The Singing Detective (1986)
Jun 10, 2024Meta-Fiction/Detective Story Daydreams
One of the most extraordinary works ever made for tv. From the pen of Dennis Potter, a mini-series that blends film noir, meta-fiction and autobiography
Jim Carter
Haunted Honeymoon (1986)
Jan 11, 2003Old Dark House Comedy
Both directing and starring here, Gene Wilder attempts to revive the Old Dark House comedy. In the 1980s, this was datedly creaky, while Wilder's comedy comes out with excruciating results
Arabian Nights (2000)
Jul 2, 2005Tales of Arabian Nights
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
The Little Vampire (2000)
Oct 29, 2000Children's Vampire Film
The film version of a popular series of children’s books about a buy who befriends a young vampire kid. Lightweight and likeable enough
Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story (2001)
Feb 12, 2005Revisionist Fairytale
TV mini-series co-produced between Hallmark Entertainment and The Jim Henson Company that offers an intriguing deconstruction of the fairytale although eventually proves to be a modernised replaying that reverses the sympathies
Dinotopia (2002)
Sep 1, 2007Lost World of Intelligent Dinosaurs
TV mini-series based on the popular books by James Gurney about the discovery of a land where dinosaurs have evolved a civilisation
Ella Enchanted (2004)
Dec 12, 2004Revisionist Cinderella Comedy
Excruciatingly awful take on Cinderella, which overruns the fairytale with hip contemporary in-jokes and pop culture references, shredding any suspension of disbelief
The Thief Lord (2006)
Jan 11, 2009Orphan Thieves Fantasy
Children's film made with care and attention, written and produced to an adult level, far superior to 95% of the US studio efforts
The Wind in the Willows (2006)
Jun 15, 2008Talking Animals/Absurdist Adventures
Amiable live-action adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's classic children's work made for the BBC with an all-star cast
The Golden Compass (2007)
Dec 27, 2007Epic Fantasy Adventure
The attempts to launch another Lord of the Rings went astray with this adaptation of Philip Pulllman's fantasy series, which cut many of the core elements of the books to not offend religious conservatives
Red Riding (2009)
Jan 31, 2017Hunt for a Serial Killer
Depending on how you saw this, this is either a UK tv mini-series or three separately released films. Taking place over a decade, the three stories have a common locale and overlapping characters in the story of the hunt for a serial killer and the battle against a corrupt police department in Yorkshire
The Little Vampire (2017)
Aug 5, 2021Animation/Children’s Vampire Film
Animated film based on the popular series of children’s stories about a kid who befriends a vampire boy. The same stories had previously appeared as a live-action fllm
Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
Sep 23, 2017Live-Action Transformer Robots
The fifth of Michael Bay's Transformers films. This comes with more of an outright comedy focus than any of the other films where Bay seems to be second-guessing his critics and spoofing his own peccadilloes in quote marks, only to produce the silliest entry in the series yet
Wonka (2023)
Feb 3, 2024Willy Wonka Origin Story
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has become a cult classic embedded in the imagination. This offers a Willy Wonka origin story