Monkey Shines (1988)
Mar 11, 2003Psychic Link with a Monkey
Disappointing George Romero film about a paraplegic man's psychic link with his monkey that then comes to enact his suppressed anger. A fine idea drowns in shrill moral characterisations.
Stanley Tucci
Prelude to a Kiss (1992)
Jan 11, 2003Bodyswap
Beautifully written film where newlywed bride Meg Ryan ends up swapping bodies with an old man
A Life Less Ordinary (1997)
Feb 20, 2009Kidnapping & Angelic Intervention Comedy
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
Deconstructing Harry (1997)
Apr 17, 1999Writer's Self-Analysis Comedy
A Woody Allen film in which he plays a writer on his way to receive an award. The film drifts in and out of a series of vignettes and stories he has written, including a number of fantastic interludes, with highly amusing effect
The Eighteenth Angel (1998)
Mar 14, 1999Biblical End Times Prophecies
David Seltzer, the screenwriter of The Omen, recycles himself here where Rachael Leigh Cook is caught up in the coming Biblical End of the World around the turn of the millennium
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999)
May 15, 1999Shakespeare Adaptation/Fairy Enchantments
Amid Kenneth Branagh's dynamic cinematic revival of Shakespeare in the 1990s, there was this all-star adaptation of Shakespeare's whimsy about fairy enchantments
Big Trouble (2002)
Dec 28, 2004Nuclear Weapon Comedy
A flop comedy based on a Dave Barry novel about various characters trying to obtain a nuclear weapon. Despite a reasonable name cast, this becomes slapstick inanity in director Barry Sonnenfeld's hands
The Core (2003)
Jun 9, 2003Journey to the Centre of the Earth
A CGI disaster film about a journey to the centre of the Earth to restart the magnetic core. This is a film construed as no more than a series of spectacular self-contained disaster set-pieces, often irrespective of any of them making sense
Robots (2005)
Apr 11, 2005Animation/Cute Robots
Enjoyably likeable animated film from Blue Sky Studios set in a world inhabited by robots. Lots of visual invention and madcap slapstick
Space Chimps (2008)
Oct 9, 2008Animation/Talking NASA Chimpanzees
An animated film about NASA experimental chimpanzees. Not quite up there with Pixar but an amiable and unpretentious and amiable outing
The Tale of Despereaux (2008)
Jan 11, 2008Animation/Talking Animal Adventures
Appealingly old-fashioned film about chivalry and heroism, much quieter than the other animation out there but this still holds its own
The Lovely Bones (2009)
Jan 17, 2010Murdered Girl Looks on From the Afterlife
A film about a dead girl trying to stop her paedophile murderer from the afterlife. A grim story becomes a visual effects vehicle wrecked by Peter Jackson's overblown amateur hour symbolism
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Jul 25, 2011Comic-Book Superhero
One of the more disappointing of the Marvel Comics adaptations. Despite all the elements assembled, this never comes to life in director Joe Johnston's hands and takes forever to get into action
The Hunger Games (2012)
Mar 29, 2012Future Televised Human Hunting
A Young Adult box-office hit that does little more than competently shuffle around ideas from other SF films. Jennifer Lawrence makes an impressive showing but the film also soft-pedals the moral reality of its scenario
Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)
Feb 28, 2013Fairytale Adaptation/Epic Fantasy
Bryan Singer was once the hope of fanboy cinema but this attempt to turn Jack and the Beanstalk into an epic fantasy feels exactly like formula studio product that could have been made by any hired director
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013)
Aug 16, 2013Greek Myth in the Present Day
This sequel is marginally better than the first film (largely due to Chris Columbus no longer being in the director's chair), being more dramatically engaged and with effects that feel less like random eye candy. That still doesn't disguise the fact that the Percy Jackson series is no more than a lightweight and forgettable Harry Potter knockoff
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
Nov 23, 2013Future Televised Human Hunting/Social Revolution
The first sequel to the box-office juggernaut. The surprise is that it spends defies most of the things that made the first film, not to mention has made one of the year's biggest box-office hits into a parable for Marxist revolution
Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014)
Mar 15, 2014Animation/Time-Travelling Dog Genius and His Son
DreamWorks animated film based on an old Rocky and Bullwinkle segment about a time-travelling genius dog and his adopted human son. This takes a relentlessly content-free approach to history that strips it down to no more than a series of giddy 3D slapstick gags for the single digit age groups
Muppets Most Wanted (2014)
Mar 22, 2014Muppet Movie
The Muppets were successfully revived in The Muppets; this is a lesser follow-up that leaves us with a feeling that the creative team used their best ammunition first time around
Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
Jun 28, 2014Live-Action Transformer Robots
Are there any new creative directions that Michael Bay feels he he has to explore for a fourth Transformers film? All the Transformers beating the crap out of each other and copious mass destruction has become hard to tell one of the films from each other
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (2014)
Nov 22, 2014Future Social Revolution
The third The Hunger Games film starts in with a more brooding complexity but with the book being split in two parts, the story feels more thinly drawn and comes to an abrupt end just when it starts to get interesting
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (2015)
Nov 28, 2015Future Social Revolution
The finale of the saga comes with a tough, gritty edge that make it the best directed of the series. On the other hand, it builds well only to arrive at an ending that goes oddly sideways and throws sympathies to the wind
Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
Sep 23, 2017Live-Action Transformer Robots
The fifth of Michael Bay's Transformers films. This comes with more of an outright comedy focus than any of the other films where Bay seems to be second-guessing his critics and spoofing his own peccadilloes in quote marks, only to produce the silliest entry in the series yet
Beauty and the Beast (2017)
May 27, 2017Fairy-Tale/Disney Live-Action Remake
This live-action remake of the Disney animated film is mounted with a lavishness. On the other hand, the romance at the centre never fully warms up, while the human characters have the show stolen from under by the cutlery and furnishings
Patient Zero (2018)
Feb 1, 2019Rabid Zombies/Man Who Can Speak Their Language
Former Doctor Who Matt Smith is absurdly miscast as someone who can speak the language of zombies. The film does nothing to make the premise believable.
The Silence (2019)
Jun 21, 2019Creatures That Attack Anything That Makes a Sound
This was dismissed as a copy of a A Quiet Place and had an almost identical plot about survivors sheltering from creatures that attack the smallest sound. In actuality, this was based on a book that predates A Quiet Place
The Witches (2020)
Nov 7, 2020Evil Witches/Roald Dahl Adaptation
Robert Zemeckis’s remake of the Roald Dahl story and Nicolas Roeg film proves a head-scratching effort that misfires on almost every cue
Fountain of Youth (2025)
Jun 6, 2025Quest for the Fountain of Youth/Adventure Film
Guy Ritchie makes an adventure film that pays homage to Indiana Jones and a host of other works concerning the quest for the Fountain of Youth. A superficial film killed by its constantly distracting flip banter
The Electric State (2025)
Mar 22, 2025The Robot Revolution
This is a film that had the capacity within its hands to be a classic work about A.I. and robotics. Adapted from the art of Simon Stålenhag and directed by the Russo Brothers who were behind the last two Avengers films