A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting (2020)
Adapted from a Young Adult series of books, this is a bland and utterly superficial film about a secret society of monster-hunting babysitters
A Banquet (2021)
A fascinatingly enigmatic and beautifully made film where a girl is mysteriously affected by something that causes her to stop eating
A Beginners Guide to Snuff (2016)
A comedy about two wannabe brothers who try to enter a horror movie competition by making their own snuff movie, only for everything to start going wrong
A Boy and His Dog (1975)
This adaptation of a Harlan Ellison story is a B-budget delight that zings with witty dialogue and a young, unknown Don Johnson giving a very funny performance as the titular boy roaming the post-apocalyptic landscape with his dog
A Boy Called Christmas (2021)
Gil Kenan dips into motion-capture animation to make this charming and likeable Christmas film that in effect tells a Santa Claus origin story, one that works without drowning in saccharine sentiment
A Bucket of Blood (1959)
A quirky low-budget black comedy from cult B movie director Roger Corman with Dick Miller as a wannabe who suddenly receives artistic acclaim when he exhibits dead bodies in plaster as works of art
A Bucket of Blood (1995)
Roger Corman’s original A Bucket of Blood is a cult black comedy starring Dick Miller a nerdy wannabe who is acclaimed after passing dead bodies off as works of art. Here it was remade with Anthony Michael Hall inheriting the role of Walter Paisley
A Bug’s Life (1998)
The second film from Pixar. One of their slighter and usually overlooked works, this is nevertheless an enjoyably eccentric reworking of The Seven Samurai set amidst a circus troupe of talking insects
B.T.K. (2008)
A film supposedly based on true-life serial killer Dennis Rader that completely fictionalises much of his story, while Rader is badly miscast with big, bulky Kane Hodder
Baba Yaga, Terror of the Dark Forest (2020)
A new Russian-made version of the Baba Yaga folktale where the old witch is rewritten as a seductive nanny stealing children and their parents’ memories of them
Babe (1995)
Runaway hit produced by George Miller of Mad Max fame that conducts what in any other terms would be an animated talking animals film in live-action with CGI and animatronics. The results are utterly charming.
Babe: Pig in the City (1998)
For this sequel to the hit talking pig film, producer George Miller of Mad Max films fame steps into the director’s chair. However, the cuteness of the original promptly becomes buried under careening slapstick
Babel (1999)
An inane French/Canadian-made children’s film about three cute creatures that come to help a boy stop the resurrection of the Tower of Babel on the eve of the millennium
Babes in Toyland (1961)
The Disney musical version of a story that takes place among the denizens of fairytale. Some visual nonsense but the film dies a slow lumbering death amid the sugary sentiment
Baby – Secret of the Lost Legend (1985)
Disney family film about an expedition into unexplored Africa to find a dinosaur. This was made way before Jurassic Park and the advent of CGI and so the effects are physical and highly variable but the film achieves an undeniable tenderness
Baby Blood (1990)
A wildly deranged and gore-drenched ride. Imagine Rosemary’s Baby with an Alien chesburster where a woman is impregnated by a parasite that maintains a monologue as it urges her to kill and drink blood to feed it.
Baby Geniuses (1999)
Film set around the premise that babies are secretly geniuses and talk in their own language. This makes a beeline for pee and poop jokes and seems to think we should applaud it for the cutsieness of seeing babies doing adult things
Babycall (2011)
Pål Sletaune is a Norwegian director who deserves more attention for his reality-bending surrealism. Here mother Noomi Rapace moves into new apartment where ghostly screams come through the baby monitor and she soon finds that she cannot be sure what is real
Babylon A.D. (2008)
This was critically dismissed – even its director spoke out against it – nevertheless it proves a flawed but not entirely uninteresting French Cyberpunk film as mercenary Vin Diesel is hired to protect miracle girl Melane Thierry
Back from Hell (2011)
A possession film that takes the Found Footage approach. This takes the traditional approach of Catholic priests intoning exorcism rituals etc and fails to do anything interesting
Back in Time (2015)
Fan-produced documentary about the making of the Back to the Future trilogy. The filmmakers get face time with almost everybody involved. Far less interesting are the scenes dealing with DeLorean restoration
Back to the Future (1985)
This was a huge hit at the time and has become one of the most indisputable pop culture artifacts of its era. The film takes a clever time travel plot and infuses it with an effortless energy to prove a considerable winner
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
The first of the Back to the Future sequels has a whiplash ingenuity that propels us through several different scenarios, including a trip to the future, a dark alternate present and requiring Michael J. Fox to duck unseen in and around the margins of the first film
Back to the Future Part III (1990)
Third of the Back to the Future films, which takes everything back in time to the Old West. Probably the slightest of the trilogy by a tiny margin, this nevertheless goes out with a rousing farewell
Backmask (2015)
Marcus Nispel is a director most associated with remakes of other films. In original material here, he is still rehashing moves from other films – an abandoned asylum and every shock effect in the possession/exorcism playbook
Backtrack (2015)
Beautifully made Australian ghost story that creates a strong sense of eerie disquiet as psychologist Adrien Brody realises that all of his patients are dead and is prompted to go on a journey to uncover forgotten things from his past
Backwater (2015)
For the most part a standard variant on the staple of people being stalked through the backwoods. Things are buoyed up by an effective twist but that fails to excuse the fact that almost nothing happens
Bad Biology (2008)
The long-awaited return of Frank Henenlotter, the cult director of Basket Case fame, with a film about people with mutant genitalia – a work that proves extraordinary in its mind-bogglingly perverse imagery
Bad Blood (1982)
Film based on true-life New Zealand mass murderer Stanley Graham, a disenfranchised farmer who became a local hero after shooting several police and inspiring a massive manhunt
Bad CGI Gator (2023)
A deliberately ridiculous Charles Band production where students throwing their laptops into a lake causes an alligator to float through the air and become giant-sized
Bad Channels (1992)
Another film from Charles Band’s Full Moon Productions, this is made with a deliberate chessiness as aliens take over a radio station shrinking girls down into bottles
Bad Dreams (1988)
Story of the sole survivor of a cult mass suicide waking from a coma to be haunted by the cult leader begging her to join them. This becomes a derivative of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films before a contrived ending
Bad Girl Island (2007)
A film that feels like it should be an erotic thriller but isn’t. Antonio Sabato Jr. rescues an amnesiac Annalynne McCord who proceeds to exert a fatal influence
Bad Guy (2001)
Kim Ki-Duk film about the strangely tender relationship that grows between a mute thug and a woman he forces into prostitution
Bad Influence (1990)
Fine Curtis Hanson psycho-thriller in which dull yuppie James Spader befriends charismatic psychopath Rob Lowe and is drawn into a series of taunting psychological games
Bad Johnson (2014)
Sometimes you shake your head and wonder how a film got greenlit. In this case, we have a comedy where Cam Gigandet’s penis gains a separate life of its own, resulting in a Jekyll/Hyde film of sorts
Bad Kids Go to Hell (2012)
This promises the amusing idea of a sarcastic 00s take on The Breakfast Club but emerges as no more than a glorified episode of Scooby-Doo, in a plot about punishing the children of privilege
Bad Kids of Crestview Academy (2017)
Sequel to the sarcastically amusing Bad Kids Go to Hell, which is set at the same school a few years later as someone starts eliminating people in detention
Bad Milo! (2013)
A comedy about a demon that appears out of a man’s ass!!! This has the dementia to be a potential midnight cult hit but misses the mark by a wide mile and stumbles around obvious targets in predictable ways
Bad Moon (1996)
Eric Red directed film with Michael Paré as a werewolf fighting a territorial dispute with his sister’s dog. Slight effort that suffers from crappy morphing werewolf transformation effects
Bad Ronald (1974)
From the Golden Age of TV Movies, a film where Scott Jacoby hides in the cubbyhole of the wall of his home after he accidentally kills someone and then develops a fixation on the family that move in
Bad Samaritan (2018)
Roland Emmerich’s former writer Dean Devlin makes a film where a burglar discovers that David Tennant is a serial killer holding a girl prisoner and sets out to rescue her. Tennant does an entertaining turn as a bad guy
Bad Taste (1988)
Peter Jackson first appeared with this no-budget splatter comedy. A miracle of DIY filmmaking, the film plays out like a live-action Roadunner cartoon where the creativity of Jackson’s home-made gore effects is positively ingenious
Badlands (1973)
Terrence Malick’s first film, very loosely based on the murder spree of Charles Starkweather, albeit one where Malick reinvents Starkweather and girlfriend Caril Fugate as innocents adrift in the great American landscape
Baffled! (1972)
A young and dashing Leonard Nimoy plays a clairvoyant racing driver in this unsold tv pilot. The disappointment is that his powers amount to no more than a detective deducing clues in a standard murder mystery
Bag of Bones (2011)
The perpetually terrible Mick Garris is allowed loose on another Stephen King book where he promptly reduces a subtle, ambiguous ghost story to a series of lunging pop-up scares without any concept of atmosphere or nuance
Baghead (2008)
The second film from The Duplass Brothers, Mark and Jay. Though labelled a slasher parody, it is more of an improvisational comedy that uses the set-up of a backwoods slasher film without much interest in horror
Baghead (2023)
Horror film about a mysterious creature in the cellar with a bag over its head that can bring a dead loved one back to life for two minutes, but where use of this comes with a price
Bagman (2024)
Colm McCarthy, who previously directed the standout The Girl With All the Gifts, returns with a film about a man being haunted by a boogeyman out of his childhood that snatches children in a bag
Bailey’s Mistake (2001)
Strange Disney tv movie in which widow Linda Hamilton moves to a small town where the people seem able to do magic
Baise-Moi (2000)
Splendidly nasty French film that feels like Thelma and Louise by way of Natural Born Killers where two women pick up guns and go on a shooting spree against men who are abusive jerks. Directed by two women and cast with porn actresses, this holds little back
Bait (2012)
A strong contender for the most ridiculous killer shark ever made – something that should have occurred to the producers about the point of the film’s premise of a shark hunting people in a supermarket
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002)
An action film that sets Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu up as rival assassins. Despite a reasonable budget thrown at it, the film comes strangely without enervation
Balto (1995)
One of the better animated films produced by Amblin, this is based on the true story of a husky rescue in Alaska, albeit turned into a film where the dogs now talk
Bambi (1942)
One of the unquestionable classics from Disney’s Golden Age of animation between 1939 and 1942. This is an absolute delight for its unalloyed innocence and tragically affecting emotions
Bambi II (2006)
One of the better video-released Disney sequels churned out during the 90s/00s, this finds some of the innocence of the original even if it never scales the same heights
Bambi: The Reckoning (2025)
The people behind Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey offer up a savage take on another childhood favourite with a horror version of Bambi where Bambi becomes a mutated deer with a murderous hatred of humans
Bang Bang Baby (2014)
A genre-melding oddity that starts as an earnest recreation of a 1950s rock‘n’roll movie, before introducing a series of bizarre mutations and some fascinating mid-film twists. Most audiences didn’t get this but it is unusually different
Bangkok Haunted (2001)
Early effort from one of the Pang Brothers Oxide, who only directs one of the episodes in this trio of Thai ghost stories. The other director’s grasp of horror effect is often crude and amateurish
Banlieue 13 (2004)
Luc Besson written/produced film that is a French rehash of Escape from New York but director Pierre Morel gives it a series of exhilarating action and parkour sequences
Banlieue 13: Ultimatum (2009)
Sequel to the French action hit. The plot shuffles the same basic elements around but it is the action we have come for, which is slow to start but soon kicks into exhilarating high gear
Barb Wire (1996)
Enjoyably silly comic-book adaptation with a pneumatically-inflated Pamela Anderson playing the titular bounty hunter in an anarchic future. You cannot complain that this is a film that delivers exactly what it promises
Barbarella (1968)
Charmingly capricious and silly adaptation of the comic-strip with a wide-eyed Jane Fonda as the spacegoing heroine. Filled with some wonderfully naughty gags and a production and costume design scheme that goes to a gorgeously deranged excess
Barbarian (2022)
The directorial debut of Zach Cregger that received great word-of-mouth. A film that shifts points-of-views to tell the story of people discovering a horrible secret in the basement of an AirBNB
Barbarian Queen (1985)
One of a series of low-budget sword-and-sorcery films of the 1980s. This predates both Red Sonja and Xena with its depiction of a fierce warrior woman. Produced by Roger Corman
Barbie & the Diamond Castle (2008)
One of the first of Mainframe’s animated Barbie films, this creates a fairytale where reasonable effort gone into the animation and characters
Barbie (2023)
Less a film than a phenomenon, there is something ironic about a doll that is accused of promoting negative body standards ending up leading a women’s movement. Moria has just one or two issues with this.
Barbie and the Three Musketeers (2009)
Alexandre Dumas’s classic adventure story is turned into an animated vehicle for Barbie with genders reversed and an absurdly upbeat Girls Can Do Anything vibe. Being a kid’s film, the girl Musketeers are no longer allowed to wield swords
Barbie as Rapunzel (2002)
The second of the animated Barbie films, this casts her as the title character in the popular Brothers Grimm fairytale, which has been considerably embellished. This suffers the glassy plasticity of the early Mainframe films
Barbie as The Island Princess (2007)
Another of the animated Barbie films, this casts her as a desert island castaway accompanied by a retinue of talking animals. Visually colourful but slight
Barbie as The Princess and the Pauper (2004)
Here the Barbie films turn to Mark Twain’s classic (non-fantasy) tale of rags and riches and spins it as a fairytale This has the same blank, plastic style of the early Barbie films and is otherwise bland
Barbie Fairytopia (2004)
The previous Barbie animated films had adapted various fairytales but this casts her as a fairy in a magical kingdom – simplistic, but one of the most colourfully animated of Mainframe’s Barbie films
Barbie Fairytopia: Magic of the Rainbow (2007)
Sequel to the earlier Barbie animated film Barbie Fairytopia. Extremely colourful but essentially a fantasy version of a teenage girl high school drama that quickly slips into pre-packaged formula
Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses (2006)
Another animated Barbie film that leaves you quite certain that every problem in life can be solved with a positive upbeat ditty
Barbie in The Nutcracker (2001)
The first in a long series of animated films based on Mattel’s girl’s doll Barbie. This casts Barbie as a lead in an adaptation of The Nutcracker ballet, although is largely routine
Barbie Mariposa (2008)
Another of Mainframe’s interminable Barbie films that soon slip into a sameness. This is at least directed with a visual sweep
Barbie Mermaidia (2006)
Seventh of the animated Barbie films, spinoff of the earlier Barbie Fairytopia, all delivered in sugary upbeat sentiments amid pastel colour schemes that would look eye-poppingly psychedelic if one were high
Barbie of Swan Lake (2003)
The third animated film based on the popular girl’s doll Barbie. This places Barbie into Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake in an okay telling, if one that suffers from the usual limited animation of Mainframe’s early films
Barbie Presents Thumbelina (2009)
Another animated Barbie film, this appropriate the name of the Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale and makes it now about a fairy who preaches conservation. As these films go, this is one of the better made and comes with quite a degree of colour
Bare Wench Project 2: Scared Topless (2000)
The Bare Wench Project was an inane softcore parody of The Blair Witch Project. This is the first of four sequels in which another troupe of girls go wandering in the woods while finding almost any opportunity to take their clothes off
Barnyard (2006)
An incredibly silly animated film set around the antics of talking barnyard animals. Directed by comedy writer Steve Oedekerk, this is almost entirely centred around gags involving animals doing parodies of human things
Baron Blood (1972)
Mario Bava essentially created Italian Gothic cinema and returns to it again here in the story of a sadistic nobleman who is resurrected and begins killing people anew
Baron Munchausen (1962)
A version of the Baron’s tall tales from the great, underrated Karel Zeman. Zeman’s dizzying blend of live-action, animation and cutouts and deadpan absurdism is perfect, resulting in the best Baron Munchausen film to date
Bartok the Magnificent (1999)
Animator Don Bluth conducts a spinoff from his previous film Anastasia, focusing on the adventures of the talking bat sidekick
Barton Fink (1991)
Hollywood noir from the Coen Brothers, this takes us inside the crumbling mental state of a screenwriter in the 1930s. Like a David Lynch remake of Day of the Locust, this comes rich in the Coens’ black uncomfortable humour
Basic Instinct (1992)
This slick eroticised thriller was a huge success and made the career of Sharon Stone. The absurd plot bears no resemblance to human motivation but Paul Verhoeven makes an undeniably provocative and entertaining package
Basic Instinct 2 (2006)
Sequel to Basic Instinct made fourteen years later. Sharon Stone vamps her way across the screen but the heated sexuality of the original has been watered down to a lukewarm whimper
Basket Case (1982)
Remarkable little no-budget film from Frank Henenlotter about the relationship between a man and the deformed, psychopathic torso of his severed Siamese twin
Basket Case 2 (1990)
Frank Henenlotter takes the commercial route and makes a sequel to his no-budget cult film. A bigger budget allows the film to become a comic variant on Freaks featuring a series of way-out makeup effects
Basket Case 3 (1991)
The third of Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case films but by this point the perverse wit of the original has become replaced by a cartoonish absurdity
Baskin (2015)
Balls-to-the-wall horror from all places Turkey. It is not clear what is going on for much of the film about police investigating a house filled with Devil worshippers but you cannot deny that it pulls out all stops
Bates Motel (1987)
Not the tv series, this is an unsold earlier tv pilot that attempted to spin a series off from Psycho, An ill-conceived disaster, the film’s clumsy
direction could not be further away from Alfred Hitchcock if it tried
Bathory (2008)
Lushly made retelling of the Countess Bathory story, one that tries to make an interesting if historically questionable case that she was kind to servants and a misunderstood victim
Batman & Bill (2017)
While the world knows of Bob Kane as the creator of Batman, few of heard of Bill Finger who created many of the core aspects but had his contributions claimed by Kane. This is a documentary that sets out to find the truth
Batman & Robin (1997)
Possibly the worst film ever made on a big studio budget, Joel Schumacher’s follow-up to Tim Buton’s standout Batman films where he turns everything into an absurd Day Glo realm with a script for two year-olds, campy puns and badly overacting super-villains
Batman (1943)
Batman’s first screen appearance in a fifteen-chapter serial. This is a dull, impoverished adaptation, which sees Batman and Robin rewritten in the service of the US government fighting a Japanese invasion force
Batman (1966)
A film spinoff from the popular 1960s Batman tv show starring Adam West. At half-an-hour twice a week, the series was an enjoyable piece of surrealistic zaniness but its appeals seem stretched at feature-length
Batman (1989)
The origins of the dark brooding superhero on film. Tim Burton borrows from the graphic novels of the era and gives us a beautiful, stunningly designed film that digs deep inside the psychological recesses of the masks and funny faces
Batman and Harley Quinn (2017)
Building on the popularity of the character in Suicide Squad, an animated film that gives to Harley Quinn, and lets loose with a sense of humour far more adult than the other animated Batman films
Batman and Mr Freeze: SubZero (1997)
The second of the animated Batman films, a Mr Freeze story timed to come out at the same time as Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin atrocity. This treats the Mr Freeze story with far more respect than that film