As much-anticipated film Arrival lands on our cinema screens, we look back at five of the best science fiction movies.

Meticulous set pieces, crisp sound design and slim-fitting space uniforms: there’s nothing more cinematically satisfying than a lovingly made, grown-up sci-fi flick. For those of you whose idea of a decent film involves slick acting, even slicker hairstyles and the occasional black hole, you’ll be pleased to hear that head-scratching extraterrestrial yarn Arrival has hit the big screen. Here are five other films that perfected the art of the sophisticated science-fiction film.

Gattaca is the quintessential 1990s sci-fi film, complete with wipe-clean set designs, sexy Soviet Union-esque uniforms (designed by three-time Oscar winner Ms Colleen Atwood) and of-its-era casting. It stars Mr Ethan Hawke and Ms Uma Thurman, who are trapped in the not-too-distant future where people are confined to social and professional tiers based on DNA testing. Mr Hawke assumes the identity of a genetically superior but physically paralysed man, and attempts to flee the system. Like 2002’s similarly themed Equilibrium, there’s something curiously fetishistic about Mr Andrew Niccol’s film, in which strict Communism is a hard, but glamourous, life.

Before reality-warping existentialist sci-fis The Matrix, Inception and The Thirteenth Floor came Dark City. Cited by Mr Christopher Nolan as a major influence on his work, the story follows protagonist John Murdoch (played by the Olivier award-winning Mr Rufus Sewell), as he pieces together his life after he is told he has amnesia. Murdoch discovers that, as the clock strikes 12 every night, all human memory is erased and that the perpetually dark city he wanders is being terrorised by gang of spectres led by Mr Richard O’Brien. Cue a clanging industrial score from Mr Trevor Jones of Mississippi Burning fame and Mr MC Escher-esque set designs, where staircases spiral into nowhere and clocks tick backwards. Oh, and a ridiculously star-studded cast: Mr Sewell is joined by Mr Kiefer Sutherland, Mr William Hurt and Ms Jennifer Connelly.

Actors… who needs ‘em? For his film about a group of entrepreneurs who accidentally discover a time portal, Mr Shane Carruth cast himself and a handful of real-life computer engineers — none of whom had acted before. I'm not even going to begin to explain Primer’s labyrinthine plot to you, but I can say that this exemplary 2004 thriller is regarded by Silicon Valley types as the high watermark in time travel storytelling. Like his equally perplexing 2013 follow-up Upstream Colour, Mr Carruth took care of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning film’s score, cinematography and final edit. “I view Shane as the illegitimate offspring of David Lynch and James Cameron,” said Mr Steven Soderbergh of the auteur in the mid-2000s.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, as the US learnt more about the dangers of Class A drugs, a batch of experimental, low-budget, slightly hysterical anti-narcotics movies started emerging. Blue Sunshine (1978) told the story of a string of Los Angeles murders linked to an hallucinogen of the same name, while 1982’s Liquid Sky is a cautionary tale about the excesses of sex, drugs and disco in bohemian downtown New York. While on a night out akin to one of legendary Manhattan clubkid Mr Michael Alig’s notorious benders — mad fashion, head-splitting synths and fluorescent strobes — aliens invade the city. Looming over couples having sex, the ETs steal the humans endorphins just as they reach orgasm. It may sound like a nauseatingly zany affair, but Liquid Sky is a sharp and observant little timepiece.

Not the made-for-TV Russian movie nor the 1972 Mr Andrei Tarkovsky remake, but the celebrated attempt Mr Steven Soderbergh made at adapting Polish writer Mr Stanislaw Lem’s philosophical sci-fi novel. Set on a space station orbiting the planet Solaris, Mr George Clooney plays psychologist Dr Chris Kelvin, who experiences a number of lucid flashbacks from his life on Earth. Scored by Mr Cliff Martinez of Drive fame and co-produced by Mr James Cameron, Solaris is a spine-tingling affair that messes with your head. Odder still, writer-director Mr Soderbergh decided to work as the film’s editor and cinematographer under pseudonyms based on his parents’ names. Mr Peter Andrew and Ms Mary Ann Bernard, anyone?