Of course a lot of sci-fi movies contain dystopian elements, but I was thinking more about movies that specifically explore the concept:
Children of Men
Gattaca
12 Monkeys
Just some suggestions. Be interesting to see others.
Dark City
Bladerunner
Equilibrium did a decent job. (1984 w/ninjas)
THX-1138 was interesting.
Blade Runner is a total classic.
Definately Blade Runner and Children of Men
Another that could be an interesting discussion is The Island…another example of “utopia” gone very wrong on a number of levels
Every time I hear “The Island”, I think about the MST3K version of “Parts: The Clonus Horror” 
I would vote for Blade Runner, a classic movie based on a classic book, where the two build off of each other to build a terrific story.
I did not like Children of Men. The only thing I enjoyed at all was the lead was pretty cute.
Welcome wholigan.
Children of Men was good, but I didn’t enjoy watching it. Same with Gattaca. The movie did it job well, it drew you into a world you would not like to live in.
12 Monkeys was also good and very unsettling (For me it showed me Brad Pitt was an actor and not just a pretty face.)
I think the best of this sub-genre is Dark City and Bladerunner.
How about:
Rollerball (1975 -James Caan)
Mad Max 2: Road Warrior
Soldier (1998 -Kurt Russell) Though this is personal favorite of mine, it’s probably not really in this group.
I know what you mean. It was probably the most jarring thing about the movie.
The family just re-watched this last week, and the missus admitted that she hadn’t seen the whole film before – she wasn’t certain the first time around what to make of Gilliam’s vision. (It’s okay, I forgave her.)
To agree with you both, Pitt steals the film on so many occasions, simply because he commits himself (no pun intended) to the role full tilt, and from what I gathered from the short documentary add-on to the DVD, he needed very little lead-in to the classic Jeffrey outbursts and physicalizations he brought to the role. Quite the interesting early glimpse of his interpretation of Tyler Durden, eh?
Oh, and as far as dystopian films go, don’t limit yourself to the US/UK markets – there’s always Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s oddball classics, like Delicatessen and La Cite des Enfants Perdus. Ils sont magnifiques!
To really appreciate Pitt’s journey to Durde, one must start with kalifornia. He is frightening in that. You also get Admiral Cain in it as well!