Undoubtedly one of the most profound and influential "genre" films ever, Tarkovsky's masterpiece strains the boundaries of sci-fi at every turn. The director doesn't quite bother with futuristic vistas (the film's lone city scene was simply shot in contemporary Tokyo), concentrating on the barren "soulscapes" of the characters. Among the pleasures missing from the recent, fair Hollywood remake are the many mirror-hall ambivalences of the coda and Eduard Artemiev's astonishing score (played on primitive synthesizers).

by Robert Skotak