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Top Ten Science Movies
June 12th, 2009
I went looking online for lists of science movies. I found one from a chemist at about.com:
1. Weird Science
2. Dr. Strangelove
3. Real Genius
4. The Atomic Cafe
5. The Absent-Minded Professor
6. The Andromeda Strain
7. Love Potion #9
8. Prince of Darkness
9. Project X
10. Manhattan Project
Now, a few of these are good choices and I will keep them, but I am not happy with the others. Weird Science is a fun movie, but it has nothing to do with science. And some of these fall squarely in the realm of science fiction.
No, I really want a list of movies that involve science, where science is central, and where scientists are for the most part at least portrayed positively. Movies that no one would laugh at or call “science fiction” in that derogatory way. There are some science fiction novels that do these things for science, books like Timescape by Gregory Benford and Contact by Carl Sagan, but I wanted more pure science, in the way Ben Bova wrote Brothers as a novel about science and scientists rather than science fiction.
In no particular order here are ten for consideration. The science doesn’t have to be perfect, as long as it makes sense given when it was made, more or less, and makes an effort to be right, and the movie doesn’t need to be perfect, either. This wasn’t easy, and I think some choices are debatable (either for the science quality or whether or not they’re science fiction). Clips when available.
1. Real Genius. It’s a bit of a comedy, but tends to take the science seriously and portray the smart guys positively. I don’t think Caltech is really like this.
2. Creator. I have a soft spot for Peter O’Toole and lost love, and looking at the big picture over the details.
3. October Sky. Smart kids and science fairs are winners with me, as are rockets. It IS rocket science.
4. Mindwalk. Sort of a bizarre movie, all idea and talk. A rare female physicist, who at times in the film I want to smack because she’s not as right as she thinks she is, or is too dismissive of other equally reasonable perspectives. Still, smart and full of science ideas.
5. Infinity. Matthew Broderick stars in this Richard Feynman biographic. Not as good as I had hoped, but worth watching.
6. Twister. Yeah, people chase storms for science. You will believe that a cow can fly.
7. Outbreak. I wanted to avoid a lot of medical thrillers on the list, but I think this one qualifies as science.
8. Medicine Man. Searching for a cure for cancer in the Amazon rain forest. They actually seem to do science experiments in the movie, although the logging plot seemed way too forced.
9. I.Q. Not sure I’m wild about the message here (heart trumps mind, which we see all the time being reinforced already in every other film ever made), but movies with positive portrayals of Einstein can’t be all bad.
10. Manhattan Project. Smart kids and science fairs. And nuclear weapons.
Notes: I left off Andromeda Strain for being too much science fiction in my opinion. I haven’t seen Project X. I left off A Beautiful Mind as math, Apollo 13/Right Stuff as history/engineering, and Bond movies casting Denise Richards as ridiculous. Chain Reaction didn’t seem smart enough.
What do you think? Other suggestions?
(Also check out the five best and five worst science based movies, which includes a lot of science fiction.)
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October Sky could be thought a bit historical too, as it is based on a guy’s memoir/autobiog, the famous anagram Rocket Boys.
Life Story may be too historical for you, and too much a TV-dramatisation to count as a movie. It’s a feature-length 97 minutes about the discovery of the double helix, with its wrong turns and shenanigans. Jeff Goldblum as Watson and Brit theatre/TV heavyweights like Alan Howard and Juliet Stephenson, and Tim Piggott-Smith as Crick.
How about The Dish, though maybe again a bit too history/engineering-oriented, plus being a bit of a social comedy (about the Australian-situated downlink dish for Apollo 11).
Going back a bit, there’s Powell and Pressburger’s The Small Back Room from 1949, based on a 1943 novel by Nigel Balchin, who was a scientific adviser in the UK WW2 boffin environment. There’s quite a bit on the politicking and turf wars of science units as they worry about the Minister, weapons trials analysis and a new kind of boobytrap bomb being dropped by the Germans. Plus alcoholism.
Ah, The Dish is one I thought about before writing the article, but forget when I actually did it.
I don’t know the other movies, but will put them on the list to track down.
October Sky could be thought a bit historical too, as it is based on a guy’s memoir/autobiog, the famous anagram Rocket Boys.
Nothing wrong with historical examples. Science has been around for a long time so many stories about science can be set in the past.
My first thought was to wonder if there are any good science movies about scientists of the past.
The thing that rather shocks me is that I can’t think of any good examples. No movies about Galileo, or Newton.
And, worst of all, no movies about Charles Darwin.
We do at least have INHERIT THE WIND about the Scopes “monkey” trial.
Inherit the Wind! That’s not a bad one at all!
Yeah, Einstein, Newton, Galileo get Nova specials. Politicians, rockstars, and artists get movies.
I did hear that at one point Tom Hanks wanted to play Allan Sandage in a movie version of Dennis Overbye’s book LONELY HEARTS OF THE COMOS.
And I’m rethinking Apollo 13. There are some nice things in there that are certainly science.
You could also look at EINSTEIN AND EDDINGTON, on the BBC in 2008, again not a full cinema-budget movie but still, like LIFE STORY, a feature-length TV-produced drama. David “Dr Who” Tennant as Eddington, Andy “Gollum Kong” Serkis as Einstein, plus other Brit worthies like Rebecca Hall and Jim Broadbent.
Science love-across-the-trenches – WWI is central, when paying attention to a German scientist dethroning Newton was a bit frowned on in Cambridge circles. Plus Eddington (like my grandfather, who was jailed for it) was a Quaker conscientious objector.
Co-prod HBO so presumably on in the US at some point.
Have you seen THE DAM BUSTERS? The 1955 film spends part of its time with the Lancaster crews training and on the mission itself, but a very substantial chunk is about Barnes Wallis politicking and testing and trialing and improving his bouncing bomb. There’s a nice sequence in a big water tank with scale models, and figuring out how to keep a 4-engine heavy bomber at precisely 60ft above water at 240mph at night so the bomb could be released accurately.