The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Kathryn Bigelow makes a strong return to form with a film about the lead-up to an imminent a nuclear attack on the US. Made with a documentary-like urgency that convinces you this is the way that the real thing would play out
Alex Garland is one of the most interesting creative names out there in the genre at the moment. Here he offers a frightening depiction of a near future USA collapsed into civil war
The second part of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic SF novel Dune, this delves more deeply into the world of the Fremen, although starts to diverge more from the book
Guillermo Del Toro offers up his dark, more adult take on the classic children’s story in this beautifully made stop-motion animated film. Winner of that year’s Academy Award for Best Animated Film.
The perfect film for the Covid era. A devastatingly on the ball satire on the ineptitude of people’s response in the face of an extinction level threat to the Earth from an oncoming comet as government agencies tries to minimise the news
In this, the fifth film in The Purge series, the scenario becomes even more interestingly political, becoming a satiric take on MAGA America and the Capitol Riots
Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic SF novel comes with a determination to give the story and its richly detailed world faithful life on screen. Villeneuve adapts freely in many areas but gets the complexity of the saga
A film that offers the depiction of a totalitarian future USA where Donald Trump has refused to leave office. This was made at the end of Trump’s first term and before his second term return to power.
Controversial variant on the human bloodsports plot of The Most Dangerous Game but where liberals hunt conservatives. A film with a darkly satiric bite that sets out to offend people on both sides of the political fence
A film about the internecine in-fighting among werewolf clans and a werewolf P.I. in a near-future European Union. With Lindsay Lohan as the EU President’s wife!
At contrast to the forgettable James Wan produced version around the same time, this Guatemalan film spins the Latin America folktale as a parable about those behind historic atrocities being haunted
Exceptionally written UK mini-series from Doctor Who producer Russell T. Davies following a diverse family throughout the 2020s that become a projection of current trends turned nightmarish
Blumhouse have handed the reigns of The Purge series to African-American filmmaker Gerard McMurray who takes the opportunity to get political and drag the series into the era of Black Lives Matter
A near future film that with eviscerates the royals with biting savagery as it depicts Prince Charles becoming the King of England and clashing with the government of the day
An extraordinary anime adapted from Project Itoh, a conceptually challenging work concerning a villain who can manipulate language to drive populations to genocide
The Purge was a routine film that caught on with audiences but the premise lacks the legs to be a franchise – for one, it is based on a future scenario that has zero plausibility. This makes paper-thin stabs in terms of social issues but all interest evaporates when the guns start blazing
This is not an adaptation of the Arabian Nights but the title has been appropriated for a collection of quasi-fantastical tales and even documentaries about the Portuguese Austerity Crisis over six hours in length
Shia LaBeouf ends up on the run from the FBI in a conspiracy involving an A.I. A thriller about the surveillance society that, despite much sound and fury, finds almost nothing to say about its subject
Not to be confused with the Oliver Stone film, this is a surrealist satire on the George W. Bush presidency
Political What if scenario that sees British Prime Minister Tony Blair being publicly shamed and then placed on trail for his part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The biting points are undone by the film being directed in a tone of strident farce
Mockumentary that caused outrage at the time in depicting the assassination of then-sitting US President George W. Bush. This does not hold back in some damning political punches
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone conduct an hilarious parody of Gerry Anderson via real world politics and a very adult sense of humour
Remake of the classic Cold War thriller from Jonathan Demme that has been updated for the era of George W. Bush
Follow-up to the 2000 tv mini-series adaptation of Dune, this adapts Frank Herbert’s two books sequels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. The production lacks the depth of its predecessor
Sequel to the Biblical End Times/Antichrist film The Omega Code, this dispenses with preaching faith but still slips into absurdity
Halfway reasonable action film in which US President Roy Scheider is taken hostage by Taiwanese terrorists who want to use the nuclear launch codes against China. The surprise about the film is how political it is willing to get
Live tv broadcast remake of the 1960s Cold War nightmare about an accidental nuclear release over Russia, now with an all-star cast. This proves far more suspenseful and expertly played than one might have thought
This TV mini-series remake of the Frank Herbert novel is much more faithful to the essence and complexity of the book, even if it lacks the visual resplendence of the film versions
A thriller with Kevin Pollak as the US President caught at a diner by a blizzard where he is faced with the hard choice of whether or not to launch a nuclear attack on Iraq
The one and only fiction film made by documentary-maker Michael Moore of Fahrenheit 9/11 fame, a broad farce concerning an imaginary war declared on Canada by the USA for political purposes
The last of the classic Star Trek films. Nicholas Meyer, who made the last good Trek film The Wrath of Khan, returns to give the characters a moving send off, while the plot that reenacts the fall of the Berlin Wall with the Klingons gives the films a political immediacy that was missing since the tv series
A comedy where the Royal Family is wiped out and vulgar American nightclub singer John Goodman inherits the crown. Much comedic play between American vulgarity and British ceremony ensues.
The last gasp of the Cold War nuclear film. A tv movie that features Martin Landau is the US President who tries to stop an accidental Russian nuclear release escalating into full-out war
The last gasp of the mid-80s era of nuclear anxieties that brought Threads and The Day After, a tv mini-series about the imposition of martial law in a British city as US-Soviet nuclear war looms in Europe
David Lynch disowned his film version of the classic Frank Herbert SF novel. However, Lynch may be incapable of making a bad film and this, while acting freely with the book, has a visual grandeur that makes it highly watchable
David Cronenberg adapts a Stephen King novel with Christopher Walken waking from a coma with clairvoyant abilities. An okay film if one that lacks the personal intensity and rich themes of Cronenberg’s original works
Philip Kaufman’s adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s book about the astronauts of the Mercury Space Program comes out halfway between admiration of the sheer ballsiness of the astronauts and buying into the flag-waving nationalism the Space Race represented.
A sprawling international political thriller/satire about stolen nuclear weapons starring Sean Connery as a journalist
Fascinating Australian film in which Robert Powell plays an enigmatic stage magician who may or may not have real powers who comes to influence a politician’s family
The penultimate screen role of Peter Sellers, a sublimely deadpan satire in which he plays a gardener with the blank innocence of a child whose simple-minded utterances are taken as words of great profundity
Robert Aldrich makes a thriller in which rogue general Burt Lancaster hijacks a nuclear missile silo and demands the truth about the Vietnam War be released. A big muscular production that attained some controversy at the time
Strong political What IF drama from a Rod Serling script that has James Earl Jones as the first Black President of the USA (something that did not occur in reality for another 36 years with Barack Obama)
Satiric 1960s Youth Revolution film where a rock star becomes US President, reduces the voting age and everyone over thirty is placed in a concentration camp
Peter Watkins is the most underrated director of the 1960s – his films are fiercely anti-establishment attacks that come with an extraordinary incendiary charge. This mockumentary depiction of a near future where the government uses a rock star to manipulate the public rings even more true today
Amid the mostly silly output of James Bond copies in the 1960s, this is one that comes with a sharp satiric bite in which president’s analyst James Coburn finds himself caught in the midst of a series of conspiracies
Stark black-and-white thriller from John Frankenheimer about a military coup in the US. Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling delivers a superb script
Work of incredibly stark tension set amidst post-Cuban Missile Crisis nuclear anxieties with the US trying to recall a bomber that has been accidentally dispatched to drop an atomic bomb on Moscow
Stanley Kubrick decided the only way to make a film about nuclear war was to resort to black comedy. Aided by three sidesplitting performances from Peter Sellers, the result are mercilessly funny
John Frankenheimer film. concerning a Communist plot for creating a brainwashed assassin, Frankenheimer shoots with stark and blackly funny effect and this has duly become a cult classic
Arch Oboler makes a film in which Claude Rains returns from a holiday to find a Nazi government has overtaken the USA
Truly amazing William Randolph Hearst financed film about a weak US President who is influenced by angels and ruthlessly cracks down on law and order