The Sandlot: Heading Home (2007)
The third in a popular series of films about a Little League baseball team, this involves a time travel element
The Sandman (2011)
Oddly eccentric Swiss comedy about a man who starts to uncontrollably shed sand. Undeniably reminiscent of the superior The Science of Sleep but not without its quirky amusements
The Santa Clause (1994)
Popular film with Tim Allen as a regular family man who is forced to become Santa. Several sequels followed.
The Santa Clause 2 (2002)
The first of two sequels to The Santa Clause with Tim Allen as Santa Claus, this benefits from a bigger budget
The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006)
Third of the Santa Clause films starring Tim Allen as Santa where his reality is upended by the evil Jack Frost
The Saragossa Manuscript (1965)
Cult Polish film that is a series of tall tales nested within a labyrinth of other tales and digressions
The Satan Bug (1965)
One of the first films about biowarfare, a tightly effective techno-thriller from John Sturges
The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)
The eight of Hammer’s Dracula, the second-to-last they would make and the last featuring Christopher Lee. This follows on from the previous film Dracula A.D. 1972 in featuring Dracula in the present day and at least does more with the idea than that film did
The Savage Bees (1976)
There has very rarely been a good killer bee movie. This is one exception, a directorial effort from no less than the creator of Mission: Impossible that gains its effectiveness by using real rather than optical bees
The Scarecrow (1982)
Fine Coming of Age story set in 1950s New Zealand with John Carradine as a sinister stranger come to town
The Scenesters (2009)
A side-splittingly funny spoof of Found Footage films as a crime scene video crew uncover evidence of a serial killer and decide to make a documentary about it
The Science of Sleep (2006)
A Michel Gondry film that blurs the line between dream and reality with hilariously offbeat regard. Gondry indulges his eccentricities to the maximum with quite sublime results
The Scorch Trials (2015)
The Maze Runner was one of the better Young Adult films, creating an intriguing conceptual mystery; this sequel ignores all of that, even throws the book out and is essentially a jumble of random sf tropes that amount to no more than running, shooting and things exploding
The Scorpion King (2002)
Back when Dwayne Johnson was a wrestler billing himself as The Rock, this was a forgettable sword and sorcery effort spun off from his appearance in The Mummy Returns. This led to a surprising number of sequels
The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (2012)
The best of an otherwise lightweight, throwaway series. Roel Reiné directs some good action scenes, even if the hackneyed plotting never lets the show rise to anything more than average
The Scorpion King 4: Quest for Power (2015)
Fourth entry in the eminently forgettable sword-and-sorcery series, this heads down into bad movie stakes by writing a series of grating quips over everything, while the action scenes exist in the realm of unbelievability that show that nobody is treating anything with the slightest seriousness
The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior (2008)
Prequel to The Scorpion King. Unfortunately director Russell Mulcahy allows his broad hand with comedy free reign and the plot is overrun by glib character banter and constant flip modern one-liners
The Search for Bridey Murphy (1956)
Dramatic recount of a true-life sensation during the 1950s when an amateur hypnotist claimed that he had regressed a housewife to recall her past life in 19th Century Ireland. The film has an earnestly prostheletysing belief in its own case but sceptical examination pulls holes in its credibility
The Seasoning House (2012)
This starts out as a socially conscious drama about East European sex slavery. As directed by a makeup effects artist, the film seems to tepidly avoid the raw and brutal impact the material holds, before finally revealing its true nature as an imprisonment and revenge horror
The Second Arrival (1998)
Low-budget and fairly indifferently made sequel to David Twohy’s quite good alien invasion film
The Second Best Science Fiction Film Ever Made (2009)
Amateur production that seems like a version of the X-Men crossbred with The Amazing Race. Not very good on most counts
The Second Jungle Book: Mowgli & Baloo (1997)
Lesser budgeted sequel to the 1994 remake of The Jungle Book, which actually comes closer in tone to the original Rudyard Kipling stories
The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993)
Bizarre stop-motion animated version of the farytale that resembles Gumby that takes place in a surreal Eraserhed-like world
The Secret Kingdom (1997)
This is an appealingly strange Charles Band produced children’s film about a kid who discovers a miniature magical kingdom that is located under the kitchen sink
The Secret Life of Pets (2016)
I really enjoyed Illumination Entertainment’s debut film Despicable Me but thereafter they just seemed to slip into formula and following what every other animation studio is. Despite low initial enthusiasm, they regain their form here, doing nothing radically out of the ordinary but producing a modestly engaging work
The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)
Illumination’s The Secret Life of Pets came with a winning concept – a Garfield like series of wry observations on humanity by pets – and this is one amongst the current plague of animated sequels that emerges equally likably
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)
A light whimsical short story about a daydreamer is turned into a bloated and ponderous vehicle for the musical and comedy set-pieces of the perpetually wet-eared Danny Kaye
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
Ben Stiller’s remake of the unfunny Danny Kaye vehicle about an impractical daydreamer has no more depth than an inspirational postcard and takes a long time to deliver it
The Secret of Crickley Hall (2012)
Ghost story BBC mini-series adapted from a novel by horror writer James Herbert that unfolds between two different eras. With an amazing cast of Before They Were Famous names.
The Secret of Dr Orloff (1964)
Prolific exploitation director Jesus Franco creates a sequel to his first horror film about a mad scientist creating a mind-controlled man that he sends to go out and kill strippers
The Secret of Kells (2009)
Beautifully made animated film that won surprise recognition at the Academy Awards. More a festival film than necessarily a box-office one
The Secret of Moonacre (2008)
Beautifully filmed Victorian-set fantasy in which orphan Dakota Blue Richards moves to her uncle’s estate and discovers the magical secrets it holds
The Secret of N.I.M.H. (1982)
The first film from Don Bluth, a Disney animator who formed his own company vowing a return to the studio’s classic tradition. The results are beautiful and quite magical
The Secret of Roan Inish (1994)
John Sayles became one of the foremost independent American filmmakers. In a change of pace here, he makes a film about rural Irish culture and legends
The Secret of the Loch (1934)
The very first film appearance of the Loch Ness Monster. A hardly auspicious debut, this came before there was such a thing as the monster movie and is played mostly as a comedy. We do eventually get an appearance of the Loch Ness Monster right at the very end
The Secret Village (2013)
A low-budget film about a journalist’s modern-day investigation into a secret village located near Salem, Massachusetts that results in paranoia and suspicious treatment by the locals
The Secretary (1995)
One of a series of Fatal Attraction copycats, a psycho-thriller where Mel Harris has her life torn apart by psycho secretary Sheila Kelley
The Sect (1991)
A film written/produced by Dario Argento, an occult giallo in the vein of his Three Mothers films in which a teacher is surrounded by a series of occult happenings and deaths
The Sector (2016)
Variant on the alternate world hopping theme where a bounty hunter finds the person he is pursuing is an alternate world criminal. The film’s budget is way too low to do any justice to either the theme or the setting after the collapse of civilisation
The Seduction (1982)
Ultra-trashy thriller with Morgan Fairchild as a tv newsreader stalked by next-door neighbour Andrew Stevens where she engages in the title seduction to eliminate him. A really bad film
The Seeker: The Dark is Rising (2007)
Adaptation of Susan Cooper’s popular fantasy series handled by people who have no interest in the material and badly rewrite/mangle it in order try to turn it into a Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings knockoff
The Sender (1982)
Excellent and overlooked film with Kathryn Harrold as a psychiatrist trying to deal with the fact that one of the patients in an asylum has vast psychic powers
The Sender (1997)
Action film with Michael Madsen and a mystery alien woman fighting a government coverup of UFOs to retrieve his abducted daughter
The Sentinel (1977)
Michael Winner directs a film about a sinister apartment building but his typical crude and heavy-handed style fails to conjure anything remotely scary
The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)
One of Wes Craven’s best films. Loosely based on true-life book by botanist Wade Davis who set out to find the drug that creates zombies, Craven delves into Haitian voodoo in a striking blend of dream and horror
The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (1985)
Cannon Films produced remake of The Seven Samurai as an Italian gladiator film starring Lou Ferrigno
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Ingmar Bergman’s classic work where Max Von Sydow plays a game of chess with Death. A film that seems to carry the philosophical weight of the modern world on its shoulders
The Seventh Sign (1988)
A much more elevated version of an Omen-styled Biblical End Times film with Demi Moore worried if her child can save the world
The Seventh Victim (1943)
One of the classic films from producer Val Lewton concerning a secret society of Satanists. An oppressive atmosphere of gloom and morbidity hangs over the film and, as always with Lewton, it comes with striking directorial effects that play on the imagination
The Severed Arm (1973)
A classic attention-grabbing title from the heyday of the exploitation film … After receiving a severed arm in the mail, a group of friends realise that a former friend has come seeking revenge for when they were trapped down a mine and agreed to cut off his arm because they had nothing to eat
The Shack (2017)
This comes with a fantastic conceptual hook “Man is invited to a meeting with God at a hut in the woods”. Alas, what we get is no more than a work of faith-based cinema that drowns in its feelgood Christianity Lite sentiments and appeal to Middle American wholesomeness
The Shadow (1940)
A serial adaptation of the popular radio superhero, which gets the look of the character perfect but drops all his mystical powers
The Shadow (1994)
Beautifully produced film version of the old radio superhero where director Russell Mulcahy does a wonderful job with the period design and adventure
The Shadow of Mary Poppins (2002)
Documentary about Mary Poppins creator P.L. Travers that delves into the questions of her secretive past and often fictionalised biography, while also covering the making of the Disney film
The Shadow of the Cat (1961)
A film from the early days of the Anglo-Horror cycle about the greedy relatives seeking a will being killed by a possibly supernatural cat
The Shaft (2001)
The English-language remake of the Dutch film The Lift about a killer elevator. Starring a then unknown Naomi Watts in a role that would probably embarrass her now
The Shaggy Dog (1959)
The first of Disney’s live-action comedies, a comic variant on the werewolf story with Tommy Kirk turning into a dog. Mildly amusing but later efforts would do this type of comedy better
The Shaggy Dog (2006)
The remake of the old Disney comedy becomes a vehicle for Tim Allen, played with a manic slapstickery wherein Allen demonstrates there are few levels of silliness he will travel to in imitating dog-like behaviours
The Shallows (2016)
A killer shark that is less Jaws and more a survival film in the vein of 127 Hours. A well worthwhile effort that uses every cinematic trick in its arsenal to provide a nail-bitingly intense adrenaline workout
The Shape of Things to Come (1979)
Shoddy low-budget Canadian-made attempt to jump aboard the Star Wars fad, this promotes itself as a bogus sequel to the H.G. Wells classic
The Shape of Water (2017)
Guillermo Del Toro makes monster movies with sympathy for the monster. This is his take onThe Creature from the Black Lagoon where the romance between creature and heroine is brought out to centre stage
The She-Creature (1956)
A strange mix of 1950s hypnotic regression fad and AIP B monster movie elements that has undeniable mood and verve
The Sheep Detectives (2026)
This has one of the most off the wall premises in some time – talking sheep team up to act as detectives and solve the murder of their shepherd. Think Babe meets Agatha Christie. The results are hilarious
The Sheriff and the Satellite Kid (1979)
The late Bud Spencer and his compatriot Terence Hill appeared in seventeen badly dubbed, slapstick comedies in the 1970s/80s … Spencer went it alone for this excruciating slapstick take on Close Encounters of the Third Kind in which that film’s kid Cary Guffey is an alien found by Spencer’s sheriff
The Shining (1980)
Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel throws much of the book out but has duly become a classic. Jack Nicholson goes grandly mad amid Kubrick’s stupendous production and unsettling set-pieces
The Shining (1997)
Stephen King expressed dissatisfaction with the way Stanley Kubrick handled his novel and here remakes it as a tv mini-series that adheres more closely to the book. While Kubrick’s film is far better, this is not bad where even the perpetually awful Mick Garris subdues his tendency to overdo everything towards some subtlety
The Shout (1978)
A film of fascinating ambiguities that stars Alan Bates as a mystery man who appears to John Hurt and demonstrates a killing shout he learned among the Aborigines
The Shrine (2010)
A piece of filler horror that is utterly generic in every respect about travelers entering a sinister East European village where the locals are up to no good
The Shrouds (2024)
At age 81, David Cronenberg is still on great form with this perversely fascinating work about the development of a technology that places cameras inside graves to observe corpses as they decay
The Shuttered Room (1967)
One of the more obscure H.P. Lovecraft adaptations based on an unfinished pastiche, not widely seen but well worth reconsideration
The Signal (2007)
Excellent variant on The Crazies as a mysterious signal causes an outbreak of mass insanity. Told in terms of three intersecting stories each of which is made by a different director
The Signal (2014)
A film ostensibly about alien abductees that has rather pleasurably been construed as a series of wild head-spinning twists that are constantly pulling everything we think we know is going on from under the audience, even if it eventually provides more questions than it ever does answers
The Silence (2019)
This was dismissed as a copy of a A Quiet Place and had an almost identical plot about survivors sheltering from creatures that attack the smallest sound. In actuality, this was based on a book that predates A Quiet Place
The Silence of the Hams (1994)
An Airplane/Naked Gun styled parody of The Silence of the Lambs
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
This caught on in a big way with the public, created a fascination with serial killers and forensic psychology and was nominated for a host of awards. Personally, one finds it one of the more overrated films of modern vintage
The Silencers (1966)
The first and probably the least worst in a series of James Bond copycat films starring Dean Martin as agent Matt Helm. Martin plays the part as a tipsy lounge lizard and the film comes stuffed with excruciating double entendres
The Silencers (1996)
Action film made at the height of the popularity of tv’s The X Files with Jack Scalia fighting off the Men in Black
The Silencing (2020)
Thriller where Nikolaj Coster Waldau is the alcoholic manager of a game preserve who becomes drawn in to the search for a serial killer who hunts girls
The Silent Flute (1978)
Bizarre Bruce Lee conceived conceived martial arts film, a bizarre allegorical work of philosophy steeped in inscrutable Zen epigrams
The Silent One (1984)
New Zealand made film about a deafmute boy in a Cook Islands tribe and his mystic communion with a sea turtle
The Silent Planet (2024)
A Canadian film starring Elias Koteas as an aging man banished to solitary servitude on a prison planet where his loneliness is broken by the arrival of a fellow prisoner
The Silent Scream (1979)
Halfway reasonable entry in the 1980s slasher cycle that sits with one foot in the Old Dark House genre. This also comes with a great cast of genre veterans.
The Silent Sea (2021)
South Korean tv mini-series about the investigation of a moonbase with illicit experiments and something possibly alien unleashed
The Silver Brumby (1993)
Adaptation of a classic Australian children’s story about a breed of mythic horses. Starring an unknown Russell Crowe.
The Simian Line (2000)
New Age film where a psychic makes a prediction about the couples at a party splitting up and how this affects all present
The Similars (2015)
Isaac Ezban makes another conceptually out there film about people trapped in a bus station who all start transforming into the likeness of the same man. Much has been modelled on The Twilight Zone and this has a fascinating weirdness
The Simpsons Movie (2007)
Film spinoff from the long-running animated tv series. The familiar gags are there but show feels awkward extruded out to a full-length plot. You keep feeling the film should have been more than it is.
The Sin Eater (2003)
Catholic horror film with Heath Ledger miscast as a priest that was a flopped. This is a fascinating piece of theological horror that plays out with an unusually strong and original script
The Singing Detective (1986)
One of the most extraordinary works ever made for tv. From the pen of Dennis Potter, a mini-series that blends film noir, meta-fiction and autobiography
The Singing Detective (2003)
Disastrous Hollywood version of Dennis Potter’s classic tv mini-series where a hospitalised Robert Downey jr fantasises a dream world of 1940s film noir
The Singularity is Near: A True Story About the Future (2010)
Based on Ray Kurzweil’s non-fiction book about the coming evolution of machine intelligence, this is an odd mix of documentary and SF, including a storyline to illustrate Kurzweil’s main theses … The vision is an extraordinarily utopian one but one has just a few plausibility problems with it
The Siren (2019)
Perry Blackshear is a director more people should know about. Here in his fascinatingly minimalist way he makes a film about the relationship between a man and a deadly mermaid creature
The Sixth Man (1997)
Exceedingly lightweight effort about Marlon Wayans’ ghost brother aiding their basketball team, which proves as predictable as one expects
The Sixth Sense (1999)
The film that made the name of M. Night Shyamalan and still a strong and spooky story despite the variability of Shyamalan’s offerings since then. What made the film a classic was its twist ending, something that has been relentlessly copied by numerous genre films since
The Skeleton Key (2005)
Kate Hudson becomes a care-aid on an old Southern mansion and finds voodoo at work. Director Iain Softley piles on the Southern atmosphere but only strains at horror effect
The Skin I Live In (2011)
Pedro Almodovar’s exquisitely lush homage to the mad surgeon fiilm Eyes Without a Face features a superb left field twist to become an extraordinary meditation on gender and identity
The Skull (1965)
Peter Cushing-Christopher Lee vehicle from Amicus with Cushing as a collector who obtains the Marquis de Sade’s possessed skull. One of the more over-rated Anglo-horror films, this feels more like an episode from one of their anthologies than a full film
The Sky Crawlers (2008)
From Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame, an anime that seems a mix of Biggles and Never Let Me Go, all taking place in an alternate world. The film is exquisite in its detail
The Sky Has Fallen (2009)
A low-budget amateur-made zombie film that treads where hundred of other copycats have before. It sets itself apart from these very slightly in that it makes effort to chart a relationship between the leads and in that the zombies behave in puzzlingly non-traditional ways
The Slasher … Is the Sex Maniac! (1972)
A giallo film about a killer who is murdering adulterous women. Standard material but some of the film’s dated sexual attitudes cause quite a double take today