50 Essential Sci-Fi Films of the 21st Century (So Far)

Jared Leto is nobody’s favourite actor these days, but back in the 2000s, he was a rising star, and films like Mr. Nobody make it so easy to see how he found his way to an Academy Award in 2014, even if he lost himself thereafter.

After making his name as the lead in smaller-budget pictures like Requiem for a Dream and Chapter 27, and playing supporting and minor roles in large productions like Fight Club and Alexander, Leto was gifted the lead in Jaco Van Dormael’s grand sci-fi feature Mr. Nobody, as Nemo Nobody, the last mortal left after humanity has achieved immortality. 117-year-old Nemo recounts several nonlinear versions of his own history, plunging us through a minor multiverse of lives that looks at the many sliding doors moments that constitute a lifetime.

An impeccable marriage of futuristic science fiction technology with deeply emotional human storytelling and sharp, lush, detail-oriented images (courtesy of DP Christophe Beaucarne), Mr. Nobody is a minor triumph for the genre, but one which never reached a wide audience and, thanks to the general distaste for Leto these days, perhaps never will. Sliding doors indeed.