March 5: Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). The cinema's first huge science fiction extravaganza is a wild futuristic parable about a society of haves and have-nots—plus a mad scientist and a robot. Lang brings his mighty directing powers to bear on this defining work.

March 12: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956). Humans in small-town America are being replaced by emotionless pods from space, a brilliant 1950s metaphor explored with Siegel's noirish intensity.

March 19: Fahrenheit 451 (Francois Truffaut, 1966). The classic Ray Bradbury novel about a society that burns books is re-imagined by one of the leading filmmakers of the French New Wave (it was Truffaut's only film in English).

March 26: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968). Kubrick re-invents the way we watch movies with his majestic and mystifying "journey to the infinite," traveling from prehistoric monkeys to the cinema's most placidly murderous computer.

April 2: Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972). One of film's great visionaries, Tarkovsky takes a Stanislaw Lem novel and turns its voyage to a troubled planet into a trippy examination of the human soul.

April 9: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977). Everyman Richard Dreyfuss finds himself "called" by otherworldly forces in Spielberg's exuberant lightshow.

April 16: The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986). A messed-up experiment results in scientist Jeff Goldblum recombining with a housefly in Cronenberg's brainy, gory love story. 

April 23: They Live (John Carpenter, 1988). Carpenter brings his B-movie energy to this satirical gem about a drifter (pro wrestler Roddy Piper) who discovers what's really going on beneath the veneer of existence.

April 30: Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006). Mankind can no longer reproduce in a dystopian future, so the lone pregnant woman on Earth must be protected at all costs—a suspense scenario given thrilling life by Cuarón's stylish long-take approach.

May 7: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013). Scarlett Johansson plays an alien visitor who lures men to their doom, a terrifying enigma played out against ordinary locations in present-day Scotland.

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