Fantasy

Speed Racer

8 May 2008

FANTASY/ADVENTURE (PG) 134min Having taken a break from directing since completing The Matrix trilogy five years ago, the Wachowski brothers (who wrote and produced but didn’t direct their last film, the abysmal V for Vendetta) are back in the driving…

Jordan Crane - The Clouds Above

8 May 2008

FANTASY (Fantagraphics) American cartoonist Jordan Crane’s all-ages graphic novella first published in 2005 makes its paperback debut complete with five previously unseen pages. It’s actually a follow-up to the self-published and now out-of-print The…

The Spiderwick Chronicles

13 Mar 2008

DRAMA/FAMILY/FANTASY (PG) 95min When newly divorced mother of three Helen Grace (Mary-Louise Parker) moves her kids to the secluded rundown Spiderwick estate, once owned by their great great uncle Spiderwick, the children are less than impressed. Twin…

Penelope

(U) 89min

31 Jan 2008

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away from self-conscious satire, there lived a girl named Penelope (Christina Ricci). With her moneyed background, good sense of humour and French language skills, Penelope should be a bit of a catch. Sadly, Penelope…

Day Watch: Director's Cut - DVD review

Fantasy/horror

31 Jan 2008

The second instalment in director Timur Bekmambetov’s Russian fantasy horror trilogy (based on the books of Segei Lukyanenko) focuses on a murky world where vampires, wizards and demons are locked in the eternal battle of good vs evil. The truce is once…

Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium

(U) 94min lllll

13 Dec 2007

Written and directed by Zach Helm (who wrote last year’s underrated Stranger Than Fiction), Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium tells the tale of a 243-year-old toyshop proprietor (Dustin Hoffman) and his faithful store manager Molly (Natalie Portman). When…

The Golden Compass - Heart of Darkness

29 Nov 2007

Everyone wanted Nicole Kidman to play Mrs Coulter. From the makers of the blockbuster film adaptation of The Golden Compass through the millions of fans of Philip Pullman’s bestselling fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials to the author of the novels…

The Golden Compass

29 Nov 2007

FANTASY/ADAPTATION (12A) 105min JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and JK Rowling may have all the initials and most of the sales but fair-minded fantasy fans know deep down that Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is the genre’s true shining light.

Wristcutters: A Love Story

15 Nov 2007

There’s a thick-blooded vein of Slavic humour running through Croatian writer-director Goran Dukic’s absurdist purgatorial romantic comedy. Adapted from Israeli writer Etgar Keret’s short story, Kneller’s Happy Campers, Dukic’s feature debut boasts a…

Stardust

18 Oct 2007

FANTASY (PG) 127min Matthew Layer Cake Vaughn’s scrupulous adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel looks set to take a space at the same box-office graveyard as several other recent fantasy pilots (Eragon, The Dark Is Rising). Vaughn quit his first big…

1408

(15) 105min

23 Aug 2007

Mikael 'Derailed Håfström'’s mild chiller is pretty much a one-man horror vehicle for John Cusack as Mike Enslin, a world-weary writer who makes his living from staying in supposedly haunted locations and describing his experiences. After a mysterious…

Comics - NEVERWHERE (DVD)

18 Jun 2007

FANTASY Elephant and Castle, Knightsbridge and The Angel, Islington: to non-Londoners and small children alike the names of the city’s landmarks conjure a sense of the bizarre which Neil Gaiman, much-loved writer of novels, comics, films and…

Essex County Vol 1: Tales from the Farm

Comics

21 May 2007

FANTASY Superman and flying saucers feature figuratively in Canadian cartoonist Jeff Lemire’s lovely low-key coming-of-age graphic novel. Set in a fictionalised version of the Ontario agricultural community in which the author grew up (here…

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Comics

21 May 2007

FANTASY Given that this is by far the best work Mike Mignola did before creating Hellboy, it’s a wonder it’s taken Dark Horse this long (17 years) to collect his marvellous adaptations, scripted by Howard Chaykin, of Fritz Leiber’s terrific sword and…

Comics - Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere

Mike Carey & Glenn Fabry

26 Mar 2007

FANTASY The presence of Neil Gaiman’s name is going to have an army of vaguely gothic comic geeks turning out in their droves to buy it. Even if his writing doesn’t actually appear therein. This is an adapted version of Sandman scribe Gaiman’s…

Science of Sleep, The (La Science des Reves)

The Science of Sleep (La Science des Reves)

12 Feb 2007

COMEDY/FANTASY French auteur Michel Gondry asserts himself as the natural heir to Jean Cocteau in this his third feature proper. Welcome to the mind-bending world of Stéphane Miroux (Gael García Bernal), a shy Mexican who exists in a perpetual…

Science of Sleep, The - feature

Sleep talking

12 Feb 2007

A love story set in Paris might not sound like terribly promising material, but Michel Gondry lets his feverish imagination run riot in The Science of Sleep. The resulting romantic fantasia is undoubtedly one of the most original films of the past year.

Stranger Than Fiction

(12A) 113min

27 Nov 2006

COMEDY/DRAMA/FANTASY We’re so used to Will Ferrell playing the crazed maniac that it’s a pleasant surprise to see that he can play the straight guy equally well. He’s Howard Crick, a taxman with an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder whose life is turned…

Pan's Labyrinth

(15) 119min

13 Nov 2006

FANTASY/ALLEGORY This wildly imaginative fabulist fable from Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro works as a companion piece to his earlier excellent Spanish language ghost story, The Devil’s Backbone. Like that film, Pan’s Labyrinth locates…

Mike Mignola & Cary Nord

Conan No 31 (Dark Horse)

1 Sep 2006

FANTASY There was a time when artist Mike Mignola wasn’t very sure of his own writing skills. In the early days of Hellboy he handed John Byrne a plot to be fleshed out fully by the far more established writer. Now Mignola feels confident enough to…