Dark City

The late 1990s produced some of the most thoughtful science fiction. Dark City begins as an amnesia story, but as it unfolds, we discover that the world itself is stranger than we ever could have imagined, and that our stand-in throughout the story, John Murdoch, is the cog that makes everything fit… or maybe not. The script by Alex Proyas is super-smart, forcing the viewer to attempt to make the world of the film fit into the world they understand. Rufus Sewell as Murdoch gives the kind of performance that you can not ignore, but he's also not completely over-whelming. Kiefer Sutherland, and especially Richard O'Brien (Riff-Raff from the Rocky Horror Picture Show) provide a creepiness to the proceedings that is undeniably tense and more than a bit terrifying. Why is it on the listA film questioning the state of our reality in the face of a greater possibility with a potential god-like character a full year before we got The Matrix!