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
Science Fiction
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
The Lost Continent (1968)
An oddity from Hammer Films – a colourfully interesting lost world film set in the Sargasso Sea filled with trapped ships from all eras and cheesy monsters
The Lost Future (2010)
This feels like a remake of the Roger Corman post-holocaust cavemen cheapie Teenage Caveman. It cannot escape that at heart it is never more than a B movie about caveman fighting mutants
Lost in Space (1998)
Surprisingly halfway reasonable big screen remake of the 1960s tv series, this welcomely dumps the campy silliness of the show for a grittier, much more realistic take on the characters
Lost in the Pacific (2016)
A Chinese-made attempt to make a disaster movie with a crosscut of characters aboard a luxury airliner. What causes the film to plummet down into the ridiculous is the addition of a horde of mutant cats
The Lost Missile (1958)
A film from the heyday of Cold War hysteria made not long after the launch of the first ICBM about a mysterious hypersonic missile of possibly alien origin that terrorises the US
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau (2014)
A compulsively watchable documentary about the making of the 1996 The Island of Dr Moreau and the bizarre stories of how the personalities and star egos made it into a cinematic train wreck
The Lost World (1925)
This was the quintessential lost world film. Based on an Arthur Conan Doyle novel and featuring stop-motion animated dinosaurs from King Kong creator Willis O’Brien
The Lost World (2001)
A TV mini-series adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle lost world story, this has been produced by the BBC as a glorious period adventure with CGI dinosaurs
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
The first sequel to the massive success of Jurassic Park where Steven Spielberg returns to direct with a script that seems a mishmash of loose ends that only weakly rehashes the original
Love (2011)
Melancholy film that does some ambitious things on a low-budget about a lone astronaut stranded aboard the International Space Station after contact with Earth goes dead
Love and Monsters (2020)
A nerdy guy sets out across a post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with giant animals to be with the girl of his dreams. This sound promising in description but suffers an identity crisis on screen
The Love War (1970)
Unusually effective tv movie about two warring alien species fighting for the fate of the Earth. An early effort from producer Aaron Spelling with an eye-opening cast of before they were famous names
Loveland (2022)
Modest and interesting Cyberpunk film that works as a melancholy future-set romance with Ryan Kwanten as a hitman. Minimalist but with some striking conceptual twists
Lucid Dream (2017)
The South Korean version of Inception with a man using a device that allows him to enter his and others memories in search of overlooked clues to the abductor of his son
Lucy (2014)
Luc Besson makes a preposterously entertaining work where drug mule Scarlett Johansson develops superhuman mental capabilities – sort of if you imagine Limitless reconceived as an action film
LunarCop (1995)
Low-budget Mad Max copycat with Michael Paré as an officer from the lunar colony who comes down to Earth to take on the marauders of the post-apocalyptic wasteland
Lunopolis (2009)
A Found Footage film that has fun uniting wacky conspiracy theories into a grand unified thesis. The swim of ideas is head-spinning
LX 2048 (2020)
A film I went into with no expectation that quickly creates a fascinating future and offers some ingeniously original treatments of cloning and Virtual Reality themes
M3gan 2.0 (2025)
Sequel to the killer doll film M3gan that is a much better work than its predecessor. If the original was Child’s Play by way of The Terminator then this is the series’ equivalent of Terminator 2: Judgement Day
M3gan (2022)
A horror film about an artificially intelligent children’s doll that resembles one of the Big Eyes paintings, which then proceeds to go full-on Terminator
Mac and Me (1988)
A children’s movie that is a shameless and derivative copy of E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial, featuring one of the dopiest looking aliens ever designed for a film
Machete Kills (2013)
Robert Rodriguez turns his earlier action film into an insanely creative comic-book overflowing with SF devices (and homages). The casting alone is side-splitting and Rodriguez’s visual absurdism wins the day
The Machine (2013)
A fascinating and well told work about artificial intelligence and mind upload. This is nearly three-quarters of a strong, intelligent science-fiction film even if the third act falls apart
Mad Max (1979)
The first of the Mad Max films and a considerable jolt if one comes to it after any of the sequels. This is an altogether different film – a grim and violent road movie more in the vein of Death Wish
Mad Max 2 (1981)
A sequel that makes an extraordinary leap over its predecessor. It created an entire genre of films – even its own design and clothing aesthetic – and is one of the most kinetic, exciting action films ever made
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
The third of the Mad Max films sees the series becoming increasingly more mainstream in focus, along with the conscious resignation that it is impossible to top the previous film
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
30 years in the making and the results are sensational. An action film so relentlessly foot-to-the-floor and full of kinetic wildness that it blows all its contemporaries away and sets the bar anew
Madame Hyde (2017)
A gender-flipped version of the Jekyll and Hyde story with Isabelle Huppert is a teacher who is walked over in every aspect of her life before she is changed by a strange electrical discharge
Madame Web (2024)
Another of the films spun off from Sony’s hold on the Spider-Man copyright, this has been called the worst Marvel Comics superhero film ever. This also bears next-to-no resemblance to its comic-book counterpart
The Magnetic Monster (1953)
One of the most unique 1950s atomic monster movies – where the monster is an amok radioactive isotope. A low-budget SF film made watchable by a documentary-like urgency
Maid-Droid (2008)
Really odd, even at times touching, Japanese film about a man’s thwarted attempts to have sex with his android maid
Making Mr Right (1987)
A Susan Seidelman romantic comedy where Ann Magnuson finds the answers to her love life with android John Malkovich after being assigned to teach him human behaviour
Malevil (1981)
An entry in the spate of early 1980s nuclear war films about the residents of a French village who are sheltered in a wine cellar when the bomb drops and their efforts to survive in the aftermath
Malice@doll (2001)
Perversely original anime about a sex robot in the aftermath of civilisation who is transformed into a human. Imagine Pinocchio by way of H.R. Giger
The Man (1972)
Strong political What If drama from a Rod Serling script that has James Earl Jones as the first Black President of the USA (something that did not occur in the real world for another 36 years with Barack Obama)
Man Facing Southeast (1986)
An extraordinary Argentinean film about a patient in his asylum who insists that he is an alien and has genteel affect on the inmates. Later uncreditedly ripped-off as K-PAX.
The Man From Earth (2007)
Beautifully written film about an immortal. The result is an entirely captivating SF film whose whole effect emerges simply from people sitting in a living room talking
The Man From Earth: Holocene (2017)
The Man from Earth had a great concept – a 14,000 year old man tells his life story. This sequel far less interestingly becomes a detective story about group of students trying to find the character
The Man from Planet X (1951)
One of the earliest 1950s alien visitor films, although here the alien is peaceful and humanity the aggressor. A moodily effective entry from cult director Edgar G. Ulmer.
The Man in the White Suit (1951)
A classic comedy from Ealing Studios where Alex Guinness, a worker at a textile firm, causes social disruption when he invents a suit that never wears out or gets dirty
Man of Steel (2013)
Zack Snyder’s reboot of Superman leaves you irritated in the first half of the film at its throwing chunks of comic-book canon out the window and the second half bored with the mass destruction orgy that drags on
Man Vs. (2015)
The amusing idea of a mimicry of a Bear Grylls-type wilderness survival reality show – but with the addition of a monster.
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
Nicolas Roeg’s film featuring David Bowie as an alienated alien visitor to Earth is a work that comes with equal amounts of brilliance and pretentious distraction
The Man Who Stole the Sun (1979)
An anarchic Japanese film where a school teacher builds an atomic bomb and then begins blackmailing the authorities with his demands
The Man Who Wasn’t There (1983)
A cheap and feeble-minded invisible man comedy that was made as part of the short-lived early 80s 3D fad. The first starring role from Steve Guttenberg
The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
Coen Brothers black comedy with Billy Bob Thornton as an anonymous barber in the 1940s on the receiving end of life’s cruelties as he becomes involved in a blackmail scheme and murder
The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
Ninth of the James Bond films. Ian Fleming created a great nemesis in the assassin Scaramanga and the film casts it with Christopher Lee – only to fail to write the role interesting enough for Lee to fill
The Man with Two Brains (1983)
An extremely funny Steve Martin comedy where he plays a neurosurgeon who falls in love with a brain in a jar. A parody of disembodied brains B movies.
Manborg (2011)
A miracle of no-budget filmmaking made on a budget of $1000. A homage/parody of 80s/90s cyborg action films with some extremely accomplished effects posing and a sidesplitting ear for the era’s dialogue
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
A John Frankenheimer film about a Communist plot for creating a brainwashed assassin. Frankenheimer shoots with stark and blackly funny effect and this has duly become a cult classic
The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
A remake of the classic Cold War thriller about a brainwashed assassin from Jonathan Demme where the scenario has now been updated for the era of George W. Bush
The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)
A spinoff film from The Mandalorian tv series, this is the best film set in the Star Wars universe this side of the 2000s for the simple reason that it has invested in characters rather than slavish fanboy callbacks
The Mandela Effect (2019)
A film based on the popular conspiracy theory that people are living in an alternate timeline where their memories have been edited and that we are all living in a simulation a la The Matrix
The Mangler 2 (2001)
Tobe Hooper’s The Mangler was one of the worst of all Stephen King adaptations. This sequel where the Mangler becomes an A.I. and a computer virus is no better
The Manhattan Project (1986)
A thriller in which teenager Christopher Collett steals a flask of plutonium to build an atomic bomb for the school science prize only to become the subject of a massive manhunt
Manhunt of Mystery Island (1945)
A fifteen chapter serial about a villain who uses an atomic device to transform into a dead pirate captain. Filled with some wonderfully exciting action set-pieces and cliffhangers
Man’s Best Friend (1993)
Film about a dog that has been experimentally crossbred with DNA from other animals that proceeds to go amok. The film proceeds to collapse into the completely ridiculous
Mansquito (2005)
B-movie in which a chemical spill at a lab causes a mass murderer to turn into a giant mosquito hybrid. An efficient cobbling of cliches that comes out as a B budget variation n The Fly.
Margaux (2022)
Group of young people get away to a smarthome for the weekend, which then tries to kill them. The most ridiculous amongst a mini-spate of films about smarthome A.I.’s
Marjorie Prime (2017)
From the always interesting Michael Almereyda, an adaptation of a Pulitzer-nominated play set in a future where people replace their departed loved ones with holograms
Marooned (1969)
Released three months after the Moon Landing, this was a big-budget film depicting a space mission disaster that leaves three astronauts marooned in orbit
Mars (1996)
Action film with police officer Olivier Gruner investigating a murder on Mars. For a film that claims such a definitive title – that it is about the planet Mars – this lets all opportunities slip through its hands
Mars Attacks! (1996)
Tim Burton makes a film based on the old Topps bubblegum card series about Martian invaders, which becomes an affectionately goofy tribute to 1950s alien invasion cinema
Mars et Avril (2012)
An impressively designed Quebecois sf film where it is it is sad to see so much artistry lavished on something completely nonsensical and utterly woolly-headed in terms of its ideas
Mars Express (2023)
A French animated film, SF noir set on a future Mars with detectives fighting against someone who is jailbreaking robots. This deploys a strong and confident use of Cyberpunk tropes
Mars Needs Moms (2011)
Motion-capture animated version of a popular children’s book. The title suggests a 1950s B movie and the subtext doesn’t bear close examination but the results are engagingly put together
Mars Needs Women (1966)
Larry Buchanan was a low-budget director whose cheapness easily equaled Edward D. Wood, Jr. This alien invasion effort features Tommy Kirk come to Earth to procure women for repopulation purposes
The Martian (2015)
A film that has worked out the science to the nth degree (and made it digestible for mass audiences). Ridley Scott rides the drama like a pro and makes one of his most enjoyable films in some time
Martian Child (2007)
Adapted from a David Gerrold book, this is essentially the Adam Sandler adopts a kid film Big Daddy by way of K-PAX and its ambiguous alien visitor
The Martian Chronicles (1980)
Ray Bradbury’s book about the colonisation of Mars is an SF classic. This tv mini-series adaptation is killed by a director who treats Bradbury’s poetic imagery in the most literal ways
Martian Land (2015)
The Asylum’s response to the box-office success of The Martian. The script has only made minimal effort to research the science but this works somewhat better than their usual fare
Martians Go Home (1990)
A majorly unfunny film about the arrival of aliens in Hawaiian shirts that do bad stand-up comedy routines and tell everybody’s embarrassing secrets
The Marvels (2023)
This was the lowest rated of all MCU films. One wondered whether this fannish hyperbole but no what we end up with is the Batman & Robin of The MCU, the single worst film that franchise has produced
Mass Effect: Paragon Lost (2012)
While Mass Effect has an impressive reputation on the console screen, this is a dull anime spinoff that only comes in around the level of a production line animated tv episode
The Master (2012)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s loose biopic of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard is a film of great acting and fine individual scenes more than it ever coheses as a story or analyses its characters
Master of the World (1961)
One amid the spate of Jules Verne adaptations of in the 1950s/60s with Vincent Price as Robur, the inventor of an amazing airship who wants mankind to stop waging war
Masters of the Universe (1987)
Live-action film based on the Mattel toy line and popular animated tv series. Given a Cannon Films budget, it emerges as a cheesily absurd Flash Gordon/Conan the Barbarian knockoff
Masters of the Universe (2026)
A reboot of Masters of the Universe, this fully embraces the mythology of the animated series and gives them great life. But is also a work that is constantly deflating any chance you are taking it seriously
Matinee (1993)
A Joe Dante film set during the Cuban Missile Crisis about a childhood in B movie fandom. John Goodman is on great form in a role that pays homage to filmmaker William Castle
The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human (1999)
The appealing idea of a parody of a nature documentary looking at human mating rituals from an alien perspective with everything constantly misinterpreted in terms of animal behaviour
The Matrix (1999)
A film that was as groundbreaking as Star Wars was in its day. The Wachowskis create a defining work on Virtual Reality themes with a sublime cool and breathtaking action moves that blew everybody away
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
The first of The Matrix sequels inevitably disappointed on the massive build-up. The Wachowskis leave more questions than answers, while the new action scenes are jaw-dropping but feel boiler-plated on
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
With the fourth film, one of The Wachowskis returns to the world of The Matrix and rather wittily subverts it into an anti-blockbuster about her reluctance to do so
The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
The third and weakest of the original The Matrix trilogy. This offers one showstopping effects sequence but also leaves a host of unanswered questions dangling
Mauvais Sang (1986)
The second film from Leos Carax, a near-future set romance that bursts with freshness and originality. Set during the return of Halley’s Comet concerning the theft of virus vaccine
Max Steel (2016)
An ill-conceived attempt to compete with Marvel superheroics. Based on a popular line of action toys, this gets nothing right – it’s hard to even tell it is meant to be a superhero film for half the show
Maximum Ride (2016)
Adapted from a Young Adult series by crime writer James Patterson about a group of kids with wings, this never made it beyond one film and is an exceedingly lacklustre production
Mayflower II (2020)
An hilariously bad film in which Christians feel oppressed by a Bible-censoring dystopia on Earth and so create a secret project to launch a space mission to relocate on Mars
The Maze Runner (2014)
One of the better Young Adult dystopian SF works post-The Hunger Games. This dispenses with dystopian Coming of Age stories and gives us a fascinating conceptual mystery
Meander (2020)
This may be the most claustrophobic film ever made about a woman trapped inside a labyrinth of narrow tunnels and crawlspaces that house a series of death traps
Meatball Machine (2005)
The first of a series of gore-drenched Japanese films featuring absurd creature effects and action moves. This is a wonderfully cartoonish film with rival bio-mechanoid creatures fighting