Meatball Machine: Kodoku (2017)
A sequel to Meatball Machine, the film that started the gonzo Japanese splatter genre, filled with wild mutations, over-the-top splatter, surreal humour and an obsession with schoolgirls in panties
Medicine Man (1992)
John McTiernan was one of the great action directors of the 1980s but this drama with Sean Connery as a cranky scientist in the Amazonian rainforest and his bickering relationship with Lorraine Bracco failed to come off
The Medusa Touch (1978)
Film in which hospital patient Richard Burton seems able to will terrible things to happen with psychic powers
Meet Joe Black (1998)
A ponderous big screen remake of Death Takes a Holiday where Death in the form of Brad Pitt comes to Earth, engages in a romance and considers the meaning of the human condition
Meet Mr Lucifer (1953)
One of the forgotten comedies from UK’s Ealing Studios, this rails against the evils of the then new medium of television where The Devil contrives to make people miserable by getting them to watch tv
Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark (2014)
Third in The Asylum’s series of Mega Shark films where they borrow the Godzilla series’ idea of Mecha-Godzilla and pit the Mega Shark against a robot copy of itself
Megaboa (2021)
In the vein of their Mega Shark films and Mega Python vs Gatoroid, The Asylum make a monster movie about a giant-sized snake. Cheesy with a B movie competence.
Megalodon (2018)
The Asylum’s low-budget mockbuster copy of The Meg, which is an irony in that The Meg was really an Asylum killer shark film with an A-budget. Two sequels followed.
Megalodon Rising (2021)
The Asylum make a sequel to their earlier giant prehistoric shark film Megalodon with a US Navy ship facing Chinese spy ships and megalodon sharks risen from the depths
Megalodon: The Frenzy (2023)
The third of The Asylum’s trilogy of films about giant prehistoric sharks, this has another US Navy ship and the crew of an underwater research station facing more prehistoric sharks
Mekong Hotel (2012)
As with any of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films, this has some intensely haunted moments but is severely lacking in plot or any dramatic momentum
Memoria (2021)
Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a darling of the arthouse and makes bafflingly cryptic films with a very haunted mood. This features Tilda Swinton in search of a series of mysterious sounds
Men (2022)
Alex Garland has become a must watch director/writer since Ex Machina and Devs. Here he ventures into an intriguing if cryptic mix of folk horror and gender politics
Men in Black 3 (2012)
One fails to greet another sequel in the series with any enthusiasm. This consists of tired, familiar gags, where the most generous compliment you can pay is that it is better than Men in Black II
The Mercury Project (2000)
Film with Ryan Merriman as a teen who rebuilds an old Mercury rocket as a school science project and then has to save a NASA mission
Mercy (2026)
Timur Bekmambetov makes a film in the Screenlife process where the screen becomes a computer screen. Set in a near future L.A. where the judicial system has been replaced by an A.I
Merlin and the Book of Beasts (2008)
A work of Arthurian sequelia made for the Syfy Channal featuring Arthur’s daughter inheriting the sword. This has the feel more of a B-budgeted D&D adventure made without much effort
Merlin’s Apprentice (2006)
Sequel to Hallmark’s earlier tv mini-series Merlin featuring a return performance from Sam Neill in the title role, this is otherwise a generic and unmemorable work of Arthurian fantasy
The Mermaid (2016)
Stephen Chow has proven himself a comic genius in his directorial works of the 90s/00s. Unfortunately, as he has gained mainstream acclaim, his films have started to disappear under their big-budgets. This is sort of a version of Splash! by way of the fad for madcap Hong Kong slapstick
Mermaid Down (2019)
This comes with the promising premise of a mermaid having her tail hacked off then being placed in an asylum where she tries to convince the other patients of who she is
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)
Luc Besson takes on the Joan of Arc story with then wife Milla Jovovich in the title role but in Besson’s hands it becomes a crazed historical action film that unquestioningly accepts Joan’s visions as real
The Messengers (2007)
The Pang Brothers, two of the most exciting genre directors in the world, have their distinctive style swallowed up in their bland US mainstream debut produced by Sam Raimi
Metegol (2013)
Spanish-Argentinean animated film about the miniature players of a table football game come to life. Everything plays out to to fairly predictable sports movies cliches
Meteor (1979)
1970s disaster movie that prefigures Armageddon with its plot of trying to divert a meteor on a collision course with Earth. It sets aside the usual soap opera dramatics to make an interesting parable about Cold War tensions
Meteor (2009)
A TV mini-series where a meteor is about to collide with the Earth. Assorted well-known faces fight through the chaos and Disaster Movie formulaic perils to prevent this
The Mexican (2001)
Romantic comedy pairing Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts as separated lovers in a plot involving Mob shenanigans and a cursed pistol. The two never click and give unmemorable performances
Michael (1996)
A Nora Ephron romantic comedy with John Travolta cast as angel who is a is less than angel-like slob. A rather aimless shapeless comedy that thinks it is funnier than it is
The Midnight After (2014)
Reminiscent of The Quiet Earth, this concerns a bus of people who end up in a deserted Hong Kong, The film seems unsure whether it is comedy or drama, while it creates an intriguing mystery about what is happening only to leave it unanswered in a frustratingly abrupt ending
The Midnight Hour (1985)
Classic Halloween tv special. As with most of its ilk, it places the focus on a light-hearted treatment where the monsters are no more serious than Halloween revelers
Midnight Movie (2008)
A horror film about the screening of a lost horror film whose director is reputed to have killed people for real. Now the killer emerges from the screen to slaughter the attendees
Mikey (1992)
Routine psycho-thriller with Brian Bonsall as a child who murders his adopted families when they fail to meet his expectation. An amusing idea plays out with comic-bookish set-ups
Millennium (1989)
The long-planned film adaptation of a time travel novel by John Varley, one of the finest SF writers in the world, that alas ends up bluntening and dumbing the story down in the clod hands of Michael Anderson
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
The Million Dollar Duck (1971)
Disney live-action comedy where Dean Jones accidentally creates a duck that lays golden eggs
The Million Dollar Hotel (2000)
Wim Wenders film from a story idea by U2’s Bono set around the down-and-outs at a fleapit hotel slightly into the future. The film circles around a cast of eccentrics without ever really coming together
The Million Eyes of Sumuru (1967)
Sax Rohmer created the super-villain Fu Manchu, less well-known was his character of the female super-villain Sumuru who leads an all-woman army in a world domination plot. This was one of two Sumuru films
Mimesis (2011)
This has an interesting premise where characters wake up inside a simulation of Night of the Living Dead and realise they are meant to play the people at siege from the zombie onslaught
Mimesis: Nosferatu (2018)
Sequel to Mimesis, which had people trapped in a simulation of Night of the Living Dead, where this time people are trapped in a recreation of Nosferatu
Mimic 2 (2001)
This was the first of two video-released sequels to Guillermo Del Toro’s intelligent insect film Mimic, although this is now more of a regular and unexceptional monster movie
The Mind of Mr. Soames (1969)
This comes with a great premise – a man is woken from a coma for the first time and is forced to deal with the world with the mind of a newborn infant. A clear attempt to copy Charly, this would be a great vehicle for a modern character actor but suffers from stodgy unimaginative handling
Mind Ripper (1995)
Produced by Wes Craven and his son, this started as a third Hills Have Eyes film but ends up a generic Alien copy with a mutant monster hunting people in a desert laboratory
Mindgame (2004)
An anime based on an autobiographical manga, this leaps off into a variety of artistic styles and comes filled with mind-bending and madcap surrealistic visuals
The Mind’s Eye (2015)
Homage to David Cronenberg’s Scanners, albeit produced on an even cheaper budget than any of the sequels. Where the film almost redeems itself is when it goes to town with the various head-exploding effects
Mindscape (2013)
Without Inception there would be no Mindscape, which involves people entering memories rather than dreams plus other similarities but this has has no interest in the SF potential beyond a thriller plot
Mindwarp (1992)
One of three films produced by Fangoria magazine, this takes place in a post-holocaust wasteland of crazies and is certainly gore-drenched but unfortunately only churns cliches
A Minecraft Movie (2025)
A live-action film based on the popular
The Minion (1998)
Low-budget action film with Dolph Lundgren as a modern-day Knights Templar tasked with preventing The Devil returning to Earth at the millennium
Minions (2015)
The incomprehensibly manic antics of the Minions have a cuteness appeal that has overspilled the Despicable Me films. Here they get a film all to themselves with amiably lightweight results
Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022)
The cutely nonsensical Minions have become a pop culture phenomenon. Here we get more of them in the second film outing, although this acts more as a Gru origin story
Minutemen (2008)
An amiable, lightweight Disney Channel film about a trio of kids who build a time machine and use it to go back and save the school’s nerds from embarrassment
Miracle in the Rain (1956)
This was one of a spate of miracle films during this period. It is Catholic nonsense with Jane Wyman and Van Johnson finding love and realising that it transcends death
Mirror Mirror (1990)
A 1990s video release, which plays out as a variant on Carrie where a bullied teen girl enacts vengeance against her tormentors with the aid of a cursed mirror
Mirror Mirror (2012)
Tarsem Singh makes a Snow White film. Tarsem’s sets, costumes and visuals are expectedly exquisite and extravagant but all is unwound by a campy, unserious approach
Mirrors (2008)
Alexandre Aja film about haunted mirrors. However, Aja is more a director of physical horror and seems less attuned to the supernatural mood. Based on an earlier Korean film.
Miss Potter (2006)
Renee Zellweger stars in a biopic of children’s author Beatrix Potter from Babe director Chris Noonan. Everything seems to be trying to be a British costume drama.
Missile to the Moon (1958)
A remake of the classic bad movie Cat-Women of the Moon in which explorers to the Moon encounter an all-women society. Things do not improve in the bad movie stakes here
The Missing (2003)
Ron Howard makes a Western that has some horror overtones featuring an evil Indian sorcerer. In the hands of a classic director like John Ford this could have been an epic work but Howard’s plodding predictability kills interest
Mississippi River Sharks (2017)
An appealingly tongue-in-cheek entry in the gonzo killer shark film with sharks attacking along the Mississippi. From the incomparable Misty Talley
The Mistress of Spices (2005)
Magical Realist film with Aishwarya Rai running a spice bazaar where she is able to tell fortunes
Mnemophrenia (2019)
Film that takes place across three future eras that questions what happens when Virtual Reality produces artificial memories more vivid than real world ones
Moana (2016)
Despite being a big success, I wasn’t a fan of this. Maybe it has to do with the fact it appropriates the culture from my neck of the woods to spin it out as a series of glib jokes and one-liners
Mockingbird (2014)
Bryan Bertino made the impressive The Strangers and this was his follow-up but it was held up so long in release that its originality was rendered everyday by others in the Found Footage genre
Modern Vampires (1998)
Richard Elfman film about chic vampires who have become an elite living in Hollywood. Despite promise and some interesting ideas, this is ruined by an atrociously overacting cast
Mom and Dad Save the World (1992)
A films about a whole planet of stupid people. Despite reasonable production values, there is little that raises even a mild smile in this comedic take on Flash Gordon
The Moment After (1999)
One of a cluster of faith-based films made around the turn of the millennium dealing with the biblical apocalypse and The Rapture, this has not dated well
Mommy (1995)
Patty McCormack played a psychopathic child in The Bad Seed at age eleven. 39 years later, this is essentially a sequel where McCormack has grown up and become a mother
Mommy’s Day (1996)
This was the sequel to Mommy, which featured Patty McCormack as a psychopathic mother who is released from jail and returns determined to get back her daughter
The Monitors (1969)
Comedy about aliens who have invaded Earth and keep broadcasting commercials to tell how wonderful life is. You feel like this should be great satire but instead the film flounders about without any plot tapping a 60s counter-culture vibe before finding it doesn’t have anything to say
The Monk (2011)
The Monk is a sordid classic of 18th Century Gothic literature, filled with crazed lusts and Catholic guilt and damnation. However, in the hands of French director Dominik Moll, all the tortured sexuality has been watered down and the story stuffed as a costume drama
The Monkey (2025)
Osgood Perkins adapts a Stephen King story about a toy monkey that causes deaths whenever it is wound, which becomes the opportunity for Perkins to go into full-on Final Destination territory with bizarre deaths
Monkey Business (1952)
The only Marilyn Monroe film on this site. A screwball comedy about the discovery of a formula that causes all who take it to revert to adolescence. Much madcap malarkey ensues
The Monkey King 3 (2018)
The Monkey King films are a series of extraordinary works that exists somewhere between CGI and live-action and have a lushness of design. That is balanced against a dated plot that basically rehashes Cat Women of the Moon
Monkey King: Hero is Back (2015)
An animated version of the epic Chinese legend Journey to the West. However, this was overshadowed by the hit live-action film that came out some months earlier retelling the tale with CGI
Monkey Shines (1988)
A disappointing George Romero film about a paraplegic man’s psychic link with his monkey that then comes to enact his suppressed anger. A fine idea drowns in shrill characterisations.
The Monkey’s Uncle (1965)
One of the wacky inventor live-action comedies Disney made in the 1960s, a sequel to The Misadventures of Merlin Jones where Tommy Kirk variously adopts a chimpanzee and tries to sleep-coach football jocks
The Monster and the Girl (1941)
Mad scientist film in which George Zucco transplants an executed man’s brain into a gorilla’s body whereupon the ape-man proceeds to exact revenge against those who wrongly convicted him
The Monster Club (1980)
Following the collapse of Amicus Films, producer Milton Subotsky went on on his own to make this horror anthology, the bread and butter of Amicus in their heyday. Though he brings in some major horror names – Vincent Price, John Carradine – the jokey tone failed to find any success
Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954)
A routine B movie about a sea monster that was one of the first films produced by Roger Corman. This has mostly been made around obtaining the use of a one-man submersible
Monster Hunt (2015)
A huge success in China – a rehash of E.T. with flying swordsmen. What kills the film is an emphasis of excruciating slapstick and low-res CGI that makes the various creatures resemble Mr Blobby
Monster in the Closet (1986)
Monster movie parody that spoofs a number of classic films, including King Kong where it takes the title literally and the monster makes off with the hero, giving the film a certain LGBT relevance in its day
The Monster Maker (1944)
Mad scientist film from poverty row studio PRC with George Zucco in a Bela Lugosi role as a madman injecting his enemies with doses of acromegaly
The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959)
Minor and largely undistinguished 1950s monster movie. The monster is a blatant copy of The Creature of the Black Lagoon and similarly has biologically improbable designs on the heroine. Routine on all accounts
Monster on the Campus (1958)
One of Jack Arnold’s lesser films, a Jekyll and Hyde story where a scientist finds himself reveting to a caveman after scraping his hand on a prehistoric coelacanth
Monster Party (2018)
This has an interesting premise where a trio of house burglars break into a mansion during a dinner party only to stumble into a support group for serial killers
The Monster That Challenged the World (1957)
Average entry in the atomically enlarged animal cycle of the 1950s concerning a giant mutated mollusc on the attack
The Monster Walks (1932)
This was misleadingly sold as a monster movie and is otherwise an Old Dark House thriller, most of which is blatantly borrowed from The Cat and the Canary
Monsters University (2013)
Pixar’s creative decline began they started making these sequels. A disappointing prequel to Monsters, Inc. that recycles the cliches of the Revenge of the Nerds films and is lacking in the humour or cuteness we expect
Monstrosity (1964)
An amusingly lurid Z budget film with an aging widow employs a scientist to use an atomic reactor to transfer her mind into the body of a younger woman
Monstrum (2018)
A South Korean attempt to make a Wu Xia film featuring swordsmen up against a hulking monster, which emerges as an impressive CGI creation
Moon 44 (1990)
An early Roland Emmerich film with Michael Paré investigating pirates targeting a mining moon. As usual with Emmerich, the focus is on action while neglecting the plausibility of the scenario
Moonfall (2022)
Roland Emmerich returns to mass destruction with a film about The Moon on a collision course with Earth, which then heads in some conceptually out there fringe science directions
Moonshot (2022)
From Arrowverse producer Greg Berlanti, a film about a nerd who stows away on a voyage to Mars. An improbable scenario works as a passable romantic comedy
Morbius (2022)
Sony’s attempts to wring everything possible from the Spider-Man copyright in order to compete with the MCU continue with this film devoted to the Spider-Man vampire villain
More Brains! A Return to the Living Dead (2011)
Return of the Living Dead is regarded as a classic zombie comedy. This is a documentary about the making of it that interviews most of the cast and crew
Morgan (2016)
An A.I. film that is awfully similar to Ex Machina but sidesteps any questions about A.I., while the latter half becomes The Terminator before a frankly unbelievable twist ending sinks the film
Morons from Outer Space (1985)
Comedy about stupid alien visitors largely construed as a vehicle for popular British comedy duo Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones. Some witty SF in-jokes among a haphazard script
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013)
A Young Adult fantasy adaptation that fells a Harry Potter wannabe repackaged with the brooding teen romanticism of the Twilight series, all under a director whose indifferent handling fails to animate any of the material
Mortal Kombat (2021)
A reboot of the film series adapted from the popular videogame. Produced by James Wan, this emerges as a kinetic effort that has clearly designed to introduce an ongoing franchise
Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms (2021)
The second of the Mortal Kombat animated films, this introduces a bewildering array of characters from the games amid a high degree of violence and bloodshed
Mortuary Academy (1988)
Intended as a horror riff on the phenomenally popular Police Academy series, this sets a series of gags in as bad a taste as possible around the locale of a mortuary