Alicia Vikander in Ex MachinaEX MACHINA

If you're a fellow fan of the high-tech Twilight Zone that is the BBC's Black Mirror and last year's Christmas special with Jon Hamm didn't sate your craving for more, you won't want to miss the sci-fi creep-out Ex Machina. (If you're not a fan of Black Mirror, which is currently streaming on Netflix, you clearly haven't watched it yet. Get cracking.) Like a 105-minute episode of that haunting anthology series, Alex Garland's quasi-futuristic morality fable boasts a simple premise that grows more complicated and nightmarish as it progresses. Also like a super-sized Black Mirror, the experience leaves you feeling a little shaken and happily freaked out, and kind of antsy to see it again.

Mila Kunis in Jupiter AscendingJUPITER ASCENDING

After months of previews in the wake of its delayed release, the big-budget sci-fi spectacle Jupiter Ascending - originally scheduled for summer 2014 - finally landed this past weekend. And with its opening, a question can now be asked: Was there any point at which Warner Bros. executives seriously considered pulling the plug on writers/directors/siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski's epic stinker? Maybe when Channing Tatum was cast as a human/wolf hybrid with a blond goatee and pointy ears? Or when an incensed Russian beat the hell out of his son with a throw pillow? Or when, for the performer's first scene, the Wachowskis handed Mila Kunis an all-too-symbolic toilet brush?