Dark City

Dark City is the great lost masterpiece of 1990s science fiction — a noir-drenched puzzle box about a man who wakes up in a city where the sun never rises and reality is rewritten every midnight by pale beings called the Strangers. Rufus Sewell's John Murdoch discovers he can 'tune' — reshape reality with his mind — and the film becomes a battle for the nature of existence itself.

Alex Proyas created a visual world that influenced The Matrix (released a year later) but receives a fraction of the credit. The city is a living entity, its buildings physically rearranging during the 'tuning' sequences. Kiefer Sutherland's Dr. Schreber is wonderfully eccentric. The film's central question — are you your memories, or something more? — anticipates Eternal Sunshine and Inception by years. The studio forced a spoiler-filled opening narration that Proyas despised; the Director's Cut removes it and improves the film enormously.