My house has three cats, and every morning between 2 and 4 a.m., at least one of them needs to go outside. My wife, who could sleep through an alien invasion, they do not bother. No, they come to me, doing that cat thing of whacking you in the face until you wake up, groggily go down the stairs, and let them out (yes, I put them out before I go to bed. They get back in.
Somehow). Sometimes I stagger back upstairs and then immediately fall back asleep. But sometimes I don't, and then I'm stuck being awake, with a low-revving brain, for a few hours at least.
This has given me an appreciation for films that are watchable in my insomniac state -- some bad, some quite good, but all for various reasons that one may, if one chooses, sort of stare at glassily for an undetermined period of time, waiting for sleep to come again. As it happens, quite a few of these films are science fiction films. Here are some of my favorites to view, half-awake, between 2 a.m. and dawn.
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