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.

Karas series A.K.A. 鴉－KARAS－, Karasu (2005 - 2007)

A Japanese science fiction fantasy anime directed by Keiichi Sato.
Deomons, spirits, kappas and city guardians duke it out in Shinjuku. A police detective is trying to figure out what is going on and there is a young woman wandering around.
Most of this was not so great. The plot was vague and muddy, so I didn't really know what was going on. There were a few fights and good scenes here and there. Then the ending happened. It made it all worthwhile. I'll just say that there is a long fight. The animation style mixed traditional anime with digital editing and really looked cool. I was watching the last 2 episodes, wondering what to write about this and that's all I got. I rate this adequate. You might want to just watch the last 3 episodes.

A Troll in Central Park A.K.A. Stanley's Magic Garden (1994)

post #2900

An American animated fantasy directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, starring Dom DeLuise, Cloris Leachman and Jonathan Pryce.
A troll is deported from troll land, into New York City because he has been making flowers with his green thumb. He lands in central park and meets a pair of children. It turns out that exiling him is not enough for the troll queen and she arrives to cause more trouble.
Alright, but not great. Pacing was what I noticed first. Everything flies by in a rush. Next was song quality. If Don Bluth wanted any chance of even co-existing with Disney, he needed better songs. At least the instruments and vocals were mixed better than All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989). The animation looked much like the other work of this studio, but not quite as good. It seems like somewhere in the late '80s and early '90s is when the studio stopped producing their best work. If you look at Don Bluth's filmography on Wikipedia, there are 4 columns for credit. I get the feeling that when these are all green (meaning Bluth did it), it's a great movie. He did also animate some Wolfgang Reitherman films for Disney. Something funny that I noticed in this film was the squirrel looking completely thrashed on drugs (image). Why? Then there was the issue with the bottle (baby bottle) and I was thinking that the squirrel probably has a liquor bottle if you need it that badly. I rate this adequate, but would only recommend it if you're into Don Bluth's work. There will be a few more of these coming soon.

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.

Clash of the Titans (1981)

A British American fantasy directed by Desmond Davis, starring Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Burgess Meredith and Ursula Andress, with visual effects by Ray Harryhausen.
Perseus has adventures trying to appease the gods, kill monsters and win the beautiful princess. He does have a magic sword, shield talking mechanical owl and flying horse, though.
Classic fantasy flick. I thought the plot was a little convoluted and not presented clearly enough. Possibly, there were too many side-quests, maybe there were too many characters. Casting did a great job. If you're interested, look up the actors listed. I just finished watching Hook (1991) with Maggie Smith as old Wendy. I prefer Harryhausen stop motion miniatures over CG monsters any day. I know they look quaint to most people, but they are not a clearly computer-generated item in a live action setting. There was a real item photographed, so it looks more like it belongs there to me. I rate this adequate because it's worth having and watching, but not one of my favorites.
As a side note, I made my friend a vase with figures from this movie on it: http://pccsm.blogspot.com/2018/12/calyx-krater.html

Hook (1991)

An American fantasy adventure directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts, Bob Hoskins and Maggie Smith.
Peter Pan has grown up, forgotten Neverland and has kids of his own. The children are stolen by Captain Hook and he must remember his past to save them.
What a pile of crap. I can't believe this was sitting in my collection for so long. Steven Spielberg and Robin Williams should have been able to make something better. The only good scenes are when the lost boys are trying to get Peter to remember. There was lots of sappy, emotional baggage that got in the way. It didn't even look that good. The sets were fine, but camerawork was not up to par on composing good shots. It sounded worse. I rate this bad. Don't watch it.

Branded A.K.A. The Mad Cow, Moscow 2017 (2012)

A Russian American fantasy directed by Jamie Bradshaw and Aleksandr Dulerayn, starring Jeffrey Tambor and Max von Sydow.
A marketing executive is involved in a media scandal and goes to live in the country. There he performs a ritual with a red cow, gaining the ability to see brand loyalty as monsters growing on people and buildings.
I love it! If only it were true... Unfortunately, it is too true in other ways. Advertising may as well be monsters with how omnipresent it is in the modern world. I could easily see fat becoming the new definition of beauty. Anyone who has been in a Walmart in the past decade or so would agree. Why do mostly fat people shop at Walmart? ...or is it Does Walmart make people fat? The plot is very interesting to me and the visual effects make it unforgettable. Some of the CG monsters are amazingly well done. I also liked how the company leaders and ad men have monster tendrils attached to them, feeding directly into the hive. The only thing that I didn't like about this is that there was Russian dialogue with no subtitles in the version I've seen. I rate it awesome for being a scorching social commentary as well as having great visual effects. You should really watch it.

Peter Pan (1953)

An American Disney animated musical fantasy directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske, starring Hans Conried.
A flying boy from a story brings a group of children to his island. The island is shared by Peter Pan's group of boys, mermaids, First Nations people and pirates.
I may type lots about subliminal messages, predictive programming and Illuminati symbolism in Disney animations, but that does not mean that I dislike them. In fact, it makes a "harmless children's cartoon" into something interesting. What I see in Peter Pan is repeated throughout the Disney catalog: blatant racism. "What Made the Red Man Red?" is a song whose mere title hints at the racist remarks within. Native Americans/First Nations people spoke a language different from that of colonial Europeans. We took their land and did not learn their language. They saved the colonists from starvation AND learned our language. Who are the stupid savages now? I'm sure that I should mention perpetual boyhood. Peter offers the boys a life free from cares, worries and adulthood, where they can fly. No boy would refuse. However, there is more to life than that, even an ideal one. Just for a modern comparison, mainstream rap is dominated by boy and dog wording, with prefixes like "lil": lil Bow Wow is a prime example. I have yet to fully analyze and decode what this means, but one result is less "men" to be leaders and more "boys" dependent upon others. A quick point I want to bring up is to question whether the absence of white European society and aurthority figures makes a place "other" or foreign, uncivilized? Captain Hook is the closest to Euro-man on the island and even he is a pirate, not part of "normal" society. He is, however, the only authority figure on the island who is obeyed because of employment, fear or responsibility. Pan may lead the boys, but they do not obey him to avoid consequences of not doing so. He is also one of them and tells them to do things that they would have wanted to do anyway. Smee doesn't seem eager to do the things ordered of him. After this academic analysis, I rate Peter Pan adequate. It gave me something to type about, but there are many better Disney films.

A Bolt from the Blue A.K.A. Seiten no Hekireki, 青天の霹靂 (2014)

A Japanese fantasy drama directed by Hitori Gekidan.
A man is disappointed with his life and gets struck by lightning, sending him into the past. There, he meets his mother and father. He works at a variety show theater as a magician and his father becomes his assistant.
Pretty cool, but also pretty sappy. The first half was interesting and funny. When the second half got sappy, the ending was not far away. Despite language differences, I think the actors did a great job. The magic performed in this was impressive and made me wonder how it was done. As convincing as the magic was the time change. There were real items from 1948 like bicycles and cars. The street scene looked authentic to me. The most important element that I noticed was that it didn't seem forced or contrived. Given that someone wrote it and a crew filmed actors playing roles, it seemed more real than many other films I've seen. I'm sure that good writing went a long way in achieving this. I rate it good because I liked it. If you try to avoid sap like I do, just remember that it gets that way right before ending and after lots of funny stuff with an immersive plot. You should probably watch it.

47 Ronin (2013)

An American samurai fantasy directed by Carl Rinsch, starring Keanu Reeves and Hiroyuki Sanada.
A "half breed" (English Japanese, but this is never mentioned) man is in love with the daughter of a feudal lord. A witch is fooling around with the political situation to have the lord executed and an evil man installed in his place, engaged to the daughter. The son of the lord and the half breed gather a group of fighters to dethrone the evil man.
Very pretty, but pretty boring. The plot failed to hold my attention. Some of the characters were developed and changed over the duration (son of the feudal lord goes from hating Keanu to fighting alongside him). I really didn't get the half English thing. I thought he was half Tengu and that the witch should have been played by a white woman because then the non-human characters would also be non-Asian. The video was mostly new Hollywood style, without a hint of Japanese framing (like camera on the roof). There were also tons of digital effects. If some physical effects like models, props and mechanically animated costumes had been mixed in, it would have been more convincing. Audio was decent and I could hear everything. It also came with good subtitles. I rate it o.k. because of too much CG and 1 white actor on an all-Asian cast.

13 Going on 30 A.K.A. Suddenly 30 (2004)

An American fantasy romance directed by Gary Winick, starring Mark Ruffalo, Judy Greer and Andy Serkis.
A 13 year old girl wishes to be 30 years old and magic glitter makes it so. She then realizes that she has been a horrible person between.
Sappy and crappy. The plot was alright in 1988 (Big), but did not need to be repeated so frequently. I'm referencing the film with the girl wishing on candles, but don't want to remember what it was called. The characters were mostly shallow. Jenna and Matt developed a little bit. The video was "chick flick" bright and had no unexpected camera placement, editing or anything of that nature. I could hear the dialogue and the soundtrack music was mostly 1980s pop. This brings up what I thought was the only good scene: the Thriller dance. Even though this was crappy and not worth watching, I've seen so many films which are so much worse. I rate it poor. You probably should not watch it.

16 Wishes (2010)

A Canadian American fantasy drama directed by Peter DeLuise.
A teen girl has a wish list of what she wants on her 16th birthday. A magical girl gives her 16 candles which grant the wishes from the list. Everything seems to be going well to start, but then some wishes develop unexpected consequences.
Total trash. I knew this type of shit was coming eventually when I started on the list of "every film ever made". It is clearly made for a female audience under the age of 16 and contains anti-male programming. Every male character is stupid, not to mention every adult character. I think the only good thing about it was that the magic girl (image) looked like she would grow to resemble the woman from Thursday (1998), Paulina Porizkova (Dallas). The plot is trite and predictable. The video looked alright, except for the sped up time effect. This was really blurry and unconvincing. There were lots of sections with the clearly mainstream female oversaturated bright look, but not all of it was like that. Audio had good levels, but also had tons of crappy pop music. I rate this shit because it is to anyone either male or over 15 years of age. If you have read any of my blog and agreed with anything on it, don't torture yourself by watching this like I did.

Alakazam the Great A.K.A. Journey to the West, Saiyūki, 西遊記 (1960)

A Japanese animated musical fantasy directed by Taiji Yabushita and Daisaku Shirakawa.
The "Journey to the West" story. Goku commits a transgression in heaven, is punished and journeys with his friends to earn honor.
Proto-Dragon Ball! I know it's a traditional Japanese story, but the similarities to the modern anime series are too many to ignore. That's Goku with the power pole and flying Nimbus (image) and Oolong wants to marry a girl, but Goku saves her and takes Oolong with him. It's listed as one of the 50 worst films of all time by someone, but I've seen that list and their taste in movies sucks. I've also seen "best movies" lists filled with worthless crap though. I thought the animation was a little standard, even for the time it was made. Disney was doing cell animations in the 1930s and that's what this was. Obviously, I liked the plot and characters. It's not a traditional Japanese story just arbitrarily. A story has to be good to last a few hundred years. The music mostly sounded too Americanized to me, but it wasn't bad. I watched the version with subtitles and original Japanese audio. There is an American release version with English speaking voice actors and different music. I say it's a perfectly fine movie because it was entertaining, held my attention and made me think of Dragon Ball. I rate it good.

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.

Alice in Wonderland (1933)

An American fantasy directed by Norman Z McLeod, starring Cary Grant and Gary Cooper.
A compressed version of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
Holy shit! I didn't know that such great films were made in 1933. As far as early movies go, I would rank this among Nosferatu, Haxan, Metropolis and Journey to the Moon. The special effects were as cheap, cheesy and easy as they come, but looked so "in place". I liked that the plot spanned both sections and that it went through them so quickly. Watching a film this old should not be a long, drawn out process. I got a version on Archive.org with incoherent subtitles that I was tempted to pause and read for humor, but turned them off to actually watch the movie. The sets were absolutely beautiful and the costumes matched. I have to rate this best because for that time, it is one of the top 5 films I've seen.

A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (1990)

An American TROMA fantasy directed by Brett Piper.
A young woman in a post-apocalyptic world is fought over by men around her who kill one another or are eaten by dinosaurs.
I think "basic" describes this best. It was so simple, yet a total failure at its modest goals. It seemed like such a good idea and an easy win, but something went wrong. Almost bad to the point of being funny, but not quite. The writing, casting, acting, camera-work, special effects and editing sucked. There is really no information available about this besides name, date, cast and crew. I imagine that the dinosaurs were a mix of puppets and stop motion. They looked worse than The Lost World (1925). The female lead was on the "Itty Bitty Tittie Committee" and there was so little dialogue that the plot became obscured by lack of speech. I rate this bad and would not recommend it to anyone. You really should not watch it.

Pm Poko A.K.A. Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko (1994)

A Japanese animated fantasy directed by Isao Takahata, starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
The forest home of raccoons is being destroyed by humans building homes. The raccoons try to use their shapeshifting abilities to make the humans leave.
I'm writing about this film for a variety of reasons. I found the plot to be engaging and interesting, but tragic. Although the plot was so good, the characters were relatively shallow and a "narrator voice" filled in the story. Testicles of the tanuki (Japanese raccoon dogs) play a major role in folklore and were included in the film. All of the male raccoons had them and some transformed their ballsacks for other uses. Balls were mentioned in the dialogue and songs of the original Japanese version and the English subtitles, but not the English audio. There were also breasts on the female raccoons and even a topless scene. I liked the environmental theme or moral of the film because it is so true. Human city development really is destroying the homes of animals. Finally, I just plain like the film. Being Studio Ghibli and having a good plot guarantees that. I rate this best. Watch it!

Sommers series Mummy & Scorpion King (1999 - 2018)

An American action fantasy by Stephen Sommers, starring Brendan Fraser and The Rock.
A British adventurer encounters conflict with a mummy in Egypt, meets his wife and they have a son. The trio then travel to China after the son finds a burial complex there. An Akkadian mercenary assassin becomes a hero by defeating corrupt and dangerous leaders, with the help of beautiful women.
Almost intolerable. All of the films were hokey and cheesy. At least the Mummy set had a comedic element that basically made it watchable. The Scorpion King did not use humor as much and was more difficult for me to get through. The whole series disregarded historical accuracy completely. I doubt that British people in the 1930s used modern dialect and figures of speech. I know that this was not the case multiple thousands of years BC. It was the case for these movies, however. And then there were ninjas. For those who don't know, shinobi come from Japan, a country that had little to no contact with the rest of the world until the mid 1800s. I highly doubt that there would have been any ninjas available in ancient Sumeria, but there they are. Editing was terrible. My film professor at school labeled the technique "enhanced continuity editing" when we see 3 shots for 1 punch or 4 for a character jumping over a table. I would argue that it should be called "decreased continuity editing" and I hope that it will go out of style soon. The first 2 Mummy films set up a running gag of domino-effect knock overs, using bookshelves and then pillars. I would have liked to at least see it finished in the 3rd Mummy film, but it did not happen. Overall, I rate this tolerable. If you're REALLY bored and need a set of 8 movies to watch, go for it. Otherwise, stay away.

The Hobbit (2012 - 2014)

A New Zealand American fantasy written by Guillermo del Toro and directed by Peter Jackson.
In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. He goes on an adventure with a wizard and 13 dwarves to reclaim a dwarven kingdom from a dragon.
If this had a different title, I would have liked it more because this story was NOT The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I won't go into my standard stuff about how microphones in Rivendell were being used to record whispering at Lonely Mountain, but I will try to communicate what I liked and disliked about these films. Obviously, the starting point for this is that they were about as accurate as a blind man playing darts. Given this fact, most of what I liked was when said blind man hit the bullseye by accident. The Bilbo meets Gollum scene was pretty accurate, down to the individual riddles. There were only 2 mistakes in the wording and Gollum's acting was top notch. He was just as expressive as I came to expect from the Lord of the Rings series. The battle of 5 armies (talking about the war, not the film as a whole) was pretty cool. There were lots of creative weapons, riding animals and orc/troll monsters. I have to say, it's 1 of the 2 battle scenes that I have liked from the whole LOTR set. The other is Legolas and Gimli fighting the oliphants in Return of the King. Smaug looked alright, but was nothing special. Now this blind dart player analogy goes further. He's got his 3 darts and they are good. It's all he needs, but dude starts pulling ninja stars and blowguns out of his pockets. Why are Legolas, Saruman, Galadriel, Radagast, Azog, etc... all in this? What are these extra plots doing here? Why is Tauriel running on walls like the Prince of Persia or Trinity from The Matrix? My point is that what started out as a classic story that any director would give body parts to have his name on a film of turned into this giant monstrosity that was clearly all there just to make money. It was about 90% rewrites and additions, with 10% of the original left so the name could be capitalized on. Apparently, Tolkien's writing is not good enough for Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson. I think my point is clear. I rate this adequate. It would have gotten a better rating with a different title.

Hercules (1983)

An Italian American fantasy directed by Luigi Cozzi, starring Lou Ferrigno, Brad Harris and Sybil Danning.
Hercules must defeat Minos and save Cassiopea.
This was cheesy like only Luigi Cozzi can do. Knowing Greek mythology, some of the plot made no sense and it seemed like characters and quests were thrown in a hat to be chosen at random. Dedalos was a woman and the labyrinth held no minotaur. That was a Theseus story anyway. Circe actually helped Hercules, unlike what she did to Ulysses and his sailors. The acting was not terrible, but could have used some work. I liked how I could tell how every special effect was done. They would be easy in Premiere Pro, but with actual film, things would have been difficult. I would only recommend this if you like even cheesier movies than I do. I rate it tolerable because it sucked, but there were some laughs along the way.