Time for another installment of Shit to Get You Through the Weekend.  Unless you’ve been living on another planet for the last 20 years or so, you’ve seen The Matrix, the Star Wars films, Blade Runner, and Aliens.  Here are five underrated sci-fi movies that you may have not seen.  So, like last weekend, if you find yourself with nothing to do this weekend, run out to your large brand-name video rental chain and pick these up.

5.  The Final Cut

Robin Williams is annoying.  Make no mistake about that.  He’s an annoying comedian and he’s an annoying actor, however in The Final Cut, a serious role for Williams, he manages not to ruin the film, surprisingly.  In this futuristic thriller, some people have camera implants inserted at birth to record their entire lives.  Once they die, the implant is removed and used to create a memorial video.  Williams plays a “cutter,” one of those responsible for reviewing the videos of people’s lives and putting together the memorial.  Naturally, he stumbles upon some disturbing images along the way and things go from there.

4.  Equilibrium

Before he was Batman, Christian Bale was Cleric John Preston, master of the ultra-badass gun kata, in Equilibrium.  In this sci-fi action flick, war has been abolished through the use of emotional suppressants.  Anything that emits an emotional response is destroyed from paintings to music to books to people.  John Preston is a Cleric, a state enforcer sent around to eliminate all those who resist the rules of the state.  Preston ends up missing a dose of his “Prozium” and starts gaining his emotional faculties again.  Suddenly he begins to question his obligation to the state.

3.  Minority Report

Minority Report is a great film, despite the fact that Tom Cruise is in the lead role.  Cruise plays an investigator in charge of the “Precrime” unit.  Precrime allows investigators to see a murder before it’s committed.  Things change when the “Precogs” point out Cruise as the murderer in a future crime.  Cruise sets out on a mission to clear his name.

2. Pitch Black

I won’t deny that Vin Diesel is a god awful actor.  As much as I detest Cruise, mostly for his whacked-out Scientology views, he is at least a decent actor.  Vin Diesel is, at times, cringe worthy to watch.  Despite this, Pitch Black is one of the best sci-fi movies to come out in the last 15 years.  Diesel plays Riddick, a deadly criminal being transported to a prison colony by a bounty hunter.  When their space transport crash lands on a desert planet, all hell breaks loose.  Surrounded by pitch black darkness and nocturnal alien monsters, the crew’s only hope is Riddick, the only one capable of seeing the creatures.

1.  Event Horizon

“Here I come, mother-fucker!!”

One of the classic lines from modern science fiction.  Event Horizon is horror/sci-fi at its best.  A group of astronauts are sent to find the long lost ship, Event Horizon, which disappeared seven years before.  When the crew finds the ship they soon come to understand what happened to the ship and the nightmare it unleashed.

That’s it for this weekend’s installment of Shit to Get You Through the Weekend.  If you get a chance, check these films out and if you have seen them, let me know what you thought.  Do you consider these films underrated?  What are some other good underrated sci-fi films?