Amateur Porn Star Killer 3: The Final Chapter (2009)
The first two of these films did ingenious things but now the inspiration is showing through and these films are starting to seem more like a personal fantasy on the director’s part
Repo Chick (2009)
Alex Cox sequelizes his off-the-wall cult hit Repo Man but only turns it into an amateurish, meandering effort that is only trying to be wacky and cultish
Life During Wartime (2009)
Todd Solondz is one of the finest US indie directors. This sequel to his masterpiece Happiness lacks the original’s savage bite and is his weakest work to date
Let Me Die Quietly (2009)
Neo-noir variation on a clairvoyant murder mystery. This works well in terms of capturing an extraordinary sense of its the central character’s loneliness and melancholy
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 Living Dead Girl (1982)
Another entry from the oeuvre of cult French director Jean Rollin – a film about the bond between a girl and her zombified friend that sits between some gore amateurish effects and a poetic subtlety
Horror High (1974)
This could easily have been titled I Was a Teenage Jekyll and Hyde where a bullied teen creates a formula that brings out his dark side to take revenge on his tormentors
Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007)
Film based on the exploits of necrophile killer Ed Gein that throws the facts up in the air and essentially makes up its own story, while the role is miscast with a hulking Kane Hodder
Final Approach (1991)
A film that mostly consists of amnesiac Air Force pilot James B. Sikking being questioned by psychologist Hector Elizondo. The film constantly hints at a big revelation before settling for one of the corniest twist endings
Secret Beyond the Door (1948)
Fritz Lang made this psychological thriller during his American period – a retelling of the Bluebeard story by way of Rebecca. Lang delivers an times stunning evocation of film noir
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 Princess and the Frog (2009)
One of the more enjoyable Disney animated films from the latter half of the 00s. Featuring Disney’s first Black heroine, this embraces its New Orleans setting and turns Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale on its head with enjoyable results
The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning (2008)
One among the series of cheap video-released sequels to their classic animated films made during the 1990s/2000s, this is a prequel that offers up a Little Mermaid origin story
Barbie in The Nutcracker (2001)
The first in a long series of animated films based on Mattel’s girl’s doll Barbie. This casts Barbie as a lead in an adaptation of The Nutcracker ballet
Avatar (2009)
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
Alien: Resurrection (1997)
The fourth of the Alien films. French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet comes on board and delivers a comic-bookish run through of a Joss Whedon script that overspills with too many ideas
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 Hidden II (1994)
The Hidden was a wittily enjoyable hit about body-hopping aliens. This is a cheap sequel that substantially reuses material from the first film, while missing everything that made the original work
Ghost Writer (1989)
Light fantasy comedy with Audrey Landers as a writer who befriends the ghost of a starlet played by real-life sister Judy Landers
When Pigs Fly (1993)
Peculiar film where Alfred Molina is the landlord of a pub who is visited by two ghosts appearing out of a rocking chair
Ice (1998)
A made-for-tv disaster movie about a new Ice Age. This uncannily prefigures the scenario of Roland Emmerich’s big budget, high-profile The Day After Tomorrow
The Fourth Kind (2009)
This makes a fictitious claim to be a dramatisation of alien abductions that took place in Alaska. This creates something that is undeniably interesting before shooting itself in the foot by heading into Ancient Astronauts territory
Deliver Us From Evil (2009)
Danish film that is largely an uncredited remake of Straw Dogs (and a far better effort than the official remake a couple of years later). This has a dark, unrelenting bite that savagely indicts a racism at the heart of modern Denmark
Speed Racer (2008)
The Wachowskis live-action remake of the anime series is a sublimely madcap confection, a film that is alive with vibrant visuals and all the colours of the rainbow. A box-office flop but glorious, even groundbreaking visually
Hologram Man (1995)
SF/action film with a ludicrous premise about a future prison where criminals are turned into holograms. Joe Lara is one lone cop facing an escaped inmate in a hologram body
Homeless Joe (2009)
A low-budget film about a homeless man who has been turned into a serial killer by a series of experiments designed to create urban mayhem
Frankenstein Unlimited (2009)
A series of short film interpretations of the Frankenstein story, with interpretations ranging from BDSM to kung fu and modern police procedural
Voyage to the End of the Universe (1963)
Czech film from a Stanislaw Lem novel made from the height of the Soviet era depicting day-to-day life about a space mission to explore another planet
Gentlemen Broncos (2009)
Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess visits the same territory with this comedy in which teenager Michael Angarano has his manuscript stolen by SF writer Jemaine Clement
New Moon (2009)
The second of the Twilight films where the moderately grounded original is blown up into the near laughable with the ridiculously over-the-top hyper-sexualised posturing of its male leads
Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961)
The Three Stooges are transplanted into a retelling of the fairytale, although their slapstick inanity feels drowned out amid the maudlin banality and Cinemascope spectacle
The Spring (2000)
TV movie where Kyle MacLachlan comes across a town where the residents have discovered a Fountain of Youth
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Wes Anderson makes a delightful detour into stop-motion animation in this Roald Dahl adaptation, a droll caper comedy enacted by talking animals who are all characterised with typical Anderson eccentricities
The Road (2009)
The extraordinary poetry of Cormac McCarthy’s novel about a man trying to retain his humanity amid the harsh struggle for survival in a post-apocalyptic world is necessarily weakened in being translated to screen but the film still does a fine job of capturing the essence of the book
Planet 51 (2009)
A one-gag animated film that essentially reverses the plot of E.T, and has a human astronaut stranded on a planet of aliens and adopted by one boy. More likeable than it has a right to be.
Over Her Dead Body (2008)
Unfunny comedy in which Eva Longoria dies and returns as a ghost to make life miserable for fiance Paul Rudd as he becomes involved with another woman
Antichrist (2009)
Lars von Trier made this deeply unfathomable film after a bout of severe depression. Claimedly a work of misogyny, it features Willem Dafoe trying to deal with a deranged Charlotte Gainsbourg
Godzilla Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)
The 25th Godzilla film which employs director Shusuke Kaneko who had done amazing things reviving the Gamera franchise. Kaneko doesn’t quite deliver the epic expected of him but does produce an amazing effects spectacle
U Be Dead (2009)
A British-made tv movie about a female stalker. What sets this above Fatal Attraction and the other copies is that it is based on a true story
Vampira (1974)
Dismissed at the time as a copy of Young Frankenstein even though it had been made earlier, this is a none too funny vampire comedy featuring David Niven as Dracula
Burial Ground (1981)
An entry from Italian exploitation cinema’s early 1980s fad for zombie films, this has been put together with no other intent than providing a progression of extremely gory set-pieces
The Cars That Ate Paris (1974)
The first film from Peter Weir, a deadpan black comedy in which a man comes around from a car crash to find himself in a small town that subsists by creating car crashes
The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)
Film based on the supposed Psychic Warfare Division of the US Army. Based on a non-fiction book, this is played by director Grant Heslov as a broad farce and sits on an uncertain line as to whether the powers are real
The Collector (2009)
A directorial debut from one of the writers of the Saw sequels, a Torture Porn film that has a highly unusual set-up about a burglar stumbling into a family home that has been turned into a death trap by a serial killer
Color Me Blood Red (1965)
One of Herschell Gordon’s Lewis’s splatter films, this readily rips off the plot basics of Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood as an artist starts to paint using human blood
Blue Flame (1993)
Low-budget but not uninteresting film that throws in a mind-bending mix of aliens, dream and alternate realities
The Box (2009)
Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly adapts a Richard Matheson story about a couple who are offered a terrible choice by a stranger but delivers a bafflingly incomprehensible film
Astro Boy (2009)
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 Christmas Carol (2009)
Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture animated adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic. The tale has gone through so many adaptations, it fee;s an uphill battle to find anything new in the story no matter the technical quality of the film
2012 (2009)
Roland Emmerich mass destruction spectacle loosely based around the supposed Mayan prophecies about the end of the world in 2012. Mostly just an excuse for massively scaled disaster sequences.
Sisters (2006)
Disappointing remake of Brian De Palma’s 1973 Siamese twins psycho-thriller that changes many elements and crucially lacks De Palma’s stylistic showmanship
Zombieland (2009)
Enjoyable zombie comedy that has been regarded as a classic by many and contains an appealing nonchalant sense of humour and some great performances, even if it owes much to Shaun of the Dead
The Stepfather (2009)
Disastrous remake of the classic 80s horror film, which comes shorn of its biting satire on Family Values and turned into just another teen horror film
Surrogates (2009)
Interesting conceptual SF film where the populace of the future inhabit a series of perfect avatar bodies. Despite a few logical quibbles with the premise, this does a good job in exploring the idea of such a world
Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
Spike Jonze conducts his own unique and individualistic adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book about a young boy who sails away to an island of friendly monsters
The Invention of Lying (2009)
Ricky Gervais co-directs and stars in a comedy set in an alternate world where everybody tells the truth and he discovers he is the one person who can lie and how this proceeds to change the world
Stan Helsing: A Parody (2009)
Film from one of the producers of Scary Movie that heads for the same lowbrow comedy routines while spoofing 80s horror films
Jennifer’s Body (2009)
Karyn Kusama directs a black comedy from a wryly funny Diablo Cody script in which Megan Fox is a cheerleader who becomes possessed after a devil worship ceremony gone wrong
Saw VI (2009)
Sixth time around and the backstory is starting to become so excessively complicated it is hard to follow what is going on. All the gruesome torturings now seem passe, although this does redeem itself somewhat in making a few black digs at the medical health industry
Paranormal Activity (2007)
No-budget film that became a word of mouth hit, spawned a series of sequels and sparked off the Found Footage fascination that took over the 2010s. Unlike most of the films that followed, Oren Peli creates a creepingly chill atmosphere and some undeniable jumps
Law Abiding Citizen (2009)
Vigilante film where Gerard Butler exacts revenge against the justice system while imprisoned in a jail cell. The dispatches become entertainingly improbable to the point that Butler almost becomes a Batman villain in all but name
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009)
Phil Lord and Chris Miller, later directors of The Lego Movie, create an animated film that is a delight with its nonsensical visions of a town inundated by weather phenomena made of food
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (2009)
Adaptation of a series of Young Adult books that should have emerged as Harry Potter made with the sensibilities of a Tim Burton. But the result fails to come to life in Paul Weitz’s hands
9 (2009)
Extraordinary animated film from Shane Acker concerning the lives of a series of stitchpunk dolls as they try to make sense of the world in the aftermath of civilisation
A Reflection of Fear (1971)
A psycho-thriller directed by renowned cinematographer William A. Fraker that is never more than a series of elliptical, soft-focus images
Crying Freeman (1995)
The first feature film from Christophe Gans is a live-action adaptation of a manga about an assassin. Gans turns out a film that dazzles with the flamboyance of his action sequences
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 Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)
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
Desperation (2006)
Halfway reasonable Stephen King adapted tv mini-series. This has been placed in the directorial hands of King’s worst adapter Mick Garris who at least holds his worst tendencies in check
G-Force (2009)
Imagine a Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible spy caper played out with talking guinea pigs. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, no less, this offers appealingly energetic silliness
Silence, Ça Tue (2008)
Belgian-made black comedy where a filmmaker frustrated with trying to raise funding starts shooting producers and filming the result
Shorts (2009)
Another of Robert Rodriguez’s children’s films about the wacky chaos caused by the discovery of a magic wishing stone. Nothing earth-shattering but Rodriguez has a lot of fun with the visual absurdities
Ninja Assassin (2009)
Produced by The Wachowskis who take the opportunity to reinvent the ninja film with the same flamboyant visuals they employed on The Matrix with exhilarating results
Attack of the Vegan Zombies! (2009)
One of the more amusing titles in the gonzo zombie title mashup fad. On the other hand, this takes itself surprisingly seriously and, while well made, never fully goes for broke
Aliens in the Attic (2009)
A family film about a group of kids discovering alien invaders in their attic. A film that is largely construed around a series of slapstick set-pieces.
Up (2009)
One of the finest works from Pixar, the story about an old man and a boy on an adventure in a film that develops some incredibly nuanced and heart-warming emotional depths
Highlander: The Source (2007)
The fifth of the Highlander films. It is hard to believe people could actually make a film worse than Highlander II but this is akin to Edward D. Wood Jr on a multi-million dollar budget
Spice World (1997)
The Spice Girls conduct their own version of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, a largely plotless film with them clowning around. Including appearances from aliens.
Master of the World (1961)
One amid the spate of Jules Verne adaptations of in the 50s/60s with Vincent Price as Robur, the inventor of an amazing airship
Orphan (2009)
Another variant on the evil child film featuring a maliciously psychopathic Isabelle Fuhrman
Case 39 (2009)
Unjustly slammed psycho-thriller with Renee Zellweger as a social worker dealing with an evil child. Comes with undeniable tensions and a superbly malevolent performance from Jodelle Ferland
Barbie Presents Thumbelina (2009)
Another animated Barbie film, this appropriate the name of the Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale and makes it now about a fairy who preaches conservation. As these films go, this is one of the better made and comes with quite a degree of colour
Alien Trespass (2009)
Homage to 1950s SF films, in particular It Came from Outer Space and The Blob, made not as a parody but as an affectionate tribute to the era with everything played seriously
The Sword of the Barbarians (1982)
One of the various low-budget Italian sword and sorcery of the 1980s that borrows much from Conan the Barbarian
Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)
Roger Corman makes a film about sea monsters and mobsters. Things get very silly but not as funny as when he tried the took the same wacky approach in his cult classic The Little Shop of Horrors
The Age of Stupid (2009)
Using the framework of an SF film, told from the perspective of a devastated future, this is a documentary about Global Warming, although one that falls short of making a convincing argument
The Man Who Laughs (1928)
Adaptation of a Victor Hugo historical novel about a man with his face surgically altered into a grin – an image that later inspired Batman’s The Joker. This has clearly been intended to imitate Lon Chaney’s grotesque performances of this era and is exquisitely made by the great Paul Leni
Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter (2001)
This is one of the great wacky titles of all time. The film has its deliberately ridiculous amusements but soon fails to provide an interesting enough show to live up to its title
The Initiation of Sarah (2006)
A remake of the 1978 tv movie about occult rituals in a girl’s sorority house. This is a film that feels directed and written without any real involvement by those responsible.
One Missed Call (2008)
Probably the worst among the mid-00s fad for English-language remakes of Japanese horror films. Takashi Miike’s original is reduced to affectless CGI pop-up scares
W (1974)
Okay stalker psycho-thriller designed as a vehicle for the British model Twiggy that after a slow start eventually develops some sharp twists and surprises
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
Hammer Films’ one and only Sherlock Holmes adaptation. It is beautiful to see the opulence of early Hammer productions brought to bear giving the story unusually effective life
G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra (2009)
Stephen Sommers make a film based on the popular action toy line. Barring one exhilarating sequence in the middle, this consists of lots of sound and CGI fury amounting to very little at all
Doomsdayer (2000)
A low-budget video-released action effort that attempts to copy the James Bond films featuring the hunt for a device that can trigger all nuclear reactors
District 9 (2009)
Neill Blomkamp’s first film starts well as a strong, highly politicised work about human-alien prejudice. However, Blomkamp loses steam about halfway through where it feel as though he didn’t know where to take the story
Snakes on a Train (2006)
The first of The Asylum’s mockbusters intended as a soundalike copy of Snakes on a Plane, this ends up defeated by low-budget and one of the most absurd premises of any film in recent memory
Whitechapel (2009)
Fascinating British mini-series about a series of modern-day Jack the Ripper copycat killings, one where the writers have clearly done their research
Outlaw (2007)
British vigilante film that strains at issues of social relevance but only ends up parroting Death Wish cliches
Dead Snow (2009)
A revival of the Nazi zombie film that comes from Norway! A hugely gore-drenched effort from Tommy Wirkola that soon plants tongue very much in cheek.
Coraline (2009)
The welcome return of stop-motion animator Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and at his wildly imaginative and darkly menacing best in an adaptation of a book by Neil Gaiman