The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Robert Zemeckis of Back to the Future and Forrest Gump fame makes a film of the true-life story of Mark Hogancamp who recovered from a brutal assault by building a fantasy village of dolls. The results are bizarre where Zemeckis seems more interested in making a Sucker Punch-like fantasy where the dolls come to life
For the most part this plays out as a mundane drama about someone with a terrible deformity – similar to The Elephant Man or Mask – but who also has daydreams in which he is a giant
The story of the relationship between a giant monster and a boy whose mother is dying of cancer, this is perhaps the darkest children’s film ever made. The film is the weaker than the award-winning book it is based on because it never replicates the extraordinarily stark black-and-white illustrations of the original
This comes with an original idea where a troubled girl starts drawing a graphic novel that mirrors her own life but the characters emerge into the real world. Less horror than a dark allegorical fantasy
Modern would-be animated sequel to The Wizard of Oz that proved a charmless flop and seems to miss the magic and whimsy of the original by a mile. Entirely formulaic in the plotting, while the familiar characters have been run over with a gratingly flip modern sense of humour
Sam Raimi’s prequel to The Wizard of Oz is a very different film – the story of how a conman fools an entire land rather than of an innocent girl just trying to find her way home – but the reconceptualisation of Oz comes with a colourful sweep, while the story works well in stitching the familiar elements together
Interestingly odd attempt to update and relocate Dracula to present-day Hollywood. This has promise despite a low-budget but eventually flounders amid a non-linear story and an entirely confused ending
Film about a dream journey made with undeniable imagination but its eventual allegory makes it a work that thinks it far more profound than it ends up being
Neil Gaiman and comic-book artist Dave McKean create a venture into a fantasy world with an extraordinary level of visual imagination and peopled with a remarkable panoply of creations. The results are quite unlike any other film you have seen
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
An uncredited adaptation of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court with Martin Lawrence as a hip modern African-American man thrown back to Mediaeval times
Almost forgotten Disney-made sequel to The Wizard of Oz, this takes a far darker outlook than the version you knew
A flop in its day, nobody at the time saw how revolutionary this was in that it predicted the idea of cyberspace and the internet. The design of the world inside the computer all in candy apple colours and geometric shapes is extraordinary
Widely considered a bad film, this is a slapstick comedy starring Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher set around the dwarves during the making of The Wizard of Oz
Alain Resnais meta-fiction with John Gielgud as an aging writer sits in bed writing a story that is based on the people around him
A Secret Life of Walter Mitty for movie lovers wherein a milquetoast projectionist daydreams himself into a variety of movie scenarios as an inept superhero. Quirkily charming if never more than a single idea. Something you feel should have been a cult film
One of a handful of prehistoric adventure films made by Hammer Studios. This eschews the stop-motion animated dinosaurs of their earlier One Million Years B.C. but does give the stage to Martine Beswick who injects a sizzling dose of sexuality and camps a silly plot up by playing to the hilt
An indisputable classic fantasy … a gorgeous sparkling fantasy that made full use of Technicolor in an era dominated by black-and-white and is told in such bold and earnestly heartfelt tones that it becomes the nearest we have to a piece of genuine American mythology