Space movies run from "that could actually happen" to "talking raccoons." Here's the spectrum, ordered roughly by realism.
The realistic shelf
- Apollo 13 (1995) — The true standard; failure as a thing to be fixed.
- The Martian (2015) — Near-future botany-based survival.
- First Man (2018) — The moon landing as grief and cost.
- Gravity (2013) — Physically ruthless (mostly), emotionally relentless.
The speculative shelf
- The Martian→ Interstellar (2014) — Wormholes, relativity, and love as physics.
- Arrival (2016) — Linguistics as first contact.
- Contact (1997) — SETI: the movie, with faith on the line.
- Ad Astra (2019) — Neptune and daddy issues.
The wild shelf
- Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) — Cosmic comedy with a mixtape.
- The Fifth Element (1997) — Opera, flying cars, and multipass.
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) — From bone to star-child; the wildest and the oldest.
Double-feature suggestion: Apollo 13 + Interstellar — the real mission and the imagined one, back to back, is a pretty great rainy-Saturday arc.