The Covenant (2006)
Ridiculous film from the perpetually awful Renny Harlin about teen male witches that feels like a gender-swapped version of The Craft cast with pretty boys and directed amid absurdly overblown effects
The Brave One (2007)
Neil Jordan teams up with action producer Joel Silver to make a vigilante film where Jodie Foster starts toting a gun against thugs on the streets after the murder of her fiancé
Underdog (2007)
Excruciating and unfunny live-action version of the animated tv series about a superpowered dog. Everything is now run over with lame slapstick and smartass one-liners
Eternal (2004)
A film about Elizabeth Bathory living in the present day, this comes with the suggestion of erotic allure but disappointingly proves to be a pose without much substance
The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962)
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
Someone’s Watching Me (1978)
One of the lesser known John Carpenter films, a tv movie in which Lauren Hutton is stalked by a neighbour spying on her from the apartment building opposite
Evan Almighty (2007)
Sequel to Bruce Almighty in which Steve Carell is transformed into a modern-day Noah. This was pitched to the Christian audiences but feels like a series of lame gags playing on Noah and the Ark devoid of any biblical context
Tall Tale (1995)
This has the promising idea of bringing together various mythic figures from the West like Pecos Bill and John Bunyan but then mishandles them in an oddly mundane depiction
Stardust (2007)
Matthew Vaughn adapts a Neil Gaiman book in this undeniably appealing fantasy that comes with a story of epical sweep that vies between fantastic imagination and broad humour
Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971)
A ballet adaptation of the stories of Beatrix Potter performed by The Royal Ballet with performers in animal costumes
Jason and the Argonauts (2000)
A Hallmark tv mini-series remake of the Greek myths that fails to stand up to the classic 1963 version. Here Ray Harryhausen’s amazing stop-motion animated effects are replaced by cut-price CGI
Rampo Noir (2005)
Anthology of tales adapted from Japanese horror writer Edogawa Rampo. The various directors push the stories into an admirably perverse and disturbed space
Nympho Libre (2007)
Following the release of Nacho Libre, we had this parody – a porn film about lucha libre (Mexican masked wrestlers), an idea that in practice ends up about as random and lame as it sounds
Nirvana (1997)
Strong and intelligent Cyberpunk film with Christopher Lambert dealing with a videogame character that has come to life
Like Father Like Son (2005)
Tightly wound British tv thriller where Jemma Redgrave has a big secret that her ex is a jailed serial killer and she now cannot be certain if her son or fiance is responsible for a murder
Sacrifice (2000)
Michael Madsen is a bank robber who makes an escape from jail and goes on the run to track down the serial killer who killed his daughter
The Invasion (2007)
The fourth film version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers starring Nicole Kidman, this badly miscues many key scenes and is missing all the paranoid mood of the original film
Trilogy of Terror (1975)
Classic tv movie that is a horror anthology offering a trio of tales all featuring Karen Black. The first two items are okay but the one that made the film into a cult item was the third episode with Black being chased through her apartment by an evil doll
Pyrates (1991)
Comedy where real-life husband and wife Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick play a couple who are so passionate they start fires whenever they have sex
The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
A pre-James Bond Roger Moore plays a mild-mannered businessman who finds his life overrun by a malevolent doppelganger
Ratatouille (2007)
The eighth film from Pixar and Brad Bird’s follow-up to the hit of The Incredibles. Telling the story of a rat that becomes a gourmet chef, this is slightly the lesser among the high standard that Pixar have set nevertheless still immensely enjoyable
Next (2007)
This adapts a Philip K. Dick story and then throws it out to make a generic action film with Nicolas Cage as a psychic. All the potential of its idea is lost amid a series of ridiculous plot twists
Man-Thing (2005)
The bastard child among the spate of pre-MCU Marvel Comics adaptations during the mid-2000s, a film based on their swamp-dweller that throws out most of the comic-book
Left Behind: World at War (2005)
The third of the Left Behind films with Kirk Cameron facing the Biblical End of the World and the Antichrist. This travels well down into bad movie territory
Karla (2006)
Film based on true-life serial killing couple Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. This could have been another Monster but it feels like a film that played everything safe in terms of its content
The Dancer (2000)
Luc Besson produced film set among drum and bass dance culture in New York that follows an aspiring mute dancer (Mia Frye) who is asked to test a new technology that translates dance to music
Conspiracy Theory (1997)
This should have been a witty film – Mel Gibson as a conspiracy nut who discovers one of his theories is true and is hunted by government agents – but the result is a confused mess that turns into an overblown action vehicle
Cold Blood (2005-2006)
One of the best copies of The Silence of the Lambs, a British tv mini-series in which police must seek the help of imprisoned serial killer Matthew Kelly, who delivers a great performance in the role
Barbie Fairytopia: Magic of the Rainbow (2007)
Sequel to the earlier Barbie animated film Barbie Fairytopia. Extremely colourful but essentially a fantasy version of a teenage girl high school drama that quickly slips into pre-packaged formula
The Tattooist (2007)
Incredibly tepid New Zealand horror film about an American tattooist who unleashes evil forces after he appropriates Samoan cultural tattoos
The Thing with Two Heads (1972)
Ray Milland is a dying white racist millionaire who has hit head transplanted onto the shoulders of a Black man. A film that sees the absurdities of its premise and plants tongue in cheek.
Dinotopia (2002)
A TV mini-series based on the popular illustrated books by James Gurney about the discovery of a lost land where dinosaurs have evolved into their own civilisation
Ultraviolet (2006)
Milla Jovovich is a part of a vampire rebel underground in a dystopian future. A film filled with incredible design schemes and action scenes that are as spectacular as they are ridiculously improbable
Target Earth (1998)
Alien invasion tv movie that mostly consists of cliches borrowed from the then success of tv’s The X Files
Psychomania (1963)
Interestingly torrid 1960s psycho-thriller featuring a number of then unknown faces
Premonition (2007)
Weepie drama in which Sandra Bullock becomes unstuck in time flipping back and forward with the foreknowledge that her husband Julian McMahon will befall a tragedy
The Patriot (1998)
Steven Seagal action film in which he plays a former virologist fighting a militia group threatening to unleash a deadly virus
Living in Fear (2001)
Taut, well-scripted psycho-thriller with William R. Moses as a man involved in the hunt for money appropriated by his late father
The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb (2006)
TV mini-series that turns the discovery of Tutankamun’s tomb into an Indiana Jones adventure. But everything is played with a constant barrage of one-liners and action sequences so silly you can’t take any of the show seriously
The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005)
The third of The Crow sequels, starring a miscast Edward Furlong as a resurrected trailer park kid. This has a bad movie ridiculousness that killed the series off
Bio-Dome (1996)
An obnoxious comedy that has the view that it is fun to watch Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin wreck a bio-dome because the scientists are a bunch of tight-asses
Severance (2006)
Rather funny British-made parody on Backwoods Brutality cliches where a work group of a team-building exercise ending up hunted by East European locals
Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
The fourth of the Die Hard films and the only one that enters into genre territory with Bruce Willis now fighting a catastrophic hack attack that disables the entire US
Tekkonkinkreet (2006)
Anime about two homeless boys living in an inner city neighbourhood. The background artwork has a stunning degree of detail such that the city almost becomes its own character
Them (2006)
French horror film that generates a reasonable level of tension as a couple are attacked in their home by mysterious strangers
Inland Empire (2006)
David Lynch’s last theatrical films and probably the most divided of Lynch’s films. Another delve into cryptic surrealism that arrives at no clear plot destinations or clues about what is going on
Taxidermia (2006)
György Pálfi directs an anthology mad up of three stories where the emphasis is on dark, gross-out humour
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)
An extraordinary Tom Tykwer film starring Ben Whishaw as an 18th Century man who has a hyper-acute sense of smell
Paprika (2006)
A venture inside the dreamscape from anime director Satoshi Kon who creates a beautifully animated work even if some of the ideas become excessively convoluted
Meet the Santas (2005)
Sequel to Single Santa Seeks Mrs Claus where here Santa’s son (Steve Guttenberg) ties the knot – amazingly traditional and conservative in its sentiments and with everything so predictable that there is no real drama
The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006)
The second film from Inuit director Zacharias Kunuk who made Atanarjuat about a Danish anthropologist charting the lives of the Inuit as they are in the process of assimilation by Westerners
Death Note: The Last Name (2006)
The second of the Japanese Death Note films, released almost back-to-back with the first. This is an even better film than its predecessor, delighting in the twists and turns in the games as Light and his nemesis L outwit each other
Death of a President (2006)
Mockumentary that caused outrage at the time in depicting the assassination of then-sitting US President George W. Bush. This does not hold back in some damning political punches
Death Note (2006)
Uniquely original Japanese horror film adapted from a manga concerning a book that kills anyone whose name is written in it. This has spawned several sequels and an American remake. The show is stolen by the supremely weird Kenichi Matsuyama
Day Watch (2006)
Timur Bekmambetov’s sequel to Night Watch comes with a much better budget and the same wild visuals, although is slightly the lesser film
Brand Upon the Brain! (2006)
Another of Guy Maddin’s silent movie pastiches, all shot in a deadpan style throwing together a hilariously convoluted madcap plot involving child detectives, mad scientists and spy capers
Breeders (1986)
All over New York City, virgins are being molested by aliens that lurk in the subway tunnels and seek them for breeding purposes. One of the worst genre films of the 1980s
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.
Retribution (2006)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa attempts to give the J-horrors of Ring and The Grudge a run for their money and creates an intensely haunted film. As with much of Kurosawa’s films, this also comes with a deeply unfathomable plot
U (2006)
A likeable and colourful French animated film
Tales from Earthsea (2006)
Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro more than capably takes up his father’s mantle in a anime beautiful adaptation of one of Ursula K. Le Guin’s later Earthsea books
Surf’s Up (2007)
This came out several months after Happy Feet and has a similar plot involving surfing penguins. Though the lesser film and far more predictable, it is likeable
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
Santa Baby (2006)
TV movie where Jenny McCarthy plays Santa’s daughter who takes over the family business
The Lost (2005)
Chris Sivertson directs a frequently explosive film based on a Jack Ketchum novel that tells the story of a true-life teenage killer and the magnetic sway he held over others
The Bothersome Man (2006)
A very black Norwegian comedy in which a man who committed suicide wakes up in an afterlife very much like this world but where everyone suffers from a maddening blandness
Aachi & Ssipak (2006)
South Korean anime that is set in a future world where people are obsessed with shit. This comes with a demented energy and a filthy-mindedness that is determined to outrage
Alone in the Dark (2005)
Uwe Boll gained a reputation as the world’s worst director on the basis of his videogame adaptations. Prize exhibit was Alone in the Dark, which abandons the game and is a series of action scenes without explanatory rationale
Ginger Snaps Back: The Begining (2004)
Third of the Ginger Snaps films, a prequel set during the pioneer era with Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle again as sisters taking refuge at a fort under attack by werewolves. The scene-setting and atmosphere of foreboding is superlative
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)
Third of the Pirates of the Caribbean films and purportedly made without a completed script, this becomes bloated and sprawling
Pulse (2001)
From Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a ghost story that creates an incredibly haunted atmosphere. As with most of Kurosawa’s work, dazzling ideas sit alongside a murky and impenetrable plot where you are baffled trying to make sense of what is happening
Princess (2006)
Animated film from Denmark about a man who goes on an ultra-violent crusade against the porn industry over the loss of innocence of his young niece
Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005)
Michel Ocelot returns to make a sequel to Kirikou and the Sorceress. This expands the quality of animation and is slightly the lesser than its predecessor but not without its charms
‘Salem’s Lot (2004)
TV mini-series remake of the Stephen King novel, this fails to hold a candle to the earlier 1979 version
Devour (2005)
Routine horror film about students being drawn to an internet site that is controlled by The Devil and is then driving them to kill others and themselves
Full Tilt Boogie (1997)
A documentary shot during the making of From Dusk Till Dawn, which gets to the heart of the issues in ways most making of documentaries don’t
Hollow Man II (2006)
Utterly generic sequel to Paul Verhoeven’s invisible man film Hollow Man. This one has been so cheaply made that it even recycles its effects from the first film
Sole Survivor (1983)
Film about premonition of an airline disaster and the survivor being haunted in the aftermath. Not dissimilar to the James Herbert adaptation The Survivor, this goes in predictable directions while never being entirely clear what is happening
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
The fifth and in my opinion the best of the Harry Potter films. It is the first film where we see the darkening of emotions and the children growing up as storm clouds gather. Much of the show is stolen by Imelda Staunton
The Creation of the Humanoids (1962)
An excellent underrated science-fiction film that was way ahead of its time about a class of androids in a future fighting for their rights as they gain increasing self-awareness
Stone Cold Dead (1979)
A dull Canadian-made police procedural with detective Richard Crenna on the trail of a sniper that is killing prostitutes
Transformers (2007)
Michael Bay takes on the 1980s toy phenomenon, turning it into a massive blockbuster filled with copious mass destruction and machines beating the metal crap out of each other
Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005)
The third of the Urban Legend films, unconnected to any of the previous two. This lamely tries to stretch the thin premise out to a story of high school supernatural vengeance
Possessed (2000)
Steven E. de Souza directs a film that supposedly tells the true story that inspired The Exorcist but in practice is just another excuse to trot out the possession and exorcism cliches
The Cave (2005)
This big-budget film came out the same year as The Descent and is a very similar work about a cast of name explorers in a vast network of underground caves being hunted by monsters
The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Probably the least satisfying of Terry Gilliam’s films that turns the real-life fairytale authors into scam ghost hunters in an adventure. Purportedly the subject of behind the scenes troubles, the film never quite comes to life on screen
A Clean Kill (1999)
Psycho-thriller that borrows from Rashomon and leaves us unsure if Roxana Zal is a stalker or an innocent caught up in a murder plot by the married man she was having an affair with
The Day of the Triffids (1981)
Excellent and extremely faithful tv adaptation of the John Wyndham book. This tells the story in terms of ordinary people forced to survive in a harsh world overtaken by killer plants and contains some exceptional writing
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)
The 2005 Fantastic Four was an amiable entry among the Marvel Comics adaptations of the 2000s. This sequel substitutes lowbrow comedy and renders the great character of the Silver Surfer as a CGI cartoon
Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (2002)
Excellent tv movie adaptation of the Jekyll/Hyde story starring John Hannah. This is mounted with exquisite period detail and brings new depths and interpretations of an oft-told tale
Species III (2004)
The third of the Species films, which follows Sil’s daughter. Some okay makeup effects but the plotting gets fairly silly
Shrek the Third (2007)
The third of the Shrek films settles in with a formulaic blandness where the characters turn up more because everyone expects them to than the film finds much for them to do
Jules Verne’s Rocket to the Moon (1967)
This jumps aboard the 1960s fad for Jules Verne film adaptations but it has nothing to do with Verne and is instead a slapstick caper film about the building of a rocket during the Victorian era
Prince of Space (1959)
Japanese film about a superhero defending Earth against alien invaders that travels into incredibly bad movie stakes with its painfully cheap effects and frequent dialogue howlers
The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human (1999)
There is an appealingly satiric concept here – a parody of a nature documentary looking at human mating rituals from an alien perspective where everything is constantly being misinterpreted in terms of an animal behaviour – but what emerges is mostly a one-gag film
Code 46 (2003)
A standout Michael Winterbottom film set in a fascinatingly detailed and well conceived future dominated by genetic laws where Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton conduct an illicit affair
Bridge to Terabithia (2007)
Made by Walden Media following the success of their The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, a well-made adaptation of a Christian children’s book even if it sits uncertainly between gentle realism and the push to make it a fantasy film
Boa vs Python (2004)
A giant CGI snake film that promptly heads into bad movie stakes through a combination of ridiculous dialogue and absurd posturing of its cast
Blind Obsession (2001)
A unique thriller in which therapist Megan Gallagher becomes obsessed with blind patient Brad Johnson and keeps sneaking into his house, he unaware she is there. The film proceeds to place some fine twists on this
The 4th Dimension (2006)
A reality-bending film somewhat influenced by Pi about a withdrawn man who receives a mystery clock that may be able to bend time and space