The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The Madagascar series was a cute idea first time around but has been stretched more than its worth by the sequels. Nevertheless, this works at you with a colourful light-heartedness that is hard to resist
Another in the early 2010s fad for fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasy films – in this case, a version of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty told from the viewpoint of the witch
Nobody much liked Maleficent but did make a reasonable amount of money, hence a sequel. The surprise is that in the hands of Norwegian director Joachim Rønning, it is far better than one expected
Zack Snyder’s reboot of Superman leaves you irritated in the first half of the film at its throwing chunks of comic-book canon out the window and the second half bored with the mass destruction orgy that drags on
Cheap and feeble-minded invisible man comedy that was made as part of the short-lived early 80s 3D fad. The first starring role from Steve Guttenberg
Motion-capture animated version of a popular children’s book. The title suggests a 1950s B movie and the subtext doesn’t bear close examination but the results are engagingly put together
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
Film that has a minor cult reputation for its cheaply trippy 3D hallucination scenes. Outside of that, The Mask (not to be confused with the Jim Carrey film) is a dull variant on the Dr Jekyll story in which a ritual mask causes the wearer’s dark side to emerge
William Cameron Menzies built a standout genre reputation with films like Things to Come and Invaders from Mars. This is a haunted house film, albeit with an ending that goes into WTF territory. Menzies was also a production designer and his films come with a design scheme superbly attuned to the mood of the film
Big budget about a giant prehistoric killer shark film. This is like a Sharknado film with its sense of its own risibility perfectly under cap, played seriously and mounted as a series of spectacular shark attack sequences
DreamWorks animated film about a super-villain that might have worked better had its thunder not been stolen by the far superior Despicable Me a few months earlier
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
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
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
Early Charles Band film made in the mid-80s 3D revival fad. A cheap planetary adventure that feels like a collage of other SF films around at the time, most notably Star Wars and Mad Max 2
Spanish-Argentinean animated film about the miniature players of a table football game come to life. The animation is not the high-end quality of most theatrical releases but passable; everything plays out to to fairly predictable sports movies cliches
The incomprehensibly manic antics of the Minions have a cuteness appeal that has overspilled the Despicable Me films and seemed like it is in danger of taking over pop culture in the last couple of years; here they get a film all to themselves with amiably lightweight results
The sixth of the Mission: Impossible films. Not the best of the series but Tom Cruise and associates have everything polished to an expertly honed formula by now and the film is a kinetic ride of intensive and often jaw-dropping action sequences
DreamWorks animated film based on an old Rocky and Bullwinkle segment about a time-travelling genius dog and his adopted human son. This takes a relentlessly content-free approach to history that strips it down to no more than a series of giddy 3D slapstick gags for the single digit age groups
Despite being a huge box-office and critical success and being nominated for an Academy Award, I am in a minority in disliking this. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that it appropriates the culture from my neck of the woods and only spins it out as a series of glib jokes and one-liners
Enjoyably colourful and silly retelling of the classic Chinese legend. This is one Wu Xia film that leaps aboard the CGI and 3D bandwagon to create a wildly fantastical airbrushed world that comes out resembling a flying swordsman film by way of Avatar
Sequel to the earlier The Monkey King, which was fun but this is altogether a better film. While the first film was more prelude to Journey to the West, this sets out on the journey and tells one of its stories. Directed with an immensely assured command of the live-action and CGi elements
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
3D restoration of a classic Chinese adaptation of Journey to the West and the best film version of the story to date … an incredible film filled with psychedelically eye-popping animation and amazing action scenes, while gleefully celebrating a defiance of all authority
Delightful motion capture animated film about children discovering a neighbourhood house that is alive. Written with refreshingly well-rounded characters and directed with a great sense of comic grotesque
Sequel to Monster Hunt, an audience pleasing comedy about a couple and a cute monster that became the biggest hit in Chinese box-office history. This offers more of the same
Apparently the biggest grossing film in China ever. What we get is not much more than a rehash of E.T. with the addition of flying swordsmen. What kills the film is an emphasis of excrutiating slapstick and low-res CGI that makes the various creatures resemble versions of Mr Blobby
Resident Evil series director Paul W.S. Anderson and star Milla Jovovich return with an adaptation of another popular videogame series
A charming French-made animated film about a genteel singing monster. Nothing profound but this is beautifully animated and sweetly appealing in all the right places
You can almost see the process in the scriptwriters head “What if we had Monster Truck rallies where the trucks were actual monsters?”. Way more entertaining than you ever expect it to be
This was the fourth animated film from Pixar and is a winning and delightful Maurice Sendakian tale about the monsters in the closet and their friendship with a young girl
Pixar’s creative decline has been the point they started making these sequels to their hits. This is a disappointing prequel to Monsters, Inc. that largely recycles the cliches of the Revenge of the Nerds films and seems lacking in any of the wacky humour or moments of cuteness we expect of a Pixar film
Cutley appealing DreamWorks animated film that brings together a bunch of oddball creatures clearly intended as an affectionate homage to various 1950s sf films
Peter Jackson written-produced film that creates a fascinatingly original world. As always with a Jackson film, all the fun is in the massively scaled effects sequences and the design of the world. Alas, Jackson is not as well attuned in the story department, which often drags up corny cliched scenes
The reboot of the Mummy series emerges as a wannabe Michael Bay film where even star Tom Cruise plays second banana to the CGI eye candy. Equally, an attempt to jumpstart a shared universe out of Universal’s Famous Monsters with the inclusion of Dr Jekyll seems awkward
Another in the fad for remakes of 70s/80s films. where the 1981 slasher film gets reworked if this did not come with the 3D gimmick, it would be no more than a routine direct-to-dvd release
A misfire from the usually reliable Wes Craven, this drearily traipses through a slasher/supernatural plot that lacks any surprises or Craven’s characteristic atmosphere
The third entry in a franchise that seems to be stretching to find anything to do with its premise beyond the first film. Everyone involved seems to have only turned up to collect a paycheque and be going through the motions in a show that entirely coasts by solely on your familiarity with the characters
Remake of George Romero’s seminal zombie classic. The 3D is no more than a gimmick, while elsewhere they are some radical changes – a white Ben, a lame explanation for the zombies, some far-too-cute in-jokes – that fails to match the effectiveness of the original
Tim Burton and Henry Selick combine on this stop-motion animated fantasy made in Burton’s characteristcially eccentric style, a beautifully stylised and dark fantasy in which assorted Halloween denizens invade Christmas
Another spinoff from The Conjuring films. James Wan is one of the finest horror directors of the 2010s but has had difficulty imparting his skills to the directors of the films he has produced. This feels like a fairground haunted house show of tedious and repetitive pop-up shocks that runs free of any connection to a plot
A splendidly trashy film that throws all good taste to the wind The title role is played by a sizzling, substantially undressed Paz de la Huerta. While deficient in acting ability, she delivers an hilarious voiceover
I went into this with zero expectations, expecting no more than a work of formula family entertainment and came out gently surprised. Essentially a talking cartoon animals variant on a heist plot, it does the formula likeably and with none of the relentless smart-ass cynicism of too many contemporaries
Big, no-expense-spared Disney production of the fairytale. The film is stunning to look at it in terms of design and costuming but has a simplicity that leaves little for adults to engage with
The 22nd animated film from Pixar and also the least successful (being released only a week before theatrical chains closing down due to Coronavirus). This has an appealingly quirky and original concept not unakin to Bright that takes place in an alternate reality where magic creatures live in a world akin to our own
Sam Raimi’s prequel to The Wizard of Oz is now; the story of how a conman fools an entire land rather than of an innocent girl just trying to find her way home. The reconceptualisation of Oz comes with a colourful sweep
Giant mecha robots beating the crap out of giant monsters – what’s not to like? In comparison to the Transformers films, Guillermo Del Toro looks to find the soul of the robot jock – in essence, Transformers for grown-ups
Pacific Rim wasn’t Guillermo Del Toro’s best film but it was a fun attempt to imagine giant Japanese mecha robots battling giant monsters. This is a sequel but without Del Toro it is reduced to no more than one of Michael Bay’s Transformers films
Ostensibly a Peter Pan prequel and origin story, this is a massively over-produced turkey – colossally scaled effects set-pieces, everything obtrusively arranged to pop out at us in 3D – that seems to completely miss the innocent charms that the original story had
For supposedly the Paranormal Activity series final entry, this offer the novelty of the first Found Footage film in 3D – a gimmick that signals the series is out of fresh ideas. Moreover, the series’ look via watching security cameras has been de-emphasised in favour of another CGI driven ghost story
Stop-motion animated children’s film from Laika that demonstrates a willingness to be scary. The film starts to move out of the amiably likeable after around the halfway point when it begins to play a number of horror tropes against expectation to deliver a reasonable message about fear and prejudice
The second directorial outing of a young Charles Band, this is essentially an earthbound version of Alien. Not a very good film, the principal reasons to watch are some cheap effects and a young Demi Moore
The gratifying pleasure of a solid conceptually-driven science-fiction film – all based around the premise of “what if a cryogenic sleeper woke up halfway through a deep space voyage?” and the moral choices he must make. Strong, intelligent character-driven science-fiction and possibly the best designed film of the year
The comic-strip Peanuts is a wryly whimsical depiction of childhood. The movie version has been taken up by Blue Sky Studios, the ones guilty for the repetitive sequelitis that most modern animation has descended to – somehow you suspect that Charles Schulz’s intention wasn’t to reduce it to a series of slapstick set-pieces
This sequel is marginally better than the first film (largely due to Chris Columbus no longer being in the director’s chair), being more dramatically engaged and with effects that feel less like random eye candy. That still doesn’t disguise the fact that the Percy Jackson series is no more than a lightweight and forgettable Harry Potter knockoff
Beatrix Potter wrote genteel stories of talking animals in the English countryside. This is a film so astonishingly awful in its treatment of the source material – it feels like someone drunkenly urinating on Beatrix Potter’s gravestone for lulz. The No 1 contender for Worst Film of 2018
Another Disney remake that hardly resemble its source – the original was light slapstick with a big cartoon dragon, this is a sober wild child story where the dragon is now an endangered species
A version of Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue that was made for the original 3D fad. That is to say, it is more a case of some elements of the story having been shuffled around into a new story with Karl Malden as a mad zookeeper using a hypnotised ape to kill women
A fascinating Chinese version of The Phantom of the Opera, transplanted from a Parisian opera house of the 19th Century to a film being shot in an abandoned theatre in the 1930s. On the other hand, this version makes the most radical changes to the story of any of the Phantom films
Another in the fad for 70s/80s remakes where Alexandre Aja for once captures the spirit of Joe Dante’s 1978 original by planting tongue in cheek and wading in with mind-bogglingly gory enthusiasm
Sequel to the Piranha remake. Much the same as before but up one cup size. Well not really, the sequel is more like a joke that was funny the first time that becomes belaboured in the retelling
Amiable effort from England’s Aardman Animations that doesn’t quite scale the heights of their other films but still has an entertainingly nonsensical charm that is far more enjoyable than most Hollywood competition
After the two last lacklustre entries, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise starts to recover where the two new directors pull off some spectacular comedy-action sequences that go a long way towards recapturing what the series used to be
The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is revived for a fifth outing. There is a new director in Rob Marshall but bar an energetic comic opening, he never does much that hits the zany heights of the previous entries
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
Bollywood remake of a ghost story that comes with one of the cleverer M. Night Shyamalan conceptual reversal twists
The second of Disney’s spinoffs from Pixar’s Cars films featuring talking anthropomorphic planes. Like the first film, this is amiable and occasionally cute but lightweight. This is beginning to feel like a franchise that is spinning out thinning ideas solely for its own sake
This broke ground in being the first animated film made using the motion-capture process. Robert Zemeckis directs with a quite magical touch
It has become an overused phrase in this site’s critical arsenal to say “yet another 70s/80s remake that is inferior to the original”. The 1982 Poltergeist was one of the great ghost stories of the era; this hits all the beats and with bigger effects but fails to find any of the haunted mood of the original
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers with its ridiculous rubber monsters and dementedly over-the-top acting as one of the key pop culture phenomena of the 1990s. The question is what audience do producers possibly think that there might be for a dark and gritty cinematic reboot?
This spends much effort creating an imaginative future where priests battle vampires who are banished to reservations only to do nothing with it other than reach for the tropes of the Western
French animated film about a group of kids with psychic powers going amok. Is okay at what it does but had much of its thunder stolen by the more recent and more spectacular Chronicle
Spinoff of the popular Antonio Banderas voiced character from the Shrek sequels, this is lightweight and amiable but can be quickly forgotten
A Bollywood venture into science-fiction that does a reasonably impressive job of trying to mount CGI superheroics … on the other hand, the plot deals in simplistic black-and-whites and draws on models of SF two decades out of date
I had a lot of liking for Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph, a depiction of the inside of a videogame from the viewpoint of the characters. This expands the concept to the internet. Despite being the ultimate product placement film, this also rather appealingly shows Disney poking fun at themselves
The idea of Dwayne Johnson facing a giant gorilla in an adaptation of a 1980s arcade game doesn’t exactly shout out Academy Award material; on the other hand, appreciated as a zero expectation cartoon of a film and the mindless mass destruction spectacle it is, this works in a goofily entertaining way
Animated film based on the popular computer game. On screen, this emerges as essentially an instantly forgettable variant on one of the Star Wars prequels retooled for the Under Tens with the emphasis all on frenetic slapstick and visual eye candy
The 59th animated film from Disney emerges as a modest effort with a cross-Asian cultural focus that eventually builds a strong character arc
Steven Spielberg adapted Ernest Cline’s book about a massive virtual treasure hunt through 1980s pop culture trivia. The film winds up the pop culture references by a factor of ten, but misses the book’s compulsive readability
Four films in and clear evidence that the Resident Evil series needs to be retired. This consists of tediously borrowed action moves now presented in 3D and a plot of random dead ends that make little sense
Another unnecessary entry in a creativity-handicapped series, the continuing popularity of which is baffles. This shuffles through the familiar moves, brings back several familiar characters but only leaves me asking why I have invested some nine hours of time following this series
The Resident Evil films are designed for people who were introduced to drama via the Xbox, action sequences that can be assembled in random order and where it doesn’t matter what happens. I watched this, the sixth and final entry, with next-to-no enthusiasm but then quite unexpectedly it starts to work
The first sequel to The Creature from the Black Lagoon where The Creature is brought back to civilisation. Director Jack Arnold again creates sympathy and pathos for the monster
A Blue Sky Studios animated film set around a talking macaw and his journey to the wilds of Brazil for the first time to mate and repopulate the species. Familiar cliched story arcs conducted with a good deal of colour
I hate the utterly formulaic films of Blue Sky Studios, the ones behind the endless Ice Age sequels. That said, this is one of their more enjoyable – despite a plot that is amazingly busy trying to reintroduce characters from the first film, the screen overflows with colourful exuberance
The concept – sort of akin to
Robinson Crusoe is a classic adventure story about a man shipwrecked on a desert island. It has no fantastic content but this is a bizarre animated version where Crusoe is aided by the talking animals that inhabits the island amid much slapstick shenanigans
One of the most entertaining bad movies ever made, an alien invader film featuring the famous Ro-Man, a gorilla suit with a diving helmet
Disney are now doing what Lucasfilm did with their novels in the 80s and spinning adventures off from even minor background characters. This is a grittier Dirty Dozen adventure but still recycles the same basic elements
Straggler in the 1970s Animal Amok genre about a small South Carolina town under attack by killer dogs. This was done better elsewhere by films like The Pack and i>Cujo. Made in short-lived 3D fad so we get dog snouts poking out the screen
This was the eighth of the Ring films. This is made as a sequel to the earlier Sadako 3D, the worst of the Japanese series, although is actually a better film
The original Ring was a classic, an eerie ghost story that was a success that spawned a series of copies right around the Asian region. Here the Ring cycle has been rebooted in a heavy letdown that abandons all of the creepy atmospherics of the original for a series of pop-up CGI effects
As the spectacle of mass destruction goes, you could hardly get more epic in scale than this. On the other hand, as someone whose hometown was obliterated by an earthquake in 2011, I find it offensive that such devastation is arranged for our enjoyment while the suffering and even the idea that anybody has been killed has been edited out
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
Supposedly the final chapter of the Saw saga – where the sole novelty on offer is gore and body parts coming out the screen in 3D. This is conducted with a tired lack of effort that makes for tedium-inducing watching
The Maze Runner was one of the better Young Adult films, creating an intriguing conceptual mystery; this sequel ignores all of that, even throws the book out and is essentially a jumble of random sf tropes that amount to no more than running, shooting and things exploding
I really enjoyed Illumination Entertainment’s debut film Despicable Me but thereafter they just seemed to slip into formula and following what every other animation studio is. Despite low initial enthusiasm, they regain their form here, doing nothing radically out of the ordinary but producing a modestly engaging work
Illumination’s The Secret Life of Pets came with a winning concept – a Garfield like series of wry observations on humanity by pets – and this is one amongst the current plague of animated sequels that emerges equally likably
South Korean monster movie set that only rehashes the cliches set down by Alien/Aliens. On the plus side, the CGI monster looks great and there are some particularly imaginative set-pieces with it but the film is at best only a rehash of Deepstar Six on an oil rig
German animated film about the adventures of Snow White’s Seven Dwarves. Lightweight and trivial, this feels like it has come along ten years too late to the fad for fairytale parodies and mash-ups we had in the mid-2000s with films like Shrek and Hoodwinked!