The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Magic is a process inherent in many works of fantasy, although actually defining what it is is elusive. It can be said that it is not scientific in nature or based on real-world physics, otherwise a work becomes one of science-fiction. Nor does it come by divine process otherwise it is a Miracle. If we can define the current world as a rational one, magic is a system or property of things that stands outside these mundane definitions where it is akin to an energy or an invisible force.
Magic can be wielded by adept individuals. In use, magic is capable of transformation of matter or person-into-animal changes, it can create illusions, control of the environment and elements, can be used for healing, to create energy blasts, Mind Control, open portals to other worlds and dimensions, or conjure entities. The employment of magic will frequently be aided by something like a staff, a ring, a lens, a cauldron, potions and the assemblage of obscure items or else via Magic Spells – the uttering of phrases and rituals, which are usually written on scrolls.
It is often seen or implied that magic needs some training in its usage. Those versed in the use of magic are referred to as Magicians, Wizards, Sorcerers or Magic Users or a Witch. It is common in works of fantasy and horror for magic users to be divided into Black and White magicians, between those who make benevolent use of the art and the dark arts. The Harry Potter series and other works gave us schools dedicated to the training of magicians and the apprentice magician story is a trope in its own right.
Magic is also a property had by certain creatures such as unicorns, Dragons and Fairies. It is also something that can be imbued into certain objects such as swords, staffs, flying carpets, red slippers, rings and the like, or even objects that may have residual power such as the robes of a magician. Possession of these is frequently greatly sought. For these see Magical Artefacts.
Most depictions of magic on screen display little interest for analysing the processes of how and why it operates. Some have been brave enough to create magic systems. By and large, the stories about magic that work the best are the ones that try to create some restrictions on its use. This may involve the user being limited in what they can do by their skill or knowledge; that a magic artefact has only a certain amount of energy; that there is a natural depletion of magic in the world; that it requires the collection of obscure items in order to work; or that its use may have some cost to the one wielding it.
George Lucas’s venture into animation was critically pilloried. It’s not bad, just no different from a formula film like Rise of the Guardians or Epic. From the man who made Star Wars, you had higher expectations
If you don’t know who Karel Zeman is, you need to check out his films – he is quite one of the most extraordinary directors in his blend of live-action and animation. Zeman’s later films are pure animation and tend to be overlooked but are not uninteresting.
The second of 2012’s Snow White films after Mirror Mirror, this turns the fairytale into an epic fantasy. Well produced but ultimately a film that lacks anything unique nor pushes far enough into the dark fantasy it promises to be
The Hallmark tv mini-series version of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale is lushly produced but tends to plod when it should come to life as fantasy
Live-action version of the popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon series. In its favour, it is at least slickly polished and comes with far less in the way of irritating smartass humour that one expected
For their third Smurfs film, Sony have dispensed with the live-action/CGi animation mix of the previous two films and made a wholly animated film. Its’ the Smurfs in their more natural element but the film is never more than 3D eye candy for the moppet audiences
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
An animated revival of The Smurfs. This was greeted with a very negative reception. With a massive celebrity voice line-up packed into almost any corner of the film the casting director can manage
A Young Adult fantasy adaptation that fells a Harry Potter wannabe repackaged with the brooding teen romanticism of the Twilight series, all under a director whose indifferent handling fails to animate any of the material
Amiably lightweight 80s comedy in which average teenage underdog Robyn Lively gains magical abilities and the complications these create
An early CGI animated film conducted on a cut-price budget that tells further adventures of Sinbad
The third of Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad films, this came out the same year as Star Wars and Harryhauden’s stop-motion animated creatures look much more flat in comparison
Peter Greenaway gets loose on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, indulging his obsessions with lists and multimedia visuals while the costume department goes completely over-the-top
Chick Flick with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock as two sisters from a family of witches. The film never really settles on a consistent tone between comedy, thriller or romance and veers all over the place
Emma Thompson written and starring adaptation of a series of children’s books comes across as a lesser copy of Mary Poppins. A film that feels like it should have been more than it ends up being.
A story about an apprentice at a mysterious company that deals with magic, this could well serve as a fix for those wanting something more of the Harry Potter franchise
I never much cared for Nanny McPhee. This is a sequel that replicates the original in fairly much the same amount mix of plot elements, slapstick sequences and nonsensical absurdism
Another of Disney’s Tinker Bell spinoff adventures. This has some slickly produced animation and does some occasionally cute pieces of fanservice that tie in to Peter Pan but is ultimately fantasy being produced for the single digit age groups
Dull remake of the classic Arabian Nights film that casts Steve Reeves and tries to make it into a Hercules peplum adventure
Russian film that creates a fascinating alternate reality where Steampunk and magic blend in an almost familiar world
The second of Amicus Films’ adaptations from EC Comics, a follow-up to their earlier Tales from the Crypt and one of their weaker horror anthologies with the episodes much more variable in overall quality
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
A low-budget film that prefigures the big-budget Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters in turning the fairytale brother and sister into witchslayers in a generic fantasy adventure plot
The first Fantastic Beasts was a welcome opening up of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe and offered something fresh in the series. This is a more mixed bag where it feels like it is back to business as usual for Rowling
Disney’s sequel to Fantasia comes weighted with a sense of its own self-importance – the first theatrical release of the new millennium. However, it fails to produce much that has the stature of the original
The second half of the film adaptation of the musical Wicked. This essentially operates as Wizard of Oz fanfiction and substantially wrenches the characters and backstories from the 1939 film out of shape to write its own story
The first half of a two-part adaptation of the hit Broadway musical that is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, showing The Wicked Witch’s origin story
A new film based on the role-playing game. The first film several years ago is poorly regarded. This is an attempt to reboot a film series but suffers badly from being handed to two comedy directors and their flip treatment
Film based on the enormously popular roleplaying game, this appears to have been quickly thrown together in advance of The Lord of the Rings films but is a shabby effort filled with some disastrous off-tone casting
The fourth film in the Dragonheart franchise. Is there truly anybody out there who was begging for this? Cheaply made in Romania where it seems to be straining to drag the original premise out for another film
Outside of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, not much else that George Lucas has made has been a success. This Ron Howard-directed epic fantasy proved to be a big flop where Howard’s lightweight touch fails to make a one-dimensional plot fly
Sequel to a largely forgotten fantasy series. While never transcending formula, this fares somewhat better than the previous sequel largely because CGI effects have advanced since the original
One among a handful of animated films based on Marvel Comics properties, this conducts a passable telling of the origin story of the Sorcerer Supreme
This sequel to Conan the Barbarian makes the mistake of watering the primal brutalism down to a PG rating and what results ends up being a pedestrian comic-book adventure
Disney animated film that supposedly adapts Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, although Andersen wouldn’t recognise it. This often feels like a ramshackle assemblage of formula elements rather than the classic it was hailed as
A Disney animated film whose classic stature has been overrated. The fairytale is too familiar to hold much interest, while the cutsie talking animals get to take over proceedings
Another lacklustre entry in the banal Lord of the Rings Lite franchise from C.S. Lewis’s books, a plodding run of the mill fantasy adventure for the most part. The mediocre reception killed off interest in the series
The film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s book sought to appeal to audiences for the Lord of the Rings films but between Lewis’s heavy-handed Christian allegories and Andrew Adamson’s inexperience as a director fails to fly
The second of the Narnia films. Director Andrew Adamson seems so intent on copying Peter Jackson that the film becomes all epic fantasy flourishes and battle scenes to the exclusion of all else – even much of C.S. Lewis’s book
Adaptation of a book by NZ author Margaret Mahy. Mahy has a sublimely poetic turn of phrase in the writing but the film strips the book down to the point we get no more than a by-the-numbers Young Adult work
Forgotten Disney animated film that was not a success at the time it came out. It seeks to tell an epic fantasy tale in the J.R.R. Tolkien vein but ends up falling too much in the shadow of Star Wars
The hit 1960s sitcom is repackaged as a frothy Nora Ephron romcom that suffers from a fatal mismatching of a showboating Will Ferrell and a more subdued Nicole Kidman who do not seem to connect in any way as Darren and Samantha
Sequel to the earlier Barbie animated film Barbie Fairytopia. Extremely colourful but essentially a fantasy version of a teenage girl high school drama that quickly slips into pre-packaged formula
The second of the animated Barbie films, this casts her as the title character in the popular Brothers Grimm fairytale, which has been considerably embellished. This suffers the glassy plasticity of the early Mainframe films
Strange Disney tv movie in which widow Linda Hamilton moves to a small town where the people seem able to do magic
This tries hard to be another The Thief of Bagdad but is never too much more than a run through the cliches of the Arabian Nights adventure rewritten for the post-Star Wars era
Clive Braker’s third and final outing as a director. Barker is trying to tell an occult detective story but fails to get any of the mood that film noir operates by
Third of the Fantastic Beasts films, this comes as a mix of ennui with the franchise and promise. It feels like about right now would be a good time to retire the series
Forgettable Disney animated film telling the story of King Arthur’s boyhood where the Arthurian legends are sidelined in favour of talking animals and slapstick
Another failed attempt to start a fantasy franchise. However, the interesting premise of someone who can bring fictional characters to life ends up going goes precisely nowhere
Not the Disney film, but a live-action film only loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. Not much more than a nicely made average film but one conducted with evident care
Earlier less well known adaptation of the C.S. Lewis book made for tv. This is faithful to the book but is badly hampered by primitive animation and an exceedingly simplistic rendering of the story
Hong Kong kung fu films of the 1970/80s contains some bizarre crosshatches in a search for novelty. Here a kung fu practitioner takes on a sorcerer who raises ghosts and even Count Dracula to fight
Disappointing adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other barbarian hero. Cast with Kevin Sorbo, it comes out as Kull: The Legendary Journeys and the material is killed by the filmmakers taking an unserious approach
Rather silly and plotless Hong Kong comedy with Chow Yun Fat as a CIA agent encountering a magical girl at a monastery in China
Guy Ritchie’s take on the Arthurian legends is an awkward beast that comes out as half wannabe Michael Bay film giddy with CGI delirium and half one of Ritchie’s typical Man’s Man caper films
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 is a futile endeavour
One has zero enthusiasm for this, which has been sold as Twilight meets Harry Potter. Defying expectation, it is written with a sarcastic amusement puncturing its own seriousness and has a great performance from its leading lady, if in the end it is too weighted down by story exposition needed to set up its sequels to ever open up dramatically
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
A blatant attempt to copy Ray Harryhausen’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, night down to employing the same lead actors and director, but this fails through shoddy stop-motion animated effects
A remake of the 1978 tv movie about occult rituals in a girl’s sorority house. This is a film that feels directed and written without any real involvement by those responsible.
The second of the Harry Potter films and better than its predecessor. Chris Columbus has his tendency to overblown effects more in check but that does leave the film more dependent on J.K. Rowling’s contrived deus ex machina plotting
Film spinoff from the popular anime tv series that seems caught between a film and a tv episode. While the film reaches for epic scale, the usual run of power blasts, there is nothing that we haven’t seen before
A live-action version of Cinderella starring Leslie Caron. This is a rather staid version with ballet sequences where the magic and romance never much ignites
Another entry among 2012’s spate of Snow White films following Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman. this was a low-budget mockbuster copycat from The Asylum
The first of the Harry Potter films. The first is the weakest and lumbers due to being placed in the hands of the perpetually banal Chris Columbus who allows visual effects wow and simplistic emotional cues to dominate
Adapted from the videogame, this is a third hand rehash of the basics of Tolkien. Secondly, it looks like a giant CGI cartoon where almost anything interesting about the world has been sidelined in favour of fantasy action
The Hobbit became Peter Jackson’s equivalent of the Star Wars prequels and this is the weakest work he has produced under the J.R.R. Tolkien banner. Five picaresque chapters of the book are extruded into bloated set-pieces
Jan-Michael Vincent plays a young man who is reluctantly drawn in by his Native American grandfather’s war against a black sorcerer
Another cheap Disney made-for-video-release sequel. This at least offers the novelty of an alternate retelling of Cinderella but everything transpires predictably
This seemed to promise something of tv’s late lamented Constantine or the first Warlock. Instead what we end up with has been turned into a ponderous effects vehicle for Vin Diesel
As part of their attempt to sell everything including the family silver, Disney make a sequel to their witch comedy, bringing back the three original actresses who are now looking a lot longer in the tooth
Inane Disney Channel film with twin sisters Tia and Tamera Mowry as sisters who didn’t know it who discover they are witches. A film that has zero interest in its fantasy elements and is entirely taken up by airhead teenage airhead natter
Sequel/modernisation (it is confusing what) to The Wizard of Oz relocated in New York. This tv mini-series may be the cheapest work ever served up bearing the Oz name and flounders amid the shabbiness of its effects and utter lack of magic its director conjures
Having to sit through the Mowray twins airhead natter again in a sequel to their early Disney Channel film feels the equivalent of nails being scratched on a blackboard
The fourth film version of the Arabian Nights adventure, a tv movie released theatrically in some parts.
Mini-series based on the works of Terry Pratchett that feels as though it is made, designed and cast by people who haven’t even read the books
A big-budget fantasy film made too much in the shadow of Star Wars by people with little understanding of the genre. The fantasy elements feel leaden and fail to take any imaginative flight
The US remake of the French time travel comedy Les Visiteurs. With a script by John Hughes, this imports the original film’s stars but misses its comedy charms by a mile
Jim Wynorski is a B-budget director whose films feature women with massively oversized breasts. Beyond epic-sized mammaries, this softcore tale about housewives engaged in witchcraft that makes no sense on a plot level
A shabby video-released sequel to DragonHeart (the first of several). Although this is quite clearly not being made with the services of Industrial Light and Magic this time
This TV mini-series adaptation of the Ursula Le Guin books is an insult. This was quickly mounted on the back of the success of The Lord of the Rings films but feels like tv filler that has zero affinity for Le Guin’s richly cultured world
Very silly romantic comedy in a Magical Realist vein where Sarah Michelle Gellar gains magical cooking abilities. Like Water for Chocolate did this better.
Frozen was the most successful animated film of all time. It also felt the most formulaic and least inspired Disney film of the 2000s. As part of Disney’s new business policy of recycling everything, this is a sequel.
British-made sword and sorcery adventure in the early 80s fantasy cycle. This suffers from a cheap and impoverished budget that makes everything look tatty
An adaptation of Jasper Fforde, one of the cleverest of modern humorous fantasy writers. Alas, the finished result is one that understands nothing about the book and is one of the worst ever screen adaptations
A Disney live-action film that engenders no believability in its basic premise. Much of the show is regarded as an opportunity for Bette Midler to steal the limelight and play to over-the-top excess
A lumbering, stagebound adaptation of Stephen Sondheim musical that lamely dips into the fairytale parody that Shrek and other films tapped far more engagingly over a decade ago
A children’s film starring NBA star Shaquille O’Neil as a genie who emerges from a ghetto blaster. Shaquille is not an actor and this has gained a wide reputation as a bad movie
A painfully cheap entry in the 1980s fad for sword and sorcery films.
NOT the Guy Ritchie film but an Asylum mockbuster released at the same time. The most WTF take on the Arthurian legends ever with the Knights as gun-wielding US Marines
A children’s fantasy adventure that never strays beyond the environs of an American high school and comes with the lowbrow slapstick, excruciating comic caricatures and incredibly bad effects
Cheap and tatty variant on the Arthurian legends with people trying to prevent a reincarnated sorcerer obtaining Excalibur
The first film was vaguely passable but this is an agonising piece of commercial product that has reduced everything to lazy slapstick sequences, cutsie laughs and smartass lines played for the single-digit age groups
In one’s efforts to track down all Edward D. Wood Jr’s films, one finally comes to Necromania, which was believed lost for many years … This turns out to be a pornographic film, consisting of little more than serial sex scenes, this far less interesting because it lacks all of Wood’s typical gaffes and ineptitudes
Excruciatingly awful take on Cinderella, which overruns the fairytale with hip contemporary in-jokes and pop culture references, shredding any suspension of disbelief in its desire to appeal to a modern teen cool
An incredibly bad Italian-made Sinbad adventure starring Lou Ferrigno that is laughable in its dialogue and acting and incredibly tatty in its budget pinching
Sequel to the painfully bad Disney Channel film that copied the success of High School Musical and featured the teenage children of classic Disney animated villains. This is just as empty-headed and unwatchable
This has an appealing premise – the children of all the Disney villains have grown up and go to school together. This is promptly killed by the awfulness of the film itself, which is essentially High School Musical set in the Disney universe
Ridiculous film from the perpetually awful Renny Harlin about teen male witches that feels like a gender-swapped version of The Craft cast with pretty boys and directed amid absurdly overblown effects