The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Disney fairytale Lite. The story of Rapunzel gets hiply modernised and is now no more than a cute adventure/romance about a handsome rogue and a girl who has magical hair. Eminently forgettable Disney animation.
Another videogame adapted film, this has almost entirely been conceived around a series of slick fight sequences and little else
Version of the Shakespeare play that gives us a female Prospero (Helen Mirren) but is otherwise surprisingly faithful. Director Julie Taymor opens the play up with considerable visual extravagance
An appealingly politicised variant on the Backwoods Brutality film in which two rogue US border guards decide to set up their own home Guantanamo Bay … not Torture Porn but an effectively brutal study on the effect of torture
The English-language remake of the Georgian 13 Tzameti about underground Russian Roulette gambling. This has an impressive cast line-up but lacks the stark tension of the original
Sequel to the modestly effective Alaskan-set vampire film 30 Days of Night, this holds up surprisingly well for something that gives all indication of being a throwaway video sequel
Rather odd but amiable Chinese film about friendship between a real-life artist and his model & with flying swordsmen and alien visitors all thrown in for no discernibly apparent reason
Imagine Baise-Moi or Thelma and Louise by way of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert – a film that hits a perfect note in terms of tongue-in-cheek spirit
Fascinating anime about a cafe for androids. Imagine a cross between an Isaac Asimov Robot story and Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes. The film opens up in a series of episodes that tell stories of human-robot relations that hold a lovely tenderness
A live-action film based on a popular Japanese young adult novel that has been filmed multiple times before. This is a rather dull film that fails to do anything terribly interesting with its time travel premise
An Australian version of Red Dawn – prettily mounted but feels more like Dawson’s Creek Goes to War than it has does a realistic war film
From the top wrestling superstar in the world in the early 00s to movie action hero to being dressed in a pink tutu with fairy wings, it is hard to believe that Dwayne Johnson’s box-office star would have ever recovered from this family film embarrassment that sees him cast as a fairy
A couple abduct and torture a paedophile who killed their son. Hard to tell if this is an edgy out-there film or the most tasteless concept that Torture Porn cinema has tried so far. Alas, a banal tv movie handling kills any possibility of the former
After such high standards with the previous two films, there is considerable onus on Pixar when it comes to this third entry nevertheless they manage to wring some strong and effective new twists on the familiar
A strong and intelligent science-fiction film about a future where the aging buy younger bodies from the Third World to transfer their minds into
This has the intriguing hook of casting 1990s teen heartthrob Val Kilmer as a supernaturally empowered mysterious stranger. It soon becomes apparent that the film is a variant on Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter. After blowing its twist soon in, the film only proceeds to a desultory ending
Hilarious Norwegian-made Found Footage film about a documentary team investigating a man who claims to hunt giant trolls. Played in complete deadpan
Tron was a groundreaking work that predicted the advent of cyberspace. Three decades on, this sequel never does anything as imaginative, although advances in effects technology allow for a dazzling reinvention of The Grid
An amusing parody of the Backwoods Brutality film where the hillbillies are likeable innocents and the college kids end up killing themselves in a series of bizarre accidents. Amusing, although in the end is only a one-joke film
Sequel to the outrageously gory 2001 Maniacs, although here the horror comedy balance spills over into absurd farce and cheap gore effects. Crucially, the film seems cheaper and less polished, more messy and random in terms of its arrangements
Charming Claymation animated adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale from Russia that manages to be a mordant satire on Communism into the bargain
Animated film based on the popular fantasy wargame. The set-up is a fascinating mix of SF and mediaeval religion but the plot rehashes Aliens without much payoff and the animation is B-budget
Winner of this year Cannes Palme d’Or, this is a Thai ghost story .where director Apichatpong Weerasethaku creates an intensely haunted atmosphere at times, although the film itself remains vague and elusive in terms of plot
A Found Footage film that gets political – in this case, featuring a group of American vigilantes torturing Mexican illegal immigrants. Not quite full on Torture Porn but holds a darkly barbed bite
A couple on a getaway to an uninhabited island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef find the island may be haunted
The movie parodies of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer witlessly run a series of crude, unfunny gags over films and celebrities of the previous twelve months vintage. Here they take on the Twilight series
Enigmatic film in the vein of The Quiet Earth where everybody vanishes except for a handful of survivors who have to now deal with creatures the lurk in the dark
Strange but by no means uninteresting film that takes several weird doglegs going from biker parties to a possession film and then a home invasion by seemingly resurrected 1950s rockers
Another excruciatingly bad mock exploitation film from Tony Watt, who may well be the world’s worst filmmaker. This mixes killer women, aliens, UFOs, Mafia into an incomprehensible mix
John Carpenter returned to the director’s chair after more than a decade but failed to light the world on fire. Carpenter makes what you could call a ghost story version of Girl, Interrupted. The scares are tame and the film is hamstrung by an improbable M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
Korean-made Wu Xia/Western crossover that imports Hollywood names and is shot in New Zealand, resulting in a bizarre oddity cross-cultural fusion. The plot elements are paper thin but the film comes to life during the stylised action scenes
Slick and visually exciting German vampire film that recaptures something of the chic sumptuousness of The Hunger. Perhaps The Hunger by way of Sex and the City set in a world of conspicuous fashion consumption where vampirism represents women’s ultimate empowerment
Grimly fascinating Mexican film about the activities of a family of cannibals. The film keeps you intrigued because it only drops suggestions about what is happening, leaving it up to us to piece solutions together, although the eventual lack of answers is frustrating
Agonisingly awful romantic comedy about a Fountain of Love. The plot is utterly vapid, its resolution never in the slightest doubt, while director Mark Steven (Daredevil, Ghost Rider) Johnson sets the entire film up around a series of painfully unfunny slapstick routines
The 1941 Lon Chaney Jr The Wolf Man is given the remake treatment in a way that builds out on the creaky original with lavish sets and state of the art transformation effects
The finest film made yet on the subject of cloning. A beautifully directed film that deals with the tricky ethical issues when Eva Green decides to give birth to a clone of her lover Matt Smith and raise him as her son.
The always interesting David Blyth returns to screens with what feels like an amateur remake of Nicolas Roeg’s Track 29 that becomes a confused and plotless mishmash of hallucinations, random BDSM scenarios and shock effects
Film with minor Magical Realist touches about life in rural Malaysia that appears to be made without a plot and in which nothing happens. Dull to the point of inertia
Not much to do with The Wizard of Oz – more like The Crazies by way of The Blair Witch Project, this creates a genuinely unsettling otherworldly mystery before entering into decidedly disturbed headspace
The live-action adaptation of the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon series is a film construed entirely around slapstick sequences that never requires you to engage your brain in any way
Takashi Miike makes a sequel to his earlier superhero film filled with his typically eccentric touches
Bill Zebub is a micro-budgeted filmmaker who contends to be the most offensive filmmaker of all time. Yes, the film features a zombie Jesus who spends his time violating women who parade in a state of undress