Deep Rising (1998)
Feb 27, 2003Sea Monsters
Early Stephen Sommers film that feels like it has been mounted as Alien meets Titanic. Between the ridiculous one-dimensional writing and Sommers’ CGI overkill, this heads well into bad movie material
Cliff Curtis
Virus (1999)
May 2, 1999Lethal Alien Bio-Machine
This has the novelty of a monster that is an evolving fusion of machinery and organics. While it is all directed with much noise and fury, it is ultimately no more than another copy of Alien
Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Oct 25, 1999Urban Hell/Haunted Ambulance Driver
Martin Scorsese returns to the vision of urban hell he gave us in Taxi Driver with Nicolas Cage as an ambulance driver haunted the dead he sees. Powerful, blackly funny at times, if not quite up there as another Taxi Driver
Whale Rider (2002)
Feb 17, 2003Maori Culture/Mystical Communion with the Whales
Magical Realist tale set among New Zealand's native Maori peoples concerning a young girl's cautious defiance of traditions
River Queen (2005)
Feb 25, 2006Maori Wars Historical Epic/Precognitive Dream
Vincent Ward is one of the directors who should be granted more opportunities to make films. This is his least satisfying work, a troubled behind-the-scenes epic set during New Zealand's Maori Wars with some Magical Realist touches
The Fountain (2006)
Feb 26, 2007Mystical Quest for Immortality
Darren Aronofsky's version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. A cryptic and baffling story that takes place in three different eras, all featuring the same actors. Aronofsky engages in much symbolic interplay but what is happening is a scratch of the head
Sunshine (2007)
Apr 19, 2007Solar Expedition
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland make a big serious SF film about a solar expedition, which works with great scientific rigour until the shows heads off at a tangent and falls apart in the latter third
Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Aug 17, 2007Action Film/Socially Catastrophic Hack Attack
The fourth of the Die Hard films and the only one that enters into genre territory with Bruce Willis now fighting a catastrophic hack attack that disables the entire US
10,000 BC (2008)
Mar 8, 2008Prehistoric Drama
Roland Emmerich leaves epic mass destruction behind to make a prehistoric film, but this is one that soon collapses into a remarkable anthropological silliness
Push (2009)
Jul 30, 2011Psychic Powers
A positively ingenious film about psychic powers that comes with an enormous conceptual joy in seeing the ways the various powers can be combined
The Last Airbender (2010)
Jul 3, 2010Epic Fantasy Adventure
Live-action film adaptation of the popular animated tv series, this was widely seen as a disaster for M. Night Shyamalan. I am one of the few that liked the film for Shyamalan's superbly designed world
A Thousand Words (2012)
Mar 2, 2012Man Has a Thousand Words Before He Dies Comedy
Eddie Murphy's presence is not enough to lift the lame premise of this comedy where he is given a curse where he has a thousand words to say before he dies … a film that has a soggy marshmallow heart rather than one that lets Murphy loose to do what he does best
The Meg (2018)
Jan 18, 2019Giant Prehistoric Killer Shark
Big budget about a giant prehistoric killer shark film. This is like a Sharknado film with its sense of its own risibility perfectly under cap, played seriously and mounted as a series of spectacular shark attack sequences
Doctor Sleep (2019)
Feb 1, 2020The Shining Sequel
Mike Flanagan, one of the most exciting genre names in recent years, takes on Stephen King's book sequel to The Shining, managing the daunting balancing act of both adapting the book and turning it into a sequel to the Stanley Kubrick film
Reminiscence (2021)
Sep 4, 2021Memory Retrieval Device/Future Noir
Lisa Joy, co-creator of tv’s Westworld, directs a work of future noir in an ingenious plot involving a memory recording device and Hugh Jackman obsessed with a missing woman
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Apr 8, 2023War Between Human Colonists and Aliens
James Cameron finally delivers his sequel to Avatar. Nothing could quite repeat the same phenomenon a second time but this does well with Cameron taking the opportunity to show more depth to his alien world
Meg 2: The Trench (2023)
Sep 2, 2023Giant Prehistoric Killer Sharks
The sequel to the Jason Statham starring killer shark film, bigger and more over the top than before. The surprise is seeing cult director Ben Wheatley turning to making a big, dumb film
Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025)
Apr 4, 2026War Between Human Colonists and Aliens
James Cameron makes a third venture into the world of Pandora. The question is whether he finds any new territory to explore. What you cannot deny is that he creates a pretty and absorbing picture out of it all