Toy Story 2 (1999)
Pixar’s sequel to their first film and arguably an even better work where they get the plaintive emotion, character arcs and witty humour down perfect
End of Days (1999)
Arnold Schwarzenegger takes on The Devil on the eve of the millennium. This is essentially The Omen having been reworked as a big-budget action movie
Princess Mononoke (1997)
Stunning work of fantasy from Hayao Miyazaki. Made on an epic-sized story canvas and with a breathtaking beauty, this is one of the few original screen works to capture something of the nature and scale of written epic fantasy
The First Night of My Life (1998)
Spanish comedy produced to celebrate the turn of the millennium in which the fates of several people wind together on the eve of the end of the century
The World is Not Enough (1999)
The third and best of Pierce Brosnan’s outings as James Bond. All the aspects of the formula are contained within a strong plot and Sophie Marceau proves a standout in a role that combines both villain and love interest
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Pierce Brosnan’s second outing as James Bond holds up fairly well, especially in the action department, although Jonathan Pryce seems miscast as a Rupert Murdoch-modeled super-villain
Falling Down (1993)
Though many people celebrated this as black comedy about Michael Douglas taking up arms on a shooting rampage against the petty frustrations of modern life, it is a film that is really a single redneck rant against the poor and minorities
Dogma (1999)
Kevin Smith bends his individualistic sense of humour towards making a film about Catholicism. Smith’s irreverent humour caused controversy when the film came out, although this is also an interesting and thoughtful work
Eve of Destruction (1991)
Blatant copy of The Terminator lacking in basic plausibility featuring Renee Soutendijk as an android with an atomic bomb in her chest that goes rogue while on downtown military maneuvers
Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
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
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)
Luc Besson takes on the Joan of Arc story with then wife Milla Jovovich in the title role but in Besson’s hands it becomes a crazed historical action film that unquestioningly accepts Joan’s visions as real
Into the West (1993)
Magical Realist film sets against the backdrop of a dreary urban Dublin as two boys befriend the mythical horse Tir na Nog
The Wall (1998)
Film made to celebrate the millennium where a totalitarian government creates a wall that divides Belgium along linguistic lines
The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964)
The second mummy film from Hammer Films, this is a rather dull variant on the genre. Their usual flair and production values emerge here under a director who makes this turn out plodding
Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992)
Sequel to Anthony Hickox’s Waxwork, which ups the number of horror homages but suffers a low budget
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
David Lynch’s cinematic prequel to his cult tv series critically divides everyone who sees it. Charting the last days of the doomed Laura Palmer, Sheryl Lee gives a tour-de-force performance
Warlock: The Armageddon (1993)
Julian Sands returns in a sequel to Warlock where the frequently unserious effects of director Anthony Hickox turn it into a silly comic-book of a film
The Book of Life (1998)
A darkly funny Hal Hartley film set on the eve of The Millennium as Jesus Christ wanders about Manhattan having doubts whether to unleash the Biblical Apocalypse
The Bone Collector (1999)
Serial killer thriller with Denzel Washington as Jeffrey Deaver’s quadriplegic profiler Lincoln Rhyme and Anjelina Jolie as a rookie cop who becomes his aide
Death Warrant (1990)
Jean-Claude Van Damme action vehicle set in a prison that becomes an interestingly stylised realm in a wild plot featuring serial killers and organ harvesting schemes
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
One of the finest of all Disney animated films, an adaptation of the fairytale made with the full artistic resources that studio could bring to bear
Small Soldiers (1998)
Joe Dante had great success in the 1980s but his star started to pale into the 90s. Here he has resorted to a rehash of his biggest hit Gremlins, seemingly conceptually slung together with Toy Storyconcerning an army of malevolent toy soldiers come to life
Dead Heat (1988)
Made not along after the success of Lethal Weapon, this offers a wacky spin on the buddy cop formula having a cop paired with a zombie. The mildly amusing notion is killed by the excruciating comedy relief of Joe Piscopo
Lost Highway (1997)
Bafflingly surreal yet compulsive David Lynch film in which Bill Pullman receives mysterious videotapes and then inexplicably turns into Balthazar Getty
The Third Miracle (1999)
Agnieszka Holland film with Ed Harris as a Catholic priest who has lost his faith who is asked defend the authenticity of a supposed miracle
Open Your Eyes (1997)
Excellent film from Alejandro Amenabar in which a handsome playboy finds himself in the midst of a baffling series of reality flips before arriving at an SF twist ending
Heart and Souls (1993)
Likeable light fantasy comedy where Robert Downey Jr is possessed by four disembodies souls and sets out to help them achieve their purpose. Filled with some great performances.
The Haunting (1963)
This is the finest haunted house film of all time. In Robert Wise’s hands, all of the ghosts are unseen and only ever psychological and suggested – the results are entirely terrifying. Adapted from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill house
Billion Dollar Threat (1979)
A TV movie that was released theatrically outside the US with Dale Robinette as a James Bond copycat
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)
The sixth of the Halloween films, the fifth with Michael Myers. By now John Carpenter’s original eerie suspense has been reduced to crude slasher movie payoffs. This tries to add some nonsense about druidic cults
Long Weekend (1978)
Excellent Australian-made Nature’s Revenge film with a couple on a weekend at a beach at siege from nature. Like the film’s obvious model The Birds, the attack occurs for never-specified reasons
Lady and the Tramp (1955)
An absolute classic of Disney animation concerning two talking dogs from different walks of life who fall in together. It is impossible not to be charmed by the plaintive delights and sweetly romantic tenderness of the film
House on Haunted Hill (1999)
The announcement of the remake of The Haunting was cannily followed by this remake of the 1959 William Castle/Vincent Price. Where The Haunting turned out a bloated flop, this emerges as far more unpretentious and an altogether more fun film
FairyTale: A True Story (1997)
A very nicely produced film based on the true-life Cottingley Fairies hoax in the 1920s where two girls produced photos supposedly of fairies that convinced a number of people. Despite the original being a hoax, the film wants to convince us that the fairies were real
Twice Upon a Yesterday (1998)
Appealing and well told fantasy in which a couple are each individually offered the opportunity to go back in time and change the circumstances that led to their breakup
The Capture of Bigfoot (1979)
From Bill Rebane, this was a cheap and dreary Bigfoot film, one of a spate of similar low-budget efforts made for drive-in audiences during the 1970s
Criminal Lovers (1999)
An early film from Francois Ozon, this offers a modernisation of Hansel and Gretel where the two are teenage lovers on the run before the story turns into a remarkable gay coming out parable
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
Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Martin Scorsese returns to the vision of urban hell he gave us in Taxi Driver with Nicolas Cage as an ambulance driver haunted the dead he sees. Powerful, blackly funny at times, if not quite up there as another Taxi Driver
Bats (1999)
There has yet to be a decent killer bat movie. This redresses the balance somewhat by offering up CGI bat effects but otherwise falls prey to a cliche-ridden script
Fight Club (1999)
David Fincher tackles Chuck Palahniuk’s novel about secret brawling clubs. Maybe the only major studio film with an openly anarchist manifesto. Brilliant, incendiary, all over the map plotwise and thoroughly unique
Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989)
Director Paul Bartel and a reasonable name cast make a comedy about the sex lives of the Beverly Hills elites
Dudes (1987)
From director Penelope Spheeries, this is an almost unclassifiable oddity. Three punks set out in a search of a better life, this becomes a road movie and Western homage with ghost cowboys
Dracula (1980)
Not an adaptation of Bram Stoker but an anime based on the Marvel comic-book Tomb of Dracula (the same title that gave birth to Blade)
Shikoku (1999)
Spookily effective Japanese ghost story about a mother’s pilgrimage around a series of shrines to raise her daughter’s spirit from the dead
The Minus Man (1999)
Standout film featuring Owen Wilson as a genteel serial killer
Life is Whistling (1998)
Delightful work of Cuban Magical Realism about the fates of various people in Havana
Felicia’s Journey (1999)
Fine studied Atom Egoyan thriller in which teenage runaway Elaine Cassidy is befriended and offered a home by Bob Hoskins who is a serial killer
Doctor K (1999)
South Korean film about a doctor with shamanistic powers, this starts out seeming to be a horror film before becoming something different altogether
The Hole (1998)
Tsai Ming-Liang film made to celebrate the millennium about the taunting relationship that grows between a man and a woman affected by a hole left by a plumber between their apartments
Audition (1999)
The film that made the world pay attention to Takashi Miike. Starting out as a seeming love story, this culminates in some of the most brutal and hard-to-watch torture scenes ever committed to film
Top of the Food Chain (1999)
Canadian-made parody of a cheesy 1950s SF film that emerges more wittily amusingly than most Deliberately Bad SF Films
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1998)
Conceptually ambitious anime that builds a complex metaphor out of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf in a story centred aroundthe self-doubting member of an anti-terrorist squad
Gemini (1999)
Cult Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto makes a period-set work about a good upstanding doctor haunted by his twin. Tsukamoto returns to his favourite topic of the repressed and this emerge as his version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Existo (1999)
A witty musical satire set in a future USA that is under a fundamentalist dystopia concerning a revolution led by assorted leftist activists, drag performers and artists
Ring 2 (1999)
The second of the Japanese Ring/Ringu films where director Hideo Nakata improves over the original with a series of eerie scares if a frequently incomprehensible mishmash of story ideas
The Kingdom II (1997)
Follow-up to Lars von Trier’s haunted hospital mini-series The Kingdom. The story is continued, although the plot seems rickety and either drops elements or veers off on other tangents as though it is being made up as people go along
The Divine Ryans (1999)
Canadian family saga told through the eyes of a young boy growing up amid a strange extended Newfoundland family. Featuring a number of fantastical elements.
The Storm Riders (1998)
Solid, epically plotted variant on the Hong Kong flying swordsman genre. This is the point where Wu Xia cinema discovered CGI effects
Nang Nak (1999)
Beautifully made Thai film about a husband whose wife dies in childbirth but where he refuses to let go of her ghost
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)
Sequel to the Mortal Kombat film. While the first film was fun, here anything resembling plot has been stripped away to concentrate on fight scenes slung together in the most linear way possible such that the film blurs into a single shapeless action sequence
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
The Boy With Green Hair (1948)
A very young Dean Stockwell stars in this strange anti-war fable about a boy who wakes up to find his hair has turned green
Stir of Echoes (1999)
Enormously underrated directorial effort from screenwriter David Koepp in which Kevin Bacon gains the ability to see the dead. A film filled with some genuinely spooky moments
Blue Thunder (1983)
Dan O’Bannon scripted film about a hi-tech helicopter, this crackles with great writing and some immensely exciting aerial action scenes from director John Badham
The Crimson Ghost (1946)
A rather dull twelve-chapter serial in which a criminologist tries to stop the titular criminal mastermind tries to steal a device that can block electrical transmissions
Alice (1990)
One of Woody Allen’s less interesting films, a modernised version of Alice in Wonderland with Mia Farrow as a bored housewife who passes through various surreal experiences
The Bishop’s Wife (1947)
A typical entry in the 1940s fad for light fantasy films in which Cary Grant plays an angel who comes down to Earth to assist poor overworked bishop David Niven
Stigmata (1999)
This seems caught between being an earnest theological debate about Catholicism and a standard possession film. The results are not entirely uninteresting
Sex & Zen II (1996)
Sequel to the Hong Kong erotic film, an entirely unrelated work that inflates the original into a madcap Wu Xia film filled with crude, rude humour
Breakfast of Champions (1999)
Disappointing adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel from Adam Rudolph that substitutes Vonnegut’s satire for clumsy, ham-fisted farce that never gives us any clear idea what it is satirising
The Dark Side of the Moon (1990)
Conceptually ridiculous film where a spaceship crew in lunar orbit come across a space shuttle that disappeared through the Bermuda Triangle and contains a parasitic organism that is The Devil
Miracle in the Rain (1956)
One of a spate of miracle films during this period, Catholic nonsense with Jane Wyman and Van Johnson finding love that transcends death
Fortress (1993)
Stuart Gordon, a cult director on the basis of Re-Animator, ventures into making an SF action film set in a futuristic prison. The film has a bone-headed script that feels like it is only rehashing cliches from every SF film
Leprechaun (1993)
The first in the popular series of films starring Warwick Davis as a malevolent leprechaun. Fairly cheesy and silly, mostly known today for featuring a pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston as the heroine of the show
Death Line (1972)
Film about cannibalistic survivors of a cave-in who lurk in the tunnels beneath the London Underground, this has gained a reasonable cult following over the years
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
A quirky hit that jumped aboard the 1980s popularity of time travel themes and laid into them with an appealingly offbeat eccentricity. The film that propelled Keanu Reeves onto become a star
Brigadoon (1954)
Film adaptation of a hit musical from Alan Jay Lerner and Fredreick Loewe in which Gene Kelly discovers love in a village that exists outside of time in the Scottish highlands
Chill Factor (1999)
An inane action film that sets out to copy Speed with Skeet Ulrich and a motormouth Cuba Gooding Jr forced to drive an ice cream truck filled with chemical weapons
A.P.E. (1976)
South Korean-made cheapie intended to ride the coattails of the 1976 remake of King Kong, this must be one of the worst films ever made with some of the most pitiful special effects ever put on film
The Black Widow (1947)
A rather dull fifteen-chapter serial about the efforts a detective who sets out to stop Sombra, an Asian spy intent on stealing US atomic rocket secrets
Big Meat Eater (1982)
Highly enjoyable Canadian-made parody of bad 1950s B movies that throws in everything from alien invaders to zombies and splatter. And is a musical to boot!
Phenomena (1985)
Another of Dario Argento’s giallo thrillers filled with all his trademark artily extravagant deaths. At the centre of the film is a teenage Jennifer Connelly who can psychically communicate with insects
The Falls (1980)
Early Peter Greenaway film where in typically eccentric fashion he tells a series of absurd stories about survivors of a mysterious event who names all begin with Fall who have begun to mutate and develop an obsession with birds
Ultraviolet (1998)
A British mini-series that offers an ingenious modernised reconeptualisation of the vampire genre, depicting the activities of a secret agency of vampire hunters
Nosferatu (1922)
The first screen adaptation of Dracula and one of the most amazing of all vampire films, a German Expressionist fairytale that exists in haunted netherworld through which stalks the crepuscular figure of Max Schreck
Raggedy Man (1981)
Beautifully shot Sissy Spacek starring work of American nostalgia set in rural 1940s Texas that takes a turn into Southern Gothic in its last quarter
Ring (1998)
Kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story) that was a huge hit, spawning several sequels and an English-language remake, not to mention a horde of imitators. For all its reputation, the film is often crude nevertheless does evince an eerie atmosphere
The Muse (1999)
Albert Brooks film with Sharon Stone as a Greek muse. This suggests a Woody Allen whimsy crossed with something of Robert Altman’s The Player and its satire on Hollywood with real-life celebrities playing themselves
Black Mask (1996)
A Jet Li vehicle that falls into the masked superhero genre where the show has taken a few leaves from the tv series The Green Hornet. Enjoyable fun with some exhilarating action sequences
The 13th Warrior (1999)
Michael Crichton was hot as a result of Jurassic Park. Although mostly seen as an historical spectacle, this is an adaptation of his novel that attempts to retell the legend of Beowulf with Vikings against Neanderthals
The Visitors (1993)
Hilarious French comedy where a filthy Mediaeval knight and his servant are transported into the present-day
Forever Young (1992)
Popular film with Mel Gibson as a as a man who is cryogenically frozen in the 1940s and thawed out in the present. The romantic focus of the film is undone by some absurd plotting incredulities. An early script from J.J. Abrams
The Astronaut’s Wife (1999)
Charlize Theron becomes paranoid and suspects her space shuttle astronaut husband Johnny Depp of returning possessed by an alien. Essentially an SF version of Rosemary’s Baby
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
Dark Waters (1993)
A film about a woman’s journey to a convent of sinister secrets that is aswim in religious imagery, although the film itself eventually proves to be all imagery with no coherent plot
Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999)
Scream writer Kevin Williamson’s one and only directorial outing, a playful thriller in which Katie Holmes and fellow students imprison a teacher who has marked down her grades
Night Terrors (1993)
Another example of Tobe Hooper’s slight into mediocrity in the 1990s, an erotic thriller that features a madly overacting Robert Englund as the Marquis de Sade and an innocent being corrupted by his descendant in the modern day
The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974)
One of the better copies of
The Trollenberg Terror (1958)
Modestly effective British entry into the 1950s alien invasion genre with people fighting invaders on a Swiss mountainside