The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Disappointing live-action film from anime director Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame, construed as nothing beyond a live-action videogame with kick-ass girls engaged in serial combat encounters
An hilariously black, deadpan film set in a future as a couple undergo assessment for whether they are fit to be parents. This involves Alicia Vikander moving into the house and play-acting being a child with absolutely chaotic effect
A body snatchers film, shot partially as Found Footage where teens shooting a video make the discovery that people in their town are being replaced
We have had numerous films about asteroids and meteors about to strike the Earth. This is played as a comedy where a man buys his dream home only to find it is ground zero for an oncoming comet strike
Wes Anderson’s quirky individualistic films can be an acquired taste. This is set in a stunningly designed retro 1950s town as various oddball characters intersect in between the appearance of an alien visitor
A cheap 1950s B alien invader film with mobsters holed up at a mountainside cabin who are then visited by Shirley Kilpatrick as a radioactive alien
A film about alien visitors, transcendental states of mind and sinister government agencies. This boggles the mind in terms of laughable writing and all-round bad filmmaking
This animated theatrical remake of the old Astro Boy cartoon series is nicely made, although the film often feels over-simplistic in its scripting and use of cliches
A real Grade Z film. A mind-boggling stew involving John Carradine conducting mad science experiments, technical gaffes aplenty, spy capers featuring Tura Satana and even M.A.S.H.‘s Wayne Rogers on script
Space movies were big following successes like Gravity and The Martian. At complete contrast, this is a genteel laidback film with Richard Dreyfuss as a senior obsessed with boarding a spaceflight
Kate Mara plays an astronaut returned from a space mission strangely changed. Before you can say The Quatermass Xperiment, ‘something’ mysteriously appears to be entering the house at night
The Polish Brothers are a greatly underrated force in US filmmaking. Here they make a fine film with Billy Bob Thornton as an everyday farmer who decides to build and launch his own space rocket
Gravity presaged a big upsurge about scientifically realistic space films. Coming out only a few months before, this concerns a lone astronaut on a space mission to Europa that goes wrong
Charlize Theron becomes paranoid and suspects her space shuttle astronaut husband Johnny Depp of returning possessed by an alien. Essentially an SF version of Rosemary’s Baby
Second in the trilogy of Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations starring Doug McClure. This opens with the fabulous invention of the drilling mole but the arrival at the earth’s core look cheap and tatty
When Guillermo Del Toro made Pacific Rim, The Asylum conducted their own copy simply by switching US seaboards. While not exactly Oscar quality, this is one of The Asylum’s better mockbusters
When Guillermo Del Toro made Pacific Rim, The Asylum switched US seaboards to make Atlantic Rim. With the release of the Pacific Rim sequel, The Asylum followed in kind
Another shabby Disney video-released sequel, in this case to Atlantis the Lost Empire. The result looks like three episodes of an unsold tv series slapped together to sell as a film
George Pal was one of the top genre producers of the 1950s. Here he aims to emulate the Cinemascope Biblical spectaculars of the day albeit with an SF spin but this ends up one of his lesser works
One of the less successful films of the Disney renaissance of the 90s/00s. Disney has never done well with animated SF. That aside, this a very nicely animated Steampunk adventure
The idea of Jennifer Lopez in a transformer suit kicking robot ass has an outlandishness to it. The surprise is that this is a really good, well written SF film of planetary survival
The second film from Ayn Rand’s libertarian fantasy. This gets more into the meat of Rand’s ideas (wherein the wealthy decide to ignore an undeserving world) and is even more ridiculous than the first film
The third of the trilogy of films adapted from Ayn Rand’s absurd fantasy wherein the leaders of the business world decide to go on strike because they don’t feel appreciated enough
The first in a three part film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel that makes a heavy-handed and frequently tub-thumping argument for the virtues of selfishness and despisal of any rules of fairness
This fifteen chapter serial was the second ever Superman film. It is a vigorously entertaining run through the comic’s basics and features the first screen appearance of Lex Luthor
Perhaps the strangest film Mickey Rooney ever made, a comedy in which he is a prospector caught in an atomic explosion and afterwards gains the ability to cause things to explode
The US release of several short Japanese films featuring the superhero Starman. Cheap and entertainingly absurd, filled with tatty superheroics and laughable science
A low-budget but surprisingly reasonable mix of submarine drama and 1950s alien invader film with a submarine crew tracking a flying saucer
While the title suggests some lost 1950s atomic monster film, this is a rather dull film that concerns mysterious happenings at a near future nuclear waste reprocessing plant
Ishiro Honda, the director of Godzilla, makes a colourful dventure film about a super-submarine battling an undersea empire in the vein of other works of the era like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Adaptation of the classic J.G. Ballard novel that deals with the surreal blurring and breakdown between media, architecture, celebrity and the protagonist’s disturbed state of mind
B budget director Jim Wynorski makes another of his bimbo films, a parody of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman where a cam girl is turned giant size after eating GMO food
1950s bad movie classic with Allison Hayes as a wife made into a giant by a passing UFO who rampages through town after her philandering husband. Painfully bad effects make for show that frequently slides into the laughable
The first time we have had a remake of a bad movie – in this case the 1958 film. The title role is cast with Darryl Hannah and the shabby effects gets a much more polished work over
Fred Olen Ray offers his take on Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Where the original was a feminist parable, Olen Ray has a giant woman whose only motivation is wanting a bigger set of breasts
One of the essential items in the cult of B-movie director Roger Corman. A cheerfully absurd atomic monster movie that is played by Corman and cast with more seriousness than it deserves
A typical 1950s B monster movie. The first half creates an entertainingly torrid drama in the bayous, although when they eventually turn up the giant leeches never get to do much
Yes, a film about an invasion by space chickens, which are represented by hand puppets. Words fail me on this one. This is painful to watch. My Worst Film of 2023.
One of the original genre parodies, a very silly and amateurish film that also manages to be occasionally quite funny. Three sequels and an animated tv series followed
The fifth of the Gamera films, Japanese monster movies that are made for children. This abandons the relative realism of the earlier films for a colourful silliness with frequently lunatic results
The title is misleading as the film doesn’t feature any robots but a group of mind-controlled assassins. An entry in the mid-1960s spy film fad from cult exploitation director Jess Franco
Not to be confused with the Japanese manga/anime of the same name, this is a space opera from The Asylum, which boasts some very good effects on a budget
A refreshingly original film that transplants an alien invasion story to a modern British housing estate where a group of young hoodlums become the first line of defence against the invaders
Baffling and incomprehensible Japanese SF film about a catastrophe that is causing people to turn to stone
A low-budget cute alien film made in the aftermath of post-E.T., this purports to be based on the true story of a UFO and alien visitor who landed in 19th Century Texas
Third of the Austin Powers films and the point where the amusements of the other films topples over into a pandering indulgence to Mike Myers’ mugging, which is allowed to overtake the whole show
The first of Mike Myers’ Austin Powers films is at times extremely silly and scatological but does offer a knowing and witty parody of the James Bond films. The result became a cult phenomenon
The second of the Austin Powers films is less sharp in its parody more focused on scatological gags. Mike Myers owns the show in a trio of entertainingly gregarious performances
This Blade Runner-influenced work about robots that develop artificial intelligence is exceptional, featuring a particularly captivating last half with Antonio Banderas journeying with strangely alive robots
Olivier Gruner plays an android who goes rogue after accidentally killing his boss. A dull action film with no greater ambition than to be an SF version of Die Hard
Another among the recent spate of Artificial Intelligence film, the story of a secretary who befriends a robot. This is an A.I. film on a B-budget that you feel should have been made as a comedy
Visually stunning live-action film from Mamoru Oshii, director of Ghost in the Shell, set in the beautifully stylised faded sepia tone world of a Virtual Reality game
James Cameron’s film was a smash phenomenon. Cameron has relocated the plot of Dances With Wolves on another planet and uses motion capture to create one of the most dazzlingly realised alien worlds on film
James Cameron makes a third venture into the world of Pandora. The question is whether he finds any new territory to explore. What you cannot deny is that he creates a pretty and absorbing picture out of it all
James Cameron finally delivers his sequel to Avatar. Nothing could quite repeat the same phenomenon a second time but this does well with Cameron taking the opportunity to show more depth to his alien world
The Avengers was the height of 1960s chic. Amid the 90s/00s fad for big screen remakes of tv shows, this was a miscalculated disaster that gets everything about the original wrong from the casting to the droll humour
The culmination of one of the most ambitious cinematic exercises ever conducted, with Marvel weaving storylines through several films to finally merge here with flawless regard. The characters get far more depth than in all of their previous films
The first Avengers film came with a massive anticipation in seeing the characters come together and the snappiness of their interplay; here this seems more flat, while the rest is overrun by wall-to-wall action
Marvel conclude the cliffhanger they left Avengers: Infinity War on and offer up a bigger-than-big line-up, overspilling with just about every MCU character to ever appear on screen up to that point
Marvel’s third Avengers film, uniting almost every superhero under their roof, resulting in some thirty characters on screen and a plot that becomes a blur of changing locations and superheroic punch-ups
Japanese film that true to its title offers pits ninja against alien creatures. The film plants tongue considerably in cheek as it offers up a series of wildly fantastique action scenes and creature effects
Beginning as fan mill speculation, 20th Century Fox finally brought their Alien and Predator franchises together on the screen here. The result is an okay effort in the hands of Paul W.S. Anderson, even if it never has the grueling intensity of the early entries in either series
Second of the Alien/Predator crossovers and the absolute nadir of either series. Gone is the suspense of either series’ earlier entries and the creatures are now no more than standard monsters in a teen horror film
Fine and underrated film in which a family find themselves imprisoned in their home and then start receiving instructions through the tv pushing them to further and further extremes
A unique and effective catastrophe film in which the whole world suddenly loses the ability to sleep, this follows a mother and her children as they travel through the chaos
Lightweight action in which a young carjacker gains possession of a teleportation device and is pursued by government agents
Documentary about controversial philosopher/SF writer Ayn Rand. Her life is treated in exhaustive detail but the documentary-makers seem too enamoured of their subject matter to find any critical distance
Film set around the premise that babies are secretly geniuses and talk in their own language. This makes a beeline for pee and poop jokes and seems to think we should applaud it for the cutsieness of seeing babies doing adult things
Disney family film about an expedition to Africa to find a dinosaur. This was made before Jurassic Park and so the effects are physical and variable but the film has an undeniable tenderness
This was critically dismissed – even its director spoke out against it – nevertheless it proves a flawed but not entirely uninteresting French Cyberpunk film as mercenary Vin Diesel is hired to protect miracle girl Melane Thierry
Fan-produced documentary about the making of the Back to the Future trilogy. The filmmakers get face time with almost everybody involved. Far less interesting are the scenes dealing with DeLorean restoration
This was a huge hit at the time and has become one of the most indisputable pop culture artifacts of its era. The film takes a clever time travel plot and infuses it with an effortless energy to prove a considerable winner
The first of the Back to the Future sequels has a whiplash ingenuity that propels us through several different scenarios, including a trip to the future, a dark alternate present and requiring Michael J. Fox to duck unseen in and around the margins of the first film
Third of the Back to the Future films, which takes everything back in time to the Old West. Probably the slightest of the trilogy, this nevertheless goes out with a rousing farewell
A fascinating word-of-mouth hit based on a YouTube series about the exploration of a labyrinth of extra-dimensional office rooms built on an eerily alien design scheme
Ana Lily Amirpour caught attention with A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. She makes her second film here, set in a desert prison of cannibals and scavengers, sort of Escape from New York by way of The Burning Man Festival
Another film from Charles Band’s Full Moon Productions, this is made with a deliberate chessiness as aliens take over a radio station shrinking girls down into bottles
An action film that sets Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu up as rival assassins. Despite a reasonable budget thrown at it, the film comes strangely without enervation
Four girls come around imprisoned in a mysterious facility with amnesia to find they are being subject to mysterious experiments. Not to be confused with the DC Comics super-villain
A genre-melding oddity that starts as an earnest recreation of a 1950s rock‘n’roll movie, before introducing a series of bizarre mutations and some fascinating mid-film twists
Smart and intelligent Australian thriller about the invention of a stockmarket prediction formula. This digs its teeth into the banking industry with considerable bite
Luc Besson written/produced film that is a French rehash of Escape from New York but director Pierre Morel gives it a series of exhilarating action and parkour sequences
Sequel to the French action hit. The plot shuffles the same basic elements around but it is the action we have come for, which is slow to start but soon kicks into exhilarating high gear
Spain’s Alex de la Iglesia has become a specialist in comedies with a dark bite. This centres around a crosscut of characters trapped inside a bar during the outbreak of a deadly infection
Enjoyably silly comic-book adaptation with a pneumatically-inflated Pamela Anderson playing the titular bounty hunter in an anarchic future. You cannot complain that this is a film that delivers exactly what it promises
Charmingly capricious and silly adaptation of the comic-strip with a wide-eyed Jane Fonda as the spacegoing heroine. Filled with some wonderfully naughty gags and a production and costume design scheme that goes to a gorgeously deranged excess
Batman’s first screen appearance in a fifteen-chapter serial. This is a dull, impoverished adaptation, which sees Batman and Robin rewritten in the service of the US government fighting a Japanese invasion force
Animated film featuring a team-up between the sons of Batman and Superman, which ends up being far more fun than you expect
Film spinoff of Batman Beyond, an animated tv series set in the future as a youngster inherits a hi-tech Batsuit from an aging Bruce Wayne. The film resurrects The Joker but fails to do anything interesting with the character
A sequel to Batman Ninja, which offered an anime treatment of Batman. This gives us a bizarre alternate Yakuza-ruled Japan with versions of the Justice League working for them
Film crossover between the 1990s Batman and Superman animated tv series from Bruce Timm. The script does an interesting job in playing the characters, their secret identities and principal villains off against each other
It took DC Comics the better part of a decade to catch up with the massive success Marvel Comics are having on screen in crossing their characters over. Zack Snyder comes to the party offering up THE biggest headline double-bill in superherodom
A rather adorable Steven Spielberg produced film about a group of cute baby UFOs that come to the rescue of a tenement house of about-to-be-evicted tenants
A British film that jumps into a full flight Reds Under the Bed hysteria concerning the discovery of Communist Chinese saboteurs building a vast network of tunnels beneath the USA
Roger Corman jumps aboard the Star Wars fad and offers up a version of The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven located in space. Corman has thrown a reasonable budget at the film for once and it emerges as colourfully enjoyable
One of Francis Ford Coppola’s earliest films. Roger Corman has obtained rights to a Russian-made space expedition film and handed it over to Coppola who added a few extra scenes to repackage for US audiences
Taking inspiration from Battle Los Angeles, this is another shakycam-shot war film but with the intriguing idea of being focused around human soldiers trapped behind alien enemy lines
The Asylum’s mockbuster take on Avatar: The Way of Water, which ingeniously exploits the fact that Saturn has a moon called Pandora. The rest is a low-budget body snatchers film
Animated film that has a remarkable number of similarities to Avatar – even though it was released before. A simplistic variant of the same human colonists vs alien natives plot conducted with corner-cut CGI animation
The fifth and final of the original Planet of the Apes films. After four well worthwhile entries up to this point, a tired air infects this production as it assembles the elements in a haphazard clutter