To celebrate the success of Iron Man, which apparently does a much better job of realistically depicting how a man might go about turning himself into an armored guilded missle than, say, Spider-Man did in its speculation on the probable effects of being bitten by a radioactive spider ("Mommy, hiw come he's not turning brown and lying crumpled on the floor weeping?"), New Scientist has compiled a list of "five science fiction movies that get the science right." This is one of those areas where we'll just have to take their word for it, along with whether the kids in Spellbound got those words spelled right or not, or what circumstances would make it possible for a strange man to flirt with Julia Roberts on the street and not wind up in traction. It may be no surprise that 2001 leads the list; it is, after all, an acknowledged masterpiece of the genre whose "strikingly realistic depiction of space travel" was forged in a collaboration between a serious sci-fi author and a cerebral, perfectionist director. And besides, it always puts us to sleep, just like science class. (New Scientist notes that the film's "crew members are shown coping with the boredom and routine of a long, straightforward trek across empty space", which sure is one way of putting it.)
More surprising, perhaps, are the thumb's-up for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which accurately "depicts memory as essentially a network of links," its distant cousin Solaris (either version), and Gattaca, which posits a "grimly plausible vision of a society dominated by genetic prejudice", and which some may consider an even greater film than 2001, simply because it's even more boring. The there's Alien, which impresses for the thought given to the life cycle of its title character, "in particular for the finer details of its life cycle." Cynics and subscribers to The Daily Worker will also point to the film's cold-eyed view of the characters' unfeeling employers and the nature of blue-collar labor in space, though the fact that two of the lowest-level, bluest-collared workers appear to belong to a union now clearly stamps the film as a pre-1980s period piece. On the other hand, extensive study into the behavior of people in emergency situations has concluded that it is true that if you stick half a dozen folks aboard a spaceship and have them plot their escape from a terrifying, homicidal shape-shifting monster, one of them will wander off to look for the cat.