Scoob! (2020)
An animated film revival of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? This also makes an misguided attempt to build a shared universe among assorted Hanna-Barbera characters
Fantasy
Scooby-Doo (2002)
The live-action film version of the popular Hanna-Barbera animated tv series. Despite James Gunn on script, this is not very good, a one-dimensional, no-brain film trying to look like a one-dimensional, no-brain cartoon
Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004)
Sequel to the live-action Scooby-Doo, this is at least a better film than its predecessor, being more polished in its slapstick and effects but still has no more ambition beyond being a silly no-brain film
Scoop (2006)
One of the more forgettable Woody Allen comedies with Scarlett Johansson as a journalism student who gets tips from the afterlife
The Scorpion King (2002)
Back when Dwayne Johnson was a wrestler billing himself as The Rock, this was a forgettable sword and sorcery effort spun off from his appearance in The Mummy Returns. This led to a surprising number of sequels
The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (2012)
The best of an otherwise lightweight, throwaway series. Roel Reiné directs some good action scenes, even if the hackneyed plotting never lets the show rise to anything more than average
The Scorpion King 4: Quest for Power (2015)
Fourth entry in the eminently forgettable sword-and-sorcery series, this heads down into bad movie stakes by writing a series of grating quips over everything, while the action scenes exist in the realm of unbelievability that show that nobody is treating anything with the slightest seriousness
Scorpion King: Book of Souls (2018)
The Scorpion King films are such a low expectation series that it is hard to drum up enthusiasm for a fifth entry. The rehashes stock sword and sorcery cliches and passes its time forgettably
The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior (2008)
Prequel to The Scorpion King. Unfortunately director Russell Mulcahy allows his broad hand with comedy free reign and the plot is overrun by glib character banter and constant flip modern one-liners
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
An Edgar Wright directed comic-book adaptation made in a bewildering restless visual style that feels like two different films happening at once, one a sweet nerd romance and the other a completely gonzo superhero film
Scrooge (1951)
This is usually regarded as one of the best versions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a British-made production starring Alistair Sim
Scrooge (1970)
Musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol starring Albert Finney as Scrooge, this is made on a big budget, leading to an extravagant and often over-produced film
Scrooged (1988)
A modernised version of A Christmas Carol that seems to have been construed in the shadow of Ghostbusters right down to casting Bill Murray as Scrooge
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)
Standout thriller with Kim Stanley as a medium who fakes a child kidnapping with husband Richard Attelborough to prove her powers
The Search for Bridey Murphy (1956)
Dramatic recount of a true-life sensation during the 1950s when an amateur hypnotist claimed that he had regressed a housewife to recall her past life in 19th Century Ireland. The film has an earnestly prostheletysing belief in its own case but sceptical examination pulls holes in its credibility
The Second Jungle Book: Mowgli & Baloo (1997)
Lesser budgeted sequel to the 1994 remake of The Jungle Book, which actually comes closer in tone to the original Rudyard Kipling stories
Second Sight (1989)
An attempt to copy Ghostbusters concerning a psychic detective agency that degenerates into painfully bad slapstick
Second Time Lucky (1984)
One of the most excruciatingly painful films ever made – a softcore comedy in which God and The Devil make a bet to replay the Garden of Eden by reincarnating Adam and Eve throughout history. Filled with ghastly over-the-top performances and much eye-rolling innuendo
The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993)
Bizarre stop-motion animated version of the farytale that resembles Gumby that takes place in a surreal Eraserhed-like world
The Secret Kingdom (1997)
This is an appealingly strange Charles Band produced children’s film about a kid who discovers a miniature magical kingdom that is located under the kitchen sink
The Secret Life of Pets (2016)
I really enjoyed Illumination Entertainment’s debut film Despicable Me but thereafter they just seemed to slip into formula and following what every other animation studio is. Despite low initial enthusiasm, they regain their form here, doing nothing radically out of the ordinary but producing a modestly engaging work
The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)
Illumination’s The Secret Life of Pets came with a winning concept – a Garfield like series of wry observations on humanity by pets – and this is one amongst the current plague of animated sequels that emerges equally likably
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)
A light whimsical short story about a daydreamer is turned into a bloated and ponderous vehicle for the musical and comedy set-pieces of the perpetually wet-eared Danny Kaye
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
Ben Stiller’s remake of the unfunny Danny Kaye vehicle about an impractical daydreamer has no more depth than an inspirational postcard and takes a long time to deliver it
The Secret of Kells (2009)
Beautifully made animated film that won surprise recognition at the Academy Awards. More a festival film than necessarily a box-office one
The Secret of Moonacre (2008)
Beautifully filmed Victorian-set fantasy in which orphan Dakota Blue Richards moves to her uncle’s estate and discovers the magical secrets it holds
The Secret of N.I.M.H. (1982)
The first film from Don Bluth, a Disney animator who formed his own company vowing a return to the studio’s classic tradition. The results are beautiful and quite magical
The Secret of Roan Inish (1994)
John Sayles became one of the foremost independent American filmmakers. In a change of pace here, he makes a film about rural Irish culture and legends
Seeing Heaven (2010)
A gay version of Don’t Look Now – a film that takes forever to go anywhere and fails to wind its twists up to anything interesting
The Seeker: The Dark is Rising (2007)
Adaptation of Susan Cooper’s popular fantasy series handled by people who have no interest in the material and badly rewrite/mangle it in order try to turn it into a Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings knockoff
Sensation (1994)
Kari Wuhrer stars in a tawdry erotic thriller as an art student who gains clairvoyant abilities and gets caught up in solving a murder
Serendipity (2001)
Romance film where John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale meet and leave their details on random items in the belief luck will bring them back together
Serenity (2019)
Not to be confused with the Joss Whedon film, this starts out seeming like a weepy romantic drama before pulling one of the most absurd M. Night Shyamaalan-esque conceptual twists ever put on screen on us
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)
A real what-were-they-thinking turkey where someone had the idea of turning the Beatles’ album into a disco-era film starring The Bee Gees … In trying to contrive a plot around the songs and their surreally psychedelic lyrics, the film frequently makes no sense
The 7 Adventures of Sinbad (2010)
Cheap mockbuster from The Asylum that was designed to exploit the success of the flop Prince of Persia. While ostensibly a Sinbad film, this confusingly abandons the Arabian Nights milieu and is set contemporary where Sinbad is not sailor but a corporate CEO stranded on a desert island
The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (1985)
Cannon Films produced remake of The Seven Samurai as an Italian gladiator film starring Lou Ferrigno
17 Again (2009)
Ageswap fantasy in which middle-aged Matthew Perry is rejuvenated as a teenage Zac Efron. A glib fantasy that seems made by abstinence campaigners
The 7th Dwarf (2014)
German animated film about the adventures of Snow White’s Seven Dwarves. Lightweight and trivial, this feels like it has come along ten years too late to the fad for fairytale parodies and mash-ups we had in the mid-2000s with films like Shrek and Hoodwinked!
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Ingmar Bergman’s classic work where Max Von Sydow plays a game of chess with Death. A film that seems to carry the philosophical weight of the modern world on its shoulders
Seventh Son (2014)
An object lessons in how not to adapt a Young Adult series – take a book series about an apprentice witch hunter set in an alternate England and turn it a generic Lord of the Rings copy
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
One of the classic films from cult stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen, an Arabian Nights fantasy adventure where Harryhausen’s creations prove to be quite wondrous
Sew Torn (2024)
A unique film about a seamstress who is wound up in a drug deal gone wrong and improvises solutions with her needle and thread. Like Run Lola Run, this rewinds to offer very different versions of events
Sex and Death 101 (2007)
What starts out seeming like a frat boy comedy about a guy receiving a list of all the women he will sleep with turns into an intriguingly different beast altogether
Sex & Zen II (1996)
Sequel to the Hong Kong erotic film, an entirely unrelated work that inflates the original into a madcap Wu Xia film filled with crude, rude humour
Sex and Zen (1991)
Charming and delightful Hong Kong erotic comedy about a scholar who sets out on a journey of sexual freedom
Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (2011)
A revival of the 1990s Sex and Zen series of erotic comedies, this comes with the novelty of being presented in 3D
Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. (1990)
One of the more amusing and better made Troma films – their take on the superhero fad of the early 90s featuring a Japanese-themed superhero
The Shack (2017)
This comes with a fantastic conceptual hook “Man is invited to a meeting with God at a hut in the woods”. Alas, what we get is no more than a work of faith-based cinema that drowns in its feelgood Christianity Lite sentiments and appeal to Middle American wholesomeness
Shadey (1985)
An incomprehensibly, baffling film about a psychic that leaves you wondering what people were thinking when they were making it, let alone how it obtained funding
The Shadow (1940)
A serial adaptation of the popular radio superhero, which gets the look of the character perfect but drops all his mystical powers
The Shadow (1994)
Beautifully produced film version of the old radio superhero where director Russell Mulcahy does a wonderful job with the period design and adventure
The Shadow of Mary Poppins (2002)
Documentary about Mary Poppins creator P.L. Travers that delves into the questions of her secretive past and often fictionalised biography, while also covering the making of the Disney film
Shadows and Fog (1991)
One of the not-quite-rans in Woody Allen’s oeuvre, a homage to Franz Kafka and German Expressionism with Allen as a mousy clerk caught up in the hunt for a strangler
The Shaggy Dog (1959)
The first of Disney’s live-action comedies, a comic variant on the werewolf story with Tommy Kirk turning into a dog. Mildly amusing but later efforts would do this type of comedy better
The Shaggy Dog (2006)
The remake of the old Disney comedy becomes a vehicle for Tim Allen, played with a manic slapstickery wherein Allen demonstrates there are few levels of silliness he will travel to in imitating dog-like behaviours
Shallow Hal (2001)
Farrelly Brothers comedy where Jack Black is hypnotised by Tony Robbins and 300 pound Gwyneth Paltrow as beautiful
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
The Marvel onslaught continues with this resurrection of a martial artist superhero character from the 1970s. Amid the mostly ho-hum MCU offerings of the 2020s, this becomes an energised action vehicle
Shaolin Soccer (2001)
Hilarious Stephen Chow directed/starring film where he parodies The Matrix et al with Buddhist monks using flying martial arts moves to aid a failing soccer team
Sharing (2014)
I went to see this on the description that called it a horror film about premonitions of disaster but far less interestingly it is a fictional attempt to analyse people’s attempts to grieve over the Fukushima Disaster – not uninteresting but with little interest in being a fantastic film
Shark Tale (2004)
DreamWorks animated talking fish film that was dismissed in the shadow of Pixar’s earlier Finding Nemo but is perfectly likeable in its own right
Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015)
Probably the loudest I have laughed and the most unabashed fun I have had in a theatre all year. The most 100% successful of all of Aardman’s films to date at capturing the quirky and uniquely homesy style of their short films, this comes with gags packed in every single frame
Shazam! (2019)
Adaptation of the superhero comic is played for comedy, making it very different in emphasis to the other films in the DCEU. The boy into man transformation is played up as essentially Big with superpowers – with appealing results
Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)
Shazam! was one of the more enjoyable DCEU superhero offerings, placing a light-hearted spin on the superheroics. This is the sequel
She (1925)
The most lavish of the silent screen adaptations of H. Rider Haggard’s classic, multiply filmed adventure novel about the discovery of a lost city ruled over by an immortal queen
She (1935)
The first sound version of H. Rider Haggard’s lost city adventure about explorers finding an immortal queen (Helen Gahagan). From the producers of the original King Kong
She (1965)
Hammer Films conduct an adaptation of the classic H. Rider Haggard adventure story about the discovery of a lost city and its immortal queen but the epic spectacle never much comes to life
She Starts the Fire (1992)
Madcap Hong Kong comedy variant on Firestarter where Chingmy Yau has a curse that she starts fires when aroused
Sheena (1984)
Big screen adaptation of the Will Eisner comic-book and 1950s tv series about a female Tarzan. A blank Tanya Roberts in the title role and a campy script pushes it well into bad movie status
The Sheep Detectives (2026)
This has one of the most off the wall premises in some time – talking sheep team up to act as detectives and solve the murder of their shepherd. Think Babe meets Agatha Christie. The results are hilarious
Sherlock Gnomes (2018)
Sequel to Gnomeo & Juliet, which retold Shakespeare with garden gnomes. This for some reason adds a garden gnome Sherlock Holmes to the mix. The high speed whirring you hear is probably Arthur Conan Doyle rotating in his grave,
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Guy Ritchie’s reinvention of Sherlock Holmes seemed a miscalculated disaster in the offing. It doesn’t radically reinvent the basics but emerges passably well
Shock Treatment (1981)
A not uninteresting sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, this has widely divided reactions among fans
Short Peace (2013)
An anthology of short anime pieces from various directors, including creator Katsuhiro Otomo, the cult creator of Akira. The four episodes vary from historical to fantasy to futuristic warfare and, as with any anthology, vary in quality from the okay to the watchable
Shortbus (2006)
A second film from John Cameron Mitchell of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame where Mitchell sets out to chart different flavours of sexuality in the 00s and does so with sometimes funny, othertimes outrageous effect. Included here for a heroine whose orgasm has the ability to cause power fluctuations
Shortcut to Happiness (2003)
Alec Baldwin’s financially troubled modernised remake of The Devil and Daniel Webster comes to the screen as a compromised vision
Shorts (2009)
Another of Robert Rodriguez’s children’s films about the wacky chaos caused by the discovery of a magic wishing stone. Nothing earth-shattering but Rodriguez has a lot of fun with the visual absurdities
The Shout (1978)
A film of fascinating ambiguities that stars Alan Bates as a mystery man who appears to John Hurt and demonstrates a killing shout he learned among the Aborigines
Shrek (2001)
Before this was spun out into a series of ho-hum sequels, the original was an animated film that burst with a freshness and a series of winning voice characterisations
Shrek 2 (2004)
Shrek was a fresh and original hit. The first of four insipid sequels, this seems to merely coast by on our liking of the characters while upping the fairytale parody
Shrek Forever After (2010)
The fourth of the Shrek films. By this point, the freshness and originality of the first film has been buried under animated film formula, while the plot is a tired rehash of It’s a Wonderful Life
Shrek the Third (2007)
The third of the Shrek films settles in with a formulaic blandness where the characters turn up more because everyone expects them to than the film finds much for them to do
Siberia (2020)
From cult director Abel Ferrara, a film described as being being about the language of dreams in which Willem Dafoe drifts through a series of surreal landscapes searching for the meaning of life
Siegfried (1924)
The first of a two-part silent Fritz Lang film based on the Teutonic legend. Lang directs with an epic visual majesty that rivals today’s Lord of the Rings films
Siesta (1987)
This directorial debut for Mary Lambert is a stylish but empty-headed erotic mystery that eventually settles for a fantastical twist ending
The Silent Flute (1978)
Bizarre Bruce Lee conceived conceived martial arts film, a bizarre allegorical work of philosophy steeped in inscrutable Zen epigrams
The Silent One (1984)
New Zealand made film about a deafmute boy in a Cook Islands tribe and his mystic communion with a sea turtle
Silent Tongue (1994)
A directorial outing from actor/playwright Sam Shepard set in the West as Richard Harris buys an Indian daughter for his son River Phoenix
The Silver Brumby (1993)
Adaptation of a classic Australian children’s story about a breed of mythic horses. Starring an unknown Russell Crowe.
The Simian Line (2000)
New Age film where a psychic makes a prediction about the couples at a party splitting up and how this affects all present
The Similars (2015)
Isaac Ezban makes another conceptually out there film about people trapped in a bus station who all start transforming into the likeness of the same man. Much has been modelled on The Twilight Zone and this has a fascinating weirdness
Simon Magus (1999)
Film set in a small 19th Century Orthodox Jewish village struggling to deal with the modern world, featuring Noah Taylor as a fool troubled by visions of The Devil
A Simple Wish (1997)
Ghastly children’s film with Martin Short as an inept fairy godmother. Inanity ensues where there seems no ceiling on how over-the-top performances are allowed to go
Simply Irresistible (1999)
Very silly romantic comedy in a Magical Realist vein where Sarah Michelle Gellar gains magical cooking abilities. Like Water for Chocolate did this better.
The Simpsons Movie (2007)
Film spinoff from the long-running animated tv series. The familiar gags are there but show feels awkward extruded out to a full-length plot. You keep feeling the film should have been more than it is.
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)
The third of Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad films, this came out the same year as Star Wars and Harryhauden’s stop-motion animated creatures look much more flat in comparison
Sinbad and the War of the Furies (2016)
The Asylum attempt a modern-day Sinbad film – one where Sinbad uses a cellphone and sets sail to L.A. aboard a regular yacht. This is so cheap that it has even been stripped of all the exotic creatures
Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists (2000)
An early CGI animated film conducted on a cut-price budget that tells further adventures of Sinbad
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)
DreamWorks animated Sinbad adventure by the numbers that seems to go out of its way to tell a Sinbad story divorced of its Islamic cultural background
Sinbad of the Seven Seas (1989)
An incredibly bad Italian-made Sinbad adventure starring Lou Ferrigno that is laughable in its dialogue and acting and incredibly tatty in its budget pinching
Sinbad the Sailor (1947)
The very first Sinbad film. Douglas Fairbanks Jr is cast to capitalise on the swashbuckling name of his father. It is odd seeing a Sinbad film that eliminates fantasy adventure in favour of talk, although it eventually mounts a likeably energetic show