The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
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
An indisputable classic fantasy … a gorgeous sparkling fantasy that made full use of Technicolor in an era dominated by black-and-white and is told in such bold and earnestly heartfelt tones that it becomes the nearest we have to a piece of genuine American mythology
A Roald Dahl children’s film that has become a cult classic, set in a deliriously nonsensical world with Gene Wilder give a sinisterly threatening performance in the title role
A flop in its day, nobody at the time saw how revolutionary this was in that it predicted the idea of cyberspace and the internet. The design of the world inside the computer all in candy apple colours and geometric shapes is extraordinary
An all-time favourite based on the notion of a journey through the human body via a miniaturised submarine, an idea that comes with a sublime poetry despite the sometimes dodgy effects and plot holes
This adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel was one of the best films from 1950s SF producer/director George Pal. The time travel is depicted with considerable wondrousness and standout effects for the era
This broke ground in being the first animated film made using the motion-capture process. Robert Zemeckis directs with a quite magical touch
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
Chuck Jones, the director of numerous Warner Brothers cartoons, adapts a popular children’s book that comes with a dizzying array of surreal visuals and puns
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
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
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
The weakest of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. This is the most variant from the source material and the one where Jackson allows his tendency to visual effects bloat to take over
Often misidentified as the first science-fiction film, Georges Melies’s short is a whimsy involving comedic exploits on the Lunar surface. Hardly serious as SF but an undeniably iconic work made with enormous sophistication for the day
Georges Melies’ successor to A Trip to the Moon featuring a journey to the sun by astronauts aboard a combination train-submarine-dirigible. A charming whimsy with remarkably technically accomplished effects for the era
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
Generally overlooked animated adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien book made for tv by Rankin-Bass. This keeps to the text very faithfully – more so than Peter Jackson – and is only let down by some limited animation
This starts out seeming like a non-fantastic drama about explorers in 19th Century Argentina. However, the film seems to disregard this and heads towards a bafflingly surreal and undeniably fascinating ending
Way back before Peter Jackson, Ralph Bakshi made this not uninteresting animated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien. The film was not a success and Bakshi failed to return to complete the second part of the story
Hallmark TV mini-series version of the Jules Verne novel that keeps faith to the book for the most part before heading off on some colourfully exotic adventures
The success of Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea created a spate of Jules Verne’s adaptation. Here Verne’s tale of explorers in an underground realm has been turned into an absurdly colourful adventure
Peculiar but very nicely made anime about a group of children who go on a fantastical journey in an abandoned apartment building that is washed away to sea
A conte cruel that delights in piling humiliations onto obnoxious rich kid Chris Elliott who is shanghaied aboard a ship. This comes in an absurdist vein not dissimilar to the works of producer Tim Burton
After two bloated and over-padded Hobbit films, Peter Jackson finally gets it together and produces what everyone was expecting him to deliver, even if it means dragging one battle scene out to last an entire film
One of his earlier efforts from the great Karel Zeman wherein four boys journey through prehistory. Not the equal of Zeman’s later work, it feels more like an illustrated museum tour than a dramatic film
Adaptation of a children’s book by James Bond creator Ian Fleming concerning a magical flying car. This is clearly trying to be another Mary Poppins and has been mounted as a lavish musical
A Hallmark tv mini-series remake of the Greek myths that fails to stand up to the classic 1963 version. Here Ray Harryhausen’s amazing stop-motion animated effects are replaced by cut-price CGI
Peter Jackson returns to J.R.R. Tolkien and epic-sized adventure in the first of his Hobbit films. The visual sweep is there but the film feels over-extruded and over-burdened by its own self-importance.
This family friendly adaptation of the classic Jules Verne novel was made to highlight the 3D process and throws most of the book out to essentially become Jules Verne the theme park ride
Remake of the classic H.G. Wells novel that comes with the novelty of being directed by Wells’s great-grandson. More disappointingly it prefers to merely remake the 1960 film rather than return to the book
The Hobbit became Peter Jackson’s equivalent of the Star Wars prequels and this is the weakest work he has produced under the J.R.R. Tolkien banner. Five picaresque chapters of the book are extruded into bloated set-pieces
With the success of The Wizard of Oz, 20th Century sought to capture the same by casting Shirley Temple in this appallingly schmaltzy fairytale about two children on a quest for the Blue Bird of Happiness
A CGI disaster film about a journey to the centre of the Earth to restart the magnetic core. This is a film construed as no more than a series of spectacular self-contained disaster set-pieces, often irrespective of any of them making sense
A directorial outing from actor Bob Hoskins where a kid travels up a rainbow but his doing up sets nature in a heavy-handed environmentalist message
An obscure joke from Alex Cox that has he and Miguel Sandoval as two businessman who go to dinner but keep passing through different cities
Sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth, a supposed adaptation of Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island and a consistently silly, nonsensical film that operates at the level of a children’s cartoon
John Landis and Dan Aykroyd minus the late John Belushi revisit their cult classic but the reunion exercise smacks of poor judgement and emerges as a haphazard arrangement made only to exploit the appeal of the original
Ostensibly as a teen version of the Jules Verne novel made by Cannon Films. However, this started under one director and finished under another with totally incomprehensible results