20 Best Science Fiction Movies Released Since 2000

15. Children of Men (2006)

There is a rich history of screenwriters and directors taking science fiction novels, scraping away everything they don’t like and starting again from a hollow shell – just compare Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend to Richard Matheson’s novel, or Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin to Michel Faber’s. And Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men is no different. Adapted very loosely from P D James' novel, Cuarón’s film jettisons all the (for lack of a better term) high-dystopian distractions from the book, and cuts it down to the bare bones, before rebuilding it into something considerably more significant.

Clive Owen, as former activist everyman Theo Faron, is our way into a 2027 Britain beset by poverty, chaos, marshal law and violent anti-immigrant policies. The cause? Fertility has dropped to zero, with no new babies born in eighteen years. Sucked into a resistance plot by his estranged wife, Theo is turned from cynic to believer as he becomes the sole person in charged of securing the safe passage of Black “fugee” Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), who has somehow fallen pregnant.

Cuarón’s magic here lies not just in his dynamic directing style and realist approach to filmmaking (there are many points at which Children feels like a Mike Leigh film), but his ability to successfully ground and re-frame this OTT sci-fi story into a potent comment on society that is so very relevant here in the UK, twenty years on.