Lekce Faust (1994)

A Czech, French, British, German, American fantasy directed by Jan Švankmajer
A man receives a map from men passing them out on a street corner. He follows it and becomes an actor in the role of Faust at a theater production. As the story progresses, stop motion fantasy elements are added and he turns into a marionette, but goes back to being an actor between scenes, while still in a deal with the devil.
Jan Švankmajer also made Alice (1988) and Little Otik (2000). This belongs in the same category as those: weird and wonderful. I liked Little Otik the most, but this was pretty cool too. The stop motion all looked good and there were some great scenes. The heads rolling through areas looked good and the small marionettes in the signature scene were great. My favorite was when the jester was trying to catch a bird. He repeatedly summoned and banished a devil with some humor involved. The audio was in Czech, but the version I watched had on time English subtitles. I rate this good just for being so strange. You should probably watch it.
Sorry, no image. Blogger is broken again.

Van Helsing (2004)

A Czech American fantasy directed by Stephen Sommers, starring Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Roxburgh and David Wenham.
Vampire hunter, Van Helsing gets a female associate and they hunt monsters together. Vampires, werewolves, whatever.
Poopoo, CG junk. The plot almost held my interest way back when I watched it. Characters all over-acted, too much CG, sets too large to be real. I guess it did action scenes well because that was most of the movie. I rate this poor. You probably should not watch it.

Adventures of Sinbad the Sailor A.K.A. Pohádky tisíce a jedné noci, Tales of 1,001 Nights, A Thousand and One Nights (1974)

A Czech animated fantasy directed by Karel Zeman.
Sinbad the sailor has many adventures as he sails from kingdom to kingdom and outwits danger after danger.
I really liked this. The animation style was unique, somewhere between Lotte Reiniger's paper cutouts and "standard" hand drawn cell animation. The plot seemed like a series of vignettes because it was originally released as a series of shorts, each including a single adventure. There were some inconsistencies, like calling birds that look the same doves and then seagulls later, but I don't really want to get into that here. I just want to say how good it was. The pacing was dynamic and the characters and backgrounds all looked amazing. I would recommend it if you don't mind fast paced subtitles, not as fast as Night is Short, Walk On Girl (2017), but be ready to read pretty quickly. I rate this awesome.

On the Comet A.K.A. Na kometě (1970)

A Czech science fiction directed by Karel Zeman.
A cartographer in the French military is surveying northern Africa when he falls into the sea. A comet passes, carrying away Arabians, French and Spaniards with it. The cartographer meets a beautiful woman and they fall in love as chaos unfolds around them.
So unique! Illustrations from the Jules Verne novel were mixed with live action and animation. There were stop motion dinosaurs, illustrated backdrops and live action sections, sometimes with compositing into the illustrations or illustrations composited into live action. The plot and characters were not all that great, but it was so visually weird that this didn't matter much. Most of the special effects looked like 1920s style because the video was mostly in tinted black and white. If you're looking for something really strange to watch and don't mind reading subtitles, this is a good one. I rate it awesome.

Little Otik (2000)

A Czech fantasy by Jan Svankmajer.
After finding that he and his wife are unable to have children, a man digs up a root that looks like a baby and gives it to his wife. The wife pretends to be pregnant and have a human baby, but she is caring for the root like a child and it comes to life. The root's appetite is endless and it eats everything it can find.
This was partially stop-motion animated to show the root living and eating. The style was great, but the production value was a little low. The plot was simple and the characters were good. I liked the interaction between the sex-starved old man and the young girl who wore short skirts. I'm rating this good.