Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties (2006)
Where the first live-action Garfield film approximated the original comic-strip and its focus on a cat delivering sarcastic lines, this sequel pitches everything down to the level of an inane children’s film
Scary True Stories (1991-2)
A trio of Japanese tv movies that retell supposedly true life ghost stories
Stormbreaker (2006)
Film adaptation of a popular series of Young Adult books about a teenage spy. Made not long after the Austin Powers films, this seems unable to decide if it is being serious or a parody
Silent Hill (2006)
One of the best of all filmed videogame adaptations. Christophe Gans creates a creepy and unworldly atmosphere, along with a series of genuinely outlandish creature effects
The Wild (2006)
Likeable animated film about a group of zoo animals making an escape that ended up being overshadowed by the similar, more high-profile Madagascar
The Grudge 2 (2006)
Follow-up to The Grudge, the English-language remake of the Japanese horror film. Although original Japanese director Takashi Shimizu is present, this is one of the weaker Ju-on/Grudge films
Forced to Kill (1993)
A modestly effective action film written by/starring stuntman Corey Michael Eubanks where he is forced by backwoods hicks to compete in bare-knuckle fights
DOA: Dead or Alive (2006)
Videogame adaptation that emerges as a conceptual combination of Charlie’s Angels (2000) – a trio of girls, in kickass poses and jaw-droppingly scanty costumery – and Mortal Kombat
Snakes on a Plane (2006)
Purportedly this was dreamed up by scriptwriters over drinks trying to think of the most ridiculous pitch they could make. The result was advertised as a deliberately bad movie and became a modest hit
Dragon Tiger Gate (2006)
A Hong Kong martial arts film set among the triad wars that is made with an assured blend of turbo-charged and frequently fantastical CGI-assisted action sequences
Renaissance (2006)
Dazzling French animated Cyberpunk film shot in the performance capture animated process and then rendered in striking two-tone black-and-white
Posthumous Memoirs (2001)
Adapted from a classic Brazilian novel, a man narrates his life story from beyond the grave
Possible Loves (2001)
Brazilian-made variant on the alternate timelines film showing three very different outcomes of the lives of a man and a woman after a date
Out of the Blue (2006)
Film based on a true-life shooting spree in the tiny nowhere New Zealand town of Aramoana
My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006)
Unfunny Ivan Reitman comedy with Luke Wilson being stalked by his psychotic superheorine ex Uma Thurman
Monster House (2006)
Delightful motion capture animated film about children discovering a neighbourhood house that is alive. Written with refreshingly well-rounded characters and directed with a great sense of comic grotesque
Lady in the Water (2006)
For all its descent into loopy ideas at times, this is a decidedly interesting M. Night Shyamalan film about myth featuring Bryce Dallas Howard as a water nymph who appears out of an apartment pool
The Brides in the Bath (2003)
British true crime tv drama based on the George Joseph Smith who in the early years of the 20th Century would marry women, get them to sign life insurance policies and then drown them in the bath
Beowulf & Grendel (2005)
An interesting and worthwhile attempt to retell the epic legend of Beowulf but to give it grounding as an historical work. Filmed in Iceland with an international cast
Barnyard (2006)
An incredibly silly animated film set around the antics of talking barnyard animals. Directed by comedy writer Steve Oedekerk, this is almost entirely centred around gags involving animals doing parodies of human things
The Ant Bully (2006)
An animated film about a child who is cruel to ants only to be magically reduced down to their size and then have to become their saviour against an exterminator
Link (1986)
Australian director Richard Franklin makes a film with Elisabeth Shue trapped in a house with a hyper-intelligent killer chimpanzee. The film has structural problems but Franklin does generates fine tension
Tokyo Fist (1995)
Shinya Tsukamoto returns to the repressions of his earlier Tetsuo: The Iron Man in this frenetic, ultra-violent work about a downtrodden salaryman who reconnects with life by allowing himself to be beaten up in the boxing ring. This feels like Raging Bull remade by David Cronenberg
Häxan (1922)
A bizarre pseudo-documentary from the silent era that claims to recount a history of Satanism and witchcraft. Much of the film’s thesis is spurious but the results are facsinating
Children of Men (2006)
Alfonso Cuaron film set in a near-future afflicted by an epidemic of infertility. Cuaron’s depiction of a dystopian world comes with a richness of casually layered detail that makes for a stark and powerful film
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)
The first sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre where Tobe Hooper returns and pushes the series into an outrageously black sense of humour
Requiem (2006)
This should be mandatory viewing after watching The Exorcism of Emily Rose. While that film rewrote the tragedy of Anneliese Michel as a film about possession, this German-made production sets things straight and tells a story about a girl with mental health issues
Re-Cycle (2006)
A film from the Pang Brothers in which a heroine enters into an extraordinarily conceived fantasy world that would appear to be taking place in her own imagination
Tarzan Triumphs (1943)
The seventh of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films made as a work of Wartime propaganda where Tarzan faces Nazis
The Princess and the Goblin (1992)
Likeable animated fantasy made for young children
The Bride (1985)
Lushly mounted remake of Bride of Frankenstein with Sting as Frankenstein and Jennifer Beals as the Bride. More costume drama than it ever is a horror story.
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
Hard Candy (2005)
Brilliantly nasty film where Ellen Page is a 14 year-old who is lured by a paedophile Patrick Wilson and promptly turns the tables, preparing to castrate him. Filled with razor sharp dialogue and career-best performances from Page and Wilson
The Host (2006)
Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean director of Snowpiercer and Parasite, delivers his own version of a monster movie that certainly comes with a difference
Hoodwinked! (2005)
Animated film that offers a revisionist take on Little Red Riding Hood. Everything is played in a manic barrage of pop culture gags and level of inanity that is seriously mind damaging
Terror Beneath the Sea (1966)
Japanese movie made for international sales where a scientist has built a race of amphibian cyborgs to take over the world
The Wild Blue Yonder (2005)
Eccentric Werner Herzog film where he tries to convince us that footage from a space shuttle mission and taken under the polar ice cap is documentary footage of a trip to explore an alien planet
Supernova (2005)
Disaster TV mini-series about the end of the world due to the sun about to go supernova. Cliche plotting, canned action scenes and bad science ensue
The King of the Kickboxers (1991)
VHS era martial arts film with Loren Avedon as a US detective who is sent undercover to infiltrate the kickboxing tournaments held in Thailand by snuff movie-makers
Event 16 (2006)
A homemade New Zealand film that attempts to pull an ambitious time travel story that takes place in multiple era with temporal police intervening after a scientist invents a time portal
The King and the Mockingbird (1980)
A classic French animated film that remained unseen for over thirty years. A fairytale about a cruel king and two lovers aided by a mockingbird, it emerges with an impressively epic sweep
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)
The second of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Johnny Depp and all the principals are back and much of the eccentric humour is present but the action has undergone budget bloat
The Mistress of Spices (2005)
Magical Realist film with Aishwarya Rai running a spice bazaar where she is able to tell fortunes
Mindgame (2004)
Anime based on an autobiographical manga that leaps off into a variety of styles and comes filled with madcap surrealistic visuals
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
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
Richard Linklater conducts an animated adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel with extremely faithful results. Keanu Reeves is a police officer assigned to investigate what he realises is himself
13 Tzameti (2005)
Starkly effective Georgian-made film about a young man in need of money being drawn into an underground gambling ring that bets on games of Russian Roulette
The College-Girl Murders (1967)
One among the series of German krimi films adapted from Edgar Wallace about a series of murders at a girls college. Shot with wonderfully lurid and colourful schemes
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
Saint Ange (2004)
The first film from Pascal Laugier who has emerged as a leading French horror director since, a ghost story set at a girl’s boarding school, Laugier does produce some eerie jumps but the script is a frustrating tangle of narrative loose ends
The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
Wes Craven’s Backwoods Brutality classic gets a gore-drenched makeover from Alexandre Aja. One of the better amid the 2000s fad for horror remakes where the original is dragged into the modern day in some interesting ways
Superman Returns (2006)
This has a bad reputation but Bryan Singer does a wonderful job in bringing Superman back to the screen in a version surprisingly reliant on the Christopher Reeve films. The superheroics soar and Kevin Spacey makes for the best screen Lex Luthor ever
Ice Age 2 (2006)
The first in a series of interminable sequels to Blue Sky Studios’ animated prehistoric adventure. Everything has a tediousness that feels as though it is created by a script generating computer
Invasion U.S.A. (1985)
A ridiculous action film from Cannon Films written by and starring Chuck Norris in which he singlehandedly arms himself and defeats a Communist invasion of the USA
Earthsea (2004)
This TV mini-series adaptation of the Ursula Le Guin books is an insult. This was quickly mounted on the back of the success of The Lord of the Rings films but feels like tv filler that has zero affinity for Le Guin’s richly cultured world
Slither (2006)
James Gunn directs a film about body-snatching alien slugs that proves enormous fun and comes packed to the edges with numerous genre references and homages
Scary Movie 4 (2006)
Fourth of the Scary Movie films and the usual crude inanity, although under David Zucker the movie parodies have expanded well beyond what can be labelled scary movies any longer
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Brett Ratner inherits the X-Men franchise from Bryan Singer for the third film in the series and promptly killed it off (after this point everything became prequels featuring Young X-Men). Ratner’s handling of the superheroic action lacks Singer’s exhilaration or any affinity for the characters
Final Destination 3 (2006)
The original creative team behind the Final Destination series, James Wong and Glen Morgan, return for this sequel but only provide a routine series of bizarre novelty deaths following the premonition of a rollercoaster disaster
When a Stranger Calls (2006)
Passable remake of the 1979 slasher film that streamlines the original and sets it all in amazing designer dream home
Over the Hedge (2006)
Likeable DreamWorks animated film filled with much slapstick energy about a group of talking animals that venture into a housing estate in search of food
The Omen (2006)
The classic 1976 Anti-Christ film is given the remake treatment. The production look slick but quickly disappears into forgettability
Mission: Impossible III (2006)
For his third outing in the series, Tom Cruise made a smart bet on giving the reins to J.J. Abrams who made his directorial debut and turned in the most enjoyable entry in the series to that point. One of the best moves is in the casting of Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain of the show
Match Point (2005)
One of Woody Allen’s strongest films in years, a London-set work about conscience and murder over which the spirit of Dostoevsky hangs
Keeping Mum (2005)
Comedy in which reverend Rowan Atkinson’s home is invaded by murderous nanny Maggie Smith. A promisingly black idea ends up being delivered as a quaintly mumsy British rural comedy
Just My Luck (2006)
A painfully unfunny Lindsay Lohan romcom in which she has good luck and Chris Pine has bad luck and they swap after a kiss. Lohan seems to regard this as an exercise in her adulation
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Ron Howard directed film version of Dan Brown’s best-selling book. This is historical nonsense woven into a fancifully absurd conspiracy theory where Howard does no more than offer an illustrated version of the book
Curious George (2006)
An animated film based on a popular series of children’s books about a mischievous monkey. Amiable but a film mostly intended for the pre-school set
Click (2006)
An Adam Sandler comedy in which he is an ordinary family man who is given a magical remote control that allows him to pause and fast forward his way through the boring bits of his life
Cars (2006)
Winning animated film from Pixar based around the appealingly original idea of vehicles having personalities. The idea is spun out with considerable wit and sophistication. Two sequels followed.
Aquamarine (2006)
Young Adult fantasy in which two girls befriend a mermaid. A film very much made for teenage girls, bubbly, silly and lightweight
A Pass from the Back (2004)
Oddball German comedy in which a toy table footballer magically comes to life and becomes a star soccer player
Creep (2004)
A tense and well sustained horror with Franka Potente trapped in the London Underground after hours and menaced by a deformed creature that lurks in the tunnels
Mahabharat (1965)
An epic Indian-made film based around the foundation text of Hinduism, concerning the saga of two warring and the intercession of the gods in these matters
The Man (1972)
Strong political What IF drama from a Rod Serling script that has James Earl Jones as the first Black President of the USA (something that did not occur in reality for another 36 years with Barack Obama)
Femalien (1996)
Work of softcore erotica about an alien woman who comes to Earth to catalogue human sexual experience. Consists of lots of tasteful glossily photographed tumblings with only the slimmest of plots connecting
Date with an Angel (1987)
A rather charming comedy in which two nerds find an angel fallen knocked down by an orbiting satellite. Much silliness but Emmenualle Beart has an otherworldly loveliness as the angel
Murderers Row (1966)
An excruciating copy of the James Bond films, the second of the Matt Helm films starring Dean Martin as a drunken lounge lizard spy
The Aristo Cats (1970)
One of the better animated films made by Disney during the lean years between Walt’s death in 1966 and the studio’s return to form in the late 1980s. Not the best but it recaptures some of the classic charms of works like Lady and the Tramp
Modesty Blaise (1966)
Modesty Blaise was a classic British comic-book about a smart female thief. On screen, it is turned into a copy of the James Bond films that goes for excruciatingly over-the-top camp excess
The Phantom Empire (1935)
An oddity from the heyday of the serial that has singing cowboy star Gene Autry discover the doorway to an underground kingdom on his ranch Made with a crude pulp vigour
V for Vendetta (2006)
Adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel with a script from The Wachowskis. Moore’s repudiation aside, this is a fine and literate work that retells the story of an anarchist trickster and potently politicises it for the era of the George W. Bush.
In Search of the Castaways (1962)
Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea created a fad for Jules Verne adaptations throughout the 1950s/60s. Disney returned to Verne in this colourfully absurd adventure with children on a globe-spanning hunt for their missing father
Underworld: Evolution (2006)
The second of the Underworld films where Len Wiseman gets a bigger budget and amplifies the CGI and action sequences,. On the other hand, the characters and story are so stripped to a minimum you lose track of why things are happening
The Flesh Eaters (1964)
A true-bred exploitation film with castaways arriving on an island where they encounter a Nazi mad scientist breeding flesh eating slugs. This has been cited as the first gore film
The Eye (2002)
Thailand’s Pang Brothers proved themselves some of the best horror directors in the world with this eerie film in which a woman starts to see the dead after receiving corneal implants. Several sequels and an English-language remake followed
Next of Kin (1982)
A stylishly directed Australian psycho-thriller about Jackie Kerin who inherits a retirement home and takes it over only to find that someone is killing the seniors
Attack of the Monsters (1969)
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
Riding the Bullet (2004)
One of the worst Stephen King adaptations due to being placed in the hands of Mick Garris, a director who has no concept of subtlety and constantly tries to turn every scene into a pop-up scare like a tatty carnival haunted house ride
Return to Never Land (2002)
Among the cheap video-released sequels to their classics Disney made during the 00s, this Peter Pan sequel emerges as halfway reasonable
The Perfect Tenant (2000)
Okay psycho-thriller with Maxwell Caulfield as the tenant who moves into Linda Purl’s sleepout with the intention of taking revenge against her
The Mists of Avalon (2001)
TV mini-series based on Marion Zimmer Bradley’s book that offers a revisionist take on the Arthurian legends, telling the story through the eyes of the women of the saga
Millennium Actress (2001)
An anime from Satoshi Kon that tells the story of an actress and become a surreal journey through Japanese cinematic history
Cry Wolf (2005)
Smart and intelligent slasher film in which a campus game among students turns deadly as it appears that a killer whose identity they made up may be eliminating their numbers for real
The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire (2002)
One of a series of cheap Canadian-made made Sherlock Holmes tv movies featuring a wildly overacting Matt Frewer who makes possibly the worst screen Holmes ever
Basic Instinct 2 (2006)
Sequel to Basic Instinct made fourteen years later. Sharon Stone vamps her way across the screen but the heated sexuality of the original has been watered down to a lukewarm whimper
Death Ring (1993)
Another action movie variant on The Most Dangerous Game with Chuck Norris’s son Mike facing hunters on a remote island. Featuring a cast made up of the relatives of more famous actors
Dreamkeeper (2003)
Beautifully made and written Hallmark tv mini-series directed by Steve Barron that brings to life a variety of different Native American myths and legends
Gordy (1995)
A really cheaply made and nauseatingly cute ripoff of Babe about a boy who discovers he can talk to a pig
Gammera the Invincible (1965)
This was made as a copy of the Godzilla films by rival studio Daiei. This proved sufficiently successful that it too spawned a long-running series of sequels and monster bashes