Dirty Weekend (1992)
Feb 15, 2003Woman Takes Revenge on Men
Enjoyably sordid Michael Winner film in which Lia Williams is an woman who starts to eliminate the abusive men in her life. As to be expected with Winner, this gets trashy in quick course
Rufus Sewell
Dark City (1998)
Jun 7, 1999Reality Manipulation
From Alex Proyas and David S. Goyer, this has an astonishing conceptual audacity in its plot dealing with shifting realities and transplanted memories, making it arguably the finest science-fiction film of the 1990s
Bless the Child (2000)
Aug 11, 2000Satanists Pursue Divine Child
Reasonable budgeted film that does no more than rehash Devil Child cliches from The Omen – or even more so the basic plot of Servants of Twilight. Chuck Russell throws in lots of CGI effects to little effect
Arabian Nights (2000)
Jul 2, 2005Tales of Arabian Nights
Hallmark tv mini-series adaptation of the classic tales has been granted a decent budget that allows the stories to emerge with lavish spectacle and the fantasy to fly with exceptional regard
She Creature (2001)
Oct 5, 2001Mermaid Horror Film
Taking only the name of the 1950s B movie, this is otherwise a horror film about an imprisoned mermaid creature that wields a sinister threat. This works with a modest effectiveness
The Illusionist (2006)
Apr 19, 2007Enigmatic Stage Magician
This came out the same year as The Prestige and has a very similar plot with Edward Norton as a stage magician in 19th Century who may have real powers and the rivalry over a woman
Tristan + Isolde (2006)
Mar 13, 2006Historical Romance
Adaptation of the legendary historical romance was considered a box-office flop but emerges as a better film than one expected it would
Vinyan (2008)
Apr 16, 2011Haunted Journey Into the Southeast Asian Jungle
The second film from Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz is an intensely haunted albeit enigmatic journey into Southeast Asian jungles in search of a missing child
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (2012)
Jul 10, 2012Secret History
Seth Grahame-Smith's original book was a witty historical joke that retold the events of Lincoln's life as a secret history involving vampires. The film somehow misses the joke and turns everything into a ridiculously over-the-top action film
I’ll Follow You Down (2013)
Jun 30, 2014Time Travel
A time travel that has the near-soporific pace of a Lifetime tv movie. Here Haley Joel Osment discovers that his father built a stable wormhole that allowed him to travel back in time to 1947
Hercules (2014)
Jul 26, 2014Greek Mythological Hero's Ordinary Exploits
Dwayne Johnson starring Hercules film that just wants to be a big dumb cartoon without a brain cell in its body. This takes the interesting approach that Hercules was an ordinary man whose exploits were all down to PR
Where the Devil Hides (2014)
Dec 20, 2016Devil Child Prophecy in a Religious Cult
This is a modestly effective effort that sits just on the dividing line between interesting and cliched - the undeniably captivating premise involves an Amish-like cult dealing with a series of prophecies about devil children and killings of their number
Gods of Egypt (2016)
Mar 5, 2016Ancient Egyptian Mythology
This could be considered the Michael Bay version of Ancient Egyptian mythology, a film buried under numbing CGI overkill. For all that, Alex Proyas gives it a loopy grandeur that you can't entirely dislike
The Father (2020)
Apr 24, 2021Alzheimer's Sufferer/Reality Blurrings
A film that received great acclaim at awards season. Anthony Hopkins is a dementia-ridden senior and we experience his state of mind subjectively in a constantly shifting sense of what is real
Old (2021)
Oct 1, 2021Beach Where People Rapidly Age
M. Night Shyamalan gets more of a bad rap than he is due. I am happy to argue that this, which is set around a beach where people rapidly age, is one of his best films to date