science fiction movies that have come my way so far this century.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that in some ways we are living in a golden age of science-fiction cinema,"

This is most appropriate for the era that kicked off with the year 2001. For one thing, there’s a lot more of it; I was honestly surprised in some ways to see just how many sci-fi movies have been released since the turn of the century (and millennium).

Sci-fi is above all a genre of ideas, and each of the films selected below offers up something that arguably expands or bends one's mind and in many cases is relevant to the world we live in right now.

Minority Report (2002)

Spielberg tackles Philip K. Dick as one of the director’s most ambitious works to date. Tom Cruise plays John Anderton, part of an elite unit tasked with preventing murders before they happen thanks to the abilities of mutants known as PreCogs who can see the future. But Anderton finds himself accused of a murder he has yet to commit and must go on the run.

In addition to being a sizzling, highly visceral chase thriller, Minority Report creates a deeply unsettling and immersive near-future world and touches on themes of determinism, government intrusion, and media infiltration into our everyday lives — making the movie just as relevant as ever. The only flaw: a triumphant ending that feels almost physically out of place with the rest of the film.

Inception (2010)

Christopher Nolan’s brilliant exploration of lucid dreaming and subconscious espionage maybe, in some ways, his most complete and satisfying film to date, and certainly the one that bestows “visionary” status on this always ambitious director. His first foray into original science fiction (it remains his sole wholly original screenwriting credit to date) is a truly mind-bending experience as it follows a team of dream “extractors” (led by Leonardo DiCaprio) who must attempt the more difficult task of planting an idea (known as “inception”) in someone’s head.

Yes, the film is exposition-heavy, but the different levels of dreaming are staged with clarity and creativity. Sequences such as Joseph Gordon Levitt’s gravity-free fight with a bodyguard in a spinning hotel hallway are the kind of thing that will be taught in film school years from now. But beyond the dazzling action and fast-paced thrills, Inception is a movie stuffed with ideas about the nature of reality and the mysteries of human consciousness — truly heady (no pun intended) stuff.

Her (2013)

Spike Jonze’s fourth feature film is perhaps his most personal yet, exploring themes of loneliness and human relationships that have permeated all his previous work yet doing so in the context of genre and making them more universal than ever. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly, a depressed, isolated, socially awkward professional writer of personal letters who falls in love with his computer’s operating system — an artificial intelligence he names Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson).

The development of their relationship and eventual destinies form the spine of Jonze’s allegory about our own increasing distance from each other and absorption in technology. Phoenix is heartbreaking as Theodore, but Johansson — never known for great line readings in her other movies — is terrific as the ever-evolving Samantha.

Ex Machina (2015)

After writing several brilliant screenplays for films like 28 Days Later and the woefully underseen Dredd, Alex Garland made his directorial debut with this original tale of a search engine programmer named Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), his reclusive and arrogant genius boss Nathan (a riveting Oscar Isaac) and the seductive android (Alicia Vikander in a breakout performance) that the latter creates — and to which he wants Caleb to apply the Turing test to determine if artificial intelligence can pass for human.

Garland fashions a mounting sense of dread and paranoia as Nathan messes with Caleb’s head — and then as the android, Ava subtly begins to mess with them both. Consciousness, sexuality, and the singularity — the long-theorized moment when artificial intelligence may surpass that of humanity — are all woven into Garland’s literate screenplay, which he directs with confidence and verve.

Annihilation (2018)

Director/screenwriter Alex Garland’s brilliant follow-up to 2015’s equally riveting Ex Machina, adapted from Jeff VanderMeer’s eerie novel, is an unsettling hybrid of horror and sci-fi. Annihilation follows four female researchers (led by Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh), each with their own agenda, as they investigate a mysterious alien zone encroaching on an American coastal region from which a dozen earlier expeditions have not returned.

The way that Area X transforms a familiar and bucolic setting into a haunted house of mutations and decay, while also working its way into the psyches of the women, is the stuff of ecological/psychological nightmares. Garland wrings the situation for maximum dread — both metaphysical and visceral — while the women dig under the surface of their ambiguously drawn characters. Garland freely changes the details of VanderMeer’s story while retaining its tone and meaning, with masterful results.