A Letter to Momo (2011)
Anime about the oddball friendship between a teenage girl and three goblins. Reminiscent of My Neighbor Totoro, it is a film about a girl’s feelings for her parents that eventually becomes greatly affecting
A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman (2012)
The death of Graham Chapman put paid to a Monty Python reunion. Undeterred, Chapman’s autobiography is bought to life as an animated film in the gonzo Python style with the remaining Pythons providing voice work
A Life Less Ordinary (1997)
Danny Boyle eccentricity with Ewan McGregor as an inept kidnapper and Cameron Diaz as his more astute abductee. A head-scratching comedy that also throws gun-toting angels into the mix
A Little Bit of Soul (1997)
Australian black comedy about research into longevity and Satanism. The film has a great cast but hits a shrilly hysteric pitch without ever being funny
A Little Bit Zombie (2012)
Amiable Canadian entry in the oversaturated market of the zombie comedy that emerges sort of as a Judd Apatow film with zombies and produces the occasional smile if few laughs
A Lobster Tale (2006)
Set in a nowhere New England town where fisherman Colm Meaney discovers a moss with miracle-healing properties. Sort of a Magical Realist version of The Shipping News
L.A. Slasher (2015)
The idea of a killer targeting all the talentless in Hollywood has satiric amusement but this is an incoherent film delivered in a series of MTV visuals by what feels a coke-addled director
L.A. Zombie (2010)
Whether we asked for it or not, director Bruce LaBruce gives us the world’s first gay pornographic zombie film in which a zombie finds it can revive the dead by having sex with them
L: Change the World (2008)
Spinoff from the Japanese Death Note films from Ring director Hideo Nakata featuring the weird detective L. L was a scene-stealer but this fails to come up with an interesting enough plot for him
La Llorona (2019)
At contrast to the forgettable James Wan produced version around the same time, this Guatemalan film spins the Latin America folktale as a parable about those behind historic atrocities being haunted
Labyrinth (1986)
Stunning Jim Henson directed fantasy film set in a world of visual illusions where the Henson team’s puppetry effects are at the peak of their game to provide the creature effects
Labyrinth (2012)
Christopher Smith is an underrated genre director but his first venture into tv is disappointing cross-historical quest for the Holy Grail story that reads like warmed over Da Vinci Code
Lady and the Tramp (1955)
A Disney animation classic about two talking dogs from different walks of life who fall in together. It is impossible not to be charmed by the plaintive delights and sweetly romantic tenderness of the film
Lady and the Tramp (2019)
Another Disney animated film rehashed in live-action. At which the best compliment you can pay this is that it is at least better than the same year’s remake of The Lion King was
Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp’s Adventure (2001)
Disappointing video-released sequel to the classic Disney animated film where the engaging characters of the original have become settled down parents
Lady Beware (1987)
A tawdry erotic thriller where designer Diane Lane creates a series of sexually provocative window dressings only for her to then become targeted by a psycho stalker
Lady Frankenstein (1971)
One of several continental Frankenstein films of the 1970s, concerning Frankenstein’s daughter. This tries to imitate Hammer Films on a lesser budget and with more nudity
Lady in a Cage (1964)
Thriller with Olivia de Havilland as a wheelchair-ridden woman who is tormented after three hoodlums break in to her house while she is trapped in an elevator cage during a power cut
Lady in the Water (2006)
For all its descent into loopy ideas at times, this is a decidedly interesting M. Night Shyamalan film about myth featuring Bryce Dallas Howard as a water nymph who appears out of an apartment pool
Lady in White (1988)
This is a beautifully made Coming of Age ghost story from the greatly underrated Frank LaLoggia wherein a bullied Lukas Haas is led by a ghost to uncover a murderer
Lady Krampus (2018)
This is a misleadingly titled film that features no Krampus and is actually a low-budget Christmas slasher that has been renamed by the distributor. Poorly made on all accounts.
Lady of Csejte (2015)
Another film about Countess Bathory, although this returns to the historical record rather than makes her as a vampire. But this is killed by a ridiculously tame account of Bathory’s activities
Lady Usher (2020)
A gender-flipped adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story, this is surely the equivalent of The Room among Poe adaptations and may be the worst Poe film adaptation ever
Lady, Stay Dead (1981)
An Australian psycho film that gained a fascination, being called sleazy and sordid upon its release. Which of course makes it a must see for Moria
Ladyhawke (1985)
A beautifully made Richard Donner mediaeval fantasy with two lovers suffering a curse that transforms them into animals only able to touch in person for a second at dusk and dawn
Lake Eerie (2016)
This seems to be shaping up to be another entry in the over-saturated low-budget haunted house film. While never straying too far from this, this does throw in some interestingly strange twists
Lake Fear (2014)
A cabin in the woods horror made with an ineptitude of execution. This sets out to rip off The Evil Dead but becomes one shock effect after another that runs into an incomprehensible mass like a bad nightmare
Lake Fear 2: The Swamp (2018)
Slasher film in which a group of unlikeable teens on Springbreak are slaughtered by backwoods hicks in the Everglades. Sold as a sequel to Lake Fear despite neither film being connected in any way
Lake Mungo (2008)
An Australian Found Footage film about a haunting. Rather than the intense spookiness of Paranormal Activity, this is more a mockumentary that is constantly turning what we expect is going on on its head
Lake of Dracula (1971)
The second in a trilogy of Japanese vampire films that came influenced by the Hammer Dracula films. This generates a reasonable degree of spooky eerieness.
Lake Placid (1999)
David E. Kelley, better known as a high-profile tv producer, turns his hand to writing a killer crocodile film, although the result never ends up satisfying either as a monster movie or the jokey tone Kelley wants to take
Lamb (2021)
A standout Icelandic film about a couple on a rural farm who adopt a sheep-human hybrid child and treat it as their own child. With Noomi Rapace as the wife.
Lancelot du Lac (1974)
French director Robert Bresson’s take on the Arthurian legends, stripped of nobility and magic. I’m not part of the critical cult around Bresson. Films that are dull and lifeless are not about spiritual yearning just dull
Land of the Dead (2005)
George Romero’s return to the zombie genre after twenty years, after others starting remaking and homaging his films. Romero still makes potent social metaphors but the gory extremes of his earlier films seem tamed down
Land of the Lost (2009)
Big screen revival of the children’s lost world tv series that is now a loud and excruciating Will Ferrell vehicle that reduces the original into lowbrow farce. A majorly unfunny bomb on every level
Land of the Minotaur (1977)
A really shoddily Greek made film that imports Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence in a story concerning a cult of minotaur worshippers who are snatching tourists in a Greek village
Landmine Goes Click (2015)
A film that sells its premise in three words. Essentially a variant on Phone Booth, this keeps a character trapped on a landmine unable to move and keeps piling on torturous twists from there
Landscape with Invisible Hand (2023)
A bizarrely funny deadpan satire about aliens that have invaded the Earth and turned humanity into an economic underclass. With possibly the weirdest looking aliens to ever appear in an SF film
Lapsis (2020)
Wonderfully Kafka-esque film about a man who takes a job laying cable for a new internet company only to find himself in a system of nightmare rules and regulations
Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986)
Visually stunning Hayao Miyazaki film about the search for a lost city of the clouds Soaring adventure in an alternate world of airship fantasies, rendered in a series of breathtaking vistas
Lara Croft, Tomb Raider (2001)
The first film adaptation of the popular videogame is a film largely premised around the personality of Angelina Jolie. Outside of that, the film is a half-baked series of plot ends and action scenes taken from better films
Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003)
The first Tomb Raider film was empty-headed but a hit but the series was then killed off by this sequel. Angelina Jolie’s performance is detached from human emotion and the action sequences ludicrous
Larva (2005)
Monster movie about larvae emerging from genetically engineered cattle feed and becoming giant bat-like creatures. When a film casts Rachel Hunter as a corporate lawyer, it is not exactly aiming for believability
Laserblast (1978)
One of the first films to come out exploiting the success of Star Wars – a badly made teen underdog fantasy in which bullied Kim Milford takes revenge after finding an alien raygun
Last Action Hero (1993)
A big flop but highly underrated Arnold Schwarzenegger film, a sophisticated meta-fiction that views the cinema screen as another dimension and wittily deflates action cliches
Last and First Men (2020)
An adaptation of the Olaf Stapledon novel that depicts the future evolution of humanity billions of years into the future. This defies every rule of good filmmaking and is still a spellbinding film
Last Cannibal World (1977)
The Italian cannibal film is the most extreme genre ever seen. An earlier effort from the director of Cannibal Holocaust, this delivers the gut-munching goods
Last Girl Standing (2015)
This asks the question of what happens to the final girl after a slasher film. This is less a slasher film than a work about post-traumatic stress before reaching a jaw-dropping ending
Last Journey of Paul W.R. (2020)
French film about Earth endangered by an oncoming moon and how only one man can save the world. This seemed it might be something culty – before the mind-bogglingly bizarre science becomes apparent
Last Lives (1997)
B-budget action film in which C. Thomas Howell is caught up in a chase when an escaped criminal from an alternate timeline abducts his wife.
Last Night (1998)
Excellent Canadian-made End of the World film where actor/director Don McKellar eschews lavish big-budget spectacle for a wry, often haunting series of characters studies about how people meet the end
Last Night in Soho (2021)
Edgar Wright creates a dazzlingly stylish recreation of 1960s London in a work with Thomasine McKenzie as a modern girl haunted by ghosts of the era’s dark underside
Last Sentinel (2023)
Film set in a Waterworld styled drowned future aboard a mid-ocean platform between two warring sides. A film that almost entirely exists in terms of finely tuned psychological tensions
Last Shift (2014)
A ghost story that borrows quite a few touches from Assault on Precinct 13 in its tale of a haunted police station. Director Anthony DiBlasi spends his time on accumulating atmosphere with considerable effectiveness
Last Year in Marienbad (1961)
An extraordinary work from the French New Wave filled with incredible visuals as lovers drift through an ornate hotel where memory and time itself seems to shift
Late Bloomer (2004)
A disturbing Japanese film about a man in a motorised wheelchair (played by a real disabled actor) who turns serial killer and begins to enact revenge for petty injustices
Late for Dinner (1991)
A thoughtful and well-written Cryogenic Sleepers Awake film that charts the culture shock experienced by two men frozen in the 1960s and thawed out in the present day
Late Night Double Feature (2016)
In the same vein as Grindhouse, an anthology that consists of two longer stories set around the gimmick of a tv horror host playing a double-bill, along with several mocked-up parody trailers
Late Night With the Devil (2023)
This conducts a perfect simulation of a 1970s tv talkshow with David Dastmalchian as a host who tries to expose/debunk a demonic possession before things go wrong live on air
Late Phases (2014)
A highly original treatment of werewolf themes that begins with the unique premise of ‘Werewolf in a Retirement Village’ and features a hero who is an aging blind man
Latency (2023)
A film about an agoraphobic videogamer confined to their apartment who is given a Virtual Reality headset to test that soon starts to warp their sense of reality
Lathe of Heaven (2002)
This was the second film adaptation of conceptually ingenious Ursula Le Guin novel about a man whose dreams change reality around him whenever he wakes up
Lavalantula (2015)
A film about giant fire-breathing spiders. This is lifted from formula by a sense of humour and even peculiarly brings many of the cast of the Police Academy series out of retirement
Lavender (2016)
From the director of The Last Exorcism Part II, a title that does nothing to suggest a horror film. All we get is a ghost story that does an M. Night Shyamalan shift into an improbably contrived fugue state drama
Law Abiding Citizen (2009)
Vigilante film where Gerard Butler exacts revenge against the justice system while imprisoned in a jail cell. The dispatches become entertainingly improbable to the point that Butler almost becomes a Batman villain in all but name
Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (1996)
The Lawnmower Man was far from a classic but this sequel has an absurdity that pushes it into extremely bad movie stakes with Matt Frewer as a messiah trying to move everybody into cyberspace
Lazareth (2024)
A film set in a post-pandemic future, this features Ashley Judd and daughters living in isolation on their own who are suddenly forced to welcome a stranger into their house
Lazer Team (2015)
A film from the comedy collective Rooster Teeth about four screw-ups who pick up power suit items from an alien spaceship only to find they are to defend Earth in a tournament
Lazer Team 2 (2017)
Lazer Team was an easy predictable comedy about four screw-ups that accidentally obtain parts of an alien power suit. This sequel is all the same gags on rinse and repeat.
League of Gods (2016)
A Chinese fantasy film that leaves anything Western fantastic cinema has made recently for dead, including epical battle scenes and a lavish sumptuousness of costuming that leaves your jaw on the floor
Leapin’ Leprechauns! (1995)
Likeable film for children from Charles Band about an American family who inherit a property in Ireland inhabited by leprechauns
Leapin’ Leprechauns! 2 (1996)
Sequel to the Charles Band produced children’s film Leapin’ Leprechauns!, this is a superior film that gets much darker and ventures into the underworld
Leatherface (2017)
Supposedly a The Texas Chain Saw Massacre prequel that offers us a Leatherface origin story. The least Texas Chain Saw-like of the sequels and eventually a far cry from the original
Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)
The third of the Texas Chainsaw films where the rights have now been inherited by New Line Cinema and the brutality of the original promptly watered down to MPAA standards
Leave the World Behind (2023)
A strong and dramatic work about a sudden catastrophe that occurs when the world’s internet and cellular system are shut off. Produced by no less than former US President Barack Obama
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026)
Blumhouse conduct not a reboot but a new mummy film – that has no actual mummy in it and instead seems to have taken most of its moves from The Exorcist. And naturally the title leaves you asking “Lee who?”
Left Behind (2000)
Adaptation of the best-selling Christian book series about the Biblical End of the World. There is a mini-industry of these films and, if one can stomach the preachiness, this is not entirely bad
Left Behind (2014)
Nicolas Cage stars in a new film based on the best-selling books about the Biblical end of the world. Despite a much bigger budget than the Kirk Cameron version, nothing terribly interesting happens
Left Behind – Vanished: Next Generation (2016)
There have been the various adaptations of the Left Behind books about the Biblical Rapture; this is an attempt to spin the same off for Young Adult audiences and is not very good
Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (2002)
The second of the Kirk Cameron Biblical End Times films. On one hand, these are quite competently made B movies; on the other the fundamentalist message is unpalatable
Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist (2023)
A revival of the Kirk Cameron starring Biblical End of the World films and a sequel to the Nicolas Cage starring reboot. Directed by and starring your favourite internet troll Kevin Sorbo
Left Behind: World at War (2005)
The third of the Left Behind films with Kirk Cameron facing the Biblical End of the World and the Antichrist. This travels well down into bad movie territory
Legacy of Dracula: The Bloodthirsty Doll (1970)
The first of a trilogy of Japanese vampire films, although this does not feature Dracula despite the title and should be considered more of ghost story.
Legend (1985)
Hugely underrated Ridley Scott film that was a box-office flop. Scott attempts to reconstruct the fairytale as something dark and primal and creates moments that are superlative cinema
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (2010)
Zack Snyder makes an exquisite motion-capture animated film for adults about talking owls. This has a story that comes with a sweeping mythic arc
Legend of the Naga Pearls (2017)
A Chinese-made Wu Xia film about a roguish thief hero on a quest for a set of magical pearls also sought so that the Winged People can regain the power of flight
Legend of the Overfiend (1989)
A cult anime about a demon war on Earth and a half-demon child who has been born in the body of a teenager. This quite takes you aback with its extremes of violence and sexual fetishism
Legend of the Werewolf (1974)
A Freddie Francis directed werewolf film from the latter days entry in the Anglo-horror cycle set in 1900s France. This owes much to Hammer’s earlier Curse of the Werewolf
Legend of the White Horse (1986)
Christopher Lloyd and Dee Wallace star in one of the tattiest of 1980s fantasy films about a magic horse that is really a dragon. This is killed by some abysmal effects.
Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return (2014)
Animated sequel to The Wizard of Oz that proved a charmless flop that misses the magic of the original by a mile. The familiar characters are run over with a gratingly modern sense of humour
Legion (1998)
Well-made Alien copy that seems to have been conceived as a crosshatch between The Dirty Dozen and The Thing where the creature remains mostly psychological
Legion (2010)
An absurd film where angels conduct a war on Earth, which comes amid much in the way of gunfire and creature effects. Directed by a former visual effects supervisor.
Legion of Super-Heroes (2023)
Another of the DC Original Animated Movies. This deals with both the Legion of Super-Heroes and Supergirl, bringing them together in a mutual adventure
Lemming (2005)
A surreal very Lynchian French film in which a deranged Charlotte Rampling shoots herself and then afterwards appears to possess Laurent Lucas’s wife Charlotte Gainsbourg
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
Film adaptation of the popular children’s books expends much effort on the design and look and casts a wildly over-acting Jim Carrey as the villain. Beyond that, the show never much goes anywhere
Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973)
A vampire film that has gained a cult reputation. Nominally party of the 1970s lesbian vampire fad but mostly something unique that takes place on a level of dreamy suggestiveness.
Lensman (1984)
E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s Lensman books are space opera classics. Here they are given the anime treatment, which abandons much adherence to the source material and ends up more as a copy of Star Wars
Leonard Part 6 (1987)
Bill Cosby was massive on tv during the 1980s but when he tried to move to film it resulted in this bizarre flop of a gonzo spy comedy starring Cosby as a retired agent forced to return to the field
Leones (2012)
A group of youths walk through the woods lost then discover why they are there in a hackneyed genre twist ending you can see coming an hour before it does
Leprechaun (1993)
The first in the popular series of films starring Warwick Davis as a malevolent leprechaun. Fairly cheesy and silly, mostly known today for featuring a pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston