1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982)
An Italian exploitation film about gangs fighting in the ruins of a future New York. Director Enzo G. Catsellari has ripped off both Escape from New York and The Warriors
Science Fiction
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
Superb adaptation of the George Orwell novel that was actually shot in the months and year that the book takes place. Orwell’s future is imagined as a bleak post-War dystopia given life by a superlative cast
1984 (2023)
A new adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984. In this case, the film was shot in Russia and imagines the world as a full-on dystopian future quite unlike any of the previous film versions
Nirvana (1997)
Strong and intelligent Cyberpunk film with Christopher Lambert dealing with a videogame character that has come to life
No Escape (1994)
Big-budget action film that essentially rewrites Papillon in SF terms. Martin Campbell has a good eye for widescreen action but the film is only drawn in cliches.
No Maps for These Territories (2000)
Fascinating documentary that interviews cult Cyberpunk author William Gibson on his life and writing while being driven around in the backseat of a car
No Men Beyond This Point (2015)
Film that depicts an alternate world where women have gained the upper-hand and men are a disappearing minority. This proved an unexpected delight, a mockumentary that comes in perfect and side-splitting deadpan, not to mention explores its premise with absolutely logical regard
No One Will Save You (2023)
A woman alone in a farmhouse fights off invading aliens. Undeniably, effective, this is an uncredited remake of the classic Twilight Zone episode The Invaders
No Time to Die (2021)
Daniel Craig’s swansong as James Bond but it no longer seems a Bond that Ian Fleming would recognise leading to the question of whether James Bond still has any relevance in 2021
The Noah (1975)
Experimental film about the last man left on Earth after a nuclear war who develops a series of imaginary companions
The Noah’s Ark Principle (1984)
Roland Emmerich’s first film, made while he was still a student, involving intrigue aboard a weather control station
Nope (2022)
Jordan Peele seems to have arrived at the same position that M. Night Shyamalan was in in the early 2000s. In his third film as director, he makes a film about UFOs that becomes a baffling scratch of the head
The Northlander (2016)
Post-holocaust film made by and starring Canadian First Nations people. While the film uses the aftermath of a civilisation as a setting, it never seems that interested in exploring it. The film peters out in an uninteresting resoution and features some appallingly pretentious dialogue
Not Of This Earth (1957)
One of the classic B-budget films directed by the legendary Roger Corman back in his heyday. Concerning a mysterious alien vampire, this comes with all the quirks and dry humour of Corman’s films of this era
Not Of This Earth (1988)
The Roger Corman 1950s cheapie about a mystery man who proves to be an alien space vampire is remade as a vehicle for Traci Lords. The script is essentially the same but with the addition of a lot of topless women
Nothing (2003)
Quirky and wittily clever film from Vincenzo Natali, director of Cube, where two characters wish themselves into a blank white void filled with literally nothing
Notzilla (2020)
A really funny parody of Japanese monster movies. Sublimely silly nonsense
Now You See Him, Now You Don’t (1972)
The second of Disney’s Dexter Reilly films with Kurt Russell as a teen genius who invents an invisibility formula
The Nude Bomb (1980)
A flop theatrical film spinoff from the Get Smart tv series with Don Adams’ Maxwell Smart trying to stop a bomb that renders people naked
Nr. 10 (2021)
Alex van Warmerdam makes a very strange black comedy, so deadpan you are not sure if you are meant to be laughing or not
Nuoc 2030 (2014)
The novelty of the world’s first Vietnamese science-fiction film set in a future where many areas are underwater as a result of climate change. Much of this is a very dull film observing the day to day life of people affected but the SF elements intrude in occasionally interesting ways
The Nutty Professor (1963)
Jerry Lewis is either a low him or hate him figure; whatever the case, one should give this, his best film, a chance … It is Lewis offering his own comedic spin on the Jekyll/Hyde story, which contains a great performance on his part as he swings between a socially inept nerd and smooth lounge singer
The Nutty Professor (1996)
Remake of the Jerry Lewis film is a comedic tour-de-force for Eddie Murphy as he swings between a shy 400 lb professor and a manic, testostoronally charged health junkie
The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000)
Sequel to the Eddie Murphy remake of The Nutty Professor. That film’s tour-de-force was a scene with Murphy playing all the members of his family. Here the family have been brought to the fore. Murphy’s performance and the effects are expectedly great but the plot is all over the place
A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (1990)
Despite one of the great exploitation titles of all time, this bikini clad babes vs dinosaurs after the apocalypse effort lacks the cheerful cynicism of other Troma films and is just cheap, dull and unwatchable on almost every level
O Lucky Man! (1973)
The second of Lindsay Anderson and Malcolm’s McDowell’s social satires with coffee salesman McDowell passing through increasingly more surreal adventures
The Objective (2008)
The co-director of The Blair Witch Project makes a film about soldiers lost in the desert encountering mysterious lights in the sky. Essentially Blair Witch but with lost soldiers facing UFO phenomena
Oblivion (1994)
One of the best films from Full Moon Productions that locates a Western on another planet and manages a perfectly pitched homage to either genre
Oblivion (2013)
This falls short of being a great science-fiction film by a hairs breadth. Not the big space/action film it was sold as, more a Philip K. Dickian conceptual breakthrough film that seems to have borrowed large chunks of its set-up from Moon
The Occupant (2025)
A woman survives a helicopter crash and must make a harsh wilderness trek through the Caucasus Mountains before discovering that the helpful voice on the other end of the radio may be something not human
Oceans Rising (2017)
Disaster movie from The Asylum set around global warming. Notable for two things – the wackiness of the scientist’s scheme to save the planet by creating black holes, and the cheapness of the production, which does almost everything it can to avoid effects shots
Octaman (1971)
A monster movie from the screenwriter of The Creature from the Black Lagoon that should have a place in any list of bad movies
Octopus (2000)
B-budget mix of giant animal film and submarine drama with impoverished effects and a script only notable for its ludicrous improbabilities
Octopus II (2001)
Sequel to the ridiculous Octopus, this is slightly less cheap but no less absurd in its premise of a giant octopus attacking New York
Octopussy (1983)
The thirteenth James Bond film. the fifth for Roger Moore. While the preceding entry had tried to trim back the cartoonish excesses of the Moore era, it is back to business as usual here. The film frequently feels divorced from the remotest shred of realism
OK Connery (1967)
With the success of the James Bond films in the 1960s, someone had the idea of casting Sean Connery’s younger brother Neil in a spy film
Okja (2017)
Boon Jong Ho’s version of E.T., albeit one where E.T. is a genetically-engineered pig the size of an SUV, not to mention one with an oddball sense of humour that it is hard to imagine being enjoyed by young age groups
Old (2021)
M. Night Shyamalan gets more of a bad rap than he is due. I am happy to argue that this, which is set around a beach where people rapidly age, is one of his best films to date
Omega Cop (1990)
A low-budget post-apocalyptic action film featuring the almost completely forgotten martial arts and (non)-actor Ron Marchini who must venture out into the ruined city to rescue three girls
Omega Doom (1996)
Albert Pyun cheapie in which the plot of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo is relocated to a post-apocalyptic setting and cast with androids
The Omega Man (1971)
The second film version of I Am Legend, this rewrites the book’s vampires as mutants and abandons its mood of paranoia for a fantasy of hippie utopia and Charlton Heston in square-jawed action hero mode
Omni Loop (2024)
A timeloop film with a difference where Mary-Louise Parker takes pills that help her go back and relive the previous five days as she seeks to find ways to travel back even further
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
The sixth James Bond film where Sean Connery was replaced by Australian model George Lazenby who had never acted before. Lazenby is a disliked Bond but that tends does stand in the way of the fact that this is a fine character-driven Bond film with some of the best action sequences of the series
On the Beach (1959)
The first major film confronting nuclear war full on with the world’s last survivors gathered in Australia. Slightly ponderous today but nevertheless full of potent imagery
On the Beach (2000)
TV mini-series remake of the 1959 nuclear war film. With no longer the need to make messages as in the original, the story has been expanded out with a lush romantic sweep
On the Comet (1970)
I have raved elsewhere about Czech director Karel Zeman and his amazing blends of live-action and animation. This, his adaptation of a lesser-known Jules Verne work, is not quite up there with his earlier films but is an enjoyably colourful knockabout adventure
On the Silver Globe (1988)
Andrzej Zulawski, known for the demented Possession, makes an SF film about planetary colonisation. The spirit of Andrei Tarkovsky hangs over the film, which is long and philosophically rambling. What you cannot deny is the film’s epic scope and the mad splendour of Zulawski’s visuals
The One (2001)
Promising idea of an alternate world-hopping film from James Wong, this spends too much time copying moves from The Matrix and lets most of its possibilities pass by
100° Below 0 (2013)
Syfy Channel disaster movie about a mass volcanic eruption plunging Europe into an instant Ice Age. All the usual potted formulaic drama and cheap effects – the absurdity of the film is surely demonstrated by the fact that people wander about in the midst of -100 degree temperatures in t-shirts
100 Million BC (2008)
An Asylum mockbuster released at the same time as Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 B.C., this involves time travel mission into the prehistoric past that accidentally brings a dinosaur back to the present
One Million AC/DC (1969)
A lost Edward D. Wood Jr film. Clearly made as a parody on the hit Raquel Welch-starring One Million Years B.C., this is adult work depicting the sex lives of cave people
One Million B.C. (1940)
Classic caveman vs dinosaurs prehistoric drama later to be remade as the more famous version with Raquel Welch. This plays as fairly creaky today but gains an undeniable vividness with the raw ferocity of its dinosaur scenes (played by optically enlarged lizards)
One Million Years B.C. (1966)
Cult stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen made this classic caveman vs dinosaurs film in collaboration with Hammer Films. The work that brought Raquel Welch to prominence as an actress
One of Our Spies is Missing (1966)
The third cinematically released film repackaged from episodes of the cultish 1960s spy tv series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. Despite a scattershot plot that doglegs all over the place, the film is made with a wonderfully droll sense of humour that makes it undeniably appealing
One Point 0 (2004)
This travels into very similar places to Roman Polanski’s The Tenant – a paranoid tale about a man surrounded by very strange apartment neighbours. Apart from adding some reality blurring SF twists to the mix, this does little more than churn cliches
One Spy Too Many (1966)
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. tv series was construed as lighter take on the James Bond films. This, the third theatrical film recut from tv episodes, is one of the most entertaining, creating a memorable super-villain and almost entirely consisting of over-the-top death traps and action set-pieces
1, 2, 3, Whiteout: The End of the Light Age (2007)
Baffling SF film that lacks anything resembling a plot and seems mostly an experimental film about showing pretty light patterns
One Under the Sun (2017)
Strange film in which a woman astronaut returns from a Mars mission somehow ‘changed’
Only (2019)
A film made for the era of Coronavirus crisis if there ever was one. This concerns a worldwide plague that kills all women where Freida Pinto may be the left woman left alive. What is uncannily predictive is the film’s images of empty streets and supermarket shelves, people huddled in quarantine and social distancing
Open Your Eyes (1997)
Excellent film from Alejandro Amenabar in which a handsome playboy finds himself in the midst of a baffling series of reality flips before arriving at an SF twist ending
Operation Avalanche (2016)
This takes the old conspiracy theory about the Moon Landing being faked by tv and rather hilariously is a Found Footage film being shot by two filmmakers who have been tasked with fabricating the Moon Landing
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)
Guy Ricthie makes a spy action film that doesn’t take itself too seriously and is far more absurdly entertaining than anything you expect it to be. Hugh Grant steals the day as the super-villain of the show
Operation Ganymede (1977)
A West German-made film where a space mission to Jupiter returns only for the crew to find the Earth deserted. This captures something of the original Planet of the Apes in its better moments
Orbiter 9 (2017)
Spanish film about a lone girl on a space mission who has never met another human being and her sudden awakening to the real nature of her world. To say more is to give the film’s on big surprise away. Alas after revealing this, the film seems at a loss what to do next
The Order of the Black Eagle (1987)
A low-budget spy/action film with entertainingly bizarre elements including a cryogenically frozen Hitler and the hero going into action accompanied by a baboon
Orgazmo (1997)
An early work from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone about a Mormon who becomes a porn star and then turns superhero
Osiris (2025)
Soldiers in the middle of a warzone are abducted by aliens and wake up aboard an alien facility. An interesting set up that dissolves into massive amounts of artillery fire and action
The Other Me (2000)
Disney Channel film about a cloned kid. The result indifferently slung together and the basic premise dealt with in a hardly serious way
OtherLife (2017)
Australian SF film about the development of a set of eyedrops that allow the recipient to experience a set of preprogrammed virtual memories. The film does nothing with the idea beyond rehashing Total Recall-like reality games
Our Man Flint (1966)
One of the more amusing of the numerous James Bond copies of the 1960s featuring James Coburn as agent Derek Flint, this plants tongue in cheek and cheerfully spoofs the whole spy fad
Out of Darkness (2022)
A film that follows a group of cavepeople who set out on a journey to find a new land to only to be hunted by mysterious unknown, possibly supernatural threat
Outbreak (1995)
Spectacular big-budget, all-star film about a plague outbreak on US soil – one that was loosely inspired by the Ebola outbreak
Outer Touch (1979)
Bizarre attempt to mix the 1970s SF film with the British sex comedy as a group of people are abducted by three alien women who are ignorant about sex
Outland (1981)
The film‘s Space Western idea aside – the plot is High Noon transplanted into orbit – this is a solid and well-made science-fiction film with Sean Connery as a long marshal on Jupiter’s moon Io
Outlander (2008)
Retelling of the epic legend of Beowulf in SF terms where Grendel becomes an alien monster
Outside the Wire (2021)
There have been some impressive works about A.I. in the last few years. This plays out as Ex Machina by way of Training Day and is only notable in its ridiculous implausibility
The Outsider (1996)
Low-budget film that steals the premise of Westworld in the story of an amusement park that recreates the world of 1940s film noir with androids, which proceed to go amok
Ow (2014)
This begins fantastically well – the appearance of a mysterious alien object that paralyses everybody who looks upon it – only to take a major nosedive in its second act where we promptly realise that the filmmakers didn’t have a clue where to take the story after that
Oxygen (2021)
Imprisonment thriller where Melanie Laurent wakes up trapped inside a cryogenic capsule, this expands out to become an excellent SF film
P.G. Psycho Goreman (2020)
The great and underrated Steven Kostanski makes another of his homages to the 1980s VHS era. This has a winning concept where kids befriend an intergalactic dark lord
Pacific Rim (2013)
Giant mecha robots beating the crap out of giant monsters – what’s not to like? In comparison to the Transformers films, Guillermo Del Toro looks to find the soul of the robot jock – in essence, Transformers for grown-ups
Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)
Pacific Rim wasn’t Guillermo Del Toro’s best film but it was a fun attempt to imagine giant Japanese mecha robots battling giant monsters. This is a sequel but without Del Toro it is reduced to no more than one of Michael Bay’s Transformers films
The Pacifier (2005)
Vin Diesel seemed to fairly much kill his career off with this excruciating comedy in which he deflates his tough guy persona by playing off a bunch of kids
Pajama Party (1964)
One of the popular Beach Party comedies of the 1960s. Tommy Kirk turns up as a bumbling Martian to romance Annette Funicello
Pandorica (2016)
This comes with a premise that holds interest – it many years after the collapse of civlisation where three youth are taken into the woods on a rite of passage only to encounter someone from another tribe fleeing with an object that makes the possessor a god – a handgun
Pandorum (2009)
Rare cinematic treatment of the generation ship story that conducts it with a modest degree of affectiveness. Produced by Paul W.S. Anderson.
Panic in Year Zero! (1962)
A film about the outbreak of nuclear war directed by actor Ray Milland. What takes you aback is the naked liberatarian fantasy that Milland engages in, arguing in favour of a brutal ruthlessness in the name of survival
Paprika (2006)
A venture inside the dreamscape from anime director Satoshi Kon who creates a beautifully animated work even if some of the ideas become excessively convoluted
Paradise Hills (2019)
Nacho Vigalondo scripted film that seems like a mix between a girls’ boarding school story and an SF film like The Island, all directed with amazingly over-ornamented costuming and design scheme not seen on screen since at least The Cell
Paradox (2016)
There have been some ingenious time paradox films in recent years, this is a modest low-budget offering in which a scientist travels one hour into the future only to find everybody at the lab has been killed. Returning in time, he tries to stop everything from happening.
Parallel (2018)
From Isaac Ezban in his English-language debut, a cleverly and pleasingly contorted film where a group of friends discover a mirror that leads to a parallel timeline
Parallel (2024)
A variation on the multiverse film where Danielle Deadwyler enters a forest portal and returns to realities where the details of her life vary in minute but increasingly alarming ways
Parallel World Love Story (2019)
Japanese film that has overtones of Sliding Doors as a man finds he leads two different parallel lives
Parallels (2015)
Smart and fascinating venture into the alternate universe hopping theme that suggests something of what the underwhelming Sliders should have been. Originally made as the pilot for a tv series, this comes with much intriguing backstory set-up for a potential series
Parasite (1982)
The second directorial outing of a young Charles Band, this is essentially an earthbound version of Alien. Not a very good film, the principal reasons to watch are some cheap effects and a young Demi Moore
Parasyte Part 1 (2014)
Live-action adaptation of a manga about the war between body-snatching parasites that are capable of rearranging their host’s bodies. This plays out as a madcap version of The Thing relocated to a Japanese high school
Parasyte Part 2 (2015)
Parasyte Part 1 was a manga adaptation filled with wild effects sequences. This sequel is an even better film that expands the characters and ideas in quite fascinating directions
Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979)
This had its entire plot ripped off as Michael Bay’s The Island. Without Bay’s action overkill, this is by far the better film, working as a fascinating mystery set-up that leads to an ingenious twist
Passengers (2016)
The gratifying pleasure of a solid conceptually-driven science-fiction film – all based around the premise of “what if a cryogenic sleeper woke up halfway through a deep space voyage?” and the moral choices he must make. Strong, intelligent character-driven science-fiction and possibly the best designed film of the year
The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999)
Biopic about controversial philosopher/SF writer Ayn Rand or at least one that focuses on the extra-marital affair she had throughout her life. Given that the film is based on a book by other man’s wife, it does come with the odd axe to grind