We don’t ask much from science fiction movies: entertaining plot lines, competent acting, huge explosions, and accurate predictions of the future. Many films fail to deliver on that final request, prognosticating about the world to come and screwing it up again and again. Many of these movies rely on the believability of their premise, but when that premise involves a prediction about the state of the world at a specific future date, they’re setting themselves up for failure when that day comes to pass without incident. Here are five films that forecasted doom and gloom that did not happen.

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Christmas is a time of peace and harmony, where we remember baby Jesus, born into a manger. There were shepherds, wise men, sweet hay and swaddling clothes. But we often forget how dark the Christmas story actually is. First of all you’ve got poor Joseph, convinced that his fiance has been knocked up by another man. Then she gives birth in a barn, which would not be sweet or pleasant in any way. If that weren’t bad enough, the wise men tip Herod off to the fact that a new king has been born, and he goes and kills all the first born sons in Judea, forcing the Holy Family into exile. Real smooth, wise men, did you miss the star that told you to keep your mouths shut?

There are plenty of movies about Christmas, a few about the nativity and plenty more about Santa. But there aren’t any that capture the despair and desperation of the original tale. Placed within the larger narrative of the Christian gospel, the nativity is about a god being subjected to the vulnerability of an infancy, in order to enter a cruel world whose purpose it is to kill him. Sure, it all works out in the end, but it’s still a pretty dark story.

This lack of grit in Christmas movies became clear to me two years ago. Around Christmas, 2006, both The Nativity Story and Children of Men were released. I saw them both within a few days of one another. I was struck by how boring The Nativity Story was, especially compared to Cuarón’s post-apocalyptic masterpiece. When I think of a baby bringing peace on Earth, I can think of no better image than Clive Owen stumbling out of a shattered building with a screaming infant, its cries literally silencing tanks.

In that spirit, here are five gritty movies where everything rides on the tiny shoulders of a baby.

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Last week, Roger Ebert finally got around to destroying reviewing Ben Stein’s anti-evolution film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Ebert’s rant is as cerebral as it is merciless, and it’s worth a read even if you haven’t seen the film. He makes some good points about how the film completely misunderstands the concepts of probability and selection, forming flashy but ultimately useless argument.

Ebert’s rage is thinly veiled. He’s obviously upset that clear logical fallacies can go unnoticed by so many people. Sure, misreading Darwin while attempting to refute him is a lame move when engaging in scientific debate, but the practice is quite common when it comes to filmmaking. When movies deal with evolution, there’s an unspoken understanding that they can completely distort the theory beyond recognition. It’s kind of like calling someone a pedophile during a Friar’s Club Roast, everyone knows it isn’t true, and it’s all in good fun.

When you look at it in this way, Expelled is just the latest in a long line of films that distort the theory of evolution to make a buck. Here are 5 more that are guilty of crimes against the origin of humanity:

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(photo: La Jetée, Hellboy II: The Golden Army)

Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army hits theaters this Friday. Del Toro is a rare filmmaker who, despite his unique vision, often works on projects based on material from an outside source (Pan’s Labyrinth being a notable exception). Assuming all the legal issues get ironed out,  he’ll next direct a two part film adaptation of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the most prestigious property to date to get the del Toro treatment. Here are seven either failed or unjustly obscure movies ripe for being remade by Hellboy’s father.

1. Spawn - Todd McFarlane’s comic about a Hell-trotting anti-hero indebted to the Devil opened my young eyes to genuinely dark storytelling. While the 90s were a simpler time in terms of comic to movie adaptations, I was already dreaming about a big screen adaptation after reading the first issue. Unfortunately, my dream came true in 1997, when Mark A.Z. Dippé’s god-awful Spawn slumped into theaters.

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I’m sure I’m not the only one raising a glass to the good news that indieWIRE’s Undiscovered Gems film series is on for a second year. The New York Times and Emerging Pictures came through again with the support to make it happen.

For those who aren’t familiar with Undiscovered Gems, for ten years now indieWIRE has been making an annual list of films they love that have not been distributed in the US. This year, for the first time, critics from all over participated in the voting through indieWIRE’s online critics poll. (Here’s the resulting list of “best undistributed films.”) While the list has always created awareness of the films, in 2006 the films on the list became a film series, with one film shown per month in selected venues.

This year, as indieWIRE’s announcement says, “the series will bring one film per month from indieWIRE’s annual list to theaters in a minimum of 15 cities, including New York City; Wilmington, DE; Ft. Lauderdale, Lake Worth and Key West, FL; Martha’s Vineyard, MA; Buffalo, NY; Tulsa, and Oklahoma City, OK; Scranton, PA; Cary, NC; Ann Arbor, MI; and Washington, DC.” Audience members will vote at each venue, resulting in a winning film, which will be announced in December 2007 at an award presentation in New York City.

Steve Barron’s Choking Man will kick off the series next week. The film was awarded “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” at the 2006 IFP Gotham Awards ceremony.

The obvious thing to love about this series is that great films are getting an audience and at least some of the attention they deserve. But I also love the choice of cities for the series. Some are obvious (umm, New York and Washington?), but how great to live in Buffalo or Scranton or Tulsa and get to see these films! I realize resources are limited, but that’s what I would like to see more of in the future–more small cities in out-of-the-way places getting access to great undiscovered films. Wouldn’t it be cool is we could vote for cities next year, like Four Eyed Monsters did in its DIY distribution efforts?