The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Enigmatic adaptation of a Japanese videogame where the protagonist is trapped inside a railway platform tunnel and must walk through the same corridor that repeats itself with minute variations to find the exit
An acclaimed surrealistic film from Luis Buñuel in which a group of people attend an upper-class dinner party but then find themselves inexplicably unable to leave the room
Luc Besson adapts a French comic-book – sort of a female version of Tintin – with uneven but generally amiable regard. The result is somewhere between an Indiana Jones adventure and the quirkness of an Amelie
Based on a popular children’s book, this is a simplistic animated film for very young children about a toy mouse that goes on a quest to find freedom
Quirkily appealing Canadian fish out of water comedy where John the Baptist is sent to present-day Newfoundland just before the turn of the millennium to prevent the End of the World
Entirely charming film about a woman who claims to be a fairy. In the best tradition of Jacques Tati, this consists of a series of deliriously nonsensical sight gags that become an utter delight
A nicely produced film based on the true-life Cottingley Fairies hoax in the 1920s where two girls produced photos supposedly of fairies that convinced some people. Despite the original being a hoax, the film wants to convince us that the fairies were real
A fable that was a personal project for Tarsem Singh. A film made for the pure beauty of its visuals, Tarsem eschews visual effects and shoots exotic real world locations to create something exquisitely fantastical
Adaption of a Young Adult series of books – this is essentially Twilight but with angels instead of vampires. Another YA effort where we never saw successive chapters due to its box-office flop
Early Peter Greenaway film where in typically eccentric fashion he tells a series of absurd stories about survivors of a mysterious event who names all begin with Fall who have begun to mutate and develop an obsession with birds
Aardman Animation return with a sequel to Shaun the Sheep Movie. More of the same absurdly nonsensical capers and gags, this comes with much in the way of homage and in-jokes to classic SF films
Brett Ratner conducts a likeable variation on It’s a Wonderful Life with banker Nicolas Cage suddenly finding himself in an alternate life as a regular working class man with wife and kids
The first film from Alejandro Jodorowsky, more like a student film that seems a rehearsal for the surrealistic and outrageous imagery of El Topo, although no less uniquely Jodorowsky-esque for all that
Ingmar Bergman’s final film, a beautifully shot and richly textured family saga that was loosely autobiographical in nature on Bergman’s part. Contains considerable fantasy content.
The best animated film Disney ever made, created as a work of art with animation set to classical music. The segments vary between abstraction, comic eccentricity and evocations of nightmare. The results are magical.
Disney’s sequel to Fantasia comes weighted with a sense of its own self-importance – the first theatrical release of the new millennium. However, it fails to produce much that has the stature of the original
Spinoff from the Harry Potter films – unlike those, written directly for the screen and feels more like it belongs there. The US locations open the story up, while the magic creatures and new ensemble cast prove a delight
The first Fantastic Beasts was a welcome opening up of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe and offered something fresh in the series. This is a more mixed bag where it feels like it is back to business as usual for Rowling
Third of the Fantastic Beasts films, this comes as a feeling of ennui with the Harry Potter franchise. It feels like about right now would be a good time to retire the series
Wes Anderson makes a delightful detour into stop-motion animation in this Roald Dahl adaptation, a droll caper comedy enacted by talking animals who are all characterised with typical Anderson eccentricities
Hong Kong cinema specialises in a type of frenetic, high-energy slapstick. This – a romance set around a swimming competition in which the girl thinks she has been blessed by a water god – is not one of the more inspired
This film version of the massively popular Broadway musical was a miserable flop. The musical is a minimalist one but the film has replaced all of that with literalisations that kill the effect
A documentary about Luigi Cozzi, director of Starcrash and Hercules, among others. Cozzi proves a highly enjoyable raconteur and often more entertaining than some of the films he has made
The big screen remake of the popular 70s/80s tv series about an island that makes guests fantasies come true. In the hands of Blumhouse, this has now been turned into a horror film
Wim Wenders returns to angels in this sequel to Wings of Desire, along with most of the cast. Again Wenders delivers a work of haunting beauty about the angels invisibly looking in on humanity
One of a spate of films of the 90s/00s that adapted animated tv series in live-action – in this case Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Here all we get is the animated characters emerging into the real world for slapstick inanity
A film that received great acclaim at awards season. Anthony Hopkins is a dementia-ridden senior and we experience his state of mind subjectively in a constantly shifting sense of what is real
Amusingly dark Christmas film where a kid hires a hitman to kill Santa after receiving a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking. Featuring Mel Gibson as a grumpy Santa struggling with modern economic realities
F.W. Murnau’s version of the classic tale of an aging scholar selling his soul to the Devil for youth and love is one of the most fabulous pieces of pure cinema to come out of the German Expressionist era
Czech animator Jan Svankmajer offers up his wonderfully bizarre part-live-action, part-Claymation interpretation of the classic story of Faust and his pact with The Devil
Alexander Sokurov, the director behind Russian Ark, turns to the classic story about a man who sells his soul to The Devil. A very different version than we are used to that takes place in an earthy, cluttered Mediaeval world
In attempting to capture the surreal, paranoiac drug haze of Hunter S. Thompson’s counter-culture classic, Terry Gilliam’s adaptation becomes a rambling, self-indulgent mess of tripped-out visions that go on and on
Federico Fellini conducts his version of the life of the great lover but turns it into a fantastical film of gorgeously surreal excess, filled with extravagant sets and costuming
Brian De Palma makes a return to the classic psycho-thrillers where he made his name, shouting virtuoso directorial flourish from the rafters and pulling off an amazingly contrived plot
Animated film where fairies face the threat to their forest posed by a logging operation. Preachy message-making that is all but a recruitment film for Greenpeace and the Sierra Club
A black comedy from Alex de la Iglesia about murder and rivalry in a department store, where the killer becomes advised by the ghosts of those he has killed
From Lech Majewski, the Polish director of The Mill and the Cross, comes this supposed modern version of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Alas, the film never amounts to anything more than a series of almost entirely plotless surrealist visions
Beautiful fantasy where Kevin Costner hears a voice that directs him to build a baseball diamond in his cornfield where dead players to return to life. A genteel fantasy filled with nostalgia for lost Americana and the 1960s
Peter Sellers’ last film and usually lambasted by his fans. Spoofing the great villain, Sellers indulges his penchant for playing multiple roles and the result is some likeable silliness
David Fincher tackles Chuck Palahniuk’s novel about secret brawling clubs. Maybe the only major studio film with an openly anarchist manifesto. Brilliant, incendiary, all over the map plotwise and thoroughly unique
A film that mostly consists of amnesiac Air Force pilot James B. Sikking being questioned by psychologist Hector Elizondo. The film constantly hints at a big revelation before settling for one of the corniest twist endings
Not a seventh sequel to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, this adapts the videogame of the same name. Dazzling anime action but is take-no-prisoners with explanations about what is happening to non game players
Uwe Boll seems to be improving. Here he has abandoned action for a character-driven drama about the appearance of an ambiguous stranger heralding the Biblical end of the world
Pixar have never been the same since giving in to sequelitis. This sequel to Finding Nemo is not perfect but this has a winning array of new characters and some delightfully madcap comic set-pieces
An unabashed delight among the Pixar films about a fish parent on a quest to find his missing son. This comes with an extraordinarily vibrant palette of colours and a line-up of winningly eccentric characters
A biopic about J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan. The film received much acclaim at awards season but in reality is a simplistic work that rewrites J.M. Barrie’s biography in favour of a fictional story about what happened
One of Francis Ford Coppola’s earliest films as director, a musical where Fred Astaire procures a pot of gold and makes a deal with a leprechaun
Animator Ralph Bakshi collaborates with fantasy illustrator Frank Frazetta to make a fine and underrated sword and sorcery film that comes with a vigour that puts in the best spirit of Robert E. Howard
Unassumingly well-made venture into the epic fantasy genre from Pitof, director of Catwoman. A slim story played with conviction and some particularly good dragon effects
A fascinatingly original film about an apartment building of demons who live amongst humans and feed on their miseries. Directed by makeup effects man Tom Woodruff, Jr and featuring some extraordinary creature designs
A version of the Arthurian legends that has stripped out Merlin and all of the magic and mounted it as an historical romance. With Sean Connery as King Arthur and Richard Gere as Lancelot
Willfully cryptic and baffling South Korean film that only ends up being dull and confusing. Disappointingly, the big denouement reveals that all we have is another copy of The Sixth Sense with pretensions to meaningfulness
Terry Gilliam’s finest moment, a modernised knightly quest where radio dj Jeff Bridges is dragged into helping homeless man Robin Williams find the Holy Grail. A film made by its performances and warm and eventually soaring characterisations
The live-action English-language adaptation of the Japanese manga/anime that comes off as a muddled post-holocaust action film that doesn’t know what it wants to be
Live-action film from a Dr Seuss script about children imprisoned by a mad piano teacher. As to be expected from Seuss, this is gloriously madcap with extravagantly surreal set designs and nonsense choreogrphy
Adaptation of a classic British children’s book made by Jim Henson Productions where children discover a sand fairy that grants wishes. The film is largely centered around creating slapstick chaos
An animated film from Genndy Tartakovsky, director of the Hotel Transylvania films, that is a really quite filthy and hilarious story of a dog about to have its testicles removed who goes on one last adventure
A really great and overlooked anthology of fantastical tales from the 1940s. The three stories told here by Julien Duvivier blow you away with their extraordinary visual stylishness
One of Rankin-Bass’s animated films, this has an ambitious epic fantasy plot with original themes about the line between science and magic, although this is undone by Rankin-Bass’s limited animation
The first in what later became a fad for replicating cartoon tv series as big-budget live-action films, this does an exacting live-action version of the Hanna-Barbera series
Sequel to the live-action The Flintstones film. Whether we asked for it or not, this offers up a Flintstones origin story where we see familiar elements of the series fall into place
A delightful animated film from Latvia made entirely without dialogue, following a group of animals fleeing as their territory is flooded. The winner for my top film of 2024.
A beautifully made adaptation of a non-horror James Herbert novel in which a dog realises that is a reincarnated Matthew Modine and sets out to reunite with his human son
Aardman Animation abandon Claymation for regular animation in this story of a pet rat thrown out of his comfort zone down into the sewers. Alas, this only serves to make it just another talking animals animated film
Tsui Hark, a key figure of the modern Wu Xia cycle, makes a lushly extravagant, Chinese-backed flying swordsman epic. Featuring a wide canvas of characters who come together in a series of very entertaining playoffs
A New Zealand-made film where a sound effects artist is haunted by the ghost of a woman who steps out of a biopic about Henri Toulouse-Lautec that he is editing
Hilarious Stephen Chow directed/starring film where he plays an agent of the emperor in a series of gonzo exploits that go crazily over-the-top, including breaking the fourth wall
Westernised homage to Wu Xia and the Shaw Brothers film with an American teen transported back to Ancient China, this has all the thrill of junior-grade martial arts tournament
Guy Maddin has perfected a blend of silent movie stylistics and hilariously surreal melodrama. This is a Guy Maddin film on acid, a sumptuously madcap fantasia of visuals wound around a tapestry of tall tales
Near laughable film in which Chuck Norris is cast as the guardian spirit of a forest preaching eco-friendly attitudes to kids and inspiring them to stand up against loggers
Frustratingly insipid indie slice-of-life film following three guys affected by a fortune-teller’s prophecy, this never surmounts the banalities of its characters’ lives
US film based on a real Japanese historical incident that has been oddly spun out into a Keanu Reeves-starring epic samurai fantasy film. One of the biggest financial flops of 2013
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 Asylum build a disaster movie around the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who are causing various volcanoes eruptions, locust swarms and other worldwide disasters
An anthology of blackly funny tales, including episodes directed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, all centred around Tim Roth as a long-suffering hotel bellboy
A reality-bending film somewhat influenced by Pi about a withdrawn man who receives a mystery clock that may be able to bend time and space
One of the early films from Paul Verhoeven, an amusingly blasphemous tale that draws more than a little from Don’t Look Now with gay writer Jeroen Krabbe becoming wound into the dealings of femme fatale Renee Soutendijk
Disney animated film from the fallow period of the 1970s/early 80s. This concerns the friendship between a talking fox and a hound tempered by the knowledge they will grow into enemies. An okay effort if not up the heights of the studio’s classics
This was the first in a series of excruciating comedies that pairs hapless Donald O’Connor with Francis, a talking mule. Six sequels followed
The second in a surprisingly popular series of comedies about Francis the talking mule, this involves Donald O’Connor and Francis in a series of hijinks set around horse racing track
Makeup effects artist Steven Kostanski has become a fine director in recent years. Here he makes a Gremlins-styled film about a 1-900 number that unleashes a mischievous goblin
A fascinating series of interwoven stories, one of which is set in a religion-dominated dystopian future. An intriguing puzzle that arrives at a surprise left field ending
The 2003 Freaky Friday was one of the better Disney remakes with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan giving inspired performances as mother and daughter who swap bodies. The two reunite for a sequel here
The original version of the Disney live-action comedy with mother Barbara Harris and a young Jodie Foster as her daughter who swap bodies for one day. The performances are hilarious and this is filled with witty deadpan gags
Enjoyable remake of the 1970s Disney comedy about a mother and daughter who swap bodies. Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan nail the swapped roles to perfection
The fourth film version of the Disney comedy about a mother and daughter who swap bodies for one day. This was made for the Disney Channel and comes as a grating teen musical
A Christmas film with Vince Vaughn as Santa’s younger brother, a petty street hustler. A promising sarcastic tone falls into easy predictable routines and characters arcs
Animated film designed for the US Thanksgiving holiday. With a completely insane plot involving turkeys travelling back in time to stop turkeys being served at the first Thanksgiving
György Pálfi, the Hungarian director of the wonderfully twisted Taxidermia, returns with a series of Buñuel-esque vignettes that sometimes hit a darkly absurdist note
Matthew Bright’s extraordinary modernisation/trashing of Little Red Riding Hood who becomes Reese Witherspoon’s juvenile delinquent who goes hitchhiking and is targeted by serial killer Kiefer Sutherland
Matthew Bright’s even better sequel to Freeway where he conducts an outrageous and quite brilliant modernisation of Hansel and Gretel now recast with two juvenile delinquents on the run
The first X-rated animated film. Ralph Bakshi’s first film, taken from Robert Crumb’s cartoons, this is hilariously raunchy as the titular talking cat takes a strung-out but often sharply politicised journey through 1960s counter-culture
Documentary devoted to a fan following that grew up around Bret McKenzie who had only a single shot appearance as an elf in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Modest Australian-made children’s film that imports Henry Thomas riding on the success of E.T. as a teen inventor finding a lake purported to contain a creature from Aborigine legend
This is another in the series of the cheap fairytales made by Cannon Films with Aileen Quinn from Annie as an obnoxious princess who befriends a taking frog
Disney animated film that supposedly adapts Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, although Andersen wouldn’t recognise it. This often feels like a ramshackle assemblage of formula elements rather than the classic it was hailed as
Frozen was the most successful animated film of all time. It also felt the most formulaic and least inspired Disney film of the 2000s. As part of Disney’s new business policy of recycling everything, this is a sequel.
Documentary about the so-called World’s Worst Director Uwe Boll. We get fascinating insight into Boll’s filmmaking methods, while the documentary fearlessly tackles the controversies associated with its subject
Live-action adaptation of the popular manga and anime series. Despite having a reasonable budget thrown at it and treating the source material with fathfulness, this looks awkward on the screen
The concluding chapter of the trilogy of live-action Fullmetal Alchemist films, this follows the manga’s storyline closely and brings the series to an epic conclusion