11-11-11 (2011)
Saw series director Darren Lynn Bousman delivers a loopy cross between The Number 23 and an occult film whose sole selling point is the significance of the date it was released
11.22.63 (2016)
Stephen King adapted mini-series in which James Franco finds a mysterious door that leads back to 1960 and sets out to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy
11: 11 (2004)
This Canadian film is a mishmash of hauntings, psychic powers, ghost hunters, possibly imaginary friends and End of the World prophecies that fails to make the slightest sense
18 Again (1988)
One of the spate of 1980s bodyswap comedies a la Big, Vice Versa and Like Father, Like Son in which octogenarian George Burns swaps bodies with his teenage grandson Charlie Schlatter
8MM (1999)
This seeks to be another Se7en, adapting a script by Se7en writer Andrew Kevin Walker and employing the same visual style in the story of Nicolas Cage delving into a seedy underworld in search of a snuff movie.
E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Perhaps the greatest children’s film ever made, the story of the affection between a lonely boy and a stranded alien. Steven Spielberg paints in beautiful, tender emotions from the heart that can only not touch the most cynical
Eagle Eye (2008)
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
Early Man (2018)
Claymation film from Aardman Animations that is in effect a prehistoric comedy like The Flintstones or The Croods mixed up with a sports film, but is Aardman’s slightest work so far
Earth Abides (2024)
Earth Abides is a classic novel that essentially defined the theme of survival in the aftermath of the collapse of civilisation. This is a TV mini-series adaptation of the book but badly fumbles it
Earth Girls Are Easy (1989)
Wackily funny SF musical with Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayans and Jim Carrey as aliens who land in the San Fernando Valley. Directed by Julien Temple with a giddily effervescent silliness
Earth Star Voyager (1988)
TV mini-series that came out hoping to ride the coattails of Star Trek: The Next Generation but looks dated barely ten years later. Somehow the idea of teenagers on a space mission didn’t get many audiences enthused
Earth to Echo (2014)
Found Footage film that nostalgically homages, if not outrightly borrows, from E.T.. It does build a sense of wonder well but then dissolves into far too much near-identical running around
Earth vs the Flying Saucers (1956)
Cult stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen jumps aboard the 1950s flying saucer fad, making one of the era’s better alien invader films, climaxing in some great scenes with the saucers demolishing much of Washington D.C.
Earth vs the Spider (1958)
Rather tatty effort in the 1950s giant bug cycle from director Bert I. Gordon who spent most of this era making similar films about big and small creatures and people
Earth vs. the Spider (2001)
One of a spate of remakes of old AIP titles conducted in 2001, this spins the original giant spider amok film out into a superhero-gone-wrong take on Spider-Man
Earth’s Final Hours (2011)
Another Syfy Channel low-budget disaster film. This creates a fascinating if scientifically dubious end of the world premise about a white hole but spends the show on the routine stuff of car chases and gunfights
Earthquake (1974)
Disaster movie in which Los Angeles is devastated by an earthquake Size 7 on the Richter scale. Despite a script by Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather, this is the usual soap opera melodramatics
Earthrise (2014)
Low-budget SF film about a space expedition from Mars to Earth where before you can say Solaris the crew start to experience hallucinations of their loved ones. Sort of The Crazies in space
Earthsea (2004)
This TV mini-series adaptation of the Ursula Le Guin books is an insult. This was quickly mounted on the back of the success of The Lord of the Rings films but feels like tv filler that has zero affinity for Le Guin’s richly cultured world
Earthtastrophe (2016)
Syfy Channel disaster movie where Earth is suddenly transported into another Solar System amid cheap effects and an improbable time travel solution is sought to reverse this
Earwig and the Witch (2020)
Charming anime from Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro about a young girl adopted into a witch’s strange household. The occasion where Studio Ghibli made the switch over to computer animation
East Meets West (2011)
Hong Kong comedy designed to bring together an ensemble of local stars. The film starts out about the efforts to reunite a band and turns into a wacky effort where everybody discovers they are avatars of deities
East of Piccadilly (1940)
An obscure British thriller about murders in an apartment building of eccentric tenants. This turns into something really quite strange
Easter Bloody Easter (2024)
An Easter horror film about a small town overrun by a killer jackalope, this plants tongue in cheek and hits a highly amusing horror comedy stride. Leading lady/director Diane Foster should be a future horror heroine
Easter Bunny Kill! Kill! (2006)
Admirably sordid slasher film, an early effort from Chad Ferrin, that quickly gets twisted and comes up with an amusing line-up of lowlifes and an Easter bunny masked killer
Eat Brains Love (2019)
The appealing idea of a romantic comedy/road movie where both characters are zombies. The plot is all over the place but the premise is conducted with some amusement
Eat Locals (2017)
A vampire film directed by actor Jason Flemyng set around a group of vampires at siege in a farmhouse from a unit of vampire hunters. The vampire film is looking a little tepid post-Twilight era and this does little to turn the genre around
Eaten Alive (1977)
The first film that Tobe Hooper made immediately after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a dementedly OTT Southern Gothic with Neville Brand as a backwoods motelier serving up his guests to the crocodiles
Eating Miss Campbell (2022)
The sight of the normally super-offensive and un-PC Troma Films trying to adjust to the post-#MeToo and Cancel Culture era while making a film about high school cannibalism is a bizarre one indeed
Eating Raoul (1982)
Paul Bartel’s black comedy where he and Mary Woronov play a snobby couple who pose as kinksters to lure swingers and then kill them off. all to fund setting up an exclusive restaurant
Eclipse (2010)
The third of the Twilight films. This extrudes the dramatic irresolution of the last film’s cliffhanger – should Bella marry Edward or does she really love Jacob? – with over-padded momentousness
Ed and His Dead Mother (1993)
A very eccentric comedy in which momma’s boy Steve Buscemi accepts a deal from a strange salesman to resurrect his beloved mother (Miriam Margolyes) from the dead
Ed Gein (2000)
A film based on true-life necrophile killer Ed Gein starring Steve Railsback. While accurate to the case, this suffers a crucial tameness of spirit when it comes to depicting Gein’s activities
Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007)
Film based on the exploits of necrophile killer Ed Gein that throws the facts up in the air and essentially makes up its own story, while the role is miscast with a hulking Kane Hodder
Ed Kemper (2025)
A film based on true-life serial killer Ed Kemper. Director Chad Ferrin made the terrible Pig Killer, a true crime film that got everything wrong about its subject. Here however Ferrin gets it right and makes one of his best films yet
Ed Wood (1994)
In one of his finest films, Tim Burton makes a ennobling tribute to the so-called world’s worst director Edward D. Wood Jr who, in Johnny Depp’s performance, becomes Burton’s ultimate outsider hero
Eddie the Sleepwalking Cannibal (2012)
Rather peculiar film about a man who becomes a cannibal whenever he sleepwalks and an artist who finds inspiration at the sight of the dead bodies. This taps a rich vein of black comedy
Eden Lake (2008)
Highly effective British variant on the Backwoods Brutality film with an innocent couple being pursued through the woods by a group of murderous children. This gets its teeth into you with gruelling tension and rarely lets up until the end
Eden Log (2007)
Cryptic and baffling French art science-fiction film involving strange happenings at a laboratory where we never get any explanations about what is going on
Edgar Allan Poe’s Lighthouse Keeper (2016)
Adaptation of a story fragment that Edgar Allan Poe left unfinished upon his death. The original (only two pages long) gives little more than a setting but this builds out into an okay period ghost story
Edge of Darkness (1985)
One of the great tv series of the 1980s, a powerful and incisive snapshot of Thatcherite England, the backroom politics of the nuclear power industry and the environmentalist movement. A brilliantly written show featuring great performances
Edge of Darkness (2010)
A film remake of one of the great tv series of the 1980s. A complete betrayal by the original’s director Martin Campbell that strips all the politics and simply makes it into a Mel Gibson revenge film
Edge of Sanity (1989)
Probably the worst film adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, this opts for a trashy sordidness with a lunatically over-the-top Anthony Perkins in the centre of the show
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
The rarity of a summer blockbuster with smarts – think Groundhog Day reworked by way of Battle Los Angeles. The timeloop idea is dealt with in clever ways making for an action film driven by an original sf story
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Tim Burton and Johnny Depp in one of their best collaborations. Burton creates this sweet oddball fable that is a take on Frankenstein where the monster becomes an alienated youth with scissors for hands
Eegah (1962)
Z movie classic with Richard Kiel as a revived caveman facing hot rodding teenagers. Much bad movie hilarity and hilarious dialogue ensues, plus a rock’n’roll soundtrack
Eight Legged Freaks (2002)
Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin turn their attentions to revamping the 1950s giant insect film. They bring top-drawer effects to bear but everything else plays to standard formula
Einstein’s God Model (2016)
A conceptually wild film about the use of a device that can contact the dead that winds in the use of Thomas Edison’s spirit phone, modern physics and multiverse theory in something uniquely different
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)
Absolutely fascinating documentary about Golan and Globus, the producers of a great deal of action, ninja, Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson films in the 1980s, plus many genre works, under the Cannon Films banner
Electric Dreams (1984)
Lightweight, rather silly effort where Lenny Von Dohlen’s home computer becomes sentient and the two compete for the love of neighbour Virginia Madsen
Electroma (2006)
Full-length film made by the French electronic music duo Daft Punk based around the robot guises the band adopts. Resembles an extended student film and feels exactly like an SF version of The Brown Bunny
Elektra (2005)
A spinoff from the film version of Daredevil, this gives the comic-book character of the super-assassin Elektra her own film. This does not have a very good rap but comes with some solid action scenes
Elemental (2023)
Pixar release that received uneven box-office and a critical drubbing. Despite being lumbered with a weak premise – talking elements! – it is not entirely unwatchable
Elephant (2003)
Gus Van Sant makes a film about the high school shooting phenomenon, although has almost nothing to say about it. Where the film does mesmerise is in Van Sant’s seemingly naturalistic style and non-linear narrative.
Elevation (2024)
Quite a good variant on A Quiet Place where humanity is in hiding from monsters that exist below eight thousand feet altitude. This develops some fine seat-edge tension
Elf (2003)
Jon Favreau directed Christmas film premised entirely around the premise of 6’3″ Will Ferrell as an ungainly Christmas elf. The film works entirely to the extent one has a tolerance for Ferrell’s screen presence.
Eli (2019)
This has an intriguing set up involving a child with an autoimmune condition that makes him allergic to everyday air and his journey to a sinister medical institute, before a completely WTF twist
Eliminators (1986)
One of the more enjoyable films from Charles Band’s Empire Productions, a comic-book of a film that assembles an action team of various abilities on an adventure up against a mad scientist
Eliza Graves (2014)
Brad Anderson adapts an Edgar Allan Poe story about an asylum where the inmates are posing as the staff. This is lush period piece with an amazing cast line-up – the only surprise is that it did no box-office
Elizabeth Harvest (2018)
A novel take on the story of Bluebeard who forbids his wives to enter a room and kills them when they do. Here Bluebeard is a scientist who keeps cloning the same wife over. A sophisticated and intelligent film full of sharp and intriguing twists
Ella Enchanted (2004)
Excruciatingly awful take on Cinderella, which overruns the fairytale with hip contemporary in-jokes and pop culture references, shredding any suspension of disbelief in its desire to appeal to a modern teen cool
Elstree 1976 (2015)
A documentary devoted to the extras and bit players who appeared in Star Wars. Gently affectionate, it tells the story of people who never much else notable and how being part of such a cultural landmark impacted their lives
Elvira’s Haunted Hills (2001)
The second film outing of US horror hostess Elvira, which is construed as a parody/homage to the Roger Corman-Vincent Price Edgar Allan Poe films. Everything is overrun with Elvira’s cheesy puns and double entendres
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988)
The film debut of the horror hostess Elvia (Cassandra Peterson), a good natured film containing more bimbo jokes, double entendres and bad puns than one thought possible
Elysium (2013)
The second film from Neill Blomkamp. As in District 9, he starts out making a savage and biting social critique about social privilege and financial elites only to let the film descend into action moves in the third act
Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977)
One of the most bizarre efforts from 1970s Euro trash cinema – a cross between the softcore Emmanuelle films and the Italian cannibal film. It seems perverse to be watching beautiful bodies one minute and next showing their insides being spilled
Embalming (1999)
A Japanese horror film that winds a convoluted plot involving stolen corpses, a blackmarket in organ harvesting, split personality, twins and religious cults
Embers (2015)
An often hauntingly made film set in a world where the populace is affected by periodic amnesia and memory resets. Memento in effect recast as an apocalyptic story
Embodiment of Evil (2008)
Cult Brazilian figure of Jose Mojica Marina returns to his signature role of the demoniac sorcerer Ze do Caixão/Coffin Joe after 40 years. Marins’ nihilist philosophising and catalogue of torture scenes proves madly entertaining
Embrace of the Vampire (2013)
This is a Canadian-made remake of the Alyssa Milano-starring erotic vampire film The Nosferatu Diaries: Embrace of the Vampire. For some reason, this is now minus the erotica and emerges as tepid
Embrace the Darkness (1998)
A surprisingly good work of vampire erotica made with some sensuality and apparent care by those involved, along with some quite imaginative touches of fantastique
Embrace the Darkness II (2001)
Embrace the Darkness was a surprisingly good work of vampire erotica. This, the first of two sequels, seems more interested in being a horror film than erotica
Embryo (1976)
Scientist Rock Hudson brings an unborn embryo to life as beautiful emotionless Barbara Carrera. Though it uses the trappings of modern science, this still has its feet in the creaky old mad scientist film
Emmanuelle in Space: First Contact (1994)
The original Emmanuelle was a supposedly autobiographical memoir about the sexual dalliances of a bored wife in Thailand. Here Emmanuelle is now abducted by aliens for further encounters
Emmanuelle the Private Collection: Emmanuelle vs Dracula (2004)
One of the series of softcore Emmanuelle films based on an erotic memoir, which had led to some seventy films so far. Here the originally true-life character of Emmanuelle encounters Count Dracula
Empathy (2007)
British clairvoyance thriller with an almost identical premise to The Dead Zone. Familiar material told with a modest effectiveness
Emperor Visits the Hell (2012)
The idea of (some chapters of) the classic Chinese legend Journey to the West retold in contemporary terms. This makes for some amusing interpolations, while also acting as a social critique of modern-day Chinese society
Empire of Passion (1978)
A Japanese ghost story in the neo-realist style where a wife and her lover conspire to kill her husband and then dump his body down a well only for him to return to them as a ghost
Empire of the Ants (1977)
In the 1950s Bert I. Gordon specialised in cheap giant insect films. Here he takes H.G. Wells’ name in vain and jumps aboard the 1970s Animals Amok cycle but still makes another shoddy film about giant ants
Empire of the Apes (2013)
When 20th Century Fox began their Planet of the Apes reboot series, director Mark Polonia quickly jumped in with his own Z-budget mockbuster take. Several sequels followed
Empire of the Sharks (2017)
Another killer shark film from The Asylum, the people behind the Sharknado. This is a sequel to their earlier Planet of the Sharks and takes placed in a Waterworld-styled drowned future
Encanto (2021)
One of the best Disney animated films in some time. Set around a Colombian American family that have hereditary magic powers and live in a magical house, this comes with an enormous degree of colour and energy
Enchanted (2007)
Disney film in which an animated fairytale princess emerges through into the real world to become Amy Adams. This becomes the opportunity to amusingly puncture the unreal world of the Disney fairytale
Encino Man (1992)
An excruciatingly unfunny teen comedy with Brendan Fraser as a caveman who is unfrozen in the present-day. The film served to introduce Pauly Shore, one of the most annoying figures to ever appear on screen
Encounter (2021)
A standout work that starts off as Riz Ahemed snatches his two bodies, fearful of alien body snatchers, before leaving us wondering if is all not in a delusional Ahmed’s mind
Encounter with the Unknown (1973)
A variant on the horror anthology film that manages to let the potential in its three stories fall through its hands. Narrated by Rod Serling, creator of tv’s classic anthology series The Twilight Zone, who must’ve needed the money
End of Days (1999)
Arnold Schwarzenegger takes on The Devil on the eve of the millennium. This is essentially The Omen and one of its ilk having been reworked as a mindless big-budget action and effects movie
End of Days, Inc. (2015)
A comedy in which office staff working overtime gradually realise their efforts are in preparation for the end of the world. This needed more of a dark bite to fully work but has occasional amusement
End of the Line (2007)
Could it be too hard to go wrong in making a film about a doomsday cult hunting people through a subway tunnel? Apparently it is and after a promising beginning, the film churns the cliches with little tension
End of the World (1977)
A thorough embarrassment on Christopher Lee’s resume – an early Charles Band film in which Lee is a stranded alien inhabiting the cloned body of priest in a convent of nuns
Endangered Species (1982)
A modest thriller with sheriff Robert Urich investigating cattle mutilations in small town Buffalo and finding possible UFOs and a government conspiracy to be behind these
Ender’s Game (2013)
I will defend Orson Scott Card as an exceptional science-fiction writer, his controversies aside. While this is an extremely faithful adaptation of his book, it works unevenly as a film and never soars dramatically
Endgame (1983)
Joe D’Amato directs one of the numerous 80s Italian Mad Max 2 copies. One of the very first films to depict televised human bloodsports later popularised by the likes of The Running Man and The Hunger Games
Endhiran (2010)
A rare Bollywood venture into science-fiction – a completely madcap android intelligence/amok film that features some wildly imaginative action scenes, all set amid typical Bollywood song and dance/romance numbers
Endless Poetry (2016)
At the age of 87, Alejandro Jodorowsky makes second of his autobiographical films following The Dance of Reality. In Jodorowsky’s hands, the story of his adolescence is turned into a gaudy and gloriously surreal mardi gras
Enemy (2013)
Denis Villeneuve slips into a very Cronenbergian vein to deliver a film about Jake Gyllenhaal and a mysterious doppelganger. A fascinatingly oblique and cryptic work, just as long as one does not require that it comes with any easy explanations
Enemy Mind (2010)
A modest and effective low-budget reworking of the classic Enemy Mine delivered with a quite reasonable intelligence and professionalism
Enemy Mine (1985)
SF film with Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr as human and alien who are enemies but are forced to cooperate to survive after crashlanding on a hostile alien planet
Enough (2002)
Thriller about an abused wife standing up to take the law into her own hands against her husband. This has its credibility shot out by being made as a Jennifer Lopez film who does not seem to want taint the glamour of her image by seeming battered
Enter the Void (2009)
Gaspar Noe’s hallucinatory Day-Glo vision of a soul’s departure into the afterlife all shot in first-person perspective. This could be a 2001: A Space Odyssey for the trance culture generation