2020 Movie Watching Project: TCM “Must-See Sci-Fi”

Happy 2020! This year’s movie watching project has me over the moon, truly.

I am planning to watch all 50 movies listed in the cool book from Turner Classic Movies (TCM) called Must-See Sci-Fi: 50 Movies that Are Out of This World by Sloan De Forest (Running Press, 2018; available at Amazon.com and Shop TCM).

Here’s the list of the 50 films (plus I’m also going to watch Disney’s wild and wacky sci-fi flick The Black Hole from 1979 which is not included in the book but is a total sci-fi guilty pleasure).

* Watched in 2019
** Never seen before

  1. A Trip to the Moon (1902)
  2. Metropolis* (1927)
  3. Frankenstein (1931)
  4. Island of Lost Souls** (1932)
  5. The Invisible Man (1933)
  6. Things to Come** (1936)
  7. The Thing from Another World** (1951)
  8. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
  9. It Came from Outer Space (1953)
  10. The War of the Worlds (1953)
  11. Them! (1954)
  12. Godzilla (1954)
  13. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
  14. Forbidden Planet (1956)
  15. Invasion of the Body Snatchers* (1956)
  16. The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
  17. The Fly (1958)
  18. The Blob (1958)
  19. The Time Machine (1960)
  20. La Jetée** (1962)
  21. These Are the Damned** (1962)
  22. Alphaville** (1965)
  23. Fantastic Voyage (1966)
  24. Planet of the Apes (1968)
  25. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
  26. Barbarella** (1968)
  27. THX 1138 (19710
  28. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
  29. Silent Running** (1972)
  30. Solaris** (1972)
  31. Sleeper (1973)
  32. The Man Who Fell to Earth** (1976)
  33. Logan’s Run (1976)
  34. Star Wars (1977)
  35. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
  36. The Black Hole (1979); not on original list—added for my own guilty viewing pleasure
  37. Alien* (1979)
  38. E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
  39. Blade Runner (1982)
  40. The Brother from Another Planet** (1984)
  41. The Terminator (1984)
  42. Back to the Future (1985)
  43. Brazil** (1985)
  44. Robocop (1987)
  45. Jurassic Park (1993)
  46. The Matrix (1999)
  47. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
  48. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
  49. WALL-E (2008)
  50. District 9 (2009)
  51. Arrival (2016)

I hope you’ll join me in following along or, better yet, watching some or all of these films with me! I will be keeping a log of the films on my Instagram feed (@moviespap), my Letterboxd page (stanfordclark), and will be reporting regularly here on the blog and podcast.