The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Fascinating Norwegian film about the discovery of a mysterious girl who it gradually becomes apparent is not human … The first 20 minutes are a superb piece of scene-setting but the rest of the film consists of not much more than people sitting around a cellar waiting for something to happen
A very strange Australian film set in the Outback where Peter Coyote plays an ambiguous stranger who appears to a troubled family claiming to have been sent from God
Film about a pair of magical soccer boots, so centred in its local sports culture that it is unlikely to have much appeal outside of its Manchester setting
This is a Norwegian film based on the Scandinavian folklore figure of the barn elf, a household spirit that can turn malevolent if upset. The film becomes in essence a Nordic version of Gremlins
A serial based on Chandu the Magician, a popular radio superhero who wielded magical and mystical powers. Featuring Bela Lugosi in the title role
An eccentrically oddball comedy in which a man discovers that his strange roommate may be a comic-book super-villain. Made independently but with a dry wit that is hard to resist
A French zombie film that is about as far removed from a zombie film as it possible to get – the dead inexplicably return to life not to eat the flesh of the living but calm and detached where society’s problem is how to let them return to their previous lives
Legendary animated masterpiece from Richard Williams that was butchered in release. Williams’ animation is visually extraordinary
Children’s film made with care and attention, written and produced to an adult level, far superior to 95% of the US studio efforts
An Arabian Nights adventure that offers up one of the purest blends of fantasy and romance of its era. Filled with stunning directorial set-pieces and magnificent sets and all shot in colour.
Dull remake of the classic Arabian Nights film that casts Steve Reeves and tries to make it into a Hercules peplum adventure
The fourth film version of the Arabian Nights adventure, a tv movie released theatrically in some parts.
Agnieszka Holland film with Ed Harris as a Catholic priest who has lost his faith who is asked defend the authenticity of a supposed miracle
Essentially a rehash of Big in which a tormented teen wishes she was thirty and wakes up as Jennifer Garner. Amiably average without ever finding the wistful charms that Big had
Several well-known actors hole up in a Hollywood mansion as the Biblical Apocalypse hits. While at first seeming a self-congratulatory exercise, this emerges as a raucously funny ensemble drama where each of the actors play to great strength. Seth Rogen may yet earn forgiveness for The Green Hornet
Theatrical film spinoff from the Thomas the Tank Engine tv series using several imported American actors
Rather odd but amiable Chinese film about friendship between a real-life artist and his model & with flying swordsmen and alien visitors all thrown in for no discernibly apparent reason
The film adaptation of Marvel Comics’ The Mighty Thor is placed in the hands of Kenneth Branagh who delivers an okay film, if one where he never quite seems at home with the superheroic action
A low-budget mockbuster from The Asylum designed to jump aboard the bandwagon of Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder
The fourth of Marvel’s Thor films, where director Taika Waititi gets the balance of humour down much more successfully than he did in the previous film
The third of the MCU’s Thor films. This time Kiwi director Taikia Waititi gives much more of a comedic emphasis where you get the impression the intention has been to push the film in the direction of Guardians of the Galaxy. On the other hand, the superheroics are routine
Though Marvel Comics have had massive success with their big screen adaptations in the 00s, they have been far less successful with their attempts to spin off animated films. An okay but unexceptional animated prequel released at the same time as the first Thor live-action film
Sequel to Thor that earranges the same basic elements much more satisfyingly than the first film – the actors (with the exception of a tranquilised Natalie Portman) seem more at home in their roles and a director who is more confident with the effects and superheroics. That said, it is starting to feel like Marvel is shuffling the same plot ingredients around between films
An excruciatingly unfunny Australian comedy about a man murdered by his wife returned as a ghost to bring her to justice
Part of the fad during the 1940s for swashbuckling Arabian Nights adventures, this tells the story of Aladdin and is more embracing of the fantasy elements than most of the other films of this period
The third film about the title criminal mastermind from Fritz Lang. Here Lang returns to a radically different Germany to the one he fled in the 1930s, the West Germany of the Cold War, to deliver a creepily paranoid work about the surveillance society
One welcomes a collaboration between Tsui Hark, the godfather of Hong Kong fantasy cinema, and Yuen Wo Ping, fight choreographer for The Matrix. But the the results are disappointing with Yuen’s talents seeming buried under CGI
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
An obscure joke from Alex Cox that has he and Miguel Sandoval as two businessman who go to dinner but keep passing through different cities
Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the classic Frank Miller graphic novel about the Greek battle of Thermopylae. In replicating the look of the original’s panels, Snyder pushes what would otherwise be a standard historical film into something extraordinarily stylised and fantastic
Less a 300 sequel or prequel than a parallel story, this offers much the same as before but in 3D and with naval instead of land combat. Seeing Zack Snyder’s amazing visuals repeated all over again, all the poses and hyper-masculinity now seem to bubble with an inherent risibility.
George Miller of Mad Max fame makes a fantastical and charming film where djinn Idris Elba appears to Tilda Swinton
This is a 1950s Coming of Age story with Patrick Swayze as a mysterious stranger dispensing wisdom, before the film arrives at a very peculiar fantastic ending
The great Robert Altman was one of the most individualistic and downright eccentric American directors. In this cryptic and baffling work, three (mainly two) women appear to exchange identities
Adaptation of the Jonathan Swift classic about adventures in the lands of big and small people with stop-motion creature effects by Ray Harryhausen
An excruciating fan-made parody of The Hobbit films filled with amateur actors delivering performances in ridiculous falsettos. What makes this mind-boggling is its realisation it can’t compete with Peter Jackson on effects, resulting in things like Smaug played by a drag queen
Animated film from Don Bluth, an insipid adaptation of the fairytale that eventually bogs down as a comic picaresque (*)
Bizarre but undeniably brilliant Terry Gilliam film about a young girl in the cornfields of the Midwest who builds a fantasy out of the sometimes disturbing things around her
John Boorman makes a film where Brendan Gleeson has his life taken over by a doppelganger
Highly enjoyable Terry Gilliam film about a young boy who joins a group of dwarves on a series of adventures though time
An Abbott and Costello comedy. Not one of their monster bashes but a variant on the light comedy that had been popular in the last decade with Lou as an 18th Century ghost haunting Bud Abbott in the present. Can’t say I am a big fan of their humour, most of the slapstick that seems dated today
Not a time travel film as the title leads you to expect but a Chinese copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark where you expect they were trying to call it ‘tomb raiders’. The director is also the production designer leading to a gorgeously designed film but also one of constant action postures almost entirely lacking in substance
South Korean film that borrows the premise of the film Frequency in having two characters separated across twenty years have clairvoyant dreams of the other’s life and combining forces to stop a killer
Actress Alice Lowe directs/stars in a comedy about a woman who pursues the man she is infatuated with as both reincarnate through history
This must have been a marketing nightmare for Disney – a film about a kid who operates as a private detective along with his polar bear imaginary companion. The result has an oddball charm
Volker Schlondorff’s adaptation of Gunther Grass’s darkly funny book about a young boy in Nazi Germany who refuses to grow up
Nick Willing conducts the first of his SF revampings of popular tales. Here The Wizard of Oz is reworked into a Steampunk fantasy with some startling reinterpetations of the familiar characters
The first in a series of Disney video-released films based around the Peter Pan fairy who is now reconceived as a contemporary Can Do girl
Documentary about Tintin creator Hergé based on audio recordings he made in the 1970s
The second in a duo of live-action French-language adaptations of Herge’s famous comic-book character, which gets the resemblance to the characters almost perfect
Ambiguous ghost story in which Peter Gallagher sees and talks to his late wife Michelle Pfeiffer. Written by hit tv producer David E. Kelley (The Practice), this frequently disappears into its own self-congratulatory dialogue
Another film amid Woody Allen’s European renaissance, four tales all set around the gorgeously shot location of Rome. The stories are on the slight side and it is lesser Allen but there is great casting and moments where Allen is on good form
Directors Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon Ho make an anthology of strange and surreal tales that take place in Tokyo
Biopic of J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings. This covers many of the key areas of Tolkien’s early life but you also cannot help but notice what it leaves out
Tom and Jerry are revived in a part-animated, part-live action toon film although come missing the ultra-violence of the original cartoons
The Tom and Jerry cartoons have the distinction of being considered the most violent ever. The question is why anybody considered why we needed an animated remake of Willy Wonka but with the addition of Tom and Jerry
George Pal adapts the Brothers Grimm fairytale with Russ Tamblyn as a miniature youth amid colourful effects and extended slapstick scenes
The Asylum’s mockbuster response to the theatrical reboot of Tomb Raider. This is cut-priced and features globe-spanning adventures that never travel outside of California
This reboot of the film series based on the videogame franchise is a mixed affair. Certainly, the perpetually non-acting Angelina Jolie is replaced by Alicia Vikander who gives Lara Croft living, breathing emotions
Ken Russell’s adaptation of The Who’s hit album is filled with gloriously mad, glitter rock excess and wildly over the top acting in the ways that only Russell ever managed
Predating Sliding Doors, this hard-boiled Hong Kong gangster film from Wong Kar-wai did the whole alternate timelines theme first
Quirky indie film where a man encounters various strange people after learning he has 24 hours left to live
From the top wrestling superstar in the world in the early 00s to movie action hero to being dressed in a pink tutu with fairy wings, it is hard to believe that Dwayne Johnson’s box-office star would have ever recovered from this family film embarrassment that sees him cast as a fairy
Cult film from Alejandro Jodorowsky, a surrealistic Western that comes with an incoherent mishmash of symbolism, Zen mysticism and 1960s raised consciousness
A deliriously frothy screwball comedy starring Cary Grant and Constance Bennett as two socialites killed in a crash who then haunt the car’s new owner. Several sequels followed.
Second sequel to Topper , the screwball light fantasy comedy about a dull man who is driven crazy by ghosts only he can see. This throws everything into an Old Dark House setting but proves there is still a good deal of droll, nonsensical humour to be found in the formula
Paul Schrader adapts an Elmore Leonard novel about a youth who suddenly becomes sought by various parties when it is discovered he has miracle healing powers but the results never quite come off
Film made entirely with stop-motion animated plastic toys and with a sublimely nonsensical absurdiism that has more hilarity and creativity than most mainstream animated fare you will see all year
The first film from Pixar and a breakthrough in being the first computer-animated film. Even aside from its technical innovations, this is enormously good fun with extremely well-constructed character arcs
Pixar’s sequel to their first film and arguably an even better work where they get the plaintive emotion, character arcs and witty humour down perfect
After such high standards with the previous two films, there is considerable onus on Pixar when it comes to this third entry nevertheless they manage to wring some strong new twists on the familiar
Pixar sequelise their very first film for a third time but the surprise is a film that creates a range of eccentric characters and finds the wit and warmth that has been missing through their last few films
It does seem precious the world’s leading computer animation company making a film about reliance on e-devices. Nevertheless, Pixar manages to wring something new out of the Toy Story franchise
Genuinely eccentric Barry Levinson film that plays out as a post-Reaganite version of Willy Wonka and features some of the most amazing sets ever designed for a film.
Czech stop-motion animated film – imagine Toy Story film reworked by Jan Svankmajer set in a world of toys made up of scavenged junk. On the minus side, the design is the whole of the film and it never much animates the characters or fairytale story
This collaboration between Nicolas Roeg and Dennis Potter results in a mind-boggling blurring of dream, reality, symbolism and sexual obsession. A name cast are allowed their heads and go wild
Colin Firth is released from hospital following the death of his wife but experiences a series of reality-blurring hallucinations
Rather silly and plotless Hong Kong comedy with Chow Yun Fat as a CIA agent encountering a magical girl at a monastery in China
Unrelated to Robert Louis Stevenson, this is a bafflingly surrealist parody of a 1940s thriller
Cheap and tatty copycat of Raiders of the Lost Ark shot in the short-lived 1980s 3D revival fad
Terrence Malick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, maybe the best work yet about the great Lost American Childhood yet – a film that doesn’t seem to be about anything but has far more to say than almost all other multiplex films
Orson Welles’s adaptation of the Frank Kafka novel about a man caught in a nightmare bureaucracy is one of the most visually stunning black-and-white films ever shot
All-star adaptation of the Franz Kafka novel that gets a far better sense of the book’s black ironies than the previous Orson Welles version
Superb horror film filled with ingenious twists in which Melissa George boards an abandoned luxury liner only to become caught in a timeloop
The third in a series of Biblical End Times films withGary Busey as a decent cop who wakes up in a future ruled by the Anti-Christ. The heavy-handed slinging of Bible verses makes this hard-going for anyone who is not a believer, while the conspiratorial tone frequently verges on nuttiness
LSD film from Roger Corman featuring Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern and Dennis Hopper and full of hilariously surreal and trippily psychedelic moments
Splendidly original and completely off the wall work of stylised animation from Sylvain Chomet
Adaptation of the legendary historical romance was considered a box-office flop but emerges as a better film than one expected it would
Not the notorious bad movie but a sequel to Troll, the Norwegian-made effects spectacular about the revival of a giant troll. This is more of the same but with the effects pushed to a more spectacular level
Norway attempts to compete with the Godzilla films in the story of a giant troll amok and pull off a work that does the whole mass destruction spectacular well and with some top notch effects
Hilarious Norwegian-made Found Footage film about a documentary team investigating a man who claims to hunt giant trolls. Played in complete deadpan
Incredibly insipid animated film from Don Bluth about a kind-hearted troll that relocates to Central Park. This feels like a wannabe Disney film that is merely going through the moves.
A perfect example of all the things I hate about modern animation. Based around the popular Troll dolls, this is vapidly designed, content-free product based solely around simplistic storylines, manic slapstick sequences, song and dance numbers, and inane contemporary pop culture in-jokes
An early film from Apichatpong Weerasethakul, two tales – the first a gay love story, the second about a ghost tiger
Thriller starring Jennifer Beals as an FBI agent who receives clairvoyant visions during the hunt for an abducted girl
The Asylum takes on Homer. One is tempted to say Homer loses to The Asylum but this freely rearranges the basics and The Asylum deliver a solid effort that rises above the mediocrity they usually aim for
Animated film based on a book by Charlotte’s Web author E.B. White about a trumpet-playing swan
Disney adaptation of a classic children’s novel about the discovery of a family in the woods who are immortal due to a magical spring
The second part of Peter Greenaway’s massive multi-media installation, a surreal mock biography dominated by Greenaway’s fascination with nonsense lists. Gorgeous to look it but does it make for a dramatically engaging a film?
The third and final of Peter Greenaway’s Tulse Luper films, a sprawling mock biography that is more like a mad multi-media art installation than a film, filled with digressions, endless lists and obscure jokes