Impulse (1984)
Mar 10, 2001Mass Insanity Inducing Biospill
Reminiscent of George Romero's The Crazies, this is a subtle, low key film about a small town as it is affected by a toxic waste leak that causes mass insanity
Bill Paxton
Weird Science (1985)
May 23, 2003Two Geeks Create the Perfect Woman
John Hughes cornered a certain 80s market on teen angst with films like The Breakfast Club. He also made this head-scratching oddity in which two nerds create the perfect woman
Aliens (1986)
Jun 1, 1999Alien Sequel
James Cameron's follow-up to Alien is one of the few sequels that matches its predecessor. Adding a troupe of Marines, Cameron creates a powerhouse of a film that sustains itself with seat-edge tension throughout
Slipstream (1989)
Jan 20, 2001Post-Holocaust Adventure
The only film that Steven Lisberger made after Tron. Though impressively cast and with a decent budget, it is an oddly unconvincing effort that tells the story of an android's quest across a post-apocalyptic world
Predator 2 (1990)
Nov 17, 2014Action/Humans Hunted by Alien Sportsman
Predator was one of the better Alien/Aliens copies of the 1980s. This sequel does little more than serve the same up all over again bar the substitution of a near-future L.A. for the jungle but manages to generate a reasonably intensive ride out of the action
Brain Dead (1990)
Sep 8, 2000Paranoia and Hallucinations
One of the better 80s attempts to copy A Nightmare on Elm Street from an old Charles Beaumont script in which Bill Pullman is a neurologist who becomes involved in an increasingly wilder series of reality bendings
The Dark Backward (1991)
Feb 19, 2015Gonzo Comedy/Man Grows a Third Arm
A really strange comedy with Judd Nelson as a socially inept man who tries to make it as a stand-up comedy act after growing a third arm out of his back. Audiences scratched their heads and the film bombed
The Vagrant (1992)
Apr 1, 2021Yuppie Tormented by a Homeless Man
Directorial outing from makeup effects artist Chris Walas who created the Gremlins and Cronenberg's The Fly. This Bill Paxton as a Yuppie who buys a home and is driven paranoid as it keeps being invaded by a vagrant
Boxing Helena (1993)
Jan 26, 2000Sexual Obsession and Amputation
David Lynch’s daughter Jennifer directs a film about a surgeon who abducts a woman and amputates her limbs to make her love him. A critical bomb, it is a not uninteresting work about woman’s desire handled with more taste than you would think
Monolith (1994)
Jan 19, 2001Cops vs Body-Hopping Alien
Ridiculous action film produced at the peak of The X Files popularity about two detectives against a body-hopping alien and sinister government agency
Apollo 13 (1995)
Jul 31, 2000True-Life Space Mission Disaster
Probably the best among Ron Howard's mostly undistinguished films, a dramatisation of the real-life Apollo 13 space mission disaster. Once the film gets the capsule up into orbit, the drama is gripping
Twister (1996)
Dec 6, 2002Tornado Chasers
After the massive success of Jurassic Park, anything with Michael Crichton's name on it was hot property. This is made from his script about tornado chasers and is a rather entertaining film made with no other purpose that to keep producing a series of spectacular mass destruction scenes on an ever-expanding scale
Mighty Joe Young (1998)
Jun 2, 1999Giant Ape
The original Mighty Joe Young was a wonderfully underrated giant ape film. This is a remake conducted in the post-Jurassic Park era that adds CGI but holds none of the magic of the original
Frailty (2001)
Nov 10, 2003Religious Visions and Serial Killings
A directorial outing from Bill Paxton, a strikingly original film quite unlike anything else where Paxton plays a man who has religious visions and invokes his sons to murder what he calls demon
Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams (2002)
Jan 25, 2002Juvenile Spy Adventures
The second of Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids films is slightly the lesser of its predecessor – it makes the mistake of stripping out the gadgets – but is still fun and has the wacky surrealism Rodriguez gave the first film
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003)
Jan 13, 2004Adventures Inside a Videogame
The third in the series is no longer even a Spy Kids film but a Virtual Reality videogame film. Robert Rodriguez has some fun creating the virtual worlds but the parody that the other films engaged in is missing
Thunderbirds (2004)
Sep 21, 2004Hi-Tech Rescue Organisation/TV Series Remake
This live-action film version of the cult Gerry Anderson puppet series is a disaster. Great effort is made to replicate the look of the original but the film is killed by the choice to rewrite everything as a modern formula kid’s movie
The Colony (2013)
Apr 11, 2013Grim Survival in a Frozen Future
This creates a fascinatingly different future - a world of grim survivalism amid a new Ice Age in the aftermath of Global Warming. The look of the film is fantastic, only to fritter it on an action focus and Mad Max cliches
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Jun 7, 2014Man Forced to Repeat the Same Day Over/Alien Invasion
The rarity of a summer blockbuster with smarts – think Groundhog Day reworked by way of Battle Los Angeles. The timeloop idea is dealt with in clever ways making for an action film driven by an original sf story
The Circle (2017)
Jul 16, 2017Online Mass Surveillance Thriller
Hollywood tries to make a big message film about online mass surveillance but renders anodyne straw arguments. Meanwhile, back in the real world you cannot help but think things the film depicts things might happen very different