Tubi added an assortment of excellent shows and movies to its platform at the start of October, including the supernatural series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the award-winning biographical thriller The Imitation Game and a varied mix of new sci-fi films.
I’ve been looking at the new sci-fi movies to choose from this month on the best free streaming service, and while I haven’t seen all of them (I’m not sure if I’ll ever get around to Howard the Duck, honestly), there’s three in particular that stand out to me the most as some of the best sci-fi movies that I’d recommend streaming.
Each movie I’ve picked out below has the highest critical rating among the latest additions in the list – although I’ve left off Ad Astra from my personal recommendations here, which scored well with the critics but didn’t make the cut for me due to it feeling like a voyage into space as endless as the void itself, and Hellboy (the 2004 Guillermo Del Toro version not the badly-rated Hellboy from 2019). Both have high scores and are worth considering too.
12 Monkeys
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Rotten Tomatoes score: 88%
Length: 131 minutes
Director: Terry Gilliam
Released in 1995, Terry Gilliam’s (Brazil, Time Bandits, Monty Python and the Holy Grail) 12 Monkeys is a dark time-travel film filled with twists and turns. Set in a dystopian plague-ridden world, it has one of the bleakest backdrops I’ve seen for a sci-fi movie, with most of Earth’s population wiped out. It’s in this setting that we meet our titular character, James Cole (Bruce Willis), a prisoner who is sent back in time to stop a devastating virus from having a full-scale pandemic outbreak. I won’t give too much more away but it’s one of Bruce Willis’ best films and is filled with other talented performances from the likes of Madeleine Stowe (The Last of the Mohicans) and Brad Pitt (Fight Club). A definite must-watch for fans of the genre.
Dredd
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Rotten Tomatoes score: 80%
Length: 96 minutes
Director: Pete Travis
Karl Urban is currently best known for The Boys – make sure to read our The Boys season 4 review if you haven’t already – where he plays the vigilante Billy Butcher, but his big cult sci-fi moment before that was as the great Judge Dredd. Forget watching Sylvester Stallone’s version of the character in the 1995 flop Judge Dredd – this Dredd from 2012 movie really delivers on the promise of a ‘street judge’ who patrols and makes instant arrests, and who’s called upon to take down a drug lord that’s ruling the roost of an apartment block. Fair warning: this is an extremely violent film that only gets more graphic as Dredd moves up the building. There are moments of respite but these can consist of intense slow-motion scenes that are super-saturated when the ‘Slo-Mo’ drug makes an appearance. It’s an intense gritty watch that I’m certain will surprise.
Godzilla
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Rotten Tomatoes score: 94%
Length: 98 minutes
Director: Ishirô Honda
You’ll likely have seen a Godzilla movie in your time. As it stands, there are 38 films in the franchise, including the award-winning Godzilla Minus One, and there’s even been a series on Apple TV Plus called Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. But the original movie is a classic that will forever hold its own – even just for its stunning black and white cinematography and the puppet-like special effects. The Japanese cult classic was made in 1954 and is far better than the 1956 remake Godzilla, King of the Monsters!. You probably already know the story of an ancient sea creature being awakened and running rampage through a metropolitan city, but seeing the original is an experience that has to be ticked off at least once.
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