The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Unique anthology that offers 26 episodes from different directors, each ending with a death. The episodes vary wildly in quality but a sufficient number ignore all good taste and/or travel waaaay across taboo lines
Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of the adventures of the world’s greatest liar was another problem ridden Gilliam production that emerges as an absurd, colourful spectacle filled with a dizzying greatness of imagination
Controversial director Pier Paolo Pasolini offers up a far more adult telling of the Arabian Nights than we are used to, not to mention one that goes on location in the real Arabia
Hallmark tv mini-series adaptation of the classic tales has been granted a decent budget that allows the stories to emerge with lavish spectacle and the fantasy to fly with exceptional regard
A version of the Baron’s tall tales from the great, underrated Karel Zeman. Zeman’s dizzying blend of live-action, animation and cutouts and deadpan absurdism is perfect, resulting in the best Baron Munchausen film to date
An unfunny Adam Sandler film in which he plays a guy whose bedtime stories come true. Sandler regards himself as the funniest guy in the room and doesn’t even seem to be making an effort.
Tim Burton film where Albert Finney plays a habitual teller of tall tales whose son sets out to find the truth. Burton’s characteristic quirkiness seems buried by such a blandness you suspect he has been replaced by a clone of Ron Howard
A fable that was a personal project for Tarsem Singh. A film made for the pure beauty of its visuals, Tarsem eschews visual effects and shoots exotic real world locations to create something exquisitely fantastical
Guy Maddin has perfected a blend of silent movie stylistics and hilariously surreal melodrama. This is a Guy Maddin film on acid, a sumptuously madcap fantasia of visuals wound around a tapestry of tall tales
Dwayne Johnson starring Hercules film that just wants to be a big dumb cartoon without a brain cell in its body. This takes the interesting approach that Hercules was an ordinary man whose exploits were all down to PR
Fascinating, epically sized versions of the adventures of Baron Münchausen produced by the Nazis
Guy Maddin was hired by the Documentary Channel to make a documentary about his hometown Winnipeg and turns it into a surreal confabulation of fact and tall tale
Cult Polish film that is a series of tall tales nested within a labyrinth of other tales and digressions
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
Disney film that is difficult to see these days due to its controversial treatments of race issues. Controversies aside, this is undeniably likeable, in particular in its telling a series of tall tales and finding a folk vernacular
This has the promising idea of bringing together various mythic figures from the West like Pecos Bill and John Bunyan but then mishandles them in an oddly mundane depiction
For a time Kevin J. Lindemuth had a reasonable place making direct-to-video films and anthologies. This is a solidly effective video-released anthology of horror tales