London Fields (2018)
Based on an acclaimed book, once to be directed by David Cronenberg. This opened to bad reviews but is not uninteresting. A near future setting, precognitive dreams and Amber Heard as a sizzling femme fatale
London Road (2015)
Film based on the true-life Suffolk Strangler. The filmmakers have uniquely interviewed the residents of the community affected and composed these into a musical, not to mention a quasi-mockumentary
Lonely Hearts (2006)
Film based on true-life killers Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez who preyed on victims through the lonely hearts column. Directed by the investigating detective’s grandson.
Long Distance (2024)
SF film with Anthony Ramos as survivor of a crashed ship who must make a journey across a hostile planet to find another survivor while low on oxygen
Long Story Short (2021)
A light fantasy comedy from Australia in which Rafe Spall finds he is moving ahead through his life one year at a time every few minutes
Long Time Dead (2002)
This is a modest British horror film about a group of students that accidentally summon a djinn during a seance that proceeds to possess one of the group and kill all the others present
Long Weekend (1978)
Excellent Australian-made Nature’s Revenge film with a couple on a weekend at a beach at siege from nature. Like the film’s obvious model The Birds, the attack occurs for never-specified reasons
Long Weekend (2008)
Pointless remake of the cult Australian Nature’s Revenge film. This takes place amid some gorgeously shot natural scenery, is very faithful to the first film but seems to entirely miss the paranoid tone
Longing For Eternity (1988)
A dull Quebec-made about the discovery of how a pharmaceutical company is conducting illicit experiments to create an artificial womb to breed embryos
Longing for the Rain (2013)
Intriguingly different Chinese film about a wife who develops a mystery dream lover and the havoc this wreaks in her life. Largely a work about female desire, this seems to want to be a horror film
Longlegs (2024)
Osgood Perkins has been a director on the rise in recent years. This was his fourth film where he makes a serial killer thriller featuring a verrrry weird Nicolas Cage in the title role
Looker (1981)
Michael Crichton’s works are about fears of science and technology going amok. Here he attempts to address tv and advertising in a film about virtual models but the ideas in his script are muddled
Looks That Kill (2020)
A film about a teen whose face kills anyone who looks at him. This is a romantic comedy that overspills with originality, quirkiness and a really dark sense of humour.
Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003)
Joe Dante makes a toon film winding in dozens of cameos from Warner Brothers cartoon characters. The results prove enormously playful and creative. Infinitely more creative and fun that the Space Jam films
Loop Track (2023)
Quite good New Zealand made film about mysterious happenings during a hike into the bush, where what is happening is kept in a state of careful ambiguity
Looper (2012)
From Rian Johnson, a time travel film that is uneven but is mostly conducted with considerable cleverness and intelligence. One of the few multiplex films driven by plot and some clever twists rather than action
Lord of Illusions (1995)
Clive Braker’s third and final outing as a director. Barker is trying to tell an occult detective story but fails to get any of the mood that film noir operates by
Lord of Misrule (2023)
William Brent Bell, director of The Devil Inside and The Boy, makes a Folk Horror film. This borrows much from The Wicker Man and only seems Folk Horror by cliche
Lord of the Flies (1963)
A starkly effective film adaptation of William Golding’s classic novel about a group of British schoolboys stranded on a desert island in a plane crash and their descent into barbarism
Lord of the Flies (1990)
Remake of William Golding’s classic work about boys stranded on a desert island descending into barbarism where the book is disastrously Americanised in a clodding adaptation that misses the original’s rich swim of symbolism
Lord of the Flies (2026)
A tv mini-series remake of William Golding’s classic novel about schoolboys stranded on a desert island and their descent into barbarism. This gets the essence of the book with a raw primality that makes for exciting viewing
Lost After Dark (2015)
An overlooked homage to the slasher film. This doesn’t set out to parody, deconstruct or subvert the tropes, rather is just a well-made and affectionate tribute to the genre’s 1980s heyday
Lost and Beautiful (2015)
A film that started as a documentary about a man engaged in the restoration of an Italian villa before its subject died and it morphed into a peculiar fantasy film
Lost Boys: The Tribe (2008)
After 21 years, this was the first of two sequel to The Lost Boys, featuring return performances from Corey Feldman and Corey Haim and, yes, surfer vampires
Lost City Raiders (2008)
A conceptually peculiar mix of Indiana Jones and Waterworld about tomb raiding adventures in a drowned future and the quest for Moses’s staff to turn back the rising waters
Lost Continent (1951)
Low-budget film with scientists in search of a downed rocket who encounter a prehistoric lost world of dinosaurs on an island plateau
Lost Highway (1997)
A bafflingly surreal yet compulsive David Lynch film in which Bill Pullman and wife receives mysterious threatening videotapes and Bill then inexplicably turns into Balthazar Getty
Lost Horizon (1937)
Hugely successful and probably overrated classic from Frank Capra about the discovery of a lost valley in the Himalayas that offers the secret of immortality
Lost Horizon (1973)
Stodgy, bloated musical remake of the 1937 classic about the discovery of a lost valley in the Himalayas that holds the secrets of immortality. With an awkward looking all-star cast
Lost in Austen (2008)
A great tv mini-series where modern girl Jemima Rooper is transported back into Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice but disrupts the story with her modern ways
Lost in La Mancha (2002)
Fascinating documentary about the making of Terry Gilliam’s never completed The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and how everything fell apart due an extraordinary run of bad luck
Lost in Space (1998)
Surprisingly halfway reasonable big screen remake of the 1960s tv series, this welcomely dumps the campy silliness of the show for a grittier, much more realistic take on the characters
Lost in the Pacific (2016)
A Chinese-made attempt to make a disaster movie with a crosscut of characters aboard a luxury airliner. What causes the film to plummet down into the ridiculous is the addition of a horde of mutant cats
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau (2014)
A compulsively watchable documentary about the making of the 1996 The Island of Dr Moreau and the bizarre stories of how the personalities and star egos made it into a cinematic train wreck
Lost Souls (2000)
Steven Spielberg’s regular cinematographer Janusz Kaminski takes the director’s chair and conducts a modest and effective revival of the 1970s occult/Anti-Christ film
Lost Woods (2012)
Bigfoot film made by two brothers using a non-professional cast and crew, which emerges better than you might expect and generates passable tension
Love & Human Remains (1993)
From Denys Arcand, a strong and powerful examination of all differing aspects of sexuality in the 1990s via a crosscut of characters, including a serial killer also in the mix
Love (2011)
Melancholy film that does some ambitious things on a low-budget about a lone astronaut stranded aboard the International Space Station after contact with Earth goes dead
Love and Death (1975)
Rather funny Woody Allen film where he takes to spoofing Russian literature and does some hilarious visual gags and one-liners. Comes with minor fantasy elements including spoofing The Seventh Seal
Love and Monsters (2020)
A nerdy guy sets out across a post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with giant animals to be with the girl of his dreams. This sound promising in description but suffers an identity crisis on screen
Love at First Bite (1979)
Genial and very likeable spoof of Dracula and the vampire film that succeeds where other works have failed and is very funny. George Hamilton steps into the role of Dracula with debonair charm
Love is a Treasure (2002)
A Finnish art project that consists of five episodes that subjectively depict stories of women with mental illness with strikingly surreal effect
Love Me Deadly (1972)
An obscure but fascinating 1970s film where Mary Wilcox is an heiress who has an obsession with necrophilia who is then drawn into the activities of a strange cult
Love Object (2003)
This could be Lars and the Real Girl the horror version where a sex doll comes to life (maybe?) and makes Desmond Harrington’s life a misery. A film that becomes quite twisted
Love Potion No 9 (1992)
A comedy based on the hit song starring a then unknown Sandra Bullock as a nerd scientist who synthesizes a Gypsy love potion that causes anyone she gives it to to fall in love with her
Loveland (2022)
Modest and interesting Cyberpunk film that works as a melancholy future-set romance with Ryan Kwanten as a hitman. Minimalist but with some striking conceptual twists
Lovely Molly (2011)
Blair Witch Project co-director Eduardo Sanchez makes a film that sits in a fascinatingly ambiguous place as to whether a wife is being haunted/possessed or is mentally disintegrating
Lovesick (1983)
A comedy in which Sigmund Freud’s ghost pops up to offer advice to psychologist Dudley Moore after he falls in love with patient Elizabeth McGovern
Low Life (2011)
Long-winded French film largely about criticising the country’s problematic immigration and asylum seeking system. This also has a B plot about a series of cursed documents
Lowlifes (2024)
This starts out seeming like it is going to be a regular Backwoods Brutality film about a regular family threatened by hicks before expectations are abruptly turned on their head
Lu Over the Wall (2017)
An appealingly charming anime about the friendship between a lonely boy and a mermaid. She gains legs whenever music is playing and they form a pop band together
Luca (2021)
A Pixar offering that is an enjoyable work about merpeople/human friendship but this also sits on the B-rung of their films along with Onward and The Good Dinosaur
Lucid Dream (2017)
The South Korean version of Inception with a man using a device that allows him to enter his and others memories in search of overlooked clues to the abductor of his son
Luciferous (2015)
A ghost story that is directed by a married couple who shoot the film in their own apartment and also play a family as they start to be affected by a malign presence
Luck (2022)
Disgraced former Pixar head John Lasseter makes a returns to animation for Skydance in an incredibly lightweight effort about adventures in the land of luck
Lucky Bastard (2014)
A smart and boundary pushing Found Footage film in which a regular joe wins a competition and is selected as an actor on a porn film only to be pushed to snapping point
Lucky Encounter (1992)
A frenetic Hong Kong slapstick comedy about hoodlums trying to obtain a stash of money from a house that is inhabited by a ghost boy
Lucy (2014)
Luc Besson makes a preposterously entertaining work where drug mule Scarlett Johansson develops superhuman mental capabilities – sort of if you imagine Limitless reconceived as an action film
Lumberjack Man (2015)
An hilarious parody of the slasher film in which an undead lumberjack invades a Bible camp, slaughtering the teens in a series of over-the-top deaths to use their blood as syrup on his pancakes
Lunacy (2005)
A film from Czech animator Jan Svankmajer film, loosely based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, about the surreal happenings at an asylum where the lunatics have taken over
LunarCop (1995)
Low-budget Mad Max copycat with Michael Paré as an officer from the lunar colony who comes down to Earth to take on the marauders of the post-apocalyptic wasteland
Lunatics: A Love Story (1991)
A head scractchingly strange Sam Raimi produced film in which Raimi’s brother Ted plays a man suffering from hallucinations who tries to come to the aid of the girl of his dreams
Lunopolis (2009)
A Found Footage film that has fun uniting wacky conspiracy theories into a grand unified thesis. The swim of ideas is head-spinning
Lurkers (1987)
A painfully dull and uneventful Roberta Findlay film where almost nothing happens. The film is almost redeemed by an effective twist ending ripped off from The Sentinel
Lurking Fear (1994)
Charles and Albert Band had a success with the H.P. Lovecraft adapted Re-Animator; their attempt to replicate that with another Lovecraft story is lacking Stuart Gordon’s splattery black humour
Lust for a Vampire (1971)
The second of Hammer’s Karenstein films based on the lesbian vampire story Carmilla. This is killed by its laughable unsubtlety and an air of adolescent masturbatory fantasy
Lust for Dracula (2004)
Very strange softcore vampire film that conducts an all-girl retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. One or two okay erotic scenes but this befalls a quick shooting schedule
Luster (2010)
British director Adam Mason has been a rising name of note in recent years. Here he makes a Jekyll and Hyde story with Andrew Howard as a mild-mannered man at war with his own evil half
Luther the Geek (1989)
A film about a psychopathic circus geek who kills using a pair of steel dentures. One of the better critically received releases from Troma. Things get quite nasty.
Luz (2018)
A unique film about a woman who is pursued by a demon that loves her. The film is made in a challenging style that requires considerable adeptness to follow but proves rewarding
LX 2048 (2020)
A film I went into with no expectation that quickly creates a fascinating future and offers some ingeniously original treatments of cloning and Virtual Reality themes
Lynch (2007)
A documentary about David Lynch made by one of his assistants during the shooting of Inland Empire. Lynch tells assorted anecdotes from his childhood and we see him working on his artworks.
The Lady and the Monster (1944)
The first screen version of Donovan’s Brain about a brain in a jar exerting mental control over a man’s will. The story has been changed to become one of the era’s mad scientist films
The Lair (2022)
Neil Marshall was a highly promising genre name a few years ago on the basis of The Descent. Here he returns with a film about soldiers facing alien hybrid monsters in Afghanistan
The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
Ken Russell adapts a Bram Stoker novel about a snake cult. In Russell’s hand, Stoker’s serious work is turned into a campy over-the-top comedy overloaded with worm and phallic symbols
The Lake House (2006)
Remake of the South Korean film Il Mare, this is a romantic fantasy where Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock write letters to each other while living in the same house two years apart in time
The Lamp (1987)
Obscure work of 1980s horror that involves a group of teens deciding to party in a museum and being slaughtered in a variety of ridiculous ways after an antique lamp is opened
The Land Before Time (1988)
Likeable but lightweight talking dinosaur film. This aims to be a prehistoric Bambi but never quite finds the depth. A large number of video-released sequels followed
The Land Before Time III: The Time of the Great Giving (1995)
Third of The Land Before Time animated films about talking dinosaurs, made for very young children
The Land Before Time IV: Journey Through the Mists (1995)
The fourth of The Land Before Time animated films about talking dinosaurs, having been made for very young children
The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island (1997)
The fifth of The Land Before Time animated films about talking dinosaurs, all having been made for very young children
The Land Has Eyes (2004)
The first ever film made in Fiji, the story of a young girl growing up on the island of Rotuma. This also comes with elements of cultural Magical Realism
The Land That Time Forgot (1974)
The first in a trilogy of prehistoric lost world adventures based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels, all starring Doug McClure. Despite variable effects, this is a well-made adventure with a strong script
The Land That Time Forgot (2009)
A low-budget modernised version of the Edgar Rice Burroughs book about a group ending up on a lost island where dinosaurs still roam. Slightly better than usual for The Asylum
The Land Unknown (1957)
A 1950s B movie where a US Navy team discovers a prehistoric lost world in the Antarctic where dinosaurs from prehistory still roam. This unfortunately befalls shoddy effects
The Landlady (1997)
Witty psycho-thriller with Talia Shire giving the performance of a lifetime as a psychopathic landlady who becomes fixated on a handsome border
The Landlord (2009)
A low-budget indie comedy about a house that is plagued by demons and vampires. This comes with moments of appealing silliness
The Las Vegas Serial Killer (1986)
Film from Ray Dennis Steckler, the cult director of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies concerning a maniac on a killing spree in Las Vegas
The Last Airbender (2010)
Live-action film adaptation of the popular animated tv series, this was widely seen as a disaster for M. Night Shyamalan. I am one of the few that liked the film for Shyamalan’s superbly designed world
The Last Boy (2019)
Low-budget film set following the collapse of society about a boy who goes on a quest for the place where wishes can be fulfilled
The Last Breath (2024)
A film about survival in shark-infested waters where a party diving on a wreck become trapped inside by sharks. Featuring the last performance of Julian Sands
The Last Broadcast (1998)
One of the very first Found Footage films, predating The Blair Witch Project, although this is less people running around the woods with cameras than an investigative mockumentary
The Last Chase (1981)
Dystopian action film that could have only been made during the late 70s Oil Crisis where Lee Majors defies a totalitarian system where vehicles are banned by setting out in his racing car
The Last Child (1971)
TV movie set in a dystopian future where law mandates that couples can only have one child, concerning a couple who go on the run after becoming pregnant a second time
The Last Days (2013)
A fascinating Spanish film about a worldwide apocalypse created by a plague that makes the entire population mortally afraid of going out of doors
The Last Days of American Crime (2020)
A heist film set in a near-future USA where a group of criminals are preparing a last big caper before the activation of a mind control device that will make crime impossible
The Last Days on Mars (2013)
This starts out offering a fine astrophysically credible depiction of Mars only to reach for the playbook of Alien cliches to essentially become Zombies on Mars
The Last Dinosaur (1977)
A team of explorers find a humid world at the Arctic where dinosaurs and cavemen still roam. The men in rubber suit effects are adequate, although the film itself is on the slow side
The Last Dragon (1985)
A completely insane film that reads as a disco version of The Karate Kid via the 1970s Blaxploitation fad with the addition of mystical martial arts and played so over-the-top it defies belief
The Last Dragonslayer (2016)
An adaptation of Jasper Fforde, one of the cleverest of modern humorous fantasy writers. Alas, the finished result is one that understands nothing about the book and is one of the worst ever screen adaptations