The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Another film amid Woody Allen’s European renaissance, four tales all set around the gorgeously shot location of Rome. The stories are on the slight side and it is lesser Allen but there is great casting and moments where Allen is on good form
One hardly greets the attempt to generate another entry out of this franchise with any enthusiasm. This mostly consists of tired and familiar gags, where maybe the most generous compliment you can pay is that it is better than Men in Black II was
Bollywood SF film that is like a version of Shyamalan’s aliens film Signs with a few dashes of The Mouse That Roared, all played as a comic farce with much singing and dancing
The End of the World seems the least likely backdrop for a romantic comedy. Newcomer Lorene Scafaria seems less interested in depicting social collapse than in making an insipid romcom road movie with two leads who fail to strike up any connection
Comedy with a head-scratching premise where a couple discover a teapot that produces money whenever they hurt themselves. Such a loopy premise could work as a black comedy but this plays itself as a frothy light fantasy
Indie superhero comedy that reads a good deal funnier on paper than it ever produces laughs on screen. The production lacks the budget to produce more than a handful of cheap superheroic digital effects
A parody of the Twilight series, which feeds the films through the vulgar and sophomoric gags of the Scary Movie type film parody
An uninspired comedy about a neighbourhood watch encountering alien invaders that falls somewhere between Ghostbusters and The ‘Burbs. The film’s virtues lie less in the weak premise than in the director allowing the stars to freely improvise with occasionally funny results
A variant on the much more charming Mad Monster Party?, an animated film featuring cute cuddly versions of the Famous Monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, wolfman etc) with Adam Sandler voicing Dracula
Tim Burton’s slide into mediocrity continues with this comedic update of the cult Gothic soap opera tv series, which is now played at a level of cartoonish unseriousness that resembles the Addams Family
Another entry in the zombie comedy field. This has essentially been conceived as a retread of The Breakfast Club but with the addition of zombies
Rather appealing British comedy set in an afterlife that is conceived as a dreary world of social services agencies and encounter groups. A frequently extremely black and funny but eventually charming film that gets lit up by the eccentricity of its performances
Film spinoff from a YouTube channel that features two comedians giving absurdly over-the-top survivalist tips. What works as a series of short clips has difficulty extending the gags to a dramatic plot
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, behind parody films like Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie, turn to The Hunger Games. There is all the usual inanity and celebrity mocking of their films, although they do seem to make a film that is only marginally less moronic than usual
There is irresistible appeal to the idea of a comedy that conducts a spoof of the Biblical Rapture. Despite a script from one of the Bill and Ted writers, this emerges as a remarkably unfunny film that consists of about an hour of Craig Robinson delivering crude sexual innuendos
Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the trio behind Shaun of the Dead, return to conduct a very similar effort – the story of a pub crawl that is affectionately mocking the characters’ nowhere lives, before taking an abrupt dogleg turn to become a comedic take on the alien body snatchers film
Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia makes what is essentially a comedy version of From Dusk Till Dawn albeit with witches instead of vampires. This has one of the funniest openings I’ve seen in some time but thereafter dissipates into broadly farcical and overlong runnings around
From the creators of Reno 911, a comedy spoofing possession, exorcism and diabolical pregnancy cliches. This assembles material that feels as though it should have been funnier than it is
Marlon Wayans treads the same territory as the Scary Movie films in this parody take on Paranormal Activity. Most of the film is pitched as a series of crude lowest common denominator gags
The entirely unappealing notion of a vampire frat rat comedy, The film is agonisingly unfunny on almost every level, while Adam Johnson’s professor may count as possibly the wimpiest and most non-threatening vampire in the history of cinema
An anthology of comedy skits that sets out to be in as bad taste as possible – you are left astounded how far a film has to go to offend in this post-South Park era. That and wondering if the producers had kidnapped some of the stars’ family members to force them to participate
Ben Stiller’s remake of the unfunny Danny Kaye vehicle about an impractical daydreamer has no more depth than an inspirational postcard and takes a long time to deliver it
Another crude and witless genre parody in the vein of Jason Friedberg-Aaron Seltzer of Epic Movie, Disaster Movie et al notoriety. I there is anything worse than that it is surely a failed attempt to imitate them
Director/actor Stephen Chow is one of the undisputed comedy geniuses of Hong Kong cinema. Alas, he comes astray with this version of the classic Chinese legend
Just when you thought that this witless and unfunny series has died off, it drags itself out of mothballs for another outing. As with the other entries, it is a bunch of recent movies overrun with crude, moronic gags
Several well-known actors hole up in a Hollywood mansion as the Biblical Apocalypse hits. While at first seeming a self-congratulatory exercise, this emerges as a raucously funny ensemble drama where each of the actors play to great strength. Seth Rogen may yet earn forgiveness for The Green Hornet
Sequel to A Haunted House where writer/star Marlon Wayans conducted a riff on the Scary Movie films. This is marginally more amusing than its predecessor
Joe Dante makes a zombie comedy. Dante is in his element and the film overspills with classic horror references but Dante feels like he is playing slow catch up with what the zombie genre has become
Hands down, this is the best vampire comedy ever made. An incredibly witty effort that contrasts the cliches of the genre with the mundane business of a group of vampires flatting together in New Zealand. A film that comes with sly deadpan gags packed into the corner of every frame
Sequel to the hit multi-director anthology has a less high-profile line-up of directors, nor hits the astonishingly perverse heights of its predecessor. As always some entries never do much but the film finds its stride in the last few episodes
Adam Sandler does more acting than usual in the story of a shoemaker who transforms into the wearer whenever he puts on a pair of shoes. A throwaway premise that attracts a surprisingly high-profile cast
Sometimes you shake your head and wonder how a film got greenlit. In this case, we have a comedy where Cam Gigandet’s penis gains a separate life of its own, resulting in a Jekyll/Hyde film of sorts
Absolutely fascinating Bollywood venture into science-fiction. A comedic variant on the theme of the blankly innocent alien visitor trying to make sense of human culture, this has a daringly ambitious bite in tackling the topic of religion and delivering some sharply pointed barbs
In the vein of the Scary Movies films, this offers the amusing idea of a mash-up between The Hunger Games and The Hangover where the characters are forced into a death match against characters from other media franchises
The Muppets were successfully revived in The Muppets; this is a lesser follow-up that leaves us with a feeling that the creative team used their best ammunition first time around
This has an irresistible premise – of doing for 1970s tv SF what GalaxyQuest did for Star Trek – parodying the sets, costumes and cliches. On the other hand, the superb conception fails to ever play out as comedy and the film centres around a series of singularly dull personal dramas
One of Woody Allen’s slighter films about rationalist Colin Firth who is debunking medium Emma Stone but becomes convinced of her powers as romance sparkles
This has a witty idea – a parody of a soap opera combined with a slasher film. This is amusing, but the rest of the film consists of frenzied caricatures and a dearth of laugh out loud moments
From the director of Hellbound: Hellraiser II, this is an unfunny monster comedy that plays out like it is trying to be a live-action version of the Hotel Transylvania films
A film from the comedy collective Rooster Teeth about four screw-ups who pick up power suit items from an alien spaceship only to find they are to defend Earth in a tournament
This rather appealingly plays out as a sex-reversed version of Shaun of the Dead with Maria Thayer as a slightly clueless woman who ends up in the midst of the zombie apocalypse with the guy she spent the night with. Thayer gives a winning performance and the humour is smart and witty
An excruciating fan-made parody of The Hobbit films filled with amateur actors delivering performances in ridiculous falsettos. What makes this mind-boggling is its realisation it can’t compete with Peter Jackson on effects, resulting in things like Smaug played by a drag queen
This sets out to parody the Lord of the Rings fantasy. Or at least you think that is what it is trying to do. All suspension of disbelief is killed by a series of grating and anachronistic quips
Japanese comedy with various humans and aliens interacting around an interstellar burger restaurant on the road from Earth, although none of it seems that funny
I had little enthusiasm for this, I tend to like my classic monsters serious rather than defanged – these Hotel Transylvania films are so watered down, Dracula doesn’t even get to drink blood
Comedy that resembles something of tv’s The Office where Fran Kranz discovers that management is turning his co-workers into vampires as an efficiency measure
Whether you loved or hated the crude and raucous, un-PC stoner/fratboy humour of Ted, Seth MacFarlane is back with exactly the same mix here. This manages to be offensive in an amiably inoffensive, even occasionally quite funny, way
A rather funny comedy about the making of a disaster-laden low-budget horror film where the filmmaking style depicted makes Ed Wood’s films seem like works of art
This has a certain cuteness to its premise – of seeing a bunch of classic videogames brought to life. Beyond that, Pixels is a one gimmick film that suffers from two people whose films I hate – the perpetually banal Chris Columbus and the irritatingly smug presence of Adam Sandler
Why we needed a sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine is a big question. Essentially, Back to the Future Part II meets The Hangover, all this does is wind the original’s amiable coarseness up by a factor of ten
An amusing superhero spoof from the UK, a mockumentary following the everyday Bob, who is rather of a twit, as he goes on a date and his frustrations dealing with the bureaucracy required to go into action
There was a lot of hate centred on this for recasting what is considered a classic film with an all-girl cast. It emerges mostly likeably, no better, no worse on the whole, where the new ensemble make a solid showing
The Polish Brothers make some great Midwestern dramas but seem out of their depth trying to make a comedy about a sex robot. that comes out an embarrassingly unfunny variant on Weird Science
Comedy about a cop from the future who joins the present-day force where he is partnered with a cop thawed out from the 1960s. This is a premise that should have been funny but emerges as something like Sledge Hammer cast with the characters from Dumb and Dumber
I don’t dislike the Tyler Perry film – the performances are skillfully accomplished. Here however Perry attempts to make a Halloween comedy while displaying almost zero interest in any of the genre elements
Pee-Wee Herman is a deliberately annoying character that is either adored or intensely loathed by audiences. This third film closely follows the structure of the first film with Pee-Wee in a series of nonsense adventures on a cross-country journey
A miracle of $1.98 no-budget film-making, this Bigfoot comedy shouts out its sheer good nature from every pore. It is a film that wears its shortcomings with pride, while the director and cast have a great comic timing
Kevin Smith’s follow-up to Tusk slides off the cliff somewhere between Johnny Depp’s incredibly silly performance, a nemesis you can’t take seriously and what largely becomes a vanity exercise in nepotism – Smith and Depp creating a vehicle to highlight their daughters
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
Your mind struggles to process the premise of Nine Lives – where Kevin Spacey finds himself in the body of a cat. It seems a variation on the earlier Oh Heavenly Dog in which Chevy Chase was reincarnated as Benji. Some cute effects but what a lightweight effort for an actor of Spacey’s calibre
The most demented premise of the year – an animated film about the lives of the talking produce in a supermarket. This is crude, rude and guaranteed to offend (as might be expected from a Seth Rogen penned vehicle); it is also one of the funniest and cleverest films of the year
Lazer Team was an easy predictable comedy about four screw-ups that accidentally obtain parts of an alien power suit. This sequel is all the same gags on rinse and repeat.
Tyler Perry is an accomplished impressionist but his two Halloween comedies appropriate elements of the horror film while having no interest in the genre. Here all the horror elements only serve to deliver a lecture on child rearing
Revival of the Hong Kong hopping vampire film phenomenon of the late 80s as personified by the Mr Vampire films. This lacks the slapstick silliness of the originals but settles in with a goofy nuttiness, getting some winning charms out of the romance between mortal and hopping vampire girl
A sequel to Stephen Chow’s Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons. Directed by the legendary Tsui Hark who leaps in with wildly fantastic regard but is also forced to incorporate Chow’s slapstick
Comedic variant on Groundhog Day where Marlon Wayans wakes up naked in an elevator on his wedding day and is forced to repeat the same hour over and over as he tries to get to the church
The director of Tucker and Dale vs Evil returns with a comedy that spoofs The Omen about an average guy trying to step-parent the Anti-Christ child
Simon Pegg produces/stars in a comedy spoofing the British boarding school tradition – but with the addition of monsters running around
As with numerous examples in the zombie and killer shark film of recent, the idea has been to parody an existing title with the addition of a monster and a pun on the original’s title. Essentially what we have is a Scary Movie-like parody of the true-life rapper tale Straight Outta Compton but with the addition of a giant snake
A werewolf comedy that takes place on the set of a zombie film. Comes with much in the way of homage to An American Werewolf in London
Rowan Atkinson in his third outing as the inept spy. Atkinson is a talented comic but these Johnny English films, which are like less sophisticated versions of Peter Sellers’ Inspector Closeau, are the least of his comedy incarnations
There have been some very sophisticated time paradox films in recent years. At complete contrast, this is a comedy that has a great deal of fun with the premise of a guy and assorted temporal copies of himself running about
Claymation film from Aardman Animations that is in effect a prehistoric comedy like The Flintstones or The Croods mixed up with a sports film, but is Aardman’s slightest work so far
I’m not a fan of the Hotel Transylvania films and their reduction of the Famous Monsters to slapstick yocks. This is exactly the same as the preceding films, no better, no worse and with only minute plotting difference
Light fantasy comedy in which a teenager gets a magical cellphone that causes whatever he types into his status update to come true
A rather funny comedy about four misfit youths on a wilderness survival course in the Scottish Highlands who run afoul of human hunters and pagan sacrifice
Amiable comedy about an annoyingly intrusive artificially intelligent mobile assistant that wreaks havoc on its owner’s life
An enjoyable comedy where a scientist is visited by his older self who has travelled back in time to beg him not to invent the time machine that he is about to create
Rather funny comedy about Satanists and a virginal pizza girl who is chased as their intended victim. This comes with a bizarrely akilter sense of humour that reminds of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours
A rather charming South Korean comedy about a family who try to exploit the commercial aspects of having a tame zombie
A gender-swapped remake of What Women Want in which Taraji P. Henson gets the ability to read men’s thoughts. Henson displays no talent for comedy and this is a spectacularly unfunny film
The original Men in Black was a witty parody of alien coverup conspiracies; the sequels became slapstick films about pop-up aliens and gadgets hidden behind everyday things. This offers little that is new
We have had some standout A.I. films in the last few years. This is comedy variant where Melissa McCarthy is befriended by an A.I. who adopts the voice of James Corden
Witty and really hilarious film about a high school class where teens begin randomly exploding. With great performances and writing that is a delight to the ears
A sleeper awakes comedy where Seth Rogen falls into a vat of pickles in 1919 and is awakened in the present-day. A decided change of pace for Rogen who plays two lead roles throughout
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s bizarrely surreal deadpan comedies in which two amiable idiots discover a fly that is about the size of a dog and believe they could tame it
An appealingly witty comedy where two losers set out to become vampire hunters with fumblingly inept results. Written and played with a snappy, sarcastic appeal
A film about a teen whose face kills anyone who looks at him. This is a romantic comedy that overspills with originality, quirkiness and a really dark sense of humour.
Comedy about a shipwrecked crew that are rescued by a German U-boat that is carrying a vampire on board
Variation on the Groundhog Day timeloop theme, this has two people trapped on the same day at a wedding. Of all the copies, this is a delight that has a really hilariously madcap creativity
Comedy that comes comes with a winning concept – clueless hipsters try to get away from their social media devices for a weekend only to find the Earth has been invaded by aliens
A really funny parody of Japanese monster movies. Sublimely silly nonsense
The two time-travelling slackers are back after nearly thirty years and the film amusingly sees them having reached uneasy middle-age. But was the wait worth it?
Ryan Reynolds discovers he is a character inside a videogame. This has a conceptual ingenuity and originality and is the most fun and outrightly enjoyable mainstream film seen of recent
An eccentrically oddball comedy in which a man discovers that his strange roommate may be a comic-book super-villain. Made independently but with a dry wit that is hard to resist
We have had numerous films about asteroids and meteors about to strike the Earth. This is played as a comedy where a man buys his dream home only to find it is ground zero for an oncoming comet strike
A light fantasy comedy from Australia in which Rafe Spall finds he is moving ahead through his life one year at a time every few minutes
Occasionally amusing comedy where a group of fans set out to rescue the heroine’s unrequited crush from a house of vampires
A shot during the Covid lockdown film. An amiable comedy set on the last day of the world where Zoe Lister-Jones and her imaginary younger self Cailee Spaeny walk across L.A. to find closure with the people in her life
An undeniably amusing Irish comedy in which a drunken dimwit ends up being transformed into a vampire. The film comes working at you in its goofy way