Long Story Short (2021)
A light fantasy comedy from Australia in which Rafe Spall finds he is moving ahead through his life one year at a time every few minutes
Fantasy
Longing for the Rain (2013)
Intriguingly different Chinese film about a wife who develops a mystery dream lover and the havoc this wreaks in her life. Largely a work about female desire, this seems to want to be a horror film
Looks That Kill (2020)
A film about a teen whose face kills anyone who looks at him. This is a romantic comedy that overspills with originality, quirkiness and a really dark sense of humour.
Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003)
Joe Dante makes a toon film winding in dozens of cameos from Warner Brothers cartoon characters. The results prove enormously playful and creative. Infinitely more creative and fun that the Space Jam films
The Lorax (2012)
Animated Dr. Seuss adaptation that emerges as occasionally cute but little that rises above formula. The original story holds a pro-environmentalist message that is laid on with a trowel in the film
The Lord of the Rings (1978)
Way back before Peter Jackson, Ralph Bakshi made this not uninteresting animated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien. The film was not a success and Bakshi failed to return to complete the second part of the story
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Peter Jackson wowed the world with this first part of his adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy. This is epic filmmaking and one that shows Jackson in full command of his craft
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
The weakest of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. This is the most variant from the source material and the one where Jackson allows his tendency to visual effects bloat to take over
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings saga truly gains its feet here, expanding out onto an epic scale where he has fused special effects and story into a singular vision
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024)
A spinoff prequel to the Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films that takes the option that several other film/videogame franchises have of Going Anime
Lost and Beautiful (2015)
A film that started as a documentary about a man engaged in the restoration of an Italian villa before its subject died and it morphed into a peculiar fantasy film
The Lost Empire (1983)
The first film from low-budget hack Jim Wynorski. How can you resist the absurd B-budget mix of a trio of very well-endowed women kicking ass, martial arts action, women’s prison scenes and mad scientist super-villains
Lost Highway (1997)
A bafflingly surreal yet compulsive David Lynch film in which Bill Pullman and wife receives mysterious threatening videotapes and Bill then inexplicably turns into Balthazar Getty
Lost Horizon (1937)
Hugely successful and probably overrated classic from Frank Capra about the discovery of a lost valley in the Himalayas that offers the secret of immortality
Lost Horizon (1973)
Stodgy, bloated musical remake of the 1937 classic about the discovery of a lost valley in the Himalayas. The film dies an ungainly death with a cast awkward in ill-fitting costumery
Lost in Austen (2008)
A great tv mini-series where modern girl Jemima Rooper is transported back into Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice but disrupts the story with her modern ways
Lost in La Mancha (2002)
Fascinating documentary about the making of Terry Gilliam’s never completed The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and how everything fell apart due an extraordinary run of bad luck
The Lost Platoon (1989)
Low-budget but not uninteresting action film about a group of immortal mercenaries. This would be interesting on a better budget, which is sort of became with The Old Guard
The Lost Room (2006)
One of the most conceptually ingenious tv mini-series ever created concerning a quest for objects from a mysterious hotel room that have been imbued with amazing powers.
Love and Death (1975)
Rather funny Woody Allen film where he takes to spoofing Russian literature and does some hilarious visual gags and one-liners. Comes with minor fantasy elements including spoofing The Seventh Seal
The Love Bug (1969)
This was the first of Disney’s Herbie films about a Volkswagen with a life and mind of its own. Not quite as good as the sequels, this still has a charming silliness to it
The Love Bug (1997)
TV movie revival of Disney’s Herbie films and one of the better sequels, playing around with the concept and even adding a Herbie origin story
Love is a Treasure (2002)
A Finnish art project that consists of five episodes that subjectively depict stories of women with mental illness with strikingly surreal effect
Love Potion No 9 (1992)
A comedy based on the hit song starring a then unknown Sandra Bullock as a nerd scientist who synthesizes a Gypsy love potion that causes anyone she gives it to to fall in love with her
The Love Witch (2016)
Beguiling work about a modern witch that becomes a heady swim of provocative ideas about gender issues that is never less than captivating and the most gorgeously colour coordinated films you will ever see
The Lovely Bones (2009)
A film about a dead girl trying to stop her paedophile murderer from the afterlife. A grim story becomes a visual effects vehicle wrecked by Peter Jackson’s overblown amateur hour symbolism
Lovesick (1983)
A comedy in which Sigmund Freud’s ghost pops up to offer advice to psychologist Dudley Moore after he falls in love with patient Elizabeth McGovern
Low Life (2011)
Long-winded French film largely about criticising the country’s problematic immigration and asylum seeking system. This also has a B plot about a series of cursed documents
Lu Over the Wall (2017)
An appealingly charming anime about the friendship between a lonely boy and a mermaid. She gains legs whenever music is playing and they form a pop band together
Luca (2021)
A Pixar offering that is an enjoyable work about merpeople/human friendship but this also sits on the B-rung of their films along with Onward and The Good Dinosaur
Luck (2022)
Disgraced former Pixar head John Lasseter makes a returns to animation for Skydance in an incredibly lightweight effort about adventures in the land of luck
The Luck of the Irish (1948)
This was the first Hollywood film about leprechauns, although quite a different work than those that followed. American Tyrone Power encounters a leprechaun on a trip to Ireland
The Luck of the Irish (2001)
A Disney Channel film where Ryan Merriman discovers that he is the child of leprechaun parents. A mad pastiche of Irish culture, related to the earlier film in name only
Lucky Encounter (1992)
A frenetic Hong Kong slapstick comedy about hoodlums trying to obtain a stash of money from a house that is inhabited by a ghost boy
Lunacy (2005)
A film from Czech animator Jan Svankmajer film, loosely based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, about the surreal happenings at an asylum where the lunatics have taken over
Lunatics: A Love Story (1991)
A head scractchingly strange Sam Raimi produced film in which Raimi’s brother Ted plays a man suffering from hallucinations who tries to come to the aid of the girl of his dreams
The Lure (2015)
Very strange Polish film about two mermaid sisters who become a novelty stripper act. Director Agnieszka Smoczynska gives the film a provocative charge, along with a series of surreal musical numbers
Luz (2018)
A unique film about a woman who is pursued by a demon that loves her. The film is made in a challenging style that requires considerable adeptness to follow but proves rewarding
Lynch (2007)
A documentary about David Lynch made by one of his assistants during the shooting of Inland Empire. Lynch tells assorted anecdotes from his childhood and we see him working on his artworks.
Maboroshi (2023)
Anime that is a variant on Groundhog Day about a town that becomes caught in a time pocket following an industrial accident with the residents forced to live in the same day
Macario (1960)
Mexican film made to celebrate the Day of the Dead wherein Death befriends a poor peasant and bequeaths him a gift of a gourd of healing water. While not terribly sophisticated, this works as a pure and simple fable
The Machinist (2004)
Fascinating film from Brad Anderson where Christian Bale is subject to a series of reality blurrings. What hangs over the show most of all is Bale’s intensely physical performance for which he lost a third of his body weight to turn himself into an anorexic shell of a human
Maciste in Hell (1925)
Fascinating artifact from the silent era. One of the original Italian muscleman films in which the titular strongman is whisked down to Hell where efforts are made to seduce him into staying
Mad About Men (1954)
A sequel to the charming British mermaid comedy Miranda with Glynis Johns again owning the show with her flirtatiously coy sparkle as she swaps places with a lookalike relative
Mad Detective (2007)
Quite the maddest Hong Kong film once has ever seen featuring a detective who can see people’s inner personalities. No film in recent memory has led such a delirious dance with an audience
Mad God (2021)
Phil Tippett, creator of effects on Star Wars and Jurassic Park, creates a unique, unclassifiable stop-motion animated film set in an industrial nightmare world
The Mad Monk (1993)
Madcap Hong Kong comedy starring Stephen Chow as a man sent back down from the afterlife to get three people to repent of their ways. Full of deliriously crazed action and slapstick
Mad Monster Party? (1967)
Absolutely delightful stop-motion animated homage to the Universal Famous Monsters, which places tongue perfectly in cheek
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)
A reasonable sequel to DreamWorks’ Madagascar that this time actually takes the characters to Africa where it determines to give each of them their own story
Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012)
The Madagascar series was a cute idea first time around but has been stretched more than its worth by the sequels. Nevertheless, this works at you with a colourful light-heartedness that is hard to resist
Madagascar (2005)
Enjoyably silly DreamWorks animated film concerning a group of talking zoo animals that are released into the wilds of Africa for the first time. This spawned a series of sequels
Madame Web (2024)
Another of the films spun off from Sony’s hold on the Spider-Man copyright, this has been called the worst Marvel Comics superhero film ever. This also bears next-to-no resemblance to its comic-book counterpart
Madame White Snake (1956)
Lushly beautiful Japanese film from a Chinese folklore tale about a mortal who marries a snake goddess. An early Japanese colour film with fantastical touches way ahead of their time
Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (2024)
Martin Scorsese produces and narrates a documentary about the directing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger who made some of the most exquisite colour films of the Wartime era
Made in Heaven (1987)
A quite magical film in which Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis fall in love in the afterlife and then try to find the each other after they are reborn into the world of the living
The Magic Carpet (1985)
Amiable Danish-made Arabian Nights fantasy for children that has the benefit from being shot on location in Turkey
Magic Cop (1990)
A crazy Hong Kong blend of supernatural and slapstick, featuring a detective who employs supernatural methods to fight drug dealers who use the resurrected dead as couriers
The Magic Crane (1993)
Another entry in the Wu Xia cycle. By this time most of the moves of the genre have been used so this goes to wild extremes to find some type of originality
The Magic Flying Mouse
China. ????) Plot China during the Song Dynasty. The Emperor Kang is kidnapped by Jin bandits. The martial arts warrior Li Ma and two swordmaster sisters head to the Jin stronghold on Lying Mountain to rescue him. Captured, they learn of the Jin scheme to substitute a double for Kang. They try to make an […]
Magic in the Mirror (1996)
One of the best children’s films from Charles Band, an utterly bizarre effort about a world through a magic mirror ruled by talking ducks
Magic in the Mirror: Fowl Play (1996)
Sequel to the delightfully madcap Magic in the Mirror set in a world of talking ducks
Magic in the Moonlight (2014)
One of Woody Allen’s slighter films about rationalist Colin Firth who is debunking medium Emma Stone but becomes convinced of her powers as romance sparkles
Magic in the Water (1995)
Likeable Canadian-made children’s film where Mark Harmon and kids come to rescue of a lake monster
The Magic Legs (1989)
A rare venture into kung fu cinema made in Mainland China
The Magic Sword (1962)
One of the better films from B-budget dircetor Bert I. Gordon, a fantasy adventure where Gordon produces some decent effects
The Magic Faraway Tree (2026)
Adaptation of a book by famous children’s writer Enid Blyton about a series of adventures in a magical tree. Blyton would be turning in her grave at some of the changes and modernisations
The Magical Land of the Leprechauns (1999)
Lively and undeniably likeable Hallmark mini-series that celebrates Irish myth. Giddily silly nonsense conducted with a boisterous energy
The Magician (1958)
Ingmar Bergman film about a travelling magic show. Bergman is fascinated with the power that illusionists hold and what happens behind the mask. A spellbinding film that is more haunted that most genre films
Magnolia (1999)
From Paul Thomas Anderson, a series of interlinking stories and character sketches, featuring some great performances. Underlining everything is a fascination with the inexplicable and the works of Charles Fort
The Magus (1968)
Complex and often baffling film in which Michael Caine is on a Greek island where he placed at the centre of a series of enigmatic reality charades by Anthony Quinn
Mahabharat (1965)
An epic Indian-made film based around the foundation text of Hinduism, concerning the saga of two warring and the intercession of the gods in these matters
Maid to Order (1987)
1980s light fantasy comedy where spoilt rich girl Ally Sheedy wakes up in a world where nobody recognises her and is forced to take a job as the maid
Majin, Monster of Terror (1966)
One of the more unusual Japanese monster movies, one that operates just as much a samurai film, concerning the stone god of a mountain that awakens to defend downtrodden peasants
Making Waves (1994)
A bizarrely ridiculous erotic film with pretensions to being a relationship drama that features appearances from angels and smartass talking seagulls. An aging Mickey Rooney is the heavenly supervisor
Maleficent (2014)
Another in the early 2010s fad for fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasy films – in this case, a version of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty told from the viewpoint of the witch
Maleficent, Mistress of Evil (2019)
Nobody much liked Maleficent but did make a reasonable amount of money, hence a sequel. The surprise is that in the hands of Norwegian director Joachim Rønning, it is far better than one expected
Malice in Wonderland (2009)
A modernised retelling of Alice in Wonderland in which Alice takes a colourfully surreal trip through an urban landscape and criminal underworld
Malpertuis (1972)
An exquisitely arty work from Harry Kumel where a young man who is drawn into a large rambling mansion to find that its residents are the Greek gods
A Man Called Hero (1999)
Ambitious Wu Xia film set among Chinese immigrants to the US where director Andrew Lau takes to the fantastical action with some flair
Man on a Swing (1974)
Fascinating, little seen film with Joel Grey giving an amazingly captivating performance as a possibly fraudulent psychic offering to help a murder investigation
The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1937)
H.G. Wells scripted film with Roland Young as a man who suddenly finds he can perform miracles
The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
Among the fad for biopics about writers and the origins of famous stories, this, about Charles Dickens and the creation of A Christmas Carol, is the most lunatic – and that’s not counting the blatant lie of the title
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018)
This has been called the unluckiest film ever made – there is even an entire documentary devoted to the collapse of a prior version. Here Terry Gilliam’s film about people on delusional quests finally emerges with the glory he always intended it to be
The Man Who Sued God (2001)
Australian comedy where Billy Connolly sues God for all the supposed Acts of Gods on insurance forms
A Man Who Was Superman (2008)
Before the spate of superheroes with no powers films with Kick-Ass and Super, there was this South Korean based-on-a-true-story film about a delusional man who believes he is Superman
The Man with the Iron Fists (2012)
RZA of rap group Wu-Tang Clan fame (with the aid of Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino) makes a dual acting/directing appearance with this homage to Shaw Brothers martial arts films … not quite the genuine article but a solid effort where RZA certainly doesn’t embarrass himself
The Man with the Iron Fists 2 (2015)
I had a liking for RZA’s Shaw Brothers homage The Man with the Iron Fists more than most other critics.This sequel has been handed over to a generic action direction, which certainly leaves it more slickly polished than the original but also quickly forgettable
Mandibles (2020)
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s bizarrely surreal deadpan comedies in which two amiable idiots discover a fly that is about the size of a dog and believe they could tame it
Mandrake, The Magician (1939)
The first screen appearance of the famous newspaper comic-strip stage magician superhero in a serial adaptation that strips out all his illusion-casting abilities and reduces him to a mundane crimefighter
Mannequin (1987)
It is hard to believe this ever received a greenlight, a film in which Andrew McCarthy falls for a storefront mannequin (Kim Cattrall) who comes to life. The comedy has an excruciating inanity
Mannequin on the Move (1991)
A sequel to the Mannequin, the inane comedy about a romance with a storefront dummy come to life. Here Kristy Swanson plays a princess who is turned into a statue before being awoken in the present
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021)
The fourth variant on the Groundhog Day timeloop theme one to come out in the space of 12 months, this nevertheless wrings some charms from the premise
Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (2021)
This is the most charming animated (in this case stop-motion animated) film in years, a mockumentary about the life of a tiny talking shell that inhabits a human home. My best film of 2021
Il Mare (2000)
South Korean romantic film about a couple exchanging letters across time. This later underwent a Hollywood remake as The Lake House with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock
Un Mariage Sans Fin (2025)
Palm Springs was one of the funniest and most delightful variants on the Groundhog Day timeloop theme. This is a French language remake that relocates the story to the Moroccan desert
Mariko Rose the Spook (2009)
A strange Japanese film in which a suicidal lesbian receives relationship advice and from the ghost of a drag queen
Marionette (2020)
Film about a psychiatrist dealing with a boy who appears to be able to cause things to happen. All before things get really weird
Marquis (1989)
Hilariously adult and filthy minded retelling of the Marquis de Sade story using puppets. Quills crossbred with Meet the Feebles if you like.
Marrowbone (2017)
Film about children hiding in big old house of secrets following the death of their mother. Filled with all manner of fascinating secrets and twist revelations
Mary and Max (2008)
Quirky, hilarious Australian claymation film about the mail correspondence between a young girl and a lonely middle-aged man