The Thief Lord (2006)
Jan 11, 2009Orphan Thieves Fantasy
Children's film made with care and attention, written and produced to an adult level, far superior to 95% of the US studio efforts
Aaron Taylor-Johnson
The Illusionist (2006)
Apr 19, 2007Enigmatic Stage Magician
This came out the same year as The Prestige and has a very similar plot with Edward Norton as a stage magician in 19th Century who may have real powers and the rivalry over a woman
Chatroom (2010)
Jan 9, 2011Psychological Games on the Internet
English-language film from Ring director Hideo Nakata that finds a vibrant means to depict internet communication in a thriller about people meeting on a chatroom being wound into a series of psychological games
Kick-Ass (2010)
Apr 18, 2010Superhero Wannabes
One of several films around the same time about wannabes without powers playing at being superheroes. Matthew Vaughn delivers a film that falls between witty deflation of and a celebration of nerdy fantasy
Kick-Ass 2 (2013)
Aug 17, 2013Superhero Wannabes
A much better sequel that gives the characters a thorough workover while making clever play out of the contrasts of masked superhero and reality that ran through the first film
Godzilla (2014)
May 17, 2014Giant Monster Bash
A slightly different beast to its Japanese counterparts and an impressive revival of the series. Gareth Edwards, who made the excellent Monsters, delivers mass destruction on a mind-bogglingly vast scale in ways that approach painterly beauty
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
May 2, 2015Marvel Comics Superhero Team-Up
The first Avengers film came with a massive anticipation in seeing the characters come together and the snappiness of their interplay; here this seems more flat, while the rest is overrun by wall-to-wall action
Tenet (2020)
Dec 5, 2020Time Travel Action/Temporal Weaponry
After delays, Christopher Nolan’s unique time travel film is with us, a dense challenging work that plays like an intellectual version of a James Bond film
Kraven the Hunter (2024)
Jan 25, 2025Marvel Comics Superhero
Another of Sony’s films spun off from Spider-Man supporting characters. In the comics, Kraven is a Spider-Man super-villain with a big game hunter motif but here is turned into a superhero
Nosferatu (2024)
Feb 1, 2025Nosferatu Remake
Robert Eggers of The Witch fame conducts a remake of the classic silent Nosferatu. This comes drenched in mood and period detail but Eggers also substantially changes the original
28 Years Later … (2025)
Aug 9, 2025Post-Holocaust/The Zombie Apocalypse
28 Days Later was the work that started the modern zombie film revival. Twenty-three years later, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland return to make a third film and still wring some creativity out of the set-up