A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) (2001)
Steven Spielberg directs an unfinished Stanley Kubrick project about an android boy’s quest. The result is a beautiful and intelligent SF film where the sensibilities of either director merge with magnificent results
The Andromeda Strain (1971)
Robert Wise’s standout adaptation of Michael Crichton’s first novel about scientists trying to contain a virus brought back from space. This does a very faithful job of capturing Crichton’s fascination with the science
Anna M. (2007)
A standout French-made stalker film that leaves Fatal Attraction in its dust. Isabelle Carré giving a frightening performance as a woman who becomes obsessed with a doctor
The Birds (1963)
Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film inspired a series of Nature’s Revenge films throughout the 1970s. Expectedly, Hitchcock creates masterful set-pieces but the most effective thing the film does is to remove explanations creating a work of anxious uncertainty
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Blade Runner is a landmark classic but this is well worthwhile sequel from Denis Villeneuve that recreates the fascinating Cyberpunk world in more detail and expands out on the themes laid down in the original. Made with impeccably beautiful detail
Cape Fear (1962)
Classic psycho-thriller with Robert Mitchum (who was never better) as an ex-con determined to take revenge against lawyer Gregory Peck. Stark and superbly sustained psychological suspense
Carnival of Souls (1962)
Classic film that has gained a cult reputation, this creates a superbly eerie and haunted atmosphere as a woman moves to a new town and finds herself surrounded by mysterious figures
Cat People (1942)
Val Lewton’s classic work of psychological ambiguity about a woman who believes she is turning into a panther. Lewton’s ingenuity was to leave the actuality of the monster one that was merely suggested
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
One of the key films by Stanley Kubrick, centred around ultra-violent thugs in a near-future setting. Everybody was outraged at Kubrick choreographing scenes of violence to classical music but the film has a considerable brilliance and very dark sense of humour
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
Cosmopolis (2012)
David Cronenberg film that takes place in a limousine and consists of a surreal drift through a near-future world in the midst of economic collapse, observing it with darkly brilliant, razor-sharp agitprop dialogue
Creator (1985)
Biochemistry professor Peter O’Toole tries to clone his late wife. A sublime film that has a way over-the-top eccentricity and sparkles with an exuberance of life
The Creator (2023)
Gareth Edwards, the director of Monsters and Godzilla, makes a genre-defining work about robotics and artificial intelligence set in a stunningly detailed future world. This site’s Top Film for 2023
Day of the Dead (1985)
The third and most undervalued of George Romero’s original trilogy of zombie films, an explosively bared to the bone series of apocalyptic confrontations containing some of the best performances and writing in any of his films
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
Don’t Look Now (1973)
Nicolas Roeg’s masterwork. Ostensibly a film about grief and precognition, this is a film that exists as a series of taunting visual clues that constantly map over onto each other with a hidden geometry
Eraserhead (1977)
The first film from David Lynch, a surrealist work that is one the cult films of all-time. A masterpiece of mood that swims in an atmosphere of dream and Freudian symbolism of cryptically inscrutable meaning
The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (1958)
Czech Jules Verne adaptation that conducts an extraordinary blend of animation and live-action. Maybe the purest evocation of Steampunk that has ever been placed on screen. A work of underappreciated genius
Faraway, So Close! (1993)
Wim Wenders returns to angels in this sequel to Wings of Desire, along with most of the cast. Again Wenders delivers a work of haunting beauty about the angels invisibly looking in on humanity
The Fisher King (1991)
Terry Gilliam’s finest moment, a modernised knightly quest where radio dj Jeff Bridges is dragged into helping homeless man Robin Williams find the Holy Grail. A film made by its performances and warm and eventually soaring characterisations
Forbidden Planet (1956)
A classic of 1950s SF that creates one of the most well remembered screen robots. An uncredited adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, there are few other films that devote so much attention to creating a sense of wonder
The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947)
One of the most beautiful of all 1940s light fantasy films about the sweet and tender relationship between widow Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison as the ghost of the sea captain in the house she moves into
Halloween (1978)
John Carpenter’s all-time classic, the film that created the slasher film and has been much imitated, not to mention multiply sequelised and remade. None of these however come anywhere near recapturing Carpenter’s eerie spookiness
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
The Innocents (1961)
Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw is a classic ghost story that hovers in a state of ambiguity as to whether the ghosts are real or in the heroine’s imagination. Of the multiple film versions, this is the best and most authentic to the story
Interstellar (2014)
This could be Christopher Nolan’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. But where Kubrick was cold and oblique, this is a 2001 with a heart. A pleasure to see a film rooted in credible science and dealing with high concept SF
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
An excellent remake of the Cold War classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The original has now been smartly retooled for the 1970s and slots right into the Me Generation era with paranoia perfectly intact
Mad Max 2 (1981)
A sequel that makes an extraordinary leap over its predecessor. It created an entire genre of films – even its own design and clothing aesthetic – and is one of the most kinetic, exciting action films ever made
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
30 years in the making and the results are sensational. An action film so relentlessly foot-to-the-floor and full of kinetic wildness that it blows all its contemporaries away and sets the bar anew
Midnight Mass (2021)
Mike Flanagan returns with his best work to date. Effectively a Catholic version of Salem’s Lot, this comes with some flat out great pieces of writing
Mighty Joe Young (1949)
Many of the people involved in the 1933 King Kong came back together to create another giant ape film. Much overlooked, this is one of the masterpieces of stop-motion animation
Nausicaa in the Valley of the Wind (1984)
Hayao Miyazaki’s second film, a visually stunning work set in the aftermath of a holocaust. Miyazai’s frequent themes of pacifism and respect for the environment and run through building to a emotionally wrenching climax
NEKRomantik (1987)
From German director Jörg Buttgereit, a shocking and full-on film about necrophilia that defies all taboos and holds little back. This has a raw, in our face shock value that hits direct to the gut
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
The film that created the modern zombie genre, that took a creature from voodoo and reinvented at a something stumbling and wanting only to devour flesh. George Romero creates a horror film that shoots out all cozy, established convention
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
The first and still the best version of the story. Made when The Phantom was a horror story rather than a weepie romance, everything from Lon Chaney’s performance to the amazing Gothic design and directorial set-pieces is classic
Poltergeist (1982)
Debate will always rage as to whether this was directed by Tobe Hooper or executive producer Steven Spielberg. It doesn’t alter the fact that it is a superlative rollercoaster of a ghost story that doesn’t always make sense but pulls its effects off flawlessly
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s homage to the adventure films of the 1940s was a huge hit in its day, spawning several sequels and many imitators. The film is pure action and adventure, delivered with enormous charm and wit
Sea of Love (1989)
Standout thriller with great scripting and performances where detective Al Pacino goes undercover in the dating scene to track a killer and comes up against a sultry Ellen Barkin
The Sixth Sense (1999)
The film that made the name of M. Night Shyamalan and still a strong and spooky story despite the variability of Shyamalan’s offerings since then. What made the film a classic was its twist ending, something that has been relentlessly copied by numerous genre films since
Strings (2004)
Absolutely extraordinary film that takes place in a world inhabited by marionettes on strings, something that is built out into a complex metaphor and worldview
Superman (1978)
This is where the modern comic-book superhero began on screen. A film that is almost completely successful in banishing campy silliness and taking itself seriously, allowing Superman to fly with magnificent effects. Christopher Reeve shines as the ultimate boy scout
The Tree of Life (2011)
Terrence Malick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, maybe the best work yet about the great Lost American Childhood yet – a film that doesn’t seem to be about anything but has far more to say than almost all other multiplex films
Twin Peaks (1990)
David Lynch’s dive into the dark underbelly of smalltown weirdness became the cult tv series of the 1990s. This is the slightly re-edited pilot issued for theatrical release internationally, which offers an ungainly wrap-up to the proceedings
Ultraviolet (1998)
A British mini-series that offers an ingenious modernised reconeptualisation of the vampire genre, depicting the activities of a secret agency of vampire hunters
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
Vampyr (1932)
Carl Dreyer’s cult film is not a vampire film as we know it but creates an incredibly haunted uncanny mood
The Vanishing (1988)
A grippingly good Dutch thriller about a husband who becomes obsessed following the disappearance of his wife, while at the tame time we also get a parallel plot about the comically jolly serial killer responsible
Videodrome (1983)
Absolutely fascinating David Cronenberg film that swims with a heady mix of ideas that blur tv, reality and the human body
Wall-E (2008)
A near-dialogueless story of a lonely robot clearing up junk in the aftermath of civilisation. This is surely Pixar’s most endearing film to date where they are operating at the peak of their creativity