10 Great Sci-Fi Movies Under 90 Minutes

10. Silent Running - 89 Minutes

Silent Running centres around an astronaut called Freeman (Bruce Dern), who's assigned to a spaceship containing the remaining plants of Earth. When his superiors command him to destroy the ship's garden, Freeman kills his crewmates to ensure the plants survive. Consumed by loneliness, Freeman befriends the ship's robots to maintain his sanity. Despite his best efforts, it isn't long before the isolation starts driving him mad.

Although movies with a "save the trees" message can come across as heavy-handed, Silent Running gets away with it. Even though the sci-fi drama opens with an environmental message, it focuses more on Freeman's Sisyphean attempt to stay sane.

Speaking of which, you have to applaud Bruce Dern for his phenomenal performance, considering he spends most of the run-time by himself. In the hands of a lesser actor, Freeman's deranged behaviour could come across as unintentionally comical. But when you see Dern playing with the robots with utter sincerity, his commitment makes you take his plight seriously.

As impressive as the sets-pieces and the visuals are in Silent Running, it's Dern's acting that viewers remember most (and those waddling robots).