The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The third film from former Studio Ghibli employee Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Yonebayashi is seen as the carrier of Hayao Miyazaki’s mantle, so much do his films look like lost Miyazaki works. This is sweet and amiable, even if it never hits the emotional heights Miyazaki does
Disney classic that is mostly a series of dance and effects sequences strung together without any real plot nevertheless is conducted with a dizzying absurdism and perfect charm that never wears out its welcome
Mary Poppins was one of the greatest of all Disney live-action films, made with nonsensical charm and has become a much loved favourite. As part of the ongoing firesale that involves resurrecting almost all of their properties, this is a sequel. Its an exacting replication/homage to the original but that is the problem – it is a recapturing rather than seems to create its own sparkle
Comic-book adaptation featuring a ballistically OTT Jim Carrey who becomes a zany figure of chaos whenever he puts on a mask. The film has been designed to emulate cartoon physics but its lack of any grounding reality proves annoying
Hardly anyone remembers Dana Carvey, Mike Myers’ co-star in Wayne’s World. This was Carvey’s attempt to copy the Austin Powers films and is regarded as a bad movie
One of Woody Allen’s strongest films in years, a London-set work about conscience and murder over which the spirit of Dostoevsky hangs
One of the numerous spy films of the 1960s, featuring Patrick O’Neal who goes into action with a magic invisibility ring
Danny DeVito directs an adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel with Mara Wilson as a mentally gifted child. In DeVito’s hands, Roald Dahl’s black bite overbalances into broad farce
British director Michael Powell creates the most visually stunning of all 1940s afterlife fantasies in lush Technicolor, depicting a heaven of dazzling architectural marvels
Amiable Swiss Claymation effort that makes for inevitable comparison to the output from Aardman Studios
Based on the popular videogame, this is fairly much Death Wish by way of Jacob’s Ladder and proves an underwhelming delivery of its promise
Videogamers fight a demonic entity unleashed from a 1980s game. A film that is far more fun that you expect and comes loaded with videogaming in-jokes
Light fantasy comedy where Glenn Close plays a housewife who is possessed by the ghost of Maxie, a Hollywood starlet who is determined to revive her career
Fifth in a popular series of satiric Hong Kong animated films. Kicks in with an amusingly sarcastic bite that resembles a Beavis and Butt-Head in its story of a talking animal children’s choir but alas by about the halfway point takes itself seriously and starts to get mawkish and sentimental
A comedy in which Griffin Dunne’s penis begins talking to him. Contrary to expectation, most of the film is PG-13 but some of the films attitudes and unfunny routines are fairly mind-boggling
An Australian variant on Sliding Doors in which single woman Rachel Griffiths suddenly finds herself in an alternate timeline where she is now married and has kids
Lightweight French bodyswap comedy where aging rocker Alain Chabat and mousy bureaucrat Daniel Auteuil end up sharing the same body
Unrelated to the Bill Murray film in anything but name, this is a moronic teen summer camp comedy in which Patrick Dempsey is aided in trying to lose his virginity by angel Sally Kellerman
Flop Jackie Chan film that tries to recapture some of his Hong Kong heyday with Jackie in a quest for a boy and medallion with magical powers
The controversial Pier Paolo Pasolini makes a film based on Medea – the wife of Jason (of Jason and the Argonauts fame), from Greek myth, not to be confused with Tyler Perry’s films, Contrary to the way she is usually portrayed on screen as Jason’s love interest, there is another whole story where she is a vengeance-crazed witch who slaughters their children after he leaves her for another woman
An extremely clever romantic comedy where Kaley Cuoco repeatedly returns back through time to replay her one perfect day, a date with Pete Davidson
Ponderous big screen remake of Death Takes a Holiday where Death in the form of Brad Pitt comes to Earth, engages in a romance
One of the forgotten comedies from UK’s Ealing Studios, this rails against the evils of the then new medium of television where The Devil contrives to make people miserable by getting them to watch tv
Peter Jackson‘s second film, what might be called The Muppet Show by way of John Waters, an inspired work of puppet depravity that makes a beeline for bad taste
Sequel to Single Santa Seeks Mrs Claus where here Santa’s son (Steve Guttenberg) ties the knot – amazingly traditional and conservative in its sentiments and with everything so predictable that there is no real drama
The painfully unfunny films of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are movie parodies, mostly a random assortment of films and celebrities of the last six months run over with crude and vulgar jokes. In this case, they take on parodying principally 300
Sequel to the Biblical End Times/Antichrist film The Omega Code, this dispenses with preaching faith but still slips into absurdity
Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a festival favourite and one genre director whose work is least categorised as such. As with any of Weerasethakul’s films, this has some intensely haunted moments but is severely lacking in plot or any kind of dramatic inertia
Melies Cinemagician is a special screening of a selection of films from Georges Melies presented by Vancouver’s Vancity Theater to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. The show was a live performance involving a score composed especially for the event, displays of conjuring tricks and a magic lantern show. The same year also saw […]
A documentary that offers the best discussion of the life of Georges Melies to date. Much of the film is focused on the recent rediscovery of a complete trove of negatives of Melies’s film
The second Claymation film from Adam Elliot, who made the sublime Mary and Max, concerning the banally hilarious lives of weird, eccentric characters
A much better than usual film from Charles Band, an erotic fairytale in which Sherilyn Fenn becomes involved with a circusmaster and his twin brother who turns into a werewolf
A work of Arthurian sequelia made for the Syfy Channeal featuring Arthur’s daughter inheriting the sword. This has the feel more of a series of B-budgeted D&D wilderness encounters churned out without much effort rather than being a fantasy work that soars
Sequel to Hallmark’s earlier tv mini-series Merlin featuring a return performance from Sam Neill in the title role, this is otherwise a generic and unmemorable work of Arthurian fantasy
Stephen Chow has proven himself a comic genius in his directorial works of the 90s/00s. Unfortunately, as he has gained mainstream acclaim, his films have started to disappear under their big-budgets. This is sort of a version of Splash! by way of the fad for madcap Hong Kong slapstick
The mermaid film used to be the stuff of light fantasy but in recent years has become something much darker. This comes with the promising premise of a mermaid having her tail hacked off with an axe then being placed in an asylum where she tries to convince the other patients of who she is
A real head-scratching oddity, a Batman animated Christmas film
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
Wildly experimental South Korean adaptation of the Kafka story about a man turning into an insect – a film shot entirely by the director in bed with the camera pointed at his feet
Spanish-Argentinean animated film about the miniature players of a table football game come to life. The animation is not the high-end quality of most theatrical releases but passable; everything plays out to to fairly predictable sports movies cliches
Romantic comedy pairing Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts as separated lovers in a plot involving Mob shenanigans and a cursed pistol. The two never click and give unmemorable performances
Nora Ephron romantic comedy with John Travolta cast as angel who is a slob. A rather aimless shapeless comedy that thinks it is funnier than it is
A documentary focused on the unique and distinctive French director Michel Gondry, tracing his emergence through music video and to the success of films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Appealingly lightweight whimsy from Woody Allen in which Owen Wilson keeps timeslipping between the present and 1920s Paris to meet the artistic/literary greats
Adaptation of a Salman Rushdie novel that acts as a superhero film of sorts about a secret war between people with unique powers set against the backdrop of 20th Century Indian history
Amid Kenneth Branagh’s dynamic cinematic revival of Shakespeare in the 1990s, there was this all-star adaptation of Shakespeare’s whimsy about fairy enchantments
Under the umbrella title ShakespeareRetold, Shakespeare’s tale of fairy enchantments and romantic mix-ups is reimagined in a modern day British holiday camp
A filmed version of Julie Taymor’s staging of the Shakespeare play about fairt enchantments. Forget standard interpretations, Taymor opens the play up with an extraordinary visual flair
Adaptation of the Shakespeare play about fairy enchantments by Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies. Davies goes with a standard interpretation alongside radical reinvention – Athens as a fascist dictatorship
One of Woody Allen’s slighter films, a sexual rondeau set at the turn of the 20th Century, although mostly riffing on Allen’s familiar sexual neuroses. Contains minor fantasy elements.
One of Woody Allen’s most warmly funny films of the 90s with a side-splitting and award-winning performance from Mira Sorvino. Throughout, Allen gently spoofs Greek tragedy.
Many of the people involved in the 1933 King Kong came back together to create another giant ape film. Much overlooked, this is one of the masterpieces of stop-motion animation
Charming, delightful venture into Magical Realism directed by Robert Redford as the angels step in to aid the impoverished residents of a New Mexico town
An anime from Satoshi Kon that tells the story of an actress and become a surreal journey through Japanese cinematic history
Anime based on an autobiographical manga that leaps off into a variety of styles and comes filled with madcap surrealistic visuals
A live-action film based on the popular
A ridiculously melodramatic Catholic historical drama wherein a statue of the Virgin Mary comes to life to take the place of a nun so she can run off and woo a young Roger Moore … A lushly made canvas but otherwise absurdly overwrought piety
One of the classics of the Italian Neo-Realist period, a charming whimsy about homeless people who built a shantytown
One of a spate of miracle films during this period, Catholic nonsense with Jane Wyman and Van Johnson finding love that transcends death
A ghastly sanctimonious Catholic miracle film from the 1940s about the elevation of a Hollywood starlet to sainthood simply because she was glamorous
Classic Christmas film with Edmund Gwenn as a man who is placed on trial after he insists he is the real Santa Claus
A John Hughes written remake of the classic Christmas film where a man (Richard Attenborough) claiming to be Santa ends up tried in court.
Intelligent and absorbing thriller where a freak storm allows a woman to communicate with the past only to inadvertently create a new timeline where her life is very different
Mamoru Hosoda film nominated for the Best Animated Film at Academy Awards. A young boy jealous at the arrival of a baby sister is visited by her future self and travels through time to meet his family at different periods
The very first mermaid film, a wonderfully droll comedy in which a capricious Glynis Johns innocently wreaks havoc on all the men around her
Tarsem Singh makes a Snow White film. Tarsem’s sets, costumes and visuals are expectedly exquisite and extravagant but all is unwound by a campy, unserious approach
Neil Gaiman and comic-book artist Dave McKean create a venture into a fantasy world with an extraordinary level of visual imagination and peopled with a remarkable panoply of creations. The results are quite unlike any other film you have seen
Tim Burton used to be the great hope of fantastic cinema but his efforts since 2000 have been greeted with general disappointment. This Young Adult adaptation plays out like a fantasy version of the X-Men
Renee Zellweger stars in a biopic of children’s author Beatrix Potter from Babe director Chris Noonan
Ron Howard makes a Western that has some horror overtones featuring an evil Indian sorcerer. In the hands of a classic director like John Ford this could have been an epic work but Howard’s plodding predictability kills interest
Amiable knockabout stop-motion animated film from Laika Entertainment, although the title is a misnomer and the film is actually about a Bigfoot rather than a Missing Link
Fine film that deserves wider recognition with Jeff Goldblum as a man in an asylum who claims to be The Devil
Magical Realist film with Aishwarya Rai running a spice bazaar where she is able to tell fortunes
TV mini-series based on Marion Zimmer Bradley’s book that offers a revisionist take on the Arthurian legends, telling the story through the eyes of the women of the saga
Disney make a sequel to Moana, their venture into Pacific Island mythology
Despite being a huge box-office and critical success and being nominated for an Academy Award, I am in a minority in disliking this. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that it appropriates the culture from my neck of the woods and only spins it out as a series of glib jokes and one-liners
Modesty Blaise was a classic British comic-book about a smart female thief. On screen, it is turned into a copy of the James Bond films that goes for excruciatingly over-the-top camp excess
Imagine a weird mix between the basic premise of Saw and Waiting for Godot. A South Korean film about a man inexplicably chained up in a park that is less interested in his escape than it becomes a surreal existential allegory for life
Gentle affecting film about a boy learning Buddhist life lessons as he journeys across Mongolia with an old man
One of a cluster of faith-based films made around the turn of the millennium dealing with the biblical apocalypse and The Rapture, this has not dated well
Ana Lily Amirpour, director of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, returns with a film about a psychic girl and the eccentric grifters that accumulate around her
Enjoyably colourful and silly retelling of the classic Chinese legend. This is one Wu Xia film that leaps aboard the CGI and 3D bandwagon to create a wildly fantastical airbrushed world that comes out resembling a flying swordsman film by way of Avatar
Sequel to the earlier The Monkey King, which was fun but this is altogether a better film. While the first film was more prelude to Journey to the West, this sets out on the journey and tells one of its stories. Directed with an immensely assured command of the live-action and CGi elements
The Monkey King films are a series of extraordinary works that exists somewhere between CGI and live-action and have a lushness of design. That is balanced against a dated plot that basically rehashes Cat Women of the Moon
A tv mini-series adaptation of the famous Chinese legend Journey to the West made for US audiences by Hallmark Entertainment. The story remains stolidly earthbound and the meta-fictional contortions the story has to add to engage in to have the monk hero replaced by a contemporary Thomas Gibson are bizarre
An animated version of the epic Chinese legend Journey to the West that was overshadowed by the hit live-action film that came out some months earlier that retold the tale with CGI
3D restoration of a classic Chinese adaptation of Journey to the West and the best film version of the story to date … an incredible film filled with psychedelically eye-popping animation and amazing action scenes, while gleefully celebrating a defiance of all authority
Henry Selick’s first venture into live-action in which Brendan Fraser becomes trapped in a bizarre afterlife while a mischievous monkey steals his body
The story of the relationship between a giant monster and a boy whose mother is dying of cancer, this is perhaps the darkest children’s film ever made. Adapted from an award-winning illustrated book
Delightful motion capture animated film about children discovering a neighbourhood house that is alive. Written with refreshingly well-rounded characters and directed with a great sense of comic grotesque
Sequel to Monster Hunt, an audience pleasing comedy about a couple and a cute monster that became the biggest hit in Chinese box-office history. This offers more of the same
Apparently the biggest grossing film in China ever. What we get is not much more than a rehash of E.T. with the addition of flying swordsmen. What kills the film is an emphasis of excrutiating slapstick and low-res CGI that makes the various creatures resemble versions of Mr Blobby
Resident Evil series director Paul W.S. Anderson and star Milla Jovovich return with an adaptation of another popular videogame series
A charming French-made animated film about a genteel singing monster. Nothing profound but this is beautifully animated and sweetly appealing in all the right places
This was the fourth animated film from Pixar and is a winning and delightful Maurice Sendakian tale about the monsters in the closet and their friendship with a young girl
Pixar’s creative decline has been the point they started making these sequels to their hits. This is a disappointing prequel to Monsters, Inc. that largely recycles the cliches of the Revenge of the Nerds films and seems lacking in any of the wacky humour or moments of cuteness we expect of a Pixar film
South Korean attempt to make a Wu Xia film with swordsmen up against a hulking monster
The first of the Monty Python films, a wickedly funny, willfully nonsensical take on King Arthur and the knightly quest. Contains many classic Python gags
The Monty Python team’s finest hour, a wickedly irreverent spoof on Christianity that contains some of their most side-splitting gags
The third and last of the Monty Python films, a variety of skits that are variously outrageous and frequently leave behind all good taste