1 of 50 Starring: Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin Douglas Trumbull had previously brought his VFX experience to film on such groundbreaking classics as 2001, but Silent Running – a sort of proto-Wall-E, with humanity facing the demise of its natural resources – let him loose as a director. Bruce Dern plays Freeman Lowell, one of several crew members on a greenhouse vessel that carries some of the few remaining plants from a ruined Earth. But when his ship is ordered to destroy the vegetation and return, Lowell mutinies and continues to tend his foliage with the help of three memorable robo-assistants. It's by turns dramatic, quiet, and reflective, an environmental warning that refrains from throwing its message in your face.