Koi … Mil Gaya (2003)
This is the Bollywood version of E.T.. That is if one can imagine an E.T. with singing, dancing and romantic scenes. A simplistic but popular hit that spawned several sequels
Science Fiction
Komodo (1999)
A CGI monster movie directed by a former Industrial Light and Magic visual effects supervisor that features a family under attacks by over-sized komodo lizards
Kong Island (1968)
This has nothing to do with King Kong and is an adventure film that features a female Tarzan and a mad scientist creating an army of mind-controlled gorillas
Kong, King of Atlantis (2005)
The most ridiculous work to bear Kong’s name – an animated film with songs where Kong has two buddies who says “dude” and “bro” a lot and Kong fights the lizard people from Atlantis
Kong: Skull Island (2017)
A reboot where King Kong is now part of a shared universe. This is less a tragic love story about Kong falling for a girl and being brought down by civilisation than Kong as a heroic defender fighting off other monsters
Kronos (1957)
A 1950s alien invader film that is driven by the quite imaginative image of a giant black alien cube marching across the countryside devouring all forms of energy
Kung Fu Traveler (2017)
A Chinese version of The Terminator if you can imagine the android as the hero who travels back in time to learn a lost form of kung fu in order to prevent an alien invasion
Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time (2021)
Kurt Vonnegut was one of the greatest SF writers, whose work crossed over into rare mainstream appeal. This is documentary where the director befriended Vonnegut in the 1980s and filmed him over a 35 year period
The Lady and the Monster (1944)
The first screen version of Donovan’s Brain about a brain in a jar exerting mental control over a man’s will. This has been considerably changed to become one of the era’s mad scientist films
The Lair (2022)
Neil Marshall was a highly promising genre name a few years ago on the basis of The Descent. Here he returns with a film about soldiers facing alien hybrid monsters in Afghanistan
Land of the Lost (2009)
Big screen revival of the children’s lost world tv series that is now a loud and excruciating Will Ferrell vehicle that reduces the original into lowbrow farce. A majorly unfunny bomb on every level
The Land That Time Forgot (1974)
The first in a trilogy of prehistoric lost world adventures based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels, all starring Doug McClure. Despite variable effects, this is a well-made adventure with a strong script
The Land That Time Forgot (2009)
A low-budget modernised version of the Edgar Rice Burroughs book about a group ending up on a lost island where dinosaurs still roam. Slightly better than usual for The Asylum
The Land Unknown (1957)
A 1950s B movie where a US Navy team discovers a prehistoric lost world in the Antarctic where dinosaurs from prehistory still roam. This unfortunately befalls shoddy effects
Landscape with Invisible Hand (2023)
A bizarrely funny deadpan satire about aliens that have invaded the Earth and turned humanity into an economic underclass. With possibly the weirdest looking aliens to ever appear in an SF film
Lapsis (2020)
Wonderfully Kafka-esque film about a man who takes a job laying cable for a new internet company only to find himself in a system of nightmare rules and regulations
Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986)
Visually stunning Hayao Miyazaki film about the search for a lost city of the clouds Soaring adventure in an alternate world of airship fantasies, rendered in a series of breathtaking vistas
Larva (2005)
Monster movie about larvae emerging from genetically engineered cattle feed and becoming giant bat-like creatures. When a film casts Rachel Hunter as a corporate lawyer, it is not exactly aiming for believability
Laserblast (1978)
One of the first films to come out exploiting the success of Star Wars – a badly made teen underdog fantasy in which bullied Kim Milford takes revenge after finding an alien raygun
Last and First Men (2020)
An adaptation of the Olaf Stapledon novel that depicts the future evolution of humanity billions of years into the future. This defies every rule of good filmmaking and is still a spellbinding film
The Last Boy (2019)
Low-budget film set following the collapse of society about a boy who goes on a quest for the place where wishes can be fulfilled
The Last Chase (1981)
Dystopian action film that could have only been made during the late 70s Oil Crisis where Lee Majors defies a totalitarian system where vehicles are banned by setting out in his racing car
The Last Child (1971)
TV movie set in a dystopian future where law mandates that couples can only have one child, concerning a couple who go on the run after becoming pregnant a second time
The Last Days (2013)
A fascinating Spanish film about a worldwide apocalypse created by a plague that makes the entire population mortally afraid of going out of doors
The Last Days of American Crime (2020)
A heist film set in a near-future USA where a group of criminals are preparing a last big caper before the activation of a mind control device that will make crime impossible
The Last Days on Mars (2013)
This starts out offering a fine astrophysically credible depiction of Mars only to reach for the playbook of Alien cliches to essentially become Zombies on Mars
The Last Dinosaur (1977)
A team of explorers find a humid world at the Arctic where dinosaurs and cavemen still roam. The men in rubber suit effects are adequate, although the film itself is on the slow side
Last Journey of Paul W.R. (2020)
French film about Earth endangered by an oncoming moon and how only one man can save the world. This seemed it might be something culty – before the mind-bogglingly bizarre science becomes apparent
Last Lives (1997)
B-budget action film in which C. Thomas Howell is caught up in a chase when an escaped criminal from an alternate timeline abducts his wife.
The Last Loner (2019)
A homage to Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic Stalker about people venturing into a mysterious alien zone. This is rather fascinatingly filmed inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
The Last Man(s) on Earth (2012)
Film spinoff from a YouTube channel that features two comedians giving absurdly over-the-top survivalist tips. What works as a series of short clips has difficulty extending the gags to a dramatic plot
The Last Man on Earth (1964)
The first adaptation of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and the only one faithful to the novel with Vincent Price as the last man alive facing vampires outside his door
The Last Mimzy (2007)
Adaptation of a classic SF short story about children’s toys from the future that give them expanded mental powers. Much of the story has been dropped in favour of banal New Age thinking
Last Night (1998)
Excellent Canadian-made End of the World film where actor/director Don McKellar eschews lavish big-budget spectacle for a wry, often haunting series of characters studies about how people meet the end
The Last Scout (2017)
British SF film about the last survivors of Earth on an expedition to find new planet to make home. This manages to do some reasonable things on a low budget
The Last Sentinel (2007)
Action film with Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson as a cyborg soldier fighting a one-man war against rogue police drones of the future. A fairly generic assemblage of cliches
Last Sentinel (2023)
Film set in a Waterworld styled drowned future aboard a mid-ocean platform between two warring sides. A film that almost entirely exists in terms of finely tuned psychological tensions
The Last Starfighter (1984)
One of the sillier films made in the aftermath of Star Wars. It is recycling third hand cliches and reduces these to simplistic fantasies of military heroism for the videogame generation
The Last Train (1999)
A British tv mini-series where a group of people in a regular train carriage go into suspended animation and emerge fifty years later to find a devastated world
Late for Dinner (1991)
A thoughtful and well-written Cryogenic Sleepers Awake film that charts the culture shock experienced by two men frozen in the 1960s and thawed out in the present day
Latency (2023)
A film about an agoraphobic videogamer confined to their apartment who is given a Virtual Reality headset to test that soon starts to warp their sense of reality
The Lathe of Heaven (1980)
One of the most brilliant SF works conducted for television – the adaptation of an Ursula Le Guin book about a a man whose dreams change the world every time he wakes up
Lathe of Heaven (2002)
This was the second film adaptation of conceptually ingenious Ursula Le Guin novel about a man whose dreams change reality around him whenever he wakes up
Lavalantula (2015)
A film about giant fire-breathing spiders. This is lifted from formula by a sense of humour and even peculiarly brings many of the cast of the Police Academy series out of retirement
The Lawnmower Man (1992)
This has nothing to do with the Stephen King story about a Pan-worshipping lawnmowing service and is a film about Virtual Reality. Harnessing some top-drawer CGI effects of the day, this was influential on subsequent VR films
Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (1996)
The Lawnmower Man was far from a classic but this sequel has an absurdity that pushes it into extremely bad movie stakes with Matt Frewer as a messiah trying to move everybody into cyberspace
Lazareth (2024)
A film set in a post-pandemic future, this features Ashley Judd and daughters living in isolation on their own who are suddenly forced to welcome a stranger into their house
Lazer Team 2 (2017)
Lazer Team was an easy predictable comedy about four screw-ups that accidentally obtain parts of an alien power suit. This sequel is all the same gags on rinse and repeat.
Lazer Team (2015)
A film from the comedy collective Rooster Teeth about four screw-ups who pick up power suit items from an alien spaceship only to find they are to defend Earth in a tournament
Leave the World Behind (2023)
A strong and dramatic work about a sudden catastrophe that occurs when the world’s internet and cellular system are shut off. Produced by no less than former US President Barack Obama
Legion (1998)
Well-made Alien copy that seems to have been conceived as a crosshatch between The Dirty Dozen and The Thing where the creature remains mostly psychological
Legion of Super-Heroes (2023)
Another of the DC Original Animated Movies. This deals with both the Legion of Super-Heroes and Supergirl, bringing them together in a mutual adventure
Lensman (1984)
E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s Lensman books are space opera classics. Here they are given the anime treatment, which abandons much adherence to the source material and ends up more as a copy of Star Wars
Leonard Part 6 (1987)
Bill Cosby was massive on tv during the 1980s but when he tried to move to film it resulted in this bizarre flop of a gonzo spy comedy starring Cosby as a retired agent forced to return to the field
Let There Be Light: The Odyssey of Dark Star (2010)
Documentary about the making of Dark Star, depicting its’ journey from student film to cult film. The only disappointment is the absence of key players John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon
Lethal Target (1999)
Conceptually odd mix of an erotic film and a standard copy of Alien. This come with the peculiarity of steamy encounters sitting alongside chestburster scenes
Let’s Be Evil (2016)
While the title suggests a series of malicious games, this is an SF film about participants in an augmented reality experiment who are locked in a facility with strangely alien children
Letters from a Dead Man (1986)
Amid, the 1980s body of nuclear war films, all others are English-language made but this is one made by the Russians. The results are incredibly bleak but also have a haunting poetry
Level Five (1996)
Chris Marker, the director of La Jetee, returns to SF. Though this is set around a Virtual Reality game, it is in fact a documentary essay about the Battle of Okinawa
Library Wars (2013)
Set in a future where libraries have armies fighting against the militarised forces of censorship. The social scenario strains credibility but this Japanese Young Adult film works well
Licensed to Love and Kill (1979)
One in a series of British spy films made in imitation of the James Bond series. As evidenced by the alternate title The Man from S.E.X., this takes things further than the Bond films do
Life (2017)
This is essentially Alien as a scientifically grounded space film like Gravity where an original alien menace attacking aboard the International Space Station
Life After Flash (2017)
A documentary about the making of the 1980 Flash Gordon and following the career of its star Sam J. Jones afterwards
Life After The Navigator (2020)
Documentary about the making of Flight of the Navigator and the mind-boggling story of Joey Cramer, the film’s child star turned bank robber
Life Like (2019)
There have been some extremely good films about androids and A.I. in the last few years. This one about an android manservant is so ridiculous it should have been played as a comedy
Life on the Edge (1989)
A film where makeup effects artist Tom Burman takes the director’s in this head-scratchingly strange film about a family set in a bizarre future world
Lifeforce (1985)
Tobe Hooper’s space vampires film wildly divides audiences and was a flop for Cannon Films. You have to applaud its ambitious conceptual grasp even if it bites off more wild ideas than it is ever capable of coherently presenting
The Lift (1983)
A Dutch film about a killer elevator that gained some attention when it came out. This generates some reasonable suspense but it also has a plot that drags considerably
Light Blast (1985)
From the director of the original Inglorious Bastards, an action film with Erik Estrada as a cop pursuing a blackmailing scientist who has a powerful laser weapon
Light of My Life (2019)
Casey Affleck directs, writes and stars in a surprisingly good film – a small, intimate tale of survival set in a world where a pandemic has wiped out all women but one man’s daughter
Lightyear (2022)
A spinoff from Pixar’s Toy Story films that gives Buzz Lightyear a film all of his own. A likeable if fairly routine space adventure but aargh the rewrites to series continuity
Lilo & Stitch (2002)
Likeable Disney animated film about a young misfit Hawaiian girl who befriends an unruly alien creature. This has a good deal of oddball energy and humour that makes it rather appealing
Lilo & Stitch (2025)
The Disney live-action remake machine continues with this version of the hit 2002 animated film about a cuddly malevolent alien creature. As with most of the Disney remake, the original looks flat in live-action
Limitless (2011)
Bradley Cooper in a film about a drug that provides about heightened intelligence. In truth this is a film how becoming a baked drug addict can give you the feeling you can change the world
Liquid Dreams (1991)
An offbeat science-fiction film sold as a work of erotica but one that actually subverts the genre in interesting ways concerning a futuristic apartment block performers where strippers are being fed a drug
Liquid Sky (1982)
Culty New Wave film with Anne Carlisle as a model who has a miniature UFO land on her New York apartment roof where it devours her lovers for the opiate in the brain produced during orgasm
Little Fish (2020)
Beautifully understated film set in a world where a plague is causing people to lose their memories, following Olivia Cooke whose husband Jack O’Connell gradually succumbs
Little Joe (2019)
A modestly effective variant on the body snatchers theme with a scientist developing new plants coming to the realisation that the plants are taking over people’s minds
Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
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
Live Wire (1992)
Thriller with Pierce Brosnan as a bomb disposal expert who comes up against terrorists who have invented an explosive that can be drunken in a glass of water
The Lobster (2015)
Yorgos Lanthimos makes a deadpan black humour SF film set in a future where one is forced to find their perfect romantic partner or else be turned into an animal
Lobster Man from Mars (1989)
This is intended as a deliberately bad parody of a 1950s SF film. It is a fairly silly effort that almost ends up being too well made for its own good to mimic the originals that weren’t even trying
Loch Ness (1996)
Big-budget film with a CGI creature made not long after Jurassic Park with Ted Danson as a zoologist investigating the existence of the Loch Ness Monster film. This only resorts to simplistic cliches
The Loch Ness Horror (1982)
Z-budget filmmaker Larry Buchanan makes a Loch Ness Monster film. As with Buchanan’s other films, this is so painfully cheap it is a Loch Ness monster films that never travels beyond California state
Lockout (2012)
Luc Besson written action-prison film that blatantly borrows from Escape From New York. An entertaining comic-book of a movie, even if its depth exists no further than Guy Pearce tossing off flip one-liners
Locusts (2005)
A formula Syfy Channel film variant on the bugs gone amok film, starring Lucy Lawless as a government official who fights to stop a genetically-engineered swarm of locusts miles wide
Logan (2017)
Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart bid farewell to the X-Men franchise. One of the strongest films in the series, having been stripped of superheroics and allowed to play out as a character drama
Logan’s Run (1976)
Dystopian SF mounted on a big budget by people that don’t have a clue what they are doing. This creates one of prettiest depictions of the future of any film of this era but it is only a surface deep depiction
London Fields (2018)
Based on an acclaimed book, once to be directed by David Cronenberg. This opened to bad reviews but is not uninteresting. A near future setting, precognitive dreams and Amber Heard as a sizzling femme fatale
The Lonely Man with the Ghost Machine (2024)
Graham Skipper directs/writes/stars in a film about the last man on Earth trying to bring his wife’s ghost back from the dead while beset by an entity that has devoured the rest of humanity and just wants to be his friend
Long Distance (2024)
SF film with Anthony Ramos as survivor of a crashed ship who must make a journey across a hostile planet to find another survivor while low on oxygen
The Long Walk (2025)
An adaptation of Stephen King’s Richard Bachman novel set in a future where youths compete in a race where they must walk hundreds of miles without stopping or else be shot
Longing For Eternity (1988)
A dull Quebec-made about the discovery of how a pharmaceutical company is conducting illicit experiments to create an artificial womb to breed embryos
Looker (1981)
Michael Crichton’s works are about fears of science and technology going amok. Here he attempts to address tv and advertising in a film about virtual models but the ideas in his script are muddled
Looper (2012)
From Rian Johnson, a time travel film that is uneven but is mostly conducted with considerable cleverness and intelligence. One of the few multiplex films driven by plot and some clever twists rather than action
Lord of the Flies (1963)
A starkly effective film adaptation of William Golding’s classic novel about a group of British schoolboys stranded on a desert island in a plane crash and their descent into barbarism
Lord of the Flies (1990)
Remake of William Golding’s classic work about boys stranded on a desert island descending into barbarism where the book is disastrously Americanised in a clodding adaptation that misses the original’s rich swim of symbolism
Lord of the Flies (2026)
A tv mini-series remake of William Golding’s classic novel about schoolboys stranded on a desert island and their descent into barbarism. This gets the essence of the book with a raw primality that makes for exciting viewing
Lost City Raiders (2008)
A conceptually peculiar mix of Indiana Jones and Waterworld about tomb raiding adventures in a drowned future and the quest for Moses’s staff to turn back the rising waters
Lost Continent (1951)
Low-budget film with scientists in search of a downed rocket who encounter a prehistoric lost world of dinosaurs on an island plateau