Slapstick of Another Kind (1982)
Another failed attempt to film the works of Kurt Vonnegut where Vonnegut’s ironic pessimism ends up as witless slapstick chaos on screen
Science Fiction
Slash (2016)
Film that concerns itself with slash – a form of fan fiction that imagines sexual relationships between the two male leads of various film and tv series. Some passable discussion of the fandom has been grafted onto a Coming of Age story in ways that only awkwardly gel
Slaughterhouse Five (1972)
Not entirely uninteresting but also not entirely satisfactory adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel about a man who becomes unstuck in time, flipping back and forward between the events of his own life
Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987)
Easily dismissed because of its deliberately cheesy title, this is a modestly enjoyable relocating of The Most Dangerous Game on another planet
Sleeper (1973)
An hilarious Woody Allen film in which he plays a contemporary man cryogenically unthawed in the 22nd century. This satirisises SF cliches and contains some side-slitting comedy sequences
Sleeping Dogs (1977)
The cornerstone of the modern New Zealand film industry – the first film of both Sam Neill and Roger Donaldson – a vigorous dystopian action film that offers up a nightmare of sleepy parochial 1970s NZ being brutally overrun by the imagery of totalitarianism
Sleight (2016)
We’ve had films about stage magicians in the last few years from The Prestige to Now You See Me; this has the novelty of focusing on a young street magician against the backdrop of L.A.’s drug culture. The film takes a very strange leap off the deep end into SF territory in the last quarter
Slingshot (2024)
Quite a good film about a space expedition where the crew members on a mission to Saturn fall into an increasing paranoia and inability to tell what is real due to the drugs used in the hypersleep process
Slipstream (1989)
The only film that Steven Lisberger made after Tron. Though impressively cast and with a decent budget, it is an oddly unconvincing effort that tells the story of an android’s quest across a post-apocalyptic world
Slither (2006)
James Gunn directs a film about body-snatching alien slugs that proves enormous fun and comes packed to the edges with numerous genre references and homages
Small Soldiers (1998)
Joe Dante has resorted to a rehash of his biggest hit Gremlins, seemingly conceptually slung together with Toy Story – concerning an army of malevolent toy soldiers come to life
Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1997)
Adapted from an acclaimed book, Julia Ormond stars as an Icelandic heroine in a detective story with an SF twist
Smoking Causes Coughing (2022)
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s hilariously gonzo comedies made up a series of deadpan surreal vignettes, including a witty parody of the modern superhero film
Snake Outta Compton (2018)
As with numerous examples in the zombie and killer shark film of recent, the idea has been to parody an existing title with the addition of a monster and a pun on the original’s title. Essentially what we have is a Scary Movie-like parody of the true-life rapper tale Straight Outta Compton but with the addition of a giant snake
Snatchers (2019)
Really quite funny film in which a teenage girl becomes pregnant with a body-snatching parasite. Think Mean Girls meets The Hidden
Sneakers (1992)
Standout thriller set around the world of computing, one of the earliest techno-thriller to adapt to the new internet age
Snowpiercer (2013)
One of the most original science-fiction films of recent years. Set aboard a train where the last survivors of humanity circle a frozen globe, this is less an action film than something like Runaway Train turned into a unique conceptual breakthrough story, all rent through with a fierce parable about social revolution
Solar Crisis (1990)
Ambitious SF film about a space expedition to save the Sun, this bombed at the time but is not uninteresting
Solarbabies (1986)
Embarrassingly bad Mel Brooks produced film that seems to have been conceived in terms of conducting a juvenile Mad Max film on rollerskates and throwing SF cliches about without any coherent script
Solaris (1972)
Called the Russian 2001. Andrei Tarkovsky makes one of the great SF films, a haunting ghost story set on a space station as an alien planet below drives the crew mad with recreated doppelgangers of their loved ones
Solaris (2002)
Steven Soderbergh’s English-language remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s epic SF film. Soderbergh trims Tarkovsky’s long-windedness and makes the plot tighter, more intimate but this still emerges as a lesser version than the original
Soldier (1998)
Kurt Russell gives a fine performance as a programmed soldier who discovers emotions but under Paul W.S. Anderson the rest of the big-budgeted film collapses into over-inflated cliches
Solis (2018)
In the vein of realistic space films like Gravity and The Martian, this is a lower-budgeted effort about a man in an escape pod on a collision course with the sun and the attempts to rescue him
Solo (1996)
Mario Van Peebles plays a military android who defies his programming to defend the villagers he is sent to kill
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
The second of the Stars Wars spinoff films tells a Han Solo origin story. After a change of directors, it emerges in the hands of Ron Howard who has spent four decades being the world’s most ploddingly sedate director
Some Girls Do (1969)
Bulldog Drummond was a gentleman adventurer hero popular in books and films of the 1930s/40s. Here he is reincarnated as a playboy spy amid the spate of James Bond inspired spy films of the 1960s, battling a super-villain outfitted with an army of women with robot brains
Something is Out There (1988)
Mini-series that was a popular hit in its day, which largely steals its premise of a human and alien cop hunting a body-hopping alien from The Hidden. What makes the show work past its rather ordinary story, is the two leads and their wittily sparring Lethal Weapon-type relationship
Somnus (2016)
This low-budget British effort seems to be making a good start as a film that deals with space travel realistically only to bog down in one of the most incomprehensible plots one has ever sat through
Son of Flubber (1963)
Sequel to Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor that only unimaginatively shuffles around the same elements and lacks the inspired touch of the first film
Son of Godzilla (1968)
The eighth Godzilla film featuring the introduction of his son Minya in a shameless pitch for juvenile audiences. The series is no longer taking itself seriously, although ends up more likeable than some of the other entries of this period
The Son of Kong (1933)
The 1933 King Kong is a landmark classic Yhis sequel was quickly produced soon after its success,. While the original created a monster movie fairytale, this plays everything for maximum cuteness – it is essentially King Kong mounted as a children’s film
Songbird (2020)
Film shot during the pandemic lockdown from Michael Bay’s production company set in a future where Covid has become even more virulent
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)
Sequel to the hit videogame adaptation, this offers up fairly much the same mix of elements as before – a cutely anthrompomorphic creature and Jim Carrey going to rafter-rattling excess
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)
Third of the Sonic the Hedgehog films and surprisingly far more entertaining than you expect from such a lightweight formulaic film
Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
After a disastrous fan reception of its initial trailer, the film of the videogame arrives on screen. The surprise is that for such a zero expectation film and one that defies the engagement of any of your braincells it is as much fun as it is.
The Sore Losers (1997)
Film that seems to be trying to cram in as many exploitation elements as possible from UFOs to spree killers, zombies, Women in Prison and rock’n’roll
Sorry to Bother You (2018)
This directorial debut for rapper Boots Riley is a very funny satire on telemarketing that becomes increasingly more surreal as it goes on. Imagine something like Spike Lee around the point of Do the Right Thing mixed with the absurdist humour of Kurt Vonnegut
The Sound Barrier (1952)
David Lean conducts a fictional account of the efforts to build a plane that breaks the sound barrier
Sound of My Voice (2011)
Fascinating film about a cult centred around a woman who claims to come from the future. Featuring an ethereal performance from a then unknown Brit Marling, the film remains ambiguous about her claims. Less a script than a series of often emotionally raw scenes that have been improvised between the actors
A Sound of Thunder (2005)
Adaptation of the classic Ray Bradbury time travel story is overblown as a ridiculous big-budget film filled with bad science where the original point of the story disappears in a script that makes no sense
Source Code (2011)
The second film from Duncan Jones, this places Jake Gyllenhaal through a Groundhog Day scenario as he is forced to relive the same eight minutes in order to find who planted a bomb on a train
Southland Tales (2006)
Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko fame makes a work set in a near-future L.A., a sprawling film bursting at the edges with too many characters and subplots but not uninteresting
Soylent Green (1973)
The film mangles and fails to understand the fine Harry Harrison novel it is based on but in its own right creates an effective and worthwhile portrait of a badly overpopulated 21st Century New York
Space Adventure Cobra (1982)
The great Osamu Dezai makes a colourful anime that jumps aboard the Stars Wars space opera fad
Space Battleship Yamato (2010)
A live-action remake of the 1970s anime series Space Cruiser Yamato made with stupendous effects, although now much of the plot has been rendered familiar by assorted Star Wars copies
The Space Between Us (2017)
Following the huge success of films like Gravity and The Martian that portray space travel with scrupulous realism, this can be considered the Young Adult version. It pays surprising attention to getting its science right; on the other hand, that doesn’t excuse the gaping implausibilities elsewhere
The Space Children (1958)
One of the less remembered films from Jack Arnold who directed a number of 1950s SF classics in which the children of rocket engineers are used by an alien force to sabotage a space launch. Not one of Arnold’s greats but still a modestly effective work.
Space Chimps (2008)
An animated film about NASA experimental chimpanzees. Not quite up there with Pixar but an amiable and unpretentious and amiable outing
Space Cop (2016)
Comedy about a cop from the future who joins the present-day force where he is partnered with a cop thawed out from the 1960s. This is a premise that should have been funny but emerges as something like Sledge Hammer cast with the characters from Dumb and Dumber
Space Cowboys (2000)
Clint Eastwood directs a film about a quartet of aging NASA astronauts reunited for one mission back into space after forty years.
Space Cruiser Yamato (1977)
Anime film spun off from a popular Japanese tv series. Despite crude animation, this has a colourful vigour and taps the same space opera vein as Star Wars, which came only three months earlier
Space Marines (1995)
Low-budget film that does quite a creditable job on the whole space marines theme
Space Milkshake (2012)
The title and the description of a space station crew dealing with a mutating runner duck gives the expectation of something wacky – what we get is more like a variant on Dark Star, a comedy set around the boredom of life on a space station and a 1970s era episode of Doctor Who
Space Mutiny (1988)
This is widely regarded as a classic bad movie. A South African-made space opera where the corner-cutting cheapness of the production proves frequently hilarious
Space Pirate Captain Harlock (2013)
The brooding space pirate Captain Harlock is one of the famous anti-heroes in manga and anime. Harlock gets a big screen revamp here from Shinji (Appleseed) Aramaki, one of the most amazing of modern anime directors, who delivers a series of epic space battles with a breathtaking beauty
Space Raiders (1983)
Low-budget producer Roger Corman jumped aboard the Star Wars sf bandwagon with Battle Beyond the Stars then took all the effects scenes and wrote another entire film around them with Space Raiders
Space Sharks (2024)
Another in the gonzo killer shark film fad viz Sharknado, a bottom of the barrel effort that concerns lab sharks returned from a space mission mutated
Space Station 76 (2014)
This has an irresistible premise – of doing for 1970s tv SF what GalaxyQuest did for Star Trek – parodying the sets, costumes and cliches. On the other hand, the superb conception fails to ever play out as comedy and the film centres around a series of singularly dull personal dramas
Space Sweepers (2021)
South Korean space opera about a crew of space junk collectors. If the Star Wars series wanted to find a director to create fresh and exhilarating effects scenes, they need look no further than here
Space Truckers (1996)
Stuart Gordon takes a lame concept – a trucker film set in space – and makes something far more enjoyable than one expected with most of the cast getting into the spirit of the exercise
Space Wars: Quest for the Deepstar (2022)
An enjoyable low-budget modern space opera that ably conjures the knockabout spirit of a host of low-budget 1980s Star Wars knockoffs
Space Zombie Bingo!!! (1993)
Part of the late 80s/early 90s fad for deliberately bad SF films, this has plentiful references to Plan 9 from Outer Space but little that is funny
Spaceballs (1987)
Mel Brooks parodies the Star Wars films. As with most Brooks films, the humour is broad and scattershot but occasionally amusing
Spacecamp (1986)
This comes with the unappealing concept of ‘Teenagers Trapped in Orbit in the Space Shuttle’ and vies between cliche and passable treatment
Spaced Invaders (1990)
Well produced but otherwise unfunny comedy about a group of bumbling Martian invaders who turn up on Halloween, following a rebroadcast of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio show
Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983)
Planetary adventure in the Star Wars vein with a few shakes of the junkyard future look of Mad Max 2. This was made to exploit the short-lived early 80s 3D revival fad
Spaceman (2024)
Adam Sandler plays a lone astronaut who befriends an alien. This falls somewhere between E.T. and Interstellar
Spacemaster X-7 (1958)
Cheap 1950s SF film about alien spores brought back from Mars and the hunt for a housewife who inadvertently spreads them
Spacerage: Breakout on Prison Planet (1985)
SF action with Michael Paré convicted to a prison planet from which he attempts to organise the prisoners to make an escape. This is essentially a Western that takes place in SF terms
Spaghettiman (2016)
Possibly the most absurd notion to hit superhero cinema – a film in which the hero’s power is to fling spaghetti from his fingertips and hides his identity behind a paper bag. A low-budget, no-effects indie comedy with a deadpan sense of humour not likely to be everybody’s taste but I found downright hilarious
Spare Parts (1979)
A German thriller about a newlywed couple in the US where the husband is abducted and the wife’s attempts to find him take her into the midst of an illicit organ harvesting operation
Sparks (2013)
Low-budget superhero that co-opts the cod-film noir look from Sin City. Alas the film has an excessively sprawling and complicated plot, while the film noir style looks like no more than cheap pastiche reduced to cliche poses by well-meaning amateurs
Special (2006)
Before the likes of Defendor, Kick-Ass and Super, there was this, one of the best comedies about superheroes with no powers. The film loves screwing with its audience and comes with a series of mind-bending flips between drug hallucination and subjective view of the superpowers in action
The Specials (2000)
An obscure parody about a team of inept and dysfunctional superheroes that was one of the earliest works from a then unknown James Gunn (who not only writes but stars as one of the superheroes)
Species II (1998)
Sequel to Species that this time offers up the male of the species. The film feels put together as an exercise in makeup effects but their physiological absurdity causes the film to topple into silliness
Species (1995)
Slick and rather silly copy of Alien that conceptually cross-hatches it to emerge as essentially Basic Instinct with tentacles
Species III (2004)
The third of the Species films, which follows Sil’s daughter. Some okay makeup effects but the plotting gets fairly silly
Species: The Awakening (2007)
Fourth entry in the Species series where at least the series seems to have gravitated to the arena of the trashily absurd B movie it belongs
Spectre (2015)
The fourth Daniel Craig James Bond film welcomely resurrects one of the great nemeses from the series past – only to fall flat on its face. This is a Bond film severely hampered by a director unattuned to the classical elements of the series and the need to cripple everything by giving Bond backstory and character development
Speed Racer (2008)
The Wachowskis live-action remake of the anime series is a sublimely madcap confection, a film that is alive with vibrant visuals and all the colours of the rainbow. A box-office flop but glorious, even groundbreaking visually
Spermula (1976)
Rather of an oddity – a French adult film about women from the future that in the aftermath of Star Wars was re-edited to become a film about alien women visitors come to kill off the human species via sex. Often directed with an artiness that proves far more than you expect
Sphere (1998)
Michael Crichton was hot property after the success of Jurassic Park but this was one flop. A by no means uninteresting film about a group of scientists in an underwater habitat making contact with an alien lifeform
Spice World (1997)
The Spice Girls conduct their own version of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, a largely plotless film with them clowning around. Including appearances from aliens.
Spider in the Attic (2021)
From incredibly prolific B-budget British producer/director Scott Jeffrey, a film about a radio broadcaster who ventures to the home of a scientist to find it overrun by genetically engineered spiders
Spider-Man (1977)
The first big screen incarnation of the Marvel Comics character, the theatrically released pilot for a dreary tv series starring Nicholas Hammond that stripped Spider-Man down to being no more than a superpowered detective in a tv cop show
Spider-Man (2002)
A huge hit and one of the key influences that created the box-office dominance of Marvel Comics in the 2000s/10s. A fine incarnation of the comic-book, Sam Raimi brings it to life with exhilarating web-slinging scenes but overdoes the winsome innocence of Peter Parker
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire get it just right in the second entry in their trilogy of Spider-Man films. The writing team deliver a fantastic Soul of the Superhero script while Raimi delivers some superheroic action sequences that are about as exciting as it is possible to get (*)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Last and by general opinion the least of the Sam Raimi-Tobey Maguire Spider-Man films. With three super-villains present, the plot feels as though it is bursting at the seams juggling the various origin stories and ongoing dramas, although Raimi still delivers some solid superheroic action scenes
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
The animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse proved an unexpected success. This sequel builds on that ups the artistic quality of the original to something quite extraordinary
Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019)
Spider-Man: Homecoming was Sony’s Spider-Man reboot where the elements came together with winning regard and Tom Holland’s politely eager nervousness made for a fantastic Spider-Man. This was the first sequel.
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Sony’s reboot of the Spider-Man franchise bursts with a freshness and creative energy. This is also a Spider-Man that has integrated with the MCU with the script kowtowing to Marvel at every point
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Sony, the holders of the Spider-Man copyright, squeeze more out of the property with a madcap animated offering that mixes up a host of alternate takes on Spider-Man in what visually resembles an explosion at a pop art exhibition
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Sony’s Spider-Man franchise ingeniously competes with Marvel’s shared universe by bringing all their previous incarnations of Spider-Man together
Spider-Man Strikes Back (1979)
The 1970s Spider-Man tv series was a miserable failure at live-action superheroics, little more than a crime show with a costumed hero. This was the best of three theatrically released films edited from it with the plot of students building an atomic bomb has an undeniable real world credibility
Spiderhead (2022)
From Joseph Kosinski, then riding high as the director of Top Gun: Maverick, Chris Hemsworth is cast in an interestingly ambiguous role as a scientist conducting illicit experiments with behaviour altering drugs
Spiderman and the Dragon’s Challenge (1980)
The third and last of the theatrically released films recut from the 1970s live-action Spider-Man tv series. The near sleep-inducing plot takes Nicholas Hammond’s Spider-Man to Hong Kong
Spiders (2000)
In a whole bunch of ways this – plausibility being a big one of them – is a bad film. On the other hand, it does boast an entertaining array of giant spiders all emerged from a space shuttle crash
Spiders (2013)
When you approach this in terms of exactly what it promises to be – a revival of the good old B movie standard of the giant spider film – this proves absurdly entertaining and with some surprisingly good CGI spider effects
Spielberg (2017)
Documentary made for HBO about director Steven Spielberg in which he reflects on his life and films. The documentary tends to focus more on his major hits and skips his minor films but does give worthwhile insight into Spielberg, his life and formative years
Spies in Disguise (2019)
Animated film that has the madcap premise of a top spy (voiced by Will Smith) transformed into a pigeon. A film that comes with such a level of comedic energy that it makes you think all hope is not lost for Blue Sky Studios, the makers of the interminable Ice Age films.