Spies Like Us (1985)
Unfunny John Landis film with Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd as two bumbling CIA agents. This aspires to being one of the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road films but only arrives at inane slapstick
Science Fiction
The Spirit of 76 (1990)
Clearly an attempt to copy the success of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, this is a comedy with time travellers visiting the 1970s. Lots of 70s pop culture and faces without any of it being funny
Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds (1987)
The first film from Alex Proyas who once seemed a director of great promise with The Crow and Dark City, this seems to be trying to create a Mad Max post-apocalyptic film as a student art film
Splice (2010)
A genetically engineered creature film from Vincenzo Natali, this ventures into some fascinating places but ultimately returns to Frankenstein science territory
Split Second (1992)
A mishmash of Alien copy and supernatural serial killer film set in a drowned future London with a script that makes no real sense. The film’s buddy cop relationship starring Rutger Hauer does have its amusements.
Spontaneous Combustion (1990)
The start of Tobe Hooper’s decline wherein he borrows the basics of Firestarter in a really bad film with a madly overacting Brad Dourif as a pyrokinetic
Spriggan (1998)
Katsuhiro Otomo overseen anime about the discovery of Noah’s Ark, an alien artifact that gives a child vast psychic powers in a swathe of destruction not dissimilar to Akira
Sputnik (2020)
Strong intelligent SF film where a cosmonaut returns from a space mission with an alien parasite attached. On one level, not too different to a host of Alien copies but the difference is all in the approach
Spy Hard (1996)
Styled in the same movie parody style vein as Airplane, this digs into the spy movie, although in actuality it is more of a scattershot spoof of films of then-recent vintage. Leslie Nielsen found regular employ in these types of film
The Spy in the Green Hat (1967)
The fifth of the theatrically released films based on tv’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. This is one of the more overtly comic films with an entertainingly madcap plot that has Napoleon Solo forced into a shotgun wedding and Jack Palance as a mad winemaker attempting to divert the Gulf Stream
Spy Kids (2001)
Robert Rodriguez has a huge amount of fun by recasting James Bond antics with kids. The film was a success that spawned several sequels
Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams (2002)
The second of Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids films is slightly the lesser of its predecessor – it makes the mistake of stripping out the gadgets – but is still fun and has the wacky surrealism Rodriguez gave the first film
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003)
The third in the series is no longer even a Spy Kids film but a Virtual Reality videogame film. Robert Rodriguez has some fun creating the virtual worlds but the parody that the other films engaged in is missing
Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (2011)
A series that reached its maximum level of cuteness two films ago is dragged out for another pointless entry that nobody was asking for. Robert Rodriguez delivers shabby juvenile slapstick
Spy Kids: Armageddon (2023)
Robert Rodriguez revisits his juvenile spy capers franchise after a twelve year absence. Not perfect but it improves over the last couple of sequels
The Spy Next Door (2010)
The further slide downwards of Jackie Chan’s career after being discovered by Hollywood. Here he is a spy left to look after a group of kids with excruciatingly unfunny results
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
The tenth of the James Bond films, the third for Roger Moore. This determines to be spectacular in terms of international locales, effects and sets. It was also the point where the Moore Bond films started to become giant cartoon spectacles of the absurd
The Spy With My Face (1965)
The second of the feature films repackaged from the tv series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., one of the better copies of the James Bond spy fad of the 1960s. Despite the low conceptual horizons of a tv episode, this plays itself with a splendidly droll tongue-in-cheek panache
Spymate (2006)
Perhaps the lamest spy movie idea EVER – a children’s film about a spy who goes into action accompanied by a chimpanzee
SS-GB (2017)
The alternate history has never fared well on film but this British mini-series is an excellent variant on the Nazis Win World War II scenario. As opposed to the similar but tedious The Man in the High Castle series, this is marvellously understated and written with superb tension
Stalker (1979)
One of the greatest of all SF films from Andrei Tarkovsky about a mysterious zone filled with enigmatic alien phenomena at the centre of which exists a room that can grant one’s heart’s desire
Stan Lee (2023)
The late Stan Lee needs no introduction as the most influential figure over the comic-book in the 20th Century. This is a documentary about his life
The Stand (1994)
The Stand is regarded as Stephen King’s best novel, an epic that depicts the final showdown between good and evil in the aftermath of civilisation. The mini-series adaptation was alas placed into the ham fists of one of King’s worst adapters. Mick Garris
The Stand (2020-2021)
The Stand is in my opinion Stephen King’s greatest book. The question is whether this new mini-series version will improve on the laughably failed 1994 version
Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001)
Documentary about the life of Stanley Kubrick made by his brother-in-law that lifts the veil on the mystique that surrounded Kubrick in his later years and gives a good deal of insight into his working processes
Star Hunter (1995)
An incredibly cheap ripoff of Predator (and even more so that film’s real source The Most Dangerous Game) relocated to an urban area. Incredibly tatty and dull on all counts
Star Raiders: The Adventures of Saber Raine (2017)
Space opera (or more correctly planetary adventure) conducted on a low-budget where you can see the filmmakers are making a clear effort to go way above and beyond the resources to hand
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Second of the Star Trek films, usually regarded as the fan favourite because of its often moving character focus on themes of life, death and aging. Ricardo Montalban makes a grandly theatrical villain and the film gets some great suspense out of space war sequences
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
Leonard Nimoy steps into the director’s chair of the third Star Trek film and his doing marks the shift of the films from intergalactic adventuring into the regulars engaged in a safe, easy set of adventures playing to fan audiences
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
William Shatner tries to emulate the success had by Leonard Nimoy in directing a Star Trek film but falls on his face, badly overstressing the comedy elements and delivering the worst of the Classic Trek films
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
The last of the classic Star Trek films. Nicholas Meyer, who made the last good Trek film The Wrath of Khan, returns to give the characters a moving send off, while the plot that reenacts the fall of the Berlin Wall with the Klingons gives the films a political immediacy that was missing since the tv series
Star Trek (2009)
J.J. Abrams revives the Star Trek franchise by recasting it with younger faces and rewriting continuity. But in the appeal to a hipper, sexier vibe, it feels a long way from Gene Roddenberry’s creation – nowhere in evidence is the original’s concern with galactic politics and social issues of the day
Star Trek: Beyond (2016)
Gene Roddenbery created a tv series that was about boldly going, confronting different ways of life. The choice to hire the director of The Fast and the Furious films to helm the film made for the show’s 50th anniversary says how wrong-headed the reboot series has become – all about cool young leads and hurtling effects sequences
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
The second of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films where series regular Jonathan Frakes takes the director’s chair and delivers an exciting adventure, showing an excellent hand with the special effects. Far more satisfying than the previous film
Star Trek: Generations (1994)
The first of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films is an odd affair that seems like a routine episode of the series that accidentally gained a big-screen budget. This crosses over with Classic Trek where William Shatner mugs his way through a grand old airing of Captain Kirk
Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
Third of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films has Jonathan Frakes back in the director’s seat where he again plays to his strengths with great visual effects scenes but the story feels like a filler episode
Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)
I had mixed feelings about J.J. Abrams’ reboot of Star Trek This time around the actors seem more at home in the characters and the plot works a good deal better (for the most part), while Abrams creates a hurtling effects spectacle that is the most action-oriented of the Trek films
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
The last of the films spun off from Star Trek: The Next Generation and a dismal flop that killed the film series off. Tom Hardy as a bad guy Romulan is a cardboard threat while the uninspired plot rehashes The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek: Section 31 (2025)
A Star Trek film spun off around Michelle Yeoh and the secret service that appears in the modern revival series
Star Trek – The Motion Picture (1979)
Long-awaited revival of the tv series on the big screen. While this has a mixed fan reception, it is well worth re-evaluation. It is the only one of the Trek films that reaches for epic, mind-expanding places to find something of a 2001: A Space Odyssey
Star Wars (1977)
The single most influential science-fiction film of all time, one that created a massive industry of sequels and spinoffs, not to mention copycats, and changed the way that people thought of science-fiction
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)
George Lucas’s return to the Star Wars series after a sixteen year absence and a build-up rivaled only by the Second Coming. Instead most audiences went away disappointed. Lucas has used the interim to push the technology to its heights but the story and characters are lacking
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)
The second of George Lucas’s Stars Wars prequels is no particular improvement. The romance is stiff and awkward, badly written while the effects sequences seem to be running out of new things to do and so just up the scale of what has happened before with so much going on it reaches a point of visual overload
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
The last of George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel trilogy and the last opportunity for him to get it right, which he generally does. The effects are expert but are not allowed to dominate as much as they did previously and the focus has come back onto the story and Anakin’s transformation into Darth Vader
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
George Lucas’s first sequel to Star Wars and a work that holds up every bit as well as its predecessor, in many places betters it. The story darkens the mythos and introduces new characters, while the special effects sequences are the peak of the series
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)
A disappointing end to George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy. The script lazily wraps up loose ends while sidelining the new characters introduced the last time, and the climax rehashes the climaxes of the two other films
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
It’s not another Empire Strikes Back but it makes up for the prequels. A good part fanservice to the original – if overly reliant on rehashing elements from Star Wars – this also does many things right
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
I’m not one of the haters on this. It’s the first Star Wars sequel since the 1980s to invigorate the series with fresh action sequences and place more focus on the characters instead of the action
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
The concluding chapter of the third trilogy of Star Wars films. After the critically divided The Last Jedi, J.J. Abrams opts for a return to the safety of familiarity and nostalgia
The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)
The tv special that George Lucas would have all copies destroyed, a work of legendary badness – a Star Wars Thanksgiving special featuring most of the original cast and a series of variety performances that are mind-boggling in their ineptitude, not to mention complete and utter fumbling of everything that Star Wars was
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)
Theatrical spinoff from the Star Wars prequels, released to introduce the popular animated series. This shows it is time for George Lucas to move beyond recycling something that was successful three decades ago
Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning (2005)
An extraordinary example of the fan film where Finnish filmmakers created a parody of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Babylon 5, with effects that rival those of A-list studio fare made on their home computers
Starchaser: The Legend of Orin (1985)
The first animated film in 3D, a blatant copy of Star Wars that proves occasionally engaging
Starflight One (1983)
Made-for-tv disaster movie released to theatres about the attempts to rescue a plane that becomes trapped in orbit
Stargate (1994)
The first of Roland Emmerich’s special effects epics. Emmerich rehashes Erich von Daniken’s Ancient Astronauts theories but casts it as a planetary adventure on an epic canvas with surprisingly entertaining results
Starman (1984)
John Carpenter abandons horror to make one of the better E.T.-inspired cute and cuddly alien visitor films. The film’s grasp of science is sometimes shaky but the film gains an enormous amount from Jeff Bridges’ performance as the alien trying to adjust to being in a human body
Starship (1984)
A planetary adventure from the director of Battlefield Earth. I waited 35 years to find a copy of this – it looked incredibly promising when I saw production artwork back in the 1980s
Starship Apocalypse (2014)
Sequel to Starship Rising, a space opera that does some amazing things with effects on a next-to-no budget
Starship Invasions (1977)
Christopher Lee called this his worst film. Contrarily it is a ridiculously entertaining effort about a war between telepathic aliens in UFOs from beneath the Bermuda Triangle.
Starship Rising (2014)
Modest space opera from British director Neil Johnson that achieves things with its effects on a low-budget that easily rivals A-budget films
Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2003)
Passable video-released Starship Troopers sequel the heads more in the direction of a body snatchers film. Directed by Phil Tippett
Starship Troopers (1997)
Travesty of Robert Heinlein’s classic SF novel from Paul Verhoeven. Heinlein’s philosophical argument for militarism is junked in favour of blackly comic mindless violence
Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012)
The importation of anime director Shinji Aramaki to helm the latest Starship Troopers film provides dazzling animation and hardware, along with some hard, furious military action that easily outstrips all the other films. On the other hand, the film never goes beyond being about soldiers shooting up bugs
Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017)
The fifth of the films in the series begun with Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers. The best of the series was the previous entry Starship Troopers: Invasion where they turned it over to anime director Shinji Aramaki. This is a sequel to that, although the same mix fails to work again
The Starving Games (2013)
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, behind parody films like Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie, turn to The Hunger Games. There is all the usual inanity and celebrity mocking of their films, although they do seem to make a film that is only marginally less moronic than usual
Stasis (2017)
A low-budget film that mixes the rebels from the future premise of The Terminator with the story of a disembodied soul trying to get back to their own body. Too low-budget to make the idea work.
Station Eleven (2021-2022)
A beautifully-made post-apocalyptic story told as a mandala of threads and surprise connections that stretch over twenty years
Stealth (2005)
Action film about an artificially intelligent fighter plane that goes amok. Rob Cohen directs in all the cliches of the genre and the seeming need to have something spectacular happening every few minutes
Steamboy (2004)
Sixteen years after making Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo returns to direct a full-length anime, making a Steampunk work that is dazzling in its epic quality and vistas of mass destruction
Steampunk Samurai Biker Chick (2012)
I must admit to being drawn in by the title, but this proves to be a massive cheat. What we get is a painfully cheap future action film
Steel (1997)
Widely ridiculed adaptation of the DC Comics superhero featuring Shaquille O’Neal that slips down to a simplistic level of Saturday morning cartoons inanity
Steel and Lace (1990)
A killer android/cyborg film from the genre’s 1990s heyday with a tasteless concept where a raped woman kills herself and is then resurrected as an avenging cyborg. A bizarre melding of killer cyborg film and I Spit on Your Grave
Steel Dawn (1987)
Patrick Swayze vehicle that uncreditedly relocates the Western Shane into a post-holocaust setting
The Stepford Children (1987)
The second of three sequels to The Stepford Wives. I found the original implausible on any level and this is quadrupled when you get to replacing their children with android duplicates. A film that has been generated without anybody sitting and thinking about the premise on a practical level
The Stepford Wives (1975)
Ira Levin’s original novel wherein the men of a town replace their wives with subservient android duplicates seems to have its satiric point blunted when it comes to the film adaptation
The Stepford Wives (2004)
Frank Oz conducts a remake of The Stepford Wives, which becomes a broad comedy take on the gender wars in the modern world
Stereo (1969)
The very first film from David Cronenberg. An incredibly experimental work even today, which consists of people wandering the halls of a university and the soundtrack of voices discussing psychic powers experiments in a dryly funny parody of an academic paper. Fascinatingly oblique
Stitch! The Movie (2003)
Cheaply made video-released sequel to Lilo & Stitch, which is only a rehash but does surprisingly reunite all the voice talents
The Stolen Airship (1967)
Another of the delightful Steampunk adventures from Karel Zeman that blend animation and live-action in unique ways
Stonados (2013)
Another cheap Syfy Channel disaster movie – this one featuring a tornado that rains boulders that explode upon landing. Everything runs to the usual formula plotting and cheap CGI effects of these types of movies
Stonehenge Apocalypse (2010)
Cheaply made Syfy Channel attempt to copy Roland Emmerich’s 2012 that jumps aboard wacky Erich von Daniken nuttiness but fails to create a worthy End of the World drama due to cut-price effects
Storage 24 (2012)
British effort that proves to be no more than another copy of Alien – set in a warehouse of storage lockers. The film never consists of anything beyond a crashingly ordinary regurgitation of the moves used by an endless number of Alien copies
Storm Planet (1962)
Modestly effective Soviet SF film about an expedition to Venus where the cosmonauts encounter a wild and colourful planet of plants and prehistoric wildlife
Stormbreaker (2006)
Film adaptation of a popular series of Young Adult books about a teenage spy. Made not long after the Austin Powers films, this seems unable to decide if it is being serious or a parody
Story of Ricky (1991)
An outrageous Hong Kong prison film that comes filled with mind-bogglingly over-the-top splatter effects
Stowaway (2021)
In the vein of realistically grounded space movies such as Gravity and The Martian, a solidly effective film concerning the crew of a Mars mission who discover a stowaway aboard
Stranded (1987)
This is essentially E.T. by way of The Desperate Hours where aliens on the run take a family hostage
Stranded (2013)
Roger Christian was art director on Alien but will always be remembered as director of the notorious Battlefield Earth. Here he is stuck making a cheap, tatty and frequently incomprehensible copy of Alien about alien impregnation
Strange Days (1995)
A Kathryn Bigelow directed Cyberpunk film scripted by James Cameron concerning an illicit technology that can replay memories. This offers a powerful vision of a socially divided L.A. on the eve of the millennium
Strange Holiday (1945)
Arch Oboler makes a film in which Claude Rains returns from a holiday to find a Nazi government has overtaken the USA
Strange Invaders (1983)
Appealingly quirky film that pays homage to the alien invaders genre of the 1950s as filtered through post-E.T. sensibilities where the invaders still live in a fifties timwarp
Strange New World (1975)
The third of the films based around Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s Genesis II concept where a cryogenic sleeper awakes in a post-apocalyptic world
Strange World (2022)
Disney’s 61st animated film. A lost world adventure that emerges as Fantastic Voyage by way of Avatar
The Strange World of Planet X (1958)
1950s British science-fiction entry that draws influence from the Quatermass films. While the title(s) leads you to expect an alien invasion entry, it is in actuality more of a British copy of a giant insect film. A routine effort that is eventually done in by utterly impoverished giant insect effects
Stranger from Venus (1954)
A British-made ripoff of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Slow, plodding and talky without the action ever seeming to move beyond the confines of a country pub
The Stranger (1973)
Essentially a tv movie version of the Gerry Anderson film Doppelganger in which an astronaut comes around to find he is on a Counter Earth. The premise, an alternate history of sorts, is nonsensical and even then the film abandons it soon in to become a variant on The Fugitive
The Stranger Within (1974)
TV movie with a script from Richard Matheson in which Barbara Eden becomes mysteriously pregnant. The film seems to be a copy of Rosemary’s Baby before it is suddenly turns into an alien impregnation film
Strangest Dreams: Invasion of the Space Preachers (1990)
A film that has been sold on the basis of its deliberately ridiculous title concept – that of alien invaders attempting to take over the airwaves by posing as televangelists
Street Fighter (1994)
Based on the popular videogame, you cannot complain that this is exactly what you expect – wall-to-wall action, comic-book heroes and villains. The complaint might be that the action is never particularly enervated and the film lacks anything beyond that
The Strongest Man in the World (1975)
The third of Disney Dexter Reilly films in which teen inventor Kurt Russell creates a super-strength cereal