The Top 10 Science-Themed Movies From The Past 10 Years

The Top 10 Science-Themed Movies From The Past 10 Years

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From dystopian futures in space to documentaries about real-life breakthroughs, we saw a lot of great science movies come out in the past decade.

Selecting the 10 absolute best would be an impossible task. But with a little help from critics and our readers, your editors at HuffPost Science have picked a range of films that -- in addition to being incredibly fun to watch -- made us think about the awesome power of science and its central role in life on our pale blue dot.

These movies explore everything from alien worlds to our relationship with technology to how we treat our home planet. Check it out below -- and if we're missing your favorite, sound off in the comments.

March Of The Penguins (2005)

Take stunning shots of Antarctica -- then add an animal love story and the velvet voice of Morgan Freeman. It doesn't get much better than that. In "March of the Penguins," we got to travel right alongside Emperor penguins as they made their epic journey to their breeding grounds.
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

Al Gore's documentary was hailed as a watershed for raising public awareness of climate change. Though scientists have quibbled over the accuracy of some of its points, most agree it gets the big picture right.
WALL-E (2008)

"WALL-E" is proof that even a G-rated, animated movie with barely any dialogue can be profound. This dystopian Pixar flick follows the adventures of a long-abandoned robot left on Earth to clean up after humans after they trashed the planet. Though it offers a quite unsettling vision of the future of humanity (people ride around on hover chairs all day), it ends on a hopeful note.
Moon (2009)

Though you may not have heard of it, many critics consider this indie brainteaser to be one of the best sci-fi movies of the 20th century. It chronicles the solitary life of an astronaut living in a one-man moon base as he waits to return to Earth, and begins to question his sanity.
Avatar (2009)

When it comes to breaking records at the box office, look no further than a James Cameron movie. "Avatar" topped "Titanic" to become the world's highest-grossing film just 39 days after its release -- and for good reason. Thanks to advances in 3D film technology, its depiction of an alien world and its blue inhabitants (the Na'vi) is beyond stunning.
Gravity (2013)

"Gravity" may be the most visually stunning movie ever to hit the screen. It pairs beautiful shots of space with an astronaut's desperate struggle to return home.
Particle Fever (2013)

It's rare that you can see a scientific breakthrough as its happens. But that's exactly what we got to do in "Particle Fever," which documents the amazing twists and turns of physicists' hunt for the Higgs boson.
Her (2013)

Technology has revolutionized our work lives and our recreation. But what is it doing to our minds and our relationships? Those are just a couple of the questions we were forced to ask ourselves as we watched this futuristic comedy-drama, in which a man falls in love with his operating system.
The Imitation Game (2014)

This biopic tells the tale of Alan Turing -- a brilliant mathematician and pioneer of modern-day computing -- as he tries to crack the Nazi Enigma code during WWII. Though it didn't delve very deep into the math, it brought an important story from science history into the public eye.
Interstellar (2014)

This adventure/sci-fi film imagines a bleak but alarmingly possible future in which we've turned Earth into a giant dust bowl -- and the only way to save humanity is to colonize a new planet across the galaxy. Scientific inaccuracies aside, "Interstellar" offers stunning views of alien worlds and a disturbing look at what our planet could become.

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