The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Feeble and shabbily made kid’s film in which children are transported inside the world of their favourite dinosaur tv show. Featuring some terrible dinosaur effects
The Asylum’s mockbuster answer to the Tom Cruise film Edge of Tomorrow, which has very little to do with it other than both featuring an alien invasion. A film created with more ambition than budget to convey it
A satiric film based on Spike Lee’s idea of the Magical Negro, an African American who exists to deliver wisdom or magical influence to white people. This gets in some deftly amusing punches at US race relations
Work of softcore erotica that gives the old 1950s B movie plot of astronauts encountering a planet inhabited only by women an Adults Only workover. Aside from the obvious reasons to watch this, the SF content is entirely negligible
Another of the last films that Bruce Willis made before his mental deterioration forced him to retire. A variation on The Most Dangerous Game where Bruce plays a bad-ass facing hunters with his bare hands
This fifteen chapter serial was the second ever Superman film. It is a vigorously entertaining run through the comic’s basics and features the first screen appearance of Lex Luthor
Lightweight action in which a young carjacker gains possession of a teleportation device and is pursued by government agents
Eli Roth adapts the popular videogame and corrals a surprisingly high-profile cast in a knockabout planetary adventure. Alas, that met a very mixed reception and was widely regarded as a bad movie
Another among the shoddy last films Bruce Willis-made before retirement, an SF film about a rogue military team that decide to declare war on aliens. This is laughable in terms of military tactics
A Russian SF film about humans who have been selected to participate in an intergalactic sports tournament. This feels that it has been construed as an anti-Alita: Battle Angel and has some stunning design work
The time paradox film has always been one of the most ingenious and conceptually challenging SF films in recent years with the likes of Timecrimes and Predestination. This is a B-budgeted variant
The second sequel to the original The Fly, which does feature more teleporter accidents and mutations but for some reason no fly hybrids this time
This gives all appearance to being another copy of Insidious – a ghost story with an evil-sounding adjective for a title. The film settles in in predictable ways; then throws the ghost story angle on its head with a surprise SF twist
Disappointing film version of the videogame. The film seems to either miss or water down the principal appeals of the game, although you do get Dwayne Johnson (still billed as The Rock) as the bad guy
This was the second film based based on the Doom game and actually does a far better job of getting the essence of the game and paying fanservice to its elements than the earlier 2005 film did
A film from Rolf de Heer, a director who makes highly unusual works and should be better known than he is. In this, an alien woman befriends a man after she appears in the Australian Outback
A film made by a 17 year-old from Norway. This has more ideas – mystery mass disappearances, doppelgangers from alternate timelines – than it is capable of coherently relaying
After several other film incarnations that went nowhere, The Fantastic Four make their first appearance in The MCU. The film creates a wonderful retro world of 1960s futurism based on their original comic-books for them to inhabit
Spinoff from the Harry Potter films – unlike those, written directly for the screen and feels more like it belongs there. The US locations open the story up, while the magic creatures and new ensemble cast prove a delight
The first Fantastic Beasts was a welcome opening up of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe and offered something fresh in the series. This is a more mixed bag where it feels like it is back to business as usual for Rowling
Third of the Fantastic Beasts films, this comes as a mix of ennui with the franchise and promise. It feels like about right now would be a good time to retire the series
Despite all the hate this received, I am maybe the only person out there that liked it. It is three-quarters of a good film that strips the Four of costumes and tells a character-driven story about people dealing with powers
A teleporter accident causes a scientist to swap head and arm with a fly. This requires you to suspend believability but is otherwise one of the classic monster movies of the era. Several sequels and a remake followed.
David Cronenberg remakes the 1958 film, transforming its improbable scenario into a fascinating study of biological transformation with Jeff Goldblum genetically mutating into a fly hybrid. Kafka’s Metamorphosis with a lot more slime.
Sequel to the David Cronenberg remake of The Fly directed by that film’s effects creator Chris Walas. This reduces Cronenberg’s obsessive bodily transformation film into just another monster on the loose tale
Surprisingly good 1950s film in which scientist Robert Lansing invents a process that allows him to become insubstantial and walk through walls. The effects are very good and this attains some eerie effect
Green Lantern is a classic comic-book character but his screen presence were damaged by the Ryan Reynolds film. This conducts a severe reset of the character’s continuity
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a multi-media phenomenon that has developed a cult. The tv series with a less-than-stellar BBC budget was not the most effective incarnation of these but still hits the wittily absurd nerve of Douglas Adams’ humour
The title suggests either a comedic take on the superhero film or a teen film about a kid discovering superpowers. The least thing you expect this to be is a French police thriller about a unit investigating super-powered crimes
From the director of Hellbound: Hellraiser II, this is an unfunny monster comedy that plays out like it is trying to be a live-action version of the Hotel Transylvania films
The rarity of an original screen superhero film, this takes place in a Retro 1970s setting as former superheroes conduct a heist to get their badges of power back
I hate the Ice Age films and their tediously extruded adventures. The opening sequence here and its ignorance of even basic science is the most inane thing in the entire series
An Australian effort that is less the usual people being hunted by alien nasties in darkened corridors standard than ‘The Crazies in Space’. Crippled by a fatal lack of tension and suspense
While the film bombed, it emerges as a fairly good and faithful, lavishly produced adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ swashbuckling planetary adventure
A mockbusters from The Asylum made to coincide with the big-budget Brendan Fraser film. Resemblance to the Jules Verne book fairly much ends at the title
Doug Liman makes a film that has a great concept – a secret world of people with the mental ability to teleport anywhere – that emerges as no more than a slickly polished effort that does nothing with its premise
The DC Comics animated version of an Avengers film where they put every superhero under their roof on screen at once, including Justice League Dark, the regular Justice League, Suicide Squad and Teen Titans
An alternate world take on DC Comics characters, who are much more morally ambiguous – Superman is General Zod’s son and Batman’s role is taken by Man-Bat and is an actual vampire
Another of the DC Universe Animated Films that rewrites the Justice League into DC’s New 52 continuity reboot. This changes the character’s origins and designs to little point
A really cheap and unconvincing post-apocalyptic action film starring forgotten martial arts star Ron Marchini as a lawman fighting off mutant crazies to obtain a power crystal
A big-budget fantasy film made too much in the shadow of Star Wars by people with little understanding of the genre. The fantasy elements feel leaden and fail to take any imaginative flight
Lazer Team was an easy predictable comedy about four screw-ups that accidentally obtain parts of an alien power suit. This sequel is all the same gags on rinse and repeat.
One of the most conceptually ingenious tv mini-series ever created concerning a quest for objects from a mysterious hotel room that have been imbued with amazing powers.
An impressively designed Quebecois sf film where it is it is sad to see so much artistry lavished on something completely nonsensical and utterly woolly-headed in terms of its ideas
This ended up being the lowest rated of all MCU films. One wondered whether this was just fannish hyperbole but no what we end up with is the Batman & Robin of The MCU, the single worst film that franchise has produced
Another of the Mickey Mouse horror films that emerged when the character entered public domain. This features a Mickey Mouse masked killer pursuing teens through an amusement arcade
A very different to the current SF boom in Chinese cinema at the moment, this is a Cyberpunk film about the construction of mutant fighters
This has a cute title pun but otherwise is a feeble SF comedy
Following Tin Man and Alice, another of Nick Willing’s ingenious rewritings and rationalisations of classic children’s tales in science-fiction terms. Here the essentials of Peter Pan are transported to another planet
What will be the very last of 20th Century Fox’s X-Men films, this is more like a superheroic version of The Breakfast Club than any of the other X-Men films
One of the classic B-budget films directed by the legendary Roger Corman back in his heyday. Concerning a mysterious alien vampire, this comes with all the quirks and dry humour of Corman’s films of this era
The Roger Corman 1950s cheapie about a mystery man who proves to be an alien space vampire is remade as a vehicle for Traci Lords. The script is essentially the same but with the addition of a lot of topless women
Christopher Nolan directs a beautiful period piece with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as rival Victorian stage magicians. The film is an elegantly crafted Hall of Mirrors and illusions, capped by sterling performances from all involved
Strong and intelligent Spanish film that readily homages Philip K. Dick in its mind-expanding story of a science-fiction fan being contacting aliens
Zack Snyder returns with a work that is all but a Star Wars film in name where he draws heavily on the basics of The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven
A film about a teleportation experiment that has the unforeseen effect of turning men into woman and then into human-alligator hybrids. We are in extremely bad movie stakes here
The first of the sequels to the original The Fly where the scientist’s son begins his own experiments
British-made film about an astronaut stranded on a world of robots. Made by a team of three people, this produces effects that rival Hollywood productions but is also a solid work of planetary survival that comes with some jaw-dropping mid-film twists
Painful Christmas movie where Santa’s daughter takes on an evil miser
A kid makes the discovery that his father is a superhero and he and his friends amuse themselves with the cool gadgetry in his secret headquarters, before being required to defend it against a villain
Toho Films of the 1960s are best known for the Godzilla films and assorted monster bashes. This is one of their non-monster films, part of a spate of mutant supervillain films concerning a villain who has invented a teleportation machine and is using it to exact revenge
Action film with Michael Madsen and a mystery alien woman fighting a government coverup of UFOs to retrieve his abducted daughter
By this point, the Sharknado series has gone from an amusingly tongue-in-cheek original to a series that is widely signalling that it is not taking anything that happens remotely seriously
Action film made at the height of the popularity of tv’s The X Files with Jack Scalia fighting off the Men in Black
The animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse proved an unexpected success. This sequel builds on that ups the artistic quality of the original to something quite extraordinary
Second of the Star Trek films, usually regarded as the fan favourite because of its often moving character focus on themes of life, death and aging. Ricardo Montalban makes a grandly theatrical villain and the film gets some great suspense out of space war sequences
Leonard Nimoy steps into the director’s chair of the third Star Trek film and his doing marks the shift of the films from intergalactic adventuring into the regulars engaged in a safe, easy set of adventures playing to fan audiences
William Shatner tries to emulate the success had by Leonard Nimoy in directing a Star Trek film but falls on his face, badly overstressing the comedy elements and delivering the worst of the Classic Trek films
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
J.J. Abrams revives the Star Trek franchise by recasting it with younger faces and rewriting continuity. But in the appeal to a hipper, sexier vibe, it feels a long way from Gene Roddenberry’s creation – nowhere in evidence is the original’s concern with galactic politics and social issues of the day
Gene Roddenbery created a tv series that was about boldly going, confronting different ways of life. The choice to hire the director of The Fast and the Furious films to helm the film made for the show’s 50th anniversary says how wrong-headed the reboot series has become – all about cool young leads and hurtling effects sequences
The second of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films where series regular Jonathan Frakes takes the director’s chair and delivers an exciting adventure, showing an excellent hand with the special effects. Far more satisfying than the previous film
The first of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films is an odd affair that seems like a routine episode of the series that accidentally gained a big-screen budget. This crosses over with Classic Trek where William Shatner mugs his way through a grand old airing of Captain Kirk
Third of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films has Jonathan Frakes back in the director’s seat where he again plays to his strengths with great visual effects scenes but the story feels like a filler episode
I had mixed feelings about J.J. Abrams’ reboot of Star Trek This time around the actors seem more at home in the characters and the plot works a good deal better (for the most part), while Abrams creates a hurtling effects spectacle that is the most action-oriented of the Trek films
The last of the films spun off from Star Trek: The Next Generation and a dismal flop that killed the film series off. Tom Hardy as a bad guy Romulan is a cardboard threat while the uninspired plot rehashes The Wrath of Khan
Long-awaited revival of the tv series on the big screen. While this has a mixed fan reception, it is well worth re-evaluation. It is the only one of the Trek films that reaches for epic, mind-expanding places to find something of a 2001: A Space Odyssey
Matthew Vaughn adapts a Neil Gaiman book in this undeniably appealing fantasy that comes with a story of epical sweep that vies between fantastic imagination and broad humour
One of the best of the DC Universe Original Animated Movies under the greatly underrated Lauren Montgomery. This serves to introduce Supergirl and Jack Kirby’s Fourth World
SF effort from the UK’s Amicus Films with an ambitious plot about communication from the stars that manages to prefigure films like Contact and 2001. On the other hand, the film fails is in its pitiful and utterly inadequate special effects
One of the films from Charles Band’s Empire productions about a family facing an alien manifested out of their tv set
Despite being another film based on a Disney theme park, I had high expectations of this because of Brad Bird. Alas, the initial promise of a retro-sf work that mainlined the wonderment of Jetsons-styled futurism turns into a surprisingly glum and message-heavy work about how the modern world is a depressing place
The seventh of the live-action Transformers films, the second made after Michael Bay stepped down from the director’s chair
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
Tron was a genuinely groundbreaking work. It is hard to describe how ill conceived this sequel is where we have gone to predicting the idea of cyberspace to a fight over a glorified 3D printer
Third of the V/H/S films, all horror anthologies in the Found Footage style. While the other two were fairly hit and miss, this is extremely good. Each of the four stories sits among the very best episodes among the current crop of multi-director horror anthologies
Possibly the most conceptually demented film to come out of the 1960s-70s Anglo-horror cycle – one part The Fly, one part a witch’s retribution film about a man who transforms into a vulture creature after teleporting into his ancestor’s grave whereupon he is driven to enact a centuries old curse
A blatant copy of M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs even down to the near-identical title and a similar plot about crop circles appearing on a farm presaging an alien invasion
The second part of DC Universe Animated Original Movies’ adaptation of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel, the most faithful screen adaptation yet
A giant alien tentacle has appeared in the sky and randomly teleports to different locations. This concerns two oddball characters caught in one of these shifts and the quirky road journey they embark upon
An adult film about aliens that visit Earth to repopulate their own species and abduct women during sex whereupon they stimulate them with the penises that come out of their mouths
High-profile adaptation of the classic children’s work by Madeline L’Engle that has been entirely wrenched out of shape by its director to become a heavy-handed message about diversity. It is SF made by people who think the genre is just eye candy and absurdly over-the-top costumes
The seventh X-Men chapter arrives with a certain ennui. Bryan Singer creates some epic scenes but the sprawling ensemble and the series’ ragged continuity makes it hard to invest in the characters, while the new villain looks like a B movie wizard and the mass destruction climax comes surprisingly by the book
Despite the bad press surroundings this, I failed to find it as bad as other reviewers. It’s a solid if not standout entry in the series with some fine superheroic action sequences
Bryan Singer’s immediate sequel to X-Men, this ups the number of new mutant characters, although only sporadically manages to kick in with the spectacular superheroic action sequences the first film had