The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
One of the 2-3 most influential SF films since 1980. James Cameron creates a barrelling powerhouse of a film, all lorded over by Arnold Schwarzenegger as the relentless killer machine in the role that defined his career
The first sequel to The Terminator where James Cameron returns with the biggest budget for a film at the time. Cameron harnesses then top-drawer CGI technology to create one of the most original nemeses in any SF film
After the highs of James Cameron’s first two Terminator films, this was a crashing disappointment. Schwarzenegger is back but his performance has become self-parody and the uninspired action sequences are accompanied by some terrible effects
The sixth Terminator film that boasts the return of both James Cameron and Linda Hamilton to the franchise. After the troughs of Terminator: Genisys, this makes one forget about the last three sequels
A hodgepodge of competing elements – an aging Arnold Schwarzenegger, a soft reboot, alternate timelines, reintroduction of the familiar, twists to the familiar – that make no sense on a narrative level, least of all come anywhere near what James Cameron delivered back in the first two films
The fourth Terminator film is slightly better than you would expect of something directed by the empty-headed McG. There are some undeniably spectacular action sequences, although the film still stands too much in the shadow of what has gone before
Very strange French SF film about a futuristic truck race
Australian SF film about a man’s discovery of an alien artifact that helps regenerate body parts and gives him prophetic dream warnings of a coming nuclear war. An odd little film more than it is necessarily one that keeps you interested or dramatically engaged
Takashi Miike delivers a completely madcap film about evolved cockroaches on Mars being fought by astronauts who take doses of mutagenic serum to give them insect-based super-powers
A very nicely animated French Steampunk film about an expedition aboard a steam airship to explore the secret entrance to an underground world in the Antarctic. A computer animated film all made by one person.
Japanese movie made for international sales where a scientist has built a race of amphibian cyborgs to take over the world
1950s B movie about time travel experiments that produce a deadly woman from the future. Nothing standout but Salome Jens has an otherworldly presence as the woman
Possibly the dreariest alien invader film ever made. A US film shot in Sweden about an expedition to find a crashed meteorite. An alien monster that looks like a giant shaggy Yeti turns up in the last few minutes.
The fifteenth Godzilla film, the last of the classic series, featuring a return of Mechagodzilla from the previous film. Original director Ishiro Honda returns to the series and reclaims it from the juvenile focus it had taken over the last few films to make the best entry of the 1970s
Roger Corman produces a blatant copy of Alien with a group of people being pursued around a desert laboratory by a rubbery mutant creature
SF effort from the UK’s Amicus Films with an ambitious plot about communication from the stars that manages to prefigure films like Contact and 2001. On the other hand, the film fails is in its pitiful and utterly inadequate special effects
One of the films from Charles Band’s Empire productions about a family facing an alien manifested out of their tv set
Soviet era science-fiction adapted from a work by Stanislaw Lem, the original author of Solaris. This heads into rather fascinating Philip K. Dick territory, becoming a whodunnit as the title hero tries to work out who aboard a space mission is an android saboteur
Charles Band film directed by David DeCoteau, a lame softcore comedy where two guys travel back from a future where sex is outlawed and end up in a girl’s boarding school
Part of a cluster of strong strong and powerful depiction of the outbreak of nuclear war that came out in the mid-1980s. This avoids melodrama by staying focused on a family’s attempts to cope
Shinya Tsukamoto makes a better budgeted sequel to his breakthrough hit. The first film was a masterpiece of guerilla filmmaking but the same frenzied fetishism is missing here
Shinya Tsukamoto’s third Tetsuo film is a disappointingly commercial concession that waters down all of the surrealism and wild sexual fetishism that made the first film so amazing
Extraordinary directorial debut from Japan’s Shinya Tsukamoto, a frenetic, fetishistic and surreally deranged vision of man-machine fusion that feels like David Lynch having gone away and done a crash reading course of William Gibson
Okay borrowing from the set-up of The Thing about an outbreak of flesh-eating prehistoric insects at an Arctic research station
Them! and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms created the 1950s atomic monster movie. Them’s particular spin was to create the giant bug film. Unlike the B movies that followed, it is played with realism and sober conviction
Anarchic French film entirely without dialogue as a group of people in an apartment begin to revert to pre-civilised behaviour
Disastrous flop that tries to do a Lethal Weapon buddy cop film by way of Jurassic Park and gives us a film about a cop with a dinosaur partner!
Excellent Australian End of the World film. Think On the Beach by way of Last Night. The visions of social collapse are astonishingly raw, while the centre of the film is the emotional journey between a man and a child
Behind the strange title, this is an Italian-made superhero film. In contrast to the various Marvel and DC adaptations overrunning screens, this is a kitchen sink superhero film that comes with a refreshing lack of capes, super-villains and effects – if anything, it plays more as an Italian crime film
A wonderfully paranoid film where drug dealer John Boyega discovers illicit mind control experiments are being conducted on a ghetto neighbourhood and that he is one in a series of clones
John Carpenter makes an alien invasion film that works as a biting satire of Reaganomics in which aliens are manipulating reality to increase their profit shares in Earth
One of the all-time classic bad movie titles, this is cheap and dreary on almost every level, although does offer mild amusement when it comes to the provision of the title concept near the end
John Carpenter at the peak of his career, remaking The Thing from Another World as a wild and phantasmagoric film steeped in paranoia that proved to be the absolute epitome of the era’s fad for air-bladder transformation effects
Though pitched as a prequel, this is essentially a remake of John Carpenter’s classic. Alas, this only finds the same phantasmagoric outlandishness as Carpenter did in a couple of scenes that may be moderately impressive for those who have never seen the original
The very first alien invader film of the 1950s. Maybe or maybe not directed by Howard Hawks, this has a dramatic urgency and tight tension that makes it stand head and shoulders above most of the films that came after
From a script by H.G. Wells, this comes with a visionary sweep that depicts the building of a scientific utopia but equally suffers from dull and heavy-handed polemical dialogue
A fascinatingly enigmatic time paradox film about a brother and sister on the run who takes refuge at a house that exists out of time
Another variant on the Young Adult dystopia a la The Hunger Games and Divergent films, concerning a future where that who fail standardised school tests are executed to keep the population down. The blandness of approach utterly feels to grapple with the ideas at play
Rather dull plague outbreak drama tv movie based around a deadly outbreak at a water filtration plant
A Roland Emmerich produced Virtual Reality film that toys with some ideas that almost make it a great SF film before cliches and a bad twist ending take over
Michael Crichton was hot as a result of Jurassic Park. Although mostly seen as an historical spectacle, this is an adaptation of his novel that attempts to retell the legend of Beowulf with Vikings against Neanderthals
The Asylum conduct their cheap version of the Jules Verne novel, so cheap it doesn’t even look like they went to sea or underwater to film. Here the oft-filmed Verne story has been modernised
The one and only solo outing from Lou Costello of Abbott and Costello fame made after the duo’s split-up and just before Lou’s death. The film is essentially a comedy remake of the previous year’s Attack of the 50 Foot Woman in which Lou’s newlywed wife abruptly becomes a giant
Beautifully colourful 1950s SF film about scientists who are abducted to take part in a war between two alien species
A film that offers the depiction of a totalitarian future USA where Donald Trump has refused to leave office. This was made at the end of Trump’s first term and before his second term return to power.
Belgian film shot in the first person about an extreme agoraphobic who seeks to cultivate relationships with other people online
The fourth of Marvel’s Thor films, where director Taika Waititi gets the balance of humour down much more successfully than he did in the previous film
This comes with the undeniable influence of the then recent Minority Report in its story about a telepath recruited by law enforcement
UK tv movie that sets out to offer an unflinching depiction of a nuclear strike. About as bleak as it is possible to get
Spacegoing film that follows the crew aboard a space station as they survive the destruction of the Earth
The Three Stooges join a number of other comics of this era in taking on the space race. Well they only briefly venture into orbit and mostly this can be described more as a slapstick haunted house comedy with alien invaders
The Three Stooges travel through time to take on the Italian muscleman film in a never particularly funny comedy
Female-led spy/action film that serves everything up in an enjoyably kinetic mix with likeable characters. Not wheel reinventing but more enjoyable than most Hollywood product
A case of science prediction where Donald Sutherland and Jeff Goldblum create the world’s first artificial heart
A throwaway direct-to-dvd release about time travellers come back to view famous disasters that rises above low expectations to develop an occasionally interesting plot
Melissa McCarthy, along with Octavia Spencer as her best friend, is a comic screw-up who obtain superpowers
The fourth James Bond film and crippled by the misfortune of coming just after Goldfinger, which defined the formula and became the peak of the series. By contrast, this is stuck with having to make everything bigger and more spectacular
The second of the films spun off from the Gerry Anderson puppet tv series and a much better dramatically sustained film than its predecessor
This live-action film version of the cult Gerry Anderson puppet series is a disaster. Great effort is made to replicate the look of the original but the film is killed by the choice to rewrite everything as a modern formula kid’s movie
The first of the films spun off from Gerry Anderson’s cult puppet tv series. Not a completely successful transition but it is, as always with an Anderson production, worth watching for what the Andersons do best – making amazing models and blowing them up
This offering from the MCU was one of the lowest grossing, but it a good deal more likeable than many other recent entries, emerging as a sort of earthbound Guardians of the Galaxy Lite
Likeable film about a kid with incredibly powerful farts who uses his ability to launch a rocket. It’s mind-boggling to think such a premise was ever given funding nd a greenlight
George Lucas’s first film and always a puzzle to those who come to it after the Star Wars series where its antiseptic, dehumanised aesthetic and dystopian future seems almost the polar opposite of the Star Wars universe
This is an Australian film where two crystal meth addicts find a drug that transports them through time. While keeping itself contained to a single location, this emerges out into a cleverly constructed time paradox
A clever and ingenious film from Nicholas Meyer in which H.G. Wells builds his own time machine and pursues Jack the Ripper through time to present-day San Francisco. Lots of witty play around Wells’s cultural bewilderment and some great performances
This has an interesting premise where a middle-aged man suddenly faces his teenage girlfriend returned unaged from a relativistic space voyage
This holds the novelty of being a Christian time travel film but plummets into bad movie stakes when it has a 19th Century professor travel into the present to become appalled at seeing couples kiss on tv and lingerie in store … A great idea for a comedy but then you realise the film is serious
Time travel film in which Asa Butterfield invents a time machine to go back and stop Sophie Turner breaking up with him. On the lightweight side but eventually not unworthwhile
An Australian entry in the 1980s time travel film fad featuring Carrie Fisher engaged in a war across time in a time-travelling city
Action film in which an agent tries to prevent a nuclear arms deal after being given a memory-erasing drug
A perfect example of a film carried by the ingenuity of its concept – a camera that takes photos 24 hours into the future – told with a superb tightness of economy – two sets and mostly three actors (largely unknowns) – and some wonderfully contorted twists
This adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel was one of the best films from 1950s SF producer/director George Pal. The time travel is depicted with considerable wondrousness and standout effects for the era
Largely forgotten adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel made for tv. While other versions place the story in Victorian England, this has been Americanised – where the time traveller is a weapons designer and journeys back to the Wild West. What kills the film is a painful cheapness
Remake of the classic H.G. Wells novel that comes with the novelty of being directed by Wells’s great-grandson. More disappointingly it prefers to merely remake the 1960 film rather than return to the book
Rene Laloux, the animator who made Fantastic Planet, collaborates with cult fantasy artist Moebius and the result is a planetary adventure filled with trippily exotic backgrounds and creatures
Fascinating anime about a cafe for androids. Imagine a cross between an Isaac Asimov Robot story and Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes. The film opens up in a series of episodes that tell stories of human-robot relations that hold a lovely tenderness
Michael Haneke has risen to great acclaim in recent years; this is one of his earlier works – a slow Tarkovsky-esque work that seems set in a future that is collapsing at the edges. Haneke is a fascinating talent but this is a bit too vague and well free of anything actually happening for me
Highly entertaining Japanese film about modern soldiers thrown back to feudal Japan and deciding to overthrow the shogunate
Children’s film with the promising idea of kids finding a bunch of toys from the future that grant them amazing abilities unaware they have world-destroying potential.; The idea is alas watered down to the blandness of family formula and the limited conceptual horizons of a low budget
Modest B-budget SF film with scientists opening a time portal and becoming caught up in a future war between humanity and mutants
Unsold tv pilot that was a collaboration between Irwin Allen and Rod Serling where time travelers visit the Great Fire of Chicago
Film adaptation of the best-selling story about a romance between a woman and a man with the ability to travel through time. Nicely made if not quite holding the emotional involvement the book did
A live-action film based on a popular Japanese young adult novel that has been filmed multiple times before. This is a rather dull film that fails to do anything terribly interesting with its time travel premise
Unimaginative time travel/action film that plays out like
I had heard about this for years – it had a reputation as ‘the mummy from outer space film’. Seen, it proves disappointingly routine – all the tomb raiding is over after the first scene and the rest is little more than a slasher movie with the mummy akin to a hockey-masked maniac wandering a campus killing co-eds
Action film from Avi Nesher that comes with a solid and satisfying punch. Michael Biehn is a mild-mannered clockmaker who suddenly discovers he is a brainwashed assassin
Film featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme as a temporal police officer. While you expect another time travel action film, this has quite a deal more sophistication in the scripting department than you expect
Sequel to Timecop with more of an action emphasis as Jason Scott Lee replacing Jean-Claude Van Damme trying to stop a criminal who is erasing agents from the timeline.
The debut film from Nacho Vigalondo, a time travel (or more correctly time paradox) film that holds a real delight in its conceptual dexterity with which Vigalondo keeps winding the story around on itself
A time travel film produced by Christopher Landon that has a number of similarities to Totally Killer in which a girl travels back in time to 2003 to prevent her sister being murdered by a serial killer
Michael Crichton adaptation that flopped at the box-office. Crichton tells a story about time travel to the Mediaeval period where he spends a good deal of time researching the era. The film ditches all of this to make no more than an historical film with an SF gimmick
Rather slight film with the amusing concept of a present-day motorcyclist thrown back in time to the Old West
A directorial debut for screenwriter David Twohy who went on to Pitch Black, among other works. Jeff Daniels plays an ordinary man who realises that guests at his hotel are travelers from the future come to witness a disaster. A strong and intelligent maturation of time travel themes
A British quota quickie with a fascinating central idea of a scientist who has slipped several seconds out of phase in time and can answer questions before they are asked
Earnest, sincere film where deaf Timothy Bottoms receives an operation that allows him to hear again, as well as builds an A.I.
Nick Willing conducts the first of his SF revampings of popular tales. Here The Wizard of Oz is reworked into a Steampunk fantasy with some startling reinterpetations of the familiar characters
Animated adaptation of the Tintin character that gets the look and details of the characters just right but is ruined by bad dubbing of some of the voice parts and allowing a slapstick element to take over
Conceptually highly ambitious SF film about humans being biologically modified in order to be able to live on Saturn’s moon Titan. After a highly promising beginning, the film falls apart in a badly cliched unethical scientist and lab experiment amok ending
Very nicely made space opera from animator Don Bluth, operating from a Joss Whedon script, that unfortunately proved a big box-office flop
Animated revival of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which brings them back to the screen with a satisfyingly gritty edge and a series of kinetic action sequences