The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
One of the strangest of Japanese monster movies in which the heart of the Frankenstein monster is caught in the Hiroshima atomic blast and grows into a giant boy
An early work from Takashi Miike, an ultra-violent comic-book variant on RoboCop about a Yazkuza enforcer who is incarnated in a cyborg body and goes seeking revenge
Live-action adaptation of the popular manga and anime series. Despite having a reasonable budget thrown at it and treating the source material with fathfulness, this looks awkward on the screen
The concluding chapter of the trilogy of live-action Fullmetal Alchemist films, this follows the manga’s storyline closely and brings the series to an epic conclusion
The first of two sequels to the live-action Fullmetal Alchemist. The first felt uninspired but this and the third film expand the saga and its storyline out with considerable depth
Film spinoff from the popular anime tv series, this seems awkwardly caught between a film and a tv episode and, while the film reaches for the epic scale of anime, the usual run of power blasts etc seems nothing that we haven’t seen before
Classic anime space opera adventure made not long after Star Wars and filled with moments of glorious visual poetry including the conceptually absurd image of a spacegoing train
Japanese comedy with various humans and aliens interacting around an interstellar burger restaurant on the road from Earth, although none of it manages to be that funny
Shusuke Kaneko did extraordinary things in revitalising the Japanese monster movie in the 1990s with his trilogy of Gamera films. This was the second of them, usually seen as the weakest of the trilogy
Extraordinary reworking of the Japanese kaiju series with stunning CGI effects sequences. This set a new standard and is among the best of the modern Japanese monster movies
This is possibly the worst Kaiju film ever made – produced by a bankrupt company in order to recoup losses, it has been cheaply slung together by rehashing footage from the other Gamera films
Here Shusuke Kaneko revived the Gamera series of the 1960s/70s with a series of stunning effects. The result promptly set a new standard for the Japanese monster movie
The 1960s Gamera films were always a copy of the Godzilla films, aimed at a more juvenile level and with crappier effects. This was the second of them, somewhat better produced than the others and taking proceedings seriously
The third of Daiei’s 1960s Gamera films, this takes the series back into children’s movie territory. Some moments of goofy silliness and variable effects ensue
The fifth of the 1960s Gamera films. This comes with inane plotting, sub-par effects and silly monster fight scenes, even a plot stolen from Fantastic Voyage about a submarine journey into the monster’s body
This was the seventh of the 1960s Gamera films and one of the worst of the series. By now, the film is pitched entirely to juvenile audiences, while the effects are pitiful
This was made as a copy of the Godzilla films by rival studio Daiei. This was sufficiently successful that it too spawned a long-running series of sequels and monster bashes
This was a fairly crappy and terrible Japanese monster movie from a rival company seeking to copy the success of Toho’s Godzilla films
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
An anthology of short anime pieces from five different directors. Episodes range from traditional anime and Cyberpunk to mind-expanding surrealism
An extraordinary anime adapted from Project Itoh, a conceptually challenging concerning a villain who can manipulate language to drive populations to genocide
The fifth Godzilla film, the point where Godzilla becomes a good guy. The best Godzilla film from this period with the effects team operating at the peak of their game
Another effort from the Golden Age of kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story films) during the 1950s-60s. While this assembles the essentials of the genre, it is only delivered in terms of a series of strident and unsubtle pop-up effects
Mamoru Oshii’s follow-up to Ghost in the Shell where he makes a work that pushes both an artistic envelope and his philosophical fascination with the Cyberpunk world to a stunning level
Classic anime from Mamoru Oshii, a Cyberpunk work with a heroine who is a cyborg special forces officer, a work that delves deeply into the philosophical questions of what is human and what is machine
Reboot of the Ghost in the Shell series in a quartet of prequel stories. This funnels the essence of Cyberpunk superbly, creating a conceptually dazzling world with cyborgised security services fighting terrorists hacking people’s brains
Another anime film in the Ghost in the Shell series, this was a theatrically released fifth episode of the Ghost in the Shell: Arise reboot series
One of a number of films based on the most famous of all Japanese ghost stories. This is a adaptation made in the neo-realist style of the period that was released in two parts
Japanese ghost story based on a kabuki play that has been filmed numerous times. Much more character and story driven than modern kaidan eiga, this builds to a grim and spooky climax with undeniable effect
The live-action adaptation of a popular anime and manga, this takes place in an alternate history version of Japan where samurai fight following an alien invasion
Mamoru Hosoda delivers an appealingly sweet anime about a girl who discovers that she has the ability to travel through time. Based on a popular Japanese Young Adult novel
Reboot of the Godzilla series that forgets about all the sequels and acts as a direct follow-up to the original film. This uses top drawer effects technology of the era to create Godzilla as the fearsome creation he originally was
The 23rd Godzilla film where the effects were at such a peak for the genre that this became the first Godzilla film to be given a US theatrical release in fifteen years
The 26th Japanese Godzilla film, the fourth pitting him against Mechagodzilla. After a slow first hour, the film finally delivers all the exhilarating mass destruction sequences we expect of it as the two monsters go head to head
The 19th Godzilla film, part of the 1990s revival where the series started to employ modern animatronics. This revives Mothra in quite beautiful ways and mounts to a rousing monster battle
The second of the anime Godzilla films and a much more successful film than its predecessor. The reconceptions of some of the classic monsters has a dazzling ambitiousness while Godzilla appears with all the ferocity it should have had in the first film
The 28th Godzilla film, made for the series fiftieth anniversary and bringing every monster ever created by Toho together for a massive battle. The results are immensely satisfying
The very first Godzilla film. Essentially a copy of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, it has incredibly stark effect despite primitiveness effects. In it you can see Japanese nation struggling to expiate the pain of the Atomic Bomb.
The 33rd Japanese Godzilla film and the one to receive the greatest acclaim of any in the series so far, including the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. This takes the series back to the beginnings
The 25th Godzilla film in which Toho employed director Shusuke Kaneko who had done amazing things in reviving Daiei’s Gamera franchise. Kaneko doesn’t quite deliver the epic expected of him but does produce an amazing effects spectacle
The 30th Japanese Godzilla film, this is the first anime Godzilla film and the first in a trilogy. More disappointingly, it is more a space opera and planetary adventure than it is ever a Godzilla film
The concluding chapter in the trilogy of Godzilla anime films. This reintroduces two familiar monsters but takes a long time to build to the monster bash we have come to see
The 17th Godzilla film and the second of the modern era where Toho started to employ top drawer effects. Toho created a new nemesis, the plant monster Biollante, although this was not popular with the public
The twelfth Godzilla film and under director Jun Fukuda a juvenile inanity had by now come to dominate the series. The special effects, often recycled from previous films, are very cheesy
The eighteenth Godzilla film and one of the best of the modern era, this has the most conceptually audacious plot of any Godzilla film and overflows with wild ideas involving time travel and changing the timeline
The 24th Godzilla film where Godzilla faces a giant prehistoric dragonfly. While the modern Godzilla films have readily adopted CGI and animatronics, the effects here are much more variable
The thirteenth Godzilla film and a point that the series was no longer taking itself seriously. On the other hand, this is something that actually works in the films favour to create a sublime silliness
Space Godzilla is one the strangest nemeses to turn up in these kaiju films – a blue counterpart of the Big G with a giant glowing mass of crystal on its shoulders. One of the more routine entries in the modern Godzilla series
The fourteenth Godzilla film, noted for the introduction of Mecha-Godzilla, a robot copy of Godzilla that became a recurring nemesis in subsequent entries. By this point in the original series, the effects and quality of production had become very shabby
The sixth Godzilla film and the point where the series started to become silly and juvenile in its focus. A weak entry featuring some of the shabbiest effects of this era.
The eleventh Godzilla in which he faces the pollution monster Hedorah. For some reason, this gets a listing in The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time but there are worse entries in the series
The fourth Godzilla film, the first in which Godzilla battled another Toho monster, namely Mothra. Colourfully enjoyable and taking itself more seriously than many of the entries that would follow
The tenth Godzilla film and a low point of the series with the focus now going on the slapstick pratfalls of Godzilla’s son. Many special effects scenes are recycled from previous entries.
A thoroughly demented Japanese sf/horror film about passengers of a crashed plane being menaced by a body-snatching alien vampire. Quite unlike any other Japanese monster movie, the colour schemes are so loud they leave you giddy
One of the other films from Godzilla creator Ishiro Honda. This has been incorrectly identified as a Japanese giant monster film but is mostly a colourful space opera about a rogue planet
Another in the spate of gonzo Japanese splatter films. A cartoony OTT vigilante film with a Gothic schoolgirl avenger, featuring ridiculous action and splatter set-pieces
The modern cinematic madman Takashi Miike makes a uniquely original work that starts out like a Yazkuza film inhabited by the characters from a Coen Brothers film before taking a turn into the completely surreal, arriving at an admirably twisted ending
Takashi Miike jumps aboard the mid-00s fad for secondary world fantasy films, creating a realm of spirits where he and his makeup and creature effects team go absolutely wild
Cheesily entertaining film about a crew aboard a space station fighting off an alien monster. Cited as one of the films that influenced Alien. With a screenplay co-written by Batman co-creator Bill Finger
Early Kiyoshi Kurosawa film, this starts out seeming like a peculiar deadpan comedy about an office filled with strange characters before emerging as a slasher film of sorts with the hulking titular security guard eliminating people
A live-action Japanese-made mecha/transformer film that creates a dark industrial world as setting and fills it with some stunning effects
Japanese horror film that only treads tepidly where the Ring and Ju-on/The Grudgefilms have gone before. Shot in a plain and ordinary manner, meaning that we have a J-horror film that is bled of atmosphere
Monster movie from Godzilla creator Ishiro Honda featuring a glowing blob that dissolves humans. Mostly a routine policier that is spiced up every so often by novelty effects of people melting
A compilation of shorts from anime directors set in the universe of the Halo videogame. The first two episodes have a breathtaking scale but the others are bitsy stories with competent anime action but nothing standout
Completely madcap film from Takashi Miike, a black comedy about a family who run a guesthouse where the guests keep dying. This comes replete with musical numbers and Claymation sequences
Ferociously entertaining Japanese film about a cyborg-enhanced heroine on a revenge trail in a collapsed future. Mostly a series of ridiculously over-the-top action moves combined with copious degrees of blood splattered
Full-length follow-up to Hard Revenge, Milly and the same mix of ferocious action and over-the-top splatter. Despite a large budget, this is marginally the lesser in sheer entertainment
Anime set in a disquiet utopia where the populace is monitored by cyber implants. Almost completely eschewing the usual action scenes of sf anime, this tells a strong, intelligent and character-driven story
The Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film offers a wild array of splatter, bio-transformations and an obsession with schoolgirls’ panties. This is a low-budget entry that offers something akin to a zombie-hunting equivalent of Buffy
The Highlander series conducts an anime variant on the franchise, a not uninteresting item set in a post-holocaust future co-directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri of Ninja Scroll fame who adds some highly stylised moves
After his extraordinary breakthrough with Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Shinya Tsukamoto went onto make this altogether lighter film, a work about demon hunters filled with Tsukamoto’s bizarrely wacky imagery and way-out effects
Takashi Shimizu, the director of the Ju-on/The Grudge films, conducts an adaptation of a manga about a man who undergoes a trepanning operation and emerges able to see people’s inner traumas given symbolic expression
A Japanese entry in the Gonzo Killer Shark film fad with sharks invading a hot springs and emerging out of hot tubs. This has been greeted as a new cult movie
Very strange Japanese ghost story that has been rediscovered as a cult classic. It resembles a gonzo children’s film like Willy Wonka turned into a haunted house film where the intention seems to have been to be a bizarre and wacky as possible
Fantasy film from Hayao Miyazaki 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
Godzilla creator Ishiro Honda makes a film about a meek man who gains the ability to transform into a mist and promptly becomes a bank-robbing super-villain
One of the key films on which the Takashi Miike cult is based. Miike takes a nominal Yakuza plot but pushes the sadism and ultra-violence to a mind-boggling extreme
Described as a cyberporn fantasy, a quasi-pornographic film set in a Cyberpunk future where androids are designed to consume sexual experience
Standout adaptation of the oft-filmed kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story) Yotsuya Kaidan/The Yotsuya Ghost Story
Hideo Nakata, director of Ring, offers his take on reality tv shows – where contestants are locked up Big Brother-style and encouraged to kill one another. The film comes with much homage to classic murder mysteries where the contestants are then urged to play detective and find the murderer
Dance music duo Daft Punk collaborate with anime directors to create an animated space opera based on their album Discovery
Japanese film with Sonny Chiba as superhero fighting off alien invaders. This has a tatty cheapness that well and truly places it in bad movie territory.
An obscure, little-seen but fascinating Japanese copy of The Invisible Man films
Japanese film about a cyborg-enhanced bounty hunter chick. Sort of like RoboCop but played with a softcore focus
Released at the same time as Iron Man Three, this seems set to reverse the lacklustre string of Marvel animated films by employing an anime director. There are action scenes that kick every other Marvel animated film out of the park and lots of Marvel fanservice cameos even if it still doesn’t quite come together
A fascinating Japanese film that imagines a man having to descend into Hell, designed along the lines of Dante’s Inferno, to save the soul of his loved one. The depiction of Hell is filled with luridly surreal scenes
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
Cinematic madman Takashi Miike takes on a live-action adaptation of one of Japan’s longest running mangas
The Japanese Ju-on/The Grudge is one of the most popular modern kaidan eiga series, having produced fourteen films to date. This was the very first of the series
One of a duo of spinoff films made to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Ju-on/The Grudge series. Seven films in and the series is starting to resemble much of a muchness
The better of two spinoff films made to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Ju-on/The Grudge series. Seven films in and the series is suffering over-familiarity, nevertheless this manage to create moments of intensely uncanny spookiness
The Japanese Ju-on/The Grudge series has produced twelve different films to date – this was the tenth of them. Newcomer Masayuki Ochiai has some effective touches but the series is running out of original moves
Unsettlingly spooky Japanese ghost story from Takashi Shimizu that spawned an inordinate number of sequels, reboots and English-language remakes. This was the third of the films, the one that gained the series attention, and superior to all that came after
Takashi Shimizu’s follow-up to the international hit of Ju-on: The Grudge. These Ju-on films become repetitive after a time but you cannot deny that Shimizu delivers the spooky goods here
Disturbing Japanese film about a student revolutionary group and their internal turmoils, which descend into violence and bloodshed
One of the loveliest of Hayao Miyazaki’s anime, the story of a young witch who creates a parcel delivery service using her broomstick . As always, Miyazaki gives the film is simple beauty and an adult emotional complexity that finds far more adult depth than anything in the equivalent Harry Potter series
NOT the Hayao Miyazaki film but a live-action version based on the same books, made by Takashi Shimizu of the Jun-on/The Grudge films fame. Replicating Miyazaki in live-action would seem a futile endeavour from the outset and expectedly this lacks the sweet emotional uplift of his version
An obscure Japanese film about a backwoods motel where things get very strange – the hosts slaughtering the guests, a zombie wandering around. The film comes with a decided WTF element to it, the least of which is actually trying to work out what is going on
Toho Films obtained the rights to King Kong to pit him against Godzilla in King Kong Vs Godzilla and then made this entertainingly silly sequel where Kong fights a robot copy of himself
The third of the Godzilla films wherein Toho managed to obtain a coup in leasing copyright to pit Godzilla against a rather tatty-looking King Kong for one of the great title bouts of the century