The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The term magician refers to people who wield magic. The term is synonymous and interchangeable with other phrases like wizard, sorcerer or magic user. The cliche figure of the magician is Merlin or Gandalf in long beard, robes and pointy hat, although there is an equal number of black magicians who fulfil villainous roles.
Magicians are most commonly found in Epic Fantasy Films settings usually joining a party of adventurers on a quest. Of recent years, there have been a number of works that take place in contemporary urban settings as well a number of magician superheroes. There have also been several films about stage magicians who have or gain real powers.
Magicians are commonly taken to be a male practitioner of the craft. A female practitioner of magic is usually referred to as a witch or a sorceress – see Films About Witches.
For more detail and an overview of the genre see the Theme Essay Films About Magicians and Sorcerers.
One of the handful of animated Marvel Comics films. This confusingly presents a different origin story to the live-action Iorn Man film, while the major villain of The Mandarin is completely mishandled
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
This BBC adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s book about rival 19th century magicians kicks J.K. Rowling completely out of the ring. A beautifully staged costume drama, written with a superb Austen-esque dryness of wit
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
The third and final part of the adaptation of DC Comics’ classic title Crisis on Infinite Earths featuring an epic battle to prevent the destruction of the multiverse
We are familiar with the Justice League but this gives us an alternate League whose members have supernatural abilities or are versed in dealing with the occult.
The DC Comics animated version of an Avengers film where they put every superhero under their roof on screen at once, including Justice League Dark, the regular Justice League, Suicide Squad and Teen Titans
Joe Cornish gained much buzz with Attack the Block. His follow-up film concerns a kid who inherits Excalibur. Cornish has fun translating elements of the Arthurian legends to the present-day
A Canadian children’s film that does a modest, amusing job of updating the Arthurian legends to the modern day as Merlin appears to a young boy and gives him Excalibur
Don Bluth conducts animated remake of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical memorably incarnated with Yul Brynner. Now the story comes with the addition of fantasy elements
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 passable B-budget film that came out in anticipation of Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. This is actually an Arthurian sequel, featuring Arthur’s son inheriting the sword.
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
A modernised version of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court with Whoopi Goldberg as a physicist who time travels back to Camelot
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
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
The fourth entry in DreamWorks popular animated series, which by now is just another entry in the series that is coasting by on recognition factor, while offering minimal difference
One of the weird mash-ups of horror and martial arts popular in Hong Kong during the late 70s/80s. Despite a great title, this suffers from an emphasis on frenetic slapstick and caricatures
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
Beautiful and underrated animated fantasy film about an apprentice magician who protects the last unicorn. This has a maturity that most animated fantasy lacks
Film spinoff from the popular British comedy series sees the familiar characters entering the real world to meet their creators and deal with the cancellation of the show
A Chinese fantasy film that leaves anything Western fantastic cinema has made recently for dead, including epical battle scenes and a lavish sumptuousness of costuming that leaves your jaw on the floor
Animated sequel to The Wizard of Oz that proved a charmless flop that misses the magic of the original by a mile. The familiar characters are run over with a gratingly modern sense of humour
Following the success of The Lego Movie, where he was a scene-stealing supporting character, Batman gets a whole Lego film to himself. Less a Batman film than it is a parody of Batman
How much fun can a film based around Lego characters be? A film that overflows with cleverness, wit and energy. The most fun is in the film’s creating a madcap mix-up of characters from different franchises
Sequel to The Lego Movie. This time the idea of the Lego universe, the crossovers and fourth-wall breaking gags are not as fresh but this still gets good mileage out of them
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
Vincent Price had success as the mad waxworks curator in the 3D horror House of Wax. This cheap copycat casts Price as a mad stage magician and is also served up in 3D
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
One of the better films from B-budget dircetor Bert I. Gordon, a fantasy adventure where Gordon produces some decent effects
Considered a lost classic of silent cinema for many years, this is a film loosely based on occultist Alesiter Crowley and was considered a daring work that delved into taboo areas
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
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
The one moment of triumph from director William Girdler who takes a work that sits just on the threshold of schlock and transforms into something incredibly eerie with an injection of H.P. Lovecraft and American Indian mysticism
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
Manos: The Hands of Fate is considered one of the worst films of all time. 42 years later some of those involved in the original decided to make a sequel that manages to be just as bad a film
Regarded as one of the worst films ever made, more than anything this is just dull and boring. The plot concerns a couple straying into a desert home where a warlock is about to be resurrected
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
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
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
This film adaptation of the videogame is a lot of fun. The plot is a rehash of Enter the Dragon but the film offers up wall-to-wall action and exotic creatures. A directorial debut for Paul W.S. Anderson
Sequel to the Mortal Kombat film. While the first film was fun, here anything resembling plot has been stripped away to concentrate on fight scenes such that the film blurs into a single shapeless action sequence
A sequel to the 2021 revival of the film series based on the videogame and a much more satisfying film than its predecessor. The first film was all origin story, but this plunges us into the actual kombat itself
Nominal remake of the Boris Karloff The Mummy, which has now been inflated into a big budget Indiana Jones adventure. Stephen Sommers lets the film overspill with CGI spectacle but the exercise is deflated by a jokey, unserious attitude
The weakest of the Muppet movies where they are turned into the characters in a retelling of The Wizard of Oz
A surprisingly good effort to emerge from the arena of fan-made Kickstarter funded filmmaking. Essentially, a group of fans have brought their mutual love of playing Dungeons and Dragons to life but the film, while low-budgeted, places a great deal of care into the characters and building of the world
Mythica: A Quest for Heroes was a fan-made epic fantasy film made with a high degree of creativity and professionalism; this sequel is slightly the lesser but still maintains the high degree of quality
The fifth of the surprisingly good Mythica fan-produced series that has consistently made a strong, rousing variant on the Epic Fantasy tropes on a low budget
This was the fourth in the surprisingly good Mythica series of low-budget epic fantasy films funded via Kickstarter. This proves to be the best of the series yet
The third of the surprisingly good Kickstarter financed Mythica films. This marks a changeover of directors in the series and is slightly the lesser but still does highly imaginative things with a low-budget
A modestly effective film about a group of deserting soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars who enter a haunted forest
German low-budget film about a resurrected sorcerer, this goes out on a wild edge, winds everything up to 15 on the dial and positively wades in blood, gore and torture scenes
Anthology where directors Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen each contribute an episode set in New York. Allen’s contribution in which a magician’s trick manifests a giant nagging mother in the sky is side-splitting
This adapts a Philip K. Dick story and then throws it out to make a generic action film with Nicolas Cage as a psychic. All the potential of its idea is lost amid a series of ridiculous plot twists
A classic work of Film Noir adapted from a Cornell Woolrich novel featuring Edward G. Robinson as a stage mentalist who suddenly finds he can predict the future for real
Film concerning a warlock resurrected in the body of a scarecrow seeking revenge. This is conceived around a series of novelty makeup effects but director Jeff Burr treats the material seriously and with reasonable results
Likeable film made by fans about a ninja team formed to deal with a zombie onslaught
Not to be confused with Now You See Me, the one about the bank-robbing magicians, this is a surprisingly good film for the usual creative wasteland that is the Disney Channel about a reality show for illusionists who discovers a teen whose powers would appear to be real
Cheap and tatty variant on the Arthurian legends with people trying to prevent a reincarnated sorcerer obtaining Excalibur
A Syfy Channel film about the present-day discovery of a lost, still extant 19th Century village that has conducted a deal to preserve themselves by annually sacrificing someone to an ogre
The 22nd animated film from Pixar and also the least successful (being released only a week before theatrical chains closing down due to Coronavirus). This has an appealingly quirky and original concept not unakin to Bright that takes place in an alternate reality where magic creatures live in a world akin to our own
A sequel to the Gonzo Killer Shark film Ouija Shark, this goes even crazier
Sam Raimi’s prequel to The Wizard of Oz is now; the story of how a conman fools an entire land rather than of an innocent girl just trying to find her way home. The reconceptualisation of Oz comes with a colourful sweep
Amiable if lightweight film where a live-action Macaulay Culkin gets animated and has a series of adventures in a Land of Fiction where he must pass through various classic stories
One of the numerous ‘vs’ films that came out after Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, this is actually a B-budget fantasy adventure made for cable. This is not particularly bad, just routine and uninspired on all counts where the budget cramps any of its imaginative horizons
Spinoff of characters featured in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart and a greatly underrated film for Alex de la Iglesia. this pushes into even darker and more anarchic places than Lynch did, featuring outlaw lovers who are black sorcerers on a trail of murder and kidmap
Probably the least great of Hayao Miyazaki’s films. The plot feels recycled from The Little Mermaid while Miyazaki’s recurrent themes seem more perfunctory and the film lacks many of the beautiful contrasts of epic and fragile he specialises in
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
Christopher Nolan directs a beautiful period piece with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as rival Victorian stage magicians. The film is an elegantly crafted Hall of Mirrors and illusions, capped by sterling performances from all involved
Fairly silly fairytale parody with a prince transformed into a frog trying to find a modern girl to give him the kiss of true love
Swashbuckling fairytale that treads a fine line between deconstruction and parody, while reveling in a script where the dialogue positively dances. Perfectly cast – a film that few do not come out enjoying its ebullient fantasy
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
An Arthurian legends fantasy adventure made as part of the animation renaissance of the 1990s. Anything serious aspirations are wrecked by the insertion of inane popular culture in-jokes
The fifth of the Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe films. By this point, there was a clear desire for some novelty so this one is played as a comedy between duelling magicians
This was the seventh of Full Moon’s most popular series, the Puppet Master films. This goes back to tell how young Andre Toulon (Greg Sestero) originally created the puppets
A weak video-released spinoff of Disney’s Aladdin that began Disney’s habit throughout the 90s/00s of generating cheap sequels to their animated classics
Way back before Peter Jackson, there was another whole era of Tolkien adaptations, including this animated adaptation of the third book, which is a peculiar oddity if nothing else
Promisingly ambitious animated SF film that tries to catch some of the trippy qualities of Heavy Metal where the impressive quality of animation is let down by a juvenile story about a rock band in a post-holocaust future
Venture into Magical Realism with Bridget Fonda as a magician’s assistant who undergoes a Mexican ceremony to emerge with real magical powers. Featuring a young Russell Crowe.
Another of Cannon Films cheaply made fairytales with Amy Irving starring in an adaptation of Rumpelstiltskin
One of the more forgettable Woody Allen comedies with Scarlett Johansson as a journalism student who gets tips from the afterlife
Prequel to The Scorpion King. Unfortunately director Russell Mulcahy allows his broad hand with comedy free reign and the plot is overrun by glib character banter and constant flip modern one-liners
A completely deranged film from Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers involving the resurrection of a dead wife to exact retribution. Full of ghost sex, gore and madcap creature effects
One of the classic films from cult stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen, an Arabian Nights fantasy adventure where Harryhausen’s creations prove to be quite wondrous
Sequel to the Hong Kong erotic film, an entirely unrelated work that inflates the original into a madcap Wu Xia film filled with crude, rude humour
A revival of the 1990s Sex and Zen series of erotic comedies, this comes with the novelty of being presented in 3D
Directed by the underrated J.S. Cardone, this features Scott Glenn in a fine performance trying to track Indian sorcerer Benjamin Bratt
Jan-Michael Vincent plays a young man who is reluctantly drawn in by his Native American grandfather’s war against a black sorcerer
One of the not-quite-rans in Woody Allen’s oeuvre, a homage to Franz Kafka and German Expressionism with Allen as a mousy clerk caught up in the hunt for a strangler
Adaptation of the superhero comic is played for comedy, making it very different in emphasis to the other films in the DCEU. The boy into man transformation is played up as essentially Big with superpowers – with appealing results
Shazam! was one of the more enjoyable DCEU superhero offerings, placing a light-hearted spin on the superheroics. This is the sequel
Guy Ritchie’s reinvention of Sherlock Holmes seemed a miscalculated disaster in the offing. It doesn’t radically reinvent the basics but emerges passably well
A film of fascinating ambiguities that stars Alan Bates as a mystery man who appears to John Hurt and demonstrates a killing shout he learned among the Aborigines