Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994)
Most of the attention this drew at the time was over the controversy of casting Tom Cruise as the vampire Lestat; otherwise Neil Jordan conducts an excellent adaptation of the Anne Rice novel
The Iron Giant (1999)
The first animated film from Brad Bird is a sweet and lovely piece about the friendship between a young boy and a giant robot. Underrated at the time, this has subsequently become regarded as a classic
The Island at the Top of the World (1974)
An underrated and quite magnificent lost world adventure from Disney with an airship crew in search of a lost Viking world in the Arctic. Contains some absolutely stunning effects work for the era.
The Island of Lost Souls (1932)
The first and best screen adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel The Island of Dr Moreau. Wells was not happy but Charles Laughton is a great Moreau and the film develops a remarkable sexual undertow
Isle of Dogs (2018)
Wes Anderson is at his best when he does stop-motion animation as in Fantastic Mr. Fox and here. Essentially a Disney talking animals animated film where the animals talk like real people, this comes with considerable charm
It Came from Outer Space (1953)
The very first alien body snatchers film. With Jack Arnold’s eerily haunted landscapes and a memorably literate Ray Bradbury script, this is one of the classic SF films of the 1950s era
It Stains the Sand Red (2016)
The most original treatment of the zombie film in some time. Rather hilariously, what we get is a film about a girl being pursued by a single zombie (at a walking pace) and the slow relationship she develops with it
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Sentimental Frank Capra film that had become a Christmas classic where an angel shows depressed everyman James Stewart the alternate world that would happen if he had never been born
It’s Alive (1974)
The film about a killer mutant baby that made the name of director Larry Cohen who developed a cult following. Cohen infuses it with rich imagery and dark sense of humour. Several sequels followed
J’Accuse (1919)
Extraordinary filmmaking from Abel Gance made at the height of the silent era. Gance was deeply affected by World War I and makes an epic anti-war parable that stuns you with its cinematic craft
James and the Giant Peach (1996)
Henry Selick’s follow-up to The Nightmare Before Christmas, a Roald Dahl adaptation filled with enormous visual creativity as a boy and several talking insects set forth on a sea journey in a giant peach
Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
Stop-motion animator Ray Harruhausen takes on Greek Myth and creates one of his finest works. Harryhausen’s effects are at the absolute peak of their game and he delivers some astonishing creations
Jekyll (2007)
Doctor Who writer/producer Steven Moffat’s modernised Jekyll and Hyde reworks the story in fascinatingly radical ways, while James Nesbitt gives a gleeful rafter-rattling performance
La Jetee (1962)
Chris Marker’s celebrated 28 minute time paradox film, an experimental work that was made at the height of the French New Wave. This later became the basis of Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys
Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013)
A fascinating documentary about one of the most amazing films never made – director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s planned adaptation of Dune in the mid-1970s
John Dies at the End (2012)
Phantasm series director Don Coscarelli makes a mind-expanding effort that seems a conceptual collision between Donnie Darko, Limitless, a slacker version of Supernatural and Dr Strange
Joker (2019)
This origin story of Batman’s Joker is less epic superheroics than a mundanely grounded work about one individual’s rage against modern life and alienation that comes closest to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2015)
This BBC adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s book about rival 19th century magicians kicks J.K. Rowling completely out of the ring. A beautifully staged costume drama, written with a superb Austen-esque dryness of wit
Ju-on: The Grudge (2003)
Unsettlingly spooky Japanese ghost story from Takashi Shimizu that spawned a number of sequels, reboots and English-language remakes. This was the third of the films and superior to all that came after
Jurassic Park (1993)
An enormous hit for Steven Spielberg who took new emergent CGI technologies and wowed audiences with dinosaurs brought to life in dazzlingly realistic detail. It doesn’t hurt that he delivers a relentlessly suspenseful film too
The Keeping Hours (2017)
The best film that Blumhouse have produced to date. A ghost story as much as it becomes a relationship drama of incredibly authentic emotion that is beautifully made
Kichiku (1997)
A disturbing Japanese film about a student revolutionary group and their internal turmoils, which descend into violence and bloodshed as the leader pushed them to torture and bloodshed
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Yorgos Lanthimos trains his a bizarrely deadpan black humour to make a horror film where surgeon Colin Farrell finds a strange malady has afflicted his family unless he kills one of them in sacrifice
The Kingdom (1994)
Danish tv mini-series co-directed by Lars von Trier set in a haunted hospital. This comes with a blacker-than-black sense of humour in its interwoven character strands plus moments that are genuinely eerie
Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998)
The debut film from French animator Michel Ocelot, a beautifully simple series of African folk tales about a young boy whose plain-speaking truths outwit a witch
Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
Stephen Chow excels himself in this comic take on the martial arts film. Sensational over-the-top fight sequences sit alongside Chow’s frequently sidesplitting comic hand.
Kuroneko (1968)
An exquisitely haunted Japanese ghost story from the muchly overlooked Kaneto Shindo that conjures some moments of genuinely otherworldly atmosphere as two ghost women take vengeance against samurai
Kwaidan (1964)
The greatest of all Japanese ghost stories. This is an anthology that tells four stories. Each is made with an extraordinary visual flair and great attention to colour, lighting and design
Labyrinth (1986)
Stunning Jim Henson directed fantasy film set in a world of visual illusions where the Henson team’s puppetry effects are at the peak of their game to provide the creature effects
Lady in White (1988)
This is a beautifully made Coming of Age ghost story from the greatly underrated Frank LaLoggia wherein a bullied Lukas Haas is led by a ghost to uncover a murderer
Ladyhawke (1985)
A beautifully made Richard Donner mediaeval fantasy with two lovers suffering a curse that transforms them into animals only able to touch in person for a second at dusk and dawn
Lamb (2021)
A standout Icelandic film about a couple on a rural farm who adopt a sheep-human hybrid child and treat it as their own child. With Noomi Rapace as the wife.
Last Action Hero (1993)
A big flop but highly underrated Arnold Schwarzenegger film, a sophisticated meta-fiction that views the cinema screen as another dimension and wittily deflates action cliches
The Last Exorcism (2010)
An exorcism film made Found Footage-style with Patrick Fabian as a conman exorcist. This is constantly confounding everything one expects of the genre with considerable cleverness
The Last House on the Left (1972)
Wes Craven’s first film, a savage shock to the system about a group of psychopaths that brutalise two girls. With this, Craven inaugurated the Backwoods Brutality film; this is still one of the best of the cycle
Last Night (1998)
Excellent Canadian-made End of the World film where actor/director Don McKellar eschews lavish big-budget spectacle for a wry, often haunting series of characters studies about how people meet the end
The Last Unicorn (1982)
Beautiful and underrated animated fantasy film about an apprentice magician who protects the last unicorn. This has a maturity that most animated fantasy lacks
Late Night With the Devil (2023)
This conducts a perfect simulation of a 1970s tv talkshow with David Dastmalchian as a host who tries to expose/debunk a demonic possession before things go wrong live on air
The Legend of Hell House (1973)
While holding many similarities to The Haunting, this is a strong, intelligent film about parapsychologists investigating a haunted house. Filled with eerie scares and a standout script from Richard Matheson
Legend of the Overfiend (1989)
A cult anime about a demon war on Earth and a half-demon child who has been born in the body of a teenager. This quite takes you aback with its extremes of violence and sexual fetishism
Lemming (2005)
A surreal very Lynchian French film in which a deranged Charlotte Rampling shoots herself and then afterwards appears to possess Laurent Lucas’s wife Charlotte Gainsbourg
Let the Right One In (2008)
A strong and unusual Swedish vampire film that is less a horror film than one about friendship between a boy and the very strange girl next door who we gradually realise is a vampire
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
Part post Night of the Living Dead zombie film, part flower child ghost story, part Body Snatchers and lacking in much explanatory logic, this is nevertheless a film of unnerving and eerie effect
Letters from a Dead Man (1986)
Amid, the 1980s body of nuclear war films, all others are English-language made but this is one made by the Russians. The results are incredibly bleak but also have a haunting poetry
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1986)
An acclaimed mini-series about a frumpy woman taking gleeful revenge on the husband who abandoned her. Essentially Fatal Attraction rewritten with a feminist manifesto with hilariously barbed results
The Lion King (1994)
One of the best films to come out of Disney’s animation renaissance during the 1990s, this uses all the studio as its disposal to create a work that is epic in its scope
Lisa and the Devil (1972)
The last great film from Mario Bava, an exquisitely dreamy giallo/haunted house film that had the ignomity of being butchered and made into an Exorcist copy when it came out
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
The original, Roger Corman’s zero budget film about a killer plant is an hilarious black comedy that has become a cult favourite and remains his most well remembered film
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
Roger Corman’s no-budget comedy about a killer plant is remade as a multi-million dollar musical with top-drawer effects. Missing is the original’s black comedy but this has many appealingly eccentric delights of its own
The Living and the Dead (2016)
One of the best and most original ghost stories in some time, a mini-series for the BBC set in the 1890s, this does remarkable things in entirely turning the genre on its head
Lizzie (2018)
Strong and effective retelling of the Lizzie Borden story starring Chloe Sevigny that builds out a fascinating plausible scenario for how the murders might have happened
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)
Alfred Hitchcock’s third film about a family who believe their lodger might be a killer. This was made during the silent era but Hitchcock uses extraordinary visual tricks that blow you away
Long Weekend (1978)
Excellent Australian-made Nature’s Revenge film with a couple on a weekend at a beach at siege from nature. Like the film’s obvious model The Birds, the attack occurs for never-specified reasons
Looper (2012)
From Rian Johnson, a time travel film that is uneven but is mostly conducted with considerable cleverness and intelligence. One of the few multiplex films driven by plot and some clever twists rather than action
Lord of the Flies (1963)
A starkly effective film adaptation of William Golding’s classic novel about a group of British schoolboys stranded on a desert island in a plane crash and their descent into barbarism
Lord of the Flies (2026)
A tv mini-series remake of William Golding’s classic novel about schoolboys stranded on a desert island and their descent into barbarism. This gets the essence of the book with a raw primality that makes for exciting viewing
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Peter Jackson wowed the world with this first part of his adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy. This is epic filmmaking and one that shows Jackson in full command of his craft
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings saga truly gains its feet here, expanding out onto an epic scale where he has fused special effects and story into a singular vision
Lost in Austen (2008)
A great tv mini-series where modern girl Jemima Rooper is transported back into Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice but disrupts the story with her modern ways
Lost in La Mancha (2002)
Fascinating documentary about the making of Terry Gilliam’s never completed The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and how everything fell apart due an extraordinary run of bad luck
The Lost Room (2006)
One of the most conceptually ingenious tv mini-series ever created concerning a quest for objects from a mysterious hotel room that have been imbued with amazing powers.
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau (2014)
A compulsively watchable documentary about the making of the 1996 The Island of Dr Moreau and the bizarre stories of how the personalities and star egos made it into a cinematic train wreck
Love & Human Remains (1993)
From Denys Arcand, a strong and powerful examination of all differing aspects of sexuality in the 1990s via a crosscut of characters, including a serial killer also in the mix
The Love Witch (2016)
Beguiling work about a modern witch that becomes a heady swim of provocative ideas about gender issues that is never less than captivating and the most gorgeously colour coordinated films you will ever see
M (1931)
Fritz Lang was an extraordinary director of the silent era and this was his first sound film. Peter Lorre gives an amazingly craven performance as a child murderer who becomes hunted by the criminal underworld
M (1951)
The Hollywood remake of Fritz Lang’s film about how the criminal underworld hunts a child killer. Lang’s film is a classic but this comes with visuals maybe even superior to Lang’s version
Machete Kills (2013)
Robert Rodriguez turns his earlier action film into an insanely creative comic-book overflowing with SF devices (and homages). The casting alone is side-splitting and Rodriguez’s visual absurdism wins the day
Mad Detective (2007)
Quite the maddest Hong Kong film once has ever seen featuring a detective who can see people’s inner personalities. No film in recent memory has led such a delirious dance with an audience
Mad God (2021)
Phil Tippett, creator of effects on Star Wars and Jurassic Park, creates a unique, unclassifiable stop-motion animated film set in an industrial nightmare world
Mad Love (1935)
The Hollywood remake of The Hands of Orlac, a classic with Colin Clive as a pianist who believes he is possessed after receiving hands transplanted from a killer. With a fascinatingly demented performance from Peter Lorre
The Magician (1958)
Ingmar Bergman film about a travelling magic show. Bergman is fascinated with the power that illusionists hold and what happens behind the mask. A spellbinding film that is more haunted that most genre films
Malpertuis (1972)
An exquisitely arty work from Harry Kumel where a young man who is drawn into a large rambling mansion to find that its residents are the Greek gods
Man Bites Dog (1992)
One of the very first Found Footage films, an hilarious Belgian-made black comedy with Benoit Poelvoorde as a cheerful serial killer who demonstrates his techniques to a film crew
The Man From Earth (2007)
Beautifully written film about an immortal. The result is an entirely captivating SF film whose whole effect emerges simply from people sitting in a living room talking
Man on a Swing (1974)
Fascinating, little seen film with Joel Grey giving an amazingly captivating performance as a possibly fraudulent psychic offering to help a murder investigation
The Man Who Laughs (1928)
Adaptation of a Victor Hugo historical novel about a man with his face surgically altered into a grin – an image that later inspired Batman’s The Joker. This has clearly been intended to imitate Lon Chaney’s grotesque performances of this era and is exquisitely made by the great Paul Leni
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
John Frankenheimer film. concerning a Communist plot for creating a brainwashed assassin, Frankenheimer shoots with stark and blackly funny effect and this has duly become a cult classic
Marquis (1989)
Hilariously adult and filthy minded retelling of the Marquis de Sade story using puppets. Quills crossbred with Meet the Feebles if you like.
The Martian (2015)
This year’s Gravity. A film that has worked out the science to the nth degree (and made it digestible for mass audiences). Ridley Scott rides the drama like a pro and makes one of his most enjoyable films in some time
Martyrs (2008)
Pascal Laugier makes one of the most horrific films to emerge from France in the 00s. Scenes of grim torture sit alongside a plot that twists like a pretzel and messes with almost everything we take for granted
Mary and Max (2008)
Quirky, hilarious Australian claymation film about the mail correspondence between a young girl and a lonely middle-aged man
Mary Poppins (1964)
Disney classic that is mostly a series of dance and effects sequences strung together without any real plot nevertheless is conducted with a dizzying absurdism and perfect charm that never wears out its welcome
Mary Reilly (1996)
This took a critical drubbing at the time it came out with everybody laughing at Julia Roberts’ Irish accent but is a revisionist take on the Jekyll/Hyde story, all told through the eyes of Dr Jekyll’s maid and an extremely good version of the story
The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)
Boris Karloff plays the super-villain Fu Manchu, giving a performance of calculating evil in a film of great pulp thrillers
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
A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
British director Michael Powell creates the most visually stunning of all 1940s afterlife fantasies in lush Technicolor, depicting a heaven of dazzling architectural marvels
Mauvais Sang (1986)
The second film from Leos Carax, a near-future set romance that bursts with freshness and originality
Meet the Feebles (1990)
Peter Jackson‘s second film, what might be called The Muppet Show by way of John Waters, an inspired work of puppet depravity that makes a beeline for bad taste
Melies Cinemagician (2011)
Melies Cinemagician is a special screening of a selection of films from Georges Melies presented by Vancouver’s Vancity Theater to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. The show was a live performance involving a score composed especially for the event, displays of conjuring tricks and a magic lantern show. The same year also saw […]
The Melies Mystery (2021)
A documentary that offers the best discussion of the life of Georges Melies to date. Much of the film is focused on the recent rediscovery of a complete trove of negatives of Melies’s film
Memoir of a Snail (2024)
The second Claymation film from Adam Elliot, who made the sublime Mary and Max, concerning the banally hilarious lives of weird, eccentric characters
The Menu (2022)
Hilariously black horror comedy that works as a sublime satire of fine dining – with a nasty sting underneath
Metropolis (1927)
Fritz Lang’s visionary work was something way ahead of it time and is one of the few silent films still screened today. The film’s politics are naive but Lang’s visions of the city of the future and the first screen robot are vivid.
Metropolis (2001)
Stunning anime remake of Metropolis based on an Osasmu Tezuka. The visuals and particularly the design are overwhelming – like a Cyberpunk film set in a stylised Art Deco world
Michael (2011)
Chilling portrait of a paedophile and the young boy he keeps locked in his cellar. The entire film is an astonishing exercise in calm and mannered understatement
The Midnight Meat Train (2008)
One of the best Clive Barker adaptations. Japan’s Ryuhei Kitamura brings a masterful assurance with the horror elements and does gore in astonishingly new and unrealised ways
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2014)
A filmed version of Julie Taymor’s staging of the Shakespeare play about fairt enchantments. Forget standard interpretations, Taymor opens the play up with an extraordinary visual flair
Mighty Aphrodite (1995)
One of Woody Allen’s most warmly funny films of the 90s with a side-splitting and award-winning performance from Mira Sorvino. Throughout, Allen gently spoofs Greek tragedy.
Minority Report (2002)
Steven Spielberg takes on Philip K. Dick in a much grittier film than he usually makes. In the strong and intelligent script, Tom Cruise is an officer on a police force that predicts crime before it happens only to then be hunted by his own side
The Minus Man (1999)
Standout film featuring Owen Wilson as a genteel serial killer