The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
A recently rediscovered work that was sold as a lost George Romero film. Romero was hired to make a film about the plight of the elderly and creates a surreal allegorical work set around an amusement park
This sounds more like a tabloid headline “Elvis and JFK vs a mummy in a retirement home” than it does a film. It is however a work of considerable ingenuity from Phantasm series director Don Coscarelli
Another of the mostly disastrous Marvel tv adaptations of the 1970s. Captain America is sidelined for much of the show. This does conduct the coup of casting Christopher Lee as the villain but criminally gives him nothing to do
David Fincher makes a surprisingly positive and upbeat Academy Awards crowd-aimed film in which Brad Pitt is a man who ages in reverse, born as an old man and progressively getting younger as he goes through life
An adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft short story. While more faithful to the story than the earlier 1969 adaptation, the film is very cheaply made and collapses into the frequently ridiculous
Quite creepy Spanish film where the elderly everywhere without any explanation begin to act disturbed and turn on the young
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
The second of Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad films, an Arabian Nights adventure. Made as a vehicle for Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects, which are stunning. Everything about the film is classic
Paco Plaza, best known for the [Rec] movies, returns with an unsettlingly effective film about a girl forced to tend her grandmother only to find increasingly sinister things going on
Low-budget director Albert Pyun, best known for his kickboxing cyborg action films, conducts a micro-budgeted adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story about a scientist who fends off death by keeping their room chilled
Petty criminal Pete Davidson is given a job at a retirement home only to discover that sinister activities are occurring all around him. From the director of The Purge films
A wonderful little largely unknown film where the seniors in an apartment building due to be demolished group together to take revenge on the real estate developers
This Hayao Miyazaki film about a girl who becomes assistant to a mysterious magician is not quite in the same league as Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away but has the sublime beauty, eccentric characters and tender charms that all his work does
The debut film from Tony Scott was a commercial flop but is a sumptuous, elegant, beautifully filmed work that often seems a case of style over substance. It is nevertheless a challenging attempt to create a modern day vampire film
Space opera made in the aftermath of Star Wars, a magpie collage of influences not always the most coherently presented and given a comic emphasis
This could be Christopher Nolan’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he draws from in many respects, but where Kubrick was cold and oblique, this is a 2001 with a heart. A pleasure to see a film rooted in credible science and dealing with high concept SF
Likeable comedy variant on E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial in which senior citizen Ben Kingsley befriends an alien visitor after its UFO crashes in his backyard. Few films seem to be made with such an acute awareness of the issues of aging
The growth of Chinese cinema is one of the success stories of the 2010s. This is a fantasy film that leaves anything Western fantastic cinema has made recently for dead, including epical battle scenes and a lavish sumptuousness of costuming that leaves your jaw on the floor
Barbara Hershey plays an aging woman who moves into a retirement home. The film then develops an edgy paranoia about possibly supernatural happening around her
Film that assembles interesting a number of SF elements and twists but is killed by its delivery as a pretentious indie film
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
German film in which the elderly abruptly turn and begin attacking the young en masse
Rather good New Zealand made horror film set in a geriatric home with Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow engaged in a series of psychological games as a stroke-impaired Rush tries to stop a murderous Lithgow
An absurdly over-the-top film where aging Demi Moore takes a serum that turns her into a youthful Margaret Qualley
This has an interesting premise where a middle-aged man suddenly faces his teenage girlfriend returned unaged from a relativistic space voyage
Richard E. Grant is a witchfinder who pursues warlock Julian Sands through a time vortex into the present day. David Twohy’s script takes all the Old Wives’ tale aspects of Middle Ages superstition seriously to immensely entertaining regard
Director Benh Zeitlin made an extraordinary debut with Beasts of the Southern Wild. In his follow-up, he does striking things in making a modernised Peter Pan and transplanting the story to Louisiana
Most science-fiction films lack worthy ideas, this is one that contrarily suffers from too many and collapses under the weight of its pretensions to profundity