Top Picks - Sci-Fi Movies

Brilliant.The film was deliberately gruesome, with much unpleasant detail all the while remaining emotionally involving and genuinely poignant.
The Fly is an all-too human film.

Now this was interesting, here we have Chris Walas, the special effects engineer for the Oscar-winning make-up and creature effects in the first film, make his directorial debut by creating the sequel.
Ambitious!
Only to be fed to the critics who insist he only set out to exploit the success of the original by relying on excessive gore and violence at the expense of good storytelling.
Ouch!
But for his part, Walas has himself stated that the film was designed to be much more of a traditional (albeit gory) monster movie than Cronenberg's horror/tragic love film.
Score!
Point - Walas. I'm gonna let my bias rule and take his side. I say the film should be appreciated for its awesome visual impact, if nothing more.

On the fence here...I haven't seen the original so I can only judge this remake, but this movie in itself, as I have read, has come under heavy negative criticism due to the movie's changes from the original, most notably being the Blob's new origin as a government experiment gone horribly wrong, and not just a monster from outer space. The film was also criticized for all the sub-plots introduced into it, such as the government's involvement and other notable examples. It was also argued that the new Blob resembled little to the original monster...hmmm...
But all negative comments aside, the movie gets two thumbs up from me. It scores with good ole' fashioned gore and a pretty decent plot.

There live by three laws, but what happens when they are broken...

Normally I wouldn't really be trying to find the math behind it all because it's just another excessively violent sci-fi action flick; but this one was not that easy to get around.

The action moved so quickly that I thought I had missed out on a critical part of the whole plot; the "predator" itself.
I couldn't overlook questions such as why would an alien species go to all the effort to send a creature to earth, just so that it could swing from the trees and skin American soldiers?
Or, why would a creature so technologically advanced need to bother with hand-to-hand combat, when it could just zap Arnold with a ray gun?
And why would this so technologically advanced creature kill itself in the end!? The creature clearly still had some weapons at its disposal, so why wouldn't it go out fighting, why would just activate self destruct and end itself probably just for the sake of killing Dutch as well?

Now the very first time I saw this movie, clearly I would have been too young to understand, but getting a chance to see it again and again, thereby turning me into a fan has only now given me the answers to my questions and a much deeper appreciation for the film.

Predators are just that, predators. They're drawn to conflict (and clearly heat) and are all about the challenge; and I think it's safe to assume a group of heavily armed commandos is a worthy challenge.
They're also seemingly honourable fighters and not a bunch of violent, mindless marauders, which explains the end.
The predator kills itself because it knows it's already dying and well, why not go out with a bang, literally. The creature could have chose to fight it out to the last but I guess it figured hey, if I continue to fight, I'm gonna lose anyway so, so be it.
This film is officially added to my "needed to take a second look to understand and the appreciate" list.