Skip to main content 

Owing to the screen size of your device, you may obtain a better viewing experience by rotating your device a quarter-turn (to get the so-called “panorama” screen view).


Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works

  Science-fiction & fantasy literature: a critical list with discussions.

(click for menu)
You are here:  Home  »  Miscellaneous  »  Movies ( = this page)
(Click on any image above to see it at full size.)
You are here:  Home  »  Miscellaneous  »  Movies ( = this page)

You can get a site directory by clicking on the “hamburger” icon () in the upper right of this page.
Or you can search this site with Google (standard Google-search rules apply).
(Be aware that “sponsored” links to other sites will appear atop the actual results.)

Search term(s):


Welcome to the Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works web site!

You have apparently come to this page from a link on a search engine or another site. If this is your first visit here, I much recommend that you take a few minutes to look over the introductory material accessible via the red “Introductory” zone of the Site Menu available from the “hamburger” icon in the upper right of this (and every) page. An understanding of the purposes and principles of organization of this site will, I hope and believe, much augment your experience here, for this page and in general. You can simply click this link to get at the site front page, which, unsurprisingly, is the best place to start. Thank you for visiting.

SF&F Movies


Quick page jumps:



“I thought you might like to see this.”

– The Player of Games,
Iain M. Banks

Why Movies on a Books Site?

Why not? While this site is about speculative fiction literature, it would be a shame not to a at least cast a glance over at speculative fiction in other media, whether or not derived from books. This page deals with science-fiction and fantasy movies; in time, I may even add a page on television shows.

Return to the page top. ↑


The Movies

The brevity of this list wants some comment. In part, I am not much of a movie-goer; indeed, some of the entries on even this short list are films I am including based on examination of reviews (those are marked by a (?) before the film’s name). And believe me, I have put in many a midnight dreary, pondering, weak and weary, over lists of SF&F movies and reviews thereof, and this is the mouse to which that mountain of effort gave birth. (Though I would still scarcely say that it’s an exhaustive list.)

But beyond that personal limitation, there are large economic realities. The cost of making even a modest-budget movie vastly exceeds that of bringing out a book; movie-makers can easily lose many millions on just one film if it does not gross well. While a publisher can, literally, afford to take a flyer on an unknown author or a perhaps limited-appeal work of quality, a movie-maker has to do everything possible to assure a wide and numerous audience for each movie ventured. The inevitable consequence is that there is a sharp tendency to appeal to the lowest-common-denominator moviegoer. Movies of merit—the equivalent of what this site tries to present for books—are then necessarily going to be few and far between.

One other point: movies, unlike books, can appeal visually even if their content is lacking. Avoiding the “eye candy” syndrome takes some will power. An awful lot of reviewers, amateur and professional, seem—especially for SF&F movies, which often have lots of eye candy on display—to let the sexy images blind them to the absence of much meaningful content.

The list has some indicators: the number of foreign-made films, and the suprisingly large number of comedies. Think about it…

(The listings within each category are simply alphabetical, excluding leading A, An, The. As noted above, a (?) signfies a movie I have not myself seen but include based on a consensus of reviews. The links are to the Internet Movie DataBase page for the film, whence one can go to reviews, cast lists, and more.)

Return to the page top. ↑




Disclaimers  |  Privacy Policy

owl logo This site is one of The Owlcroft Company family of web sites. Please click on the link (or the owl) to see a menu of our other diverse user-friendly, helpful sites.
owl logo Like all our sites, this one is hosted at the highly regarded Pair Networks, whom we strongly recommend—click the link to learn more. (To get 20% off on hosting fees if you move to Pair, use code pairref-FyXypEEk)

(Note: All Owlcroft systems run on Ubuntu Linux and we heartily recommend it to everyone—click on the link for more information).


All content copyright © 2024 The Owlcroft Company
(excepting quoted material, which is believed to be Fair Use).

This web page is strictly compliant with the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) HyperText Markup Language (HTML5) Protocol versionless “Living Standard” and the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Cascading Style Sheets (CSS3) Protocol v3  — because we care about interoperability. Click on the logos below to test us!




This page was last modified on Sunday, 4 February 2024, at 5:32 pm Pacific Time.