The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Disney animated film from the same duo behind Aladdin. As with that film, the Greek myths are subjected to an annoying barrage of hip modern jokes and pop culture references
Witty psycho-thriller with Talia Shire giving the performance of a lifetime as a psychopathic landlady who becomes fixated on a handsome border
The fifth of The Land Before Time animated films about talking dinosaurs, all having been made for very young children
Disappointing adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other barbarian hero. Cast with Kevin Sorbo, it comes out as Kull: The Legendary Journeys and the material is killed by the filmmakers taking an unserious approach
The first film adapted from James Patterson’s books about forensic profiler Alex Cross, featuring standout performances from Morgan Freeman (cast as Cross) and Ashley Judd
Fine Australian psycho-thriller about a couple on the run from an accidental murder. This comes with sharp twists and ambiguities and a great sense of humour
Follow-up to Lars von Trier’s haunted hospital mini-series The Kingdom. The story is continued, although the plot seems rickety and either drops elements or veers off on other tangents as though it is being made up as people go along
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
Painfully bad attempt to incarnate the comic-book team as live-action tv pilot where the characters are played for comedy in an attempt to mimic the then success of Friends
A film about a killer snowman. Conceived as a one-liner spouting villain and outfitted with a series of novelty Christmas-themed deaths, this does not take itself too seriously with rather appealing results
An adaptation of the fairytale from Martin Gates, a largely unknown British animator. This embellishes the traditional telling of the story considerably
A quite indescribable animated film from the great Bill Pympton, this largely consists of a series of bizarre and surreal, often outrageous, transformations and juxtapositions
Kevin Williamson’s follow-up to Scream. There is not quite the same witty game-playing but this is still an above-average slasher film with a reasonable cast and more-than-adequate suspense generated
An oddity that seems to start as a film about IT espionage and then becomes a survival horror with a paintball team on a corporate retreat being hunted through the woods
The second sequel to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Things are feeling uninspired by this point and this just repeats the first film except makes it the adults who are miniaturised
Dan O’Bannon scripted film that is uncreditedly based on an H.P. Lovecraft story about family horrors and creatures lurking beneath the graveyard. Aka Bleeders
Paul W.S. Anderson puts together a well-produced and atmospheric copy of Alien, However, this also comes with a premise – spaceship returns after travelling through Hell – that is nonsensical
A documentary shot during the making of From Dusk Till Dawn, which gets to the heart of the issues in ways most making of documentaries don’t
Actress Kasi Lemmons directs a strong African-American Coming of Age story set in a backwater Louisiana town, one where voodoo is a regular part of the culture
A John Woo directed action film with the improbable premise where FBI agent John Travolta and terrorist Nicolas Cage end up surgically swapping faces and then taking over the other’s identity
A nicely produced film based on the true-life Cottingley Fairies hoax in the 1920s where two girls produced photos supposedly of fairies that convinced some people. Despite the original being a hoax, the film wants to convince us that the fairies were real
A big-budget space opera from Luc Besson. This offers a dazzlingly designed future but the plot is an inane hodgepodge of bad SF elements with a tone that flails between action and camp
Remake of Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor where the charms of the original are buried under an excess of twee – where the professor now gets a cute robot assistant and the flubber becomes sentient
An early work from Takashi Miike, an ultra-violent comic-book variant on RoboCop about a Yazkuza enforcer who is incarnated in a cyborg body and goes seeking revenge
Brutal Michael Haneke film where a family’s weekend getaway becomes a nightmare when two boys enter the house and proceed to torture and kill them. Haneke adds a level of meta-fiction that taunts the viewer’s participation
A Canadian film about a gay man returning home and revisiting his childhood after ten years away that ends up in a weird series of parallel realities
David Fincher film in which Michael Douglas is wound into a conspiracy that makes him doubt everything around him. Fincher creates paranoia but the story eventually becomes an improbably contrived house of cards
The first film from Andrew Niccol, a smart work set in a dystopian future where genetic engineering has perfected the human species and those who are born naturally are doomed to an underclass
Likeable live-action adaptation of the animated series, which was construed as a parody of Tarzan. The sight gags work well and the creature effects are accomplished
Larry Fessenden film in which he also plays a man who gets into a relationship with a vampire woman. Low key and with an emphasis on kitchen sink realism, leading to some quite striking scenes
Baffling mix of teen drama and eco-SF film set in an ozone depleted future with Tcheky Karyo engaged in a series of human-plant mutations that transform him into a swarm of insects
Rather enjoyable effort about an evil djinn that grants cursed wishes. Directed by makeup effects artist Robert Kurtzman, this has been designed to highlight various effects. Three sequels followed.
Stuart Gordon takes a lame concept – a trucker film set in space – and makes something far more enjoyable than one expected with most of the cast getting into the spirit of the exercise