The 5 best sci-fi movies to watch on Netflix in February 2023

Happy February, Polygon readers and Sci-Fi fans! This month we have five (inter)stellar sci-fi movies for you to watch on Netflix as the weather warms up and we head into spring.

Our February pick includes sci-fi offerings from South Korea, China, Australia and the US. We have a new animation project from acclaimed live-action director Richard Linklater (School of Rock), a new live-action project from acclaimed animation director Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan), one of the highest-grossing films of all time, and so much more to delve into!

Let’s dive in.

oblivion

Image: Universal Pictures

Year: 2013
Duration: 2h 4m
Director: Joseph Kosinsky
Pour: Tom Cruise Morgan Freeman Andrea Riseborough

Before Joseph Kosinski took Tom Cruise to heaven Top Gun: Maverickin 2013 he took him to the bleak future of the earth of 2077 oblivion, which is the type of movie best experienced without reading about its story first. Suffice it to say, Cruise begins the story as a survivor of a planet-devastating apocalypse, left behind with her partner Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) to guard a series of planetary power generators. But a sense of ominous menace hovers over him and his interactions with his space-dwelling boss, Sally (Melissa Leo), and soon the threat translates into new information that changes everything. How loner

YOUNG

Image: Netflix

Year: 2023
Duration: 1h 38m
Director: Yeon Sangho
Pour: Kang Soo-yeon, Kim Hyun-joo, Ryu Kyung-soo

Modern Sci-Fi Master Yeon Sang-ho’s Latest Movie (Train to Busan, psychokinesis, infernal), YOUNG is set in a future devastated by climate change, where warring bands of human space colonies have been at war for decades. The film follows a scientist (Kang Soo-yeon) tasked with cloning the perfect AI soldier from the brain of her comatose mother, a legendary mercenary of her day.

A great example of staging a small conflict within a larger, YOUNG thrives on its intricate designs of the technology and robots on display. The mechanical whirring of the machines brings the film to life, as does the moving performance by Kang Soo-yeon in the leading role. While touching on many old sci-fi staples surrounding artificial intelligence, the presence of data collection in the film presents a new twist on a classic sci-fi question. —pete people

The Wandering Earth

Image: China Film Group

Year: 2019
Duration: 2h 5m
Director: Big Brother
Pour: Wu Jing, Qu Chuxiao, and Li Guangjie

A big-budget sci-fi project from China, The Wandering Earth was a mega blockbuster. It’s the fifth-highest-grossing Chinese film of all time (the four above were also all released in the last decade), and a sequel is currently in theaters.

This sequel is reason enough to check it out The Wandering Earth this February, but it’s an interesting film in its own right.

Adapted from a short story by Liu Cixin (best known for The three body problem), The Wandering Earth takes place in 2058. Faced with looming catastrophe in the form of an expanding sun about to explode, Earth’s leaders decide to take the planet far away to safety.

Director Frant Gwo has said 2001: A Space Odyssey, terminator 2And Interstellar are his three favorite sci-fi films and that they were a huge influence on the production of The Wandering Earth. It’s a big-budget extravaganza starring one of the world’s biggest movie stars (Wu Jing, who also starred in the two highest-grossing Chinese films of all time) – perfect for a bucket of popcorn on a February night. —PV

I am a mother

Image: Netflix

Year: 2019
Duration: 1h 53m
Director: Grant Sputo
Pour: Clara Rugaard, Rose Byrne, Hilary Swank

Where M3GAN is the goofy, audience-friendly take on the modern day AI horror of 2019 I am a mother is the darker and more personal side – it’s a film that unfolds with all the claustrophobia and rigor of a single set stage play, but with cinematic effects and chilling imagery. A teenager with no name but Daughter (Clara Rugaard) grows up in an animal shelter, raised by a robot named Mother (Rose Byrne), and rebels in typical teenage fashion – until a wounded stranger (Hilary Swank) comes to her door for help begs for support and reversal of their tenuous relationship. It’s a tight little immersive thriller that leans heavily on character dynamics and careful disclosure, but it has all the suspense of a Terminator film as it shows how strong and unrelenting Mother is, and how potentially unforgiving. —TR

Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood

Image: Netflix

Year: 2022
Duration: 1h37m
Director: Richard Linklater
Pour: Milo Coy, Jack Black, Lee Eddy

Richard Linklater’s animated memoir about growing up in Texas in the 1960s may not feel quite like science fiction — at times it’s almost more like a documentary about a particular era and area of ​​American life that blends the universal with the very specific mixed. (Linklater’s very large family makes for a lot of domestic accommodations that might confuse viewers if they weren’t from a similar dynamic.) But Linklater’s avatar — Stanley, a fourth-grader in 1969 while NASA was trying to get people on the moon – also indulges in fantasies that Linklater brings directly to the screen as NASA recruits him for a secret astronaut mission that will fuse his real life, the history surrounding him, and his wildest dreams of being extraordinary. It’s a weird, sweet, inviting film – and a beautiful, visually-driven one, rotoscoped in a quieter version of computer-aided rotoscoping that uses Linklater A scanner in the dark And awakening life. The space scenes stand out, both as good straight-faced comic fun and an immersive, detailed adventure. —TR