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 turns in the most enjoyable entry to that point. One of the best moves is casting Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain
Match Point (2005)
This was one of Woody Allen’s strongest films in some years, this is 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 the real world 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 up against businessman Karl Malden trying to build a death ray
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 made into a copy of the James Bond films that goes for excruciatingly 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 a famous Japanese actress that in turn become a meta-fictional work and a surreal journey through Japanese cinema 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
Shallow Ground (2004)
A film filled with weird, constantly intriguing directorial effects, although you eventually have to accept that none of it makes any sense
Wolf Creek (2005)
Making dubious claim to be based on real-life, this courted considerable controversy with its violence. Essentially an Australian Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Greg McLean readily pushes things to extremes
Troll 2 (1990)
Acclaimed as one of the worst films ever made, this has a legendary bizarreness that has made it a cult film, everything from the ridiculousness of its dialogue and effects to the cast that seems made up of unskilled amateurs
Future-Kill (1984)
Low-budget attempt to make a Cyberpunk film. Essentially The Warriors with New Wave fashions as a group of frat boys are pursued by a relentless, psychopathic cyborg
Tristan + Isolde (2006)
Adaptation of the legendary historical romance was considered a box-office flop but emerges as a better film than one expected it would
Dead or Alive: Final (2002)
The third of Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive trilogy. While the previous entries are Yakuza films, this is an action film about androids set in Blade Runner-homaging Cyberpunk future
Date Movie (2006)
The first film from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, a parody of a various romance movies. The duo went on to make some of the excruciating and unfunny comedies of the next decade
The Clones (1973)
One of the very first films dealing with cloning. This starts off well with a man’s discovery that a double has stolen his identity but thereafter becomes a long drawn-out pursuit thriller
10 to Midnight (1983)
Typical of the hard-boiled thrillers/action films Charles Bronson made during the 1980s for Cannon Films. This borrows the basics from Dirty Harry with Bronson as a cop required to bend the rules to stop a psycho
More Than a Miracle (1967)
A frothily whimsical Italian-made venture into Magical Realism with Sophia Loren as a peasant girl who connects with prince Omar Sharif amid romance and magical happenings
Hidden (2005)
Incomprehensible New Zealand film about a group of camp counselors being haunted by something as they run through the woods
Domino (2005)
Tony Scott directs a biopic of true-life bounty hunter Domino Harvey that becomes a totally madcap film (including fantasy elements) thanks to a lunatically out of control script from Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly
Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure (1959)
One of the best of all Tarzan films made under producer Sy Weintraub who dispensed with the cutsie elements of the earlier films and focused on gritty adventure
Hostel (2005)
The film that put the term Torture Porn on the map. Eli Roth determines to push boundaries with one of the most brutal films ever seen in mainstream release in the tale of tourists made prisoners at an East European hostel for paying clients to torture
Total Stranger (1999)
Reasonable psycho-thriller where landlord Lindsay Crouse takes on increasingly deranged tenant Zoe McClellan
Troll (1986)
Low-budget Charles Band produced film that has entertainment value for its cheesily absurd creature effects and an amazing cast line-up
The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
An Arabian Nights adventure that offers up one of the purest blends of fantasy and romance of its era. Filled with stunning directorial set-pieces and magnificent sets and all shot in colour.
River Queen (2005)
Vincent Ward is one of the directors who should be granted more opportunities to make films. This is his least satisfying work, a troubled behind-the-scenes epic set during New Zealand’s Maori Wars with some Magical Realist touches
Nightstalker (2002)
Film supposedly based on true-life serial killer Richard Ramirez who was nicknamed the Night Stalker. This tosses out the facts in favour of its own fictionalised story
Ju-on: The Grudge 2 (2003)
Takashi Shimizu’s follow-up to the international hit of Ju-on: The Grudge. These Ju-on films become repetitive after a time but you cannot deny that Shimizu delivers the spooky goods here
The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004)
Film in which Sean Penn plays the real-life figure of a man frustrated by the pressures of everyday life who snaps and attempts to fly a plane into the White House
Aeon Flux (2005)
Disappointingly watered down live-action adaptation of the cult animated series. Karyn Kusama creates some interesting visuals but eventually everything lapses to Hollywood formula
The Plumber (1978)
Very odd early Peter Weir film about a strange plumber who moves in and takes over cautious Judy Morris’s apartment
Providence (1977)
Alain Resnais meta-fiction with John Gielgud as an aging writer sits in bed writing a story that is based on the people around him
House of the Dead (2003)
The first of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations and the beginning of his bad director reputation. This is a zombie film by the numbers but it was at the forefront of zombie film revival of the 2000s
A Christmas Carol (2004)
TV movie version of the oft-filmed Charles Dickens tale featuring Kelsey Grammer as a very theatrical Scrooge. This tells the story as a musical but also manages to be surprisingly faithful to the original
Kill … Baby Kill (1966)
Cult Italian directer Mario Bava returns to the Gothic of his highly influential Black Sunday in this atmosphere-laden film about a ghost child haunting a small village
Meatballs III: Summer Job (1987)
Unrelated to the Bill Murray film in anything but name, this is a moronic teen summer camp comedy in which Patrick Dempsey is aided in trying to lose his virginity by angel Sally Kellerman
Night of Fear (1972)
Underrated Australian horror film that prefigures The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in its dialogueless story of a woman attacked and imprisoned by a mad farmer. Directed with considerable all-out effect
The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (1955)
A rather dull 1950s atomic monster movie about a series of bodies that are found on a seashore that lead to a scientist who has created a radioactive mutant monster
Orlando (1992)
Tilda Swinton plays a gender-changing immortal in Sally Potter’s eccentric adaptation of a Virginia Woolf novel
The Void (2001)
Film where scientists creates an an atom-sized black hole that has the potential to destroy the Earth
The Ugly Duckling (1997)
Amiable British animated film for young children based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale
The Jacket (2005)
This starts off with an amnesiac, possibly hallucinating Adrien Brody who is accused or murder and locked in an asylum, before eventually opening up into a time travel film akin to Twelve Monkeys
Zathura: A Space Adventure (2005)
Enjoyable sequel to Jumanji and actually a much superior film in the hands of Jon Favreau. This expands the idea of the Jumanji boardgame that brings things from a jungle to life to a space theme
Octopus (2000)
B-budget mix of giant animal film and submarine drama with impoverished effects and a script only notable for its ludicrous improbabilities
Night Watch (2004)
An amazing breakout hit from Russia, a film that is busy to the point of overcrowding with ideas and its’ director’s visual excess but delivers the goods in ways that make your jaw drop
Mr. Stitch (1995)
Tarantino associate Roger Avary comes up with a modernised take on the Frankenstein story, an interestingly ambitious effort that features Wil Wheaton as a patchwork creation coming to understand his condition
Just Like Heaven (2005)
An odd light fantasy romcom where Mark Ruffalo is suddenly haunted by the ghost of Reese Witherspoon as she lies in a comatose state on life support
The Card Player (2004)
A disappointingly tame giallo thriller from Dario Argento about a poker-playing serial killer. Disappointingly, Argento has cut back on all his arty and sadistic murder set-pieces
Nightwing (1979)
Adaptation of a Martin Cruz Smith novel about an Indian reservation under attack by hordes of vampire bats. The Nature Amok theme suffers terrible effects and plays subordinate to a polemic about the state of the modern Indian
Southern Comfort (1981)
A beautifully evocative Walter Hill film where National Guard soldiers on training manoeuvres are hunted through the Louisiana swamps after accidentally shooting at Cajun locals
Ichi the Killer (2001)
One of the key films upon which the Takashi Miike cult is based. Miike takes a nominal Yakuza plot based on a manga where he pushes the sadism and ultra-violence to a mind-boggling extreme
Ginger Snaps: Unleashed (2004)
The first of two sequels to the Canadian werewolf film. This takes place with the surviving sister placed in a rehab facility and is the best of the trilogy, even better than the first film was in its writing and characters
Valiant (2005)
Amiable British animated film set amongst the Allied Resistance during World War II, all cast with talking carrier pigeons
Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
This Hayao Miyazaki film about a girl who becomes assistant to a mysterious magician is not quite in the same league as Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away but has the sublime beauty, eccentric characters and tender charms that all his work does
The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973)
TV movie that combines the mid-air disaster film of Airport with the 1970s occult fad with a line-up of name actors dealing with druidic stones that exude evil in the midst of a plane flight
Quest for Camelot (1998)
An Arthurian legends fantasy adventure made as part of the animation renaissance of the 1990s. Anything serious aspirations are wrecked by the insertion of inane popular culture in-jokes
Nanny McPhee (2005)
Emma Thompson written and starring adaptation of a series of children’s books comes across as a lesser copy of Mary Poppins. A film that feels like it should have been more than it ends up being.
Chicken Little (2005)
Head-scratching animated oddity from Disney that adapts the talking animal fairytale only to throw in a series of bizarre plot elements that end up as an alien invasion story
The Chain Reaction (1980)
An Australian film from many of the people behind Mad Max about the cover-up of a nuclear accident. Essentially The China Syndrome with the addition of car chases
A Twist of Faith (1999)
Dull serial killer thriller with Andrew McCarthy tracking a killer that has a Catholic fixation