Fantasy

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

15 Aug 2010

(12A) 112min Writer-director Edgar Wright has made a career out of subverting genres, as demonstrated by his collaborations with actor Simon Pegg: TV’s Spaced and the films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. For Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Wright left…

Garth Nix kicks off this year's Book Festival

What he has in store and why fantasy is making a comeback

6 Aug 2010

Garth Nix, the bestselling Australian author of young people’s fantasy fiction, is both honoured and alarmed that he’ll be kicking off this year’s Book Festival with its very first session. ‘I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be talking about yet!’ Nix…

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

3 Aug 2010

The combination of big-budget producer Jerry Bruckheimer and deep-pocketed studio Disney bore attractive if banal fruit with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, but the muddle-headed fantasy The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is more likely to make audiences…

9

Two-dimensional dystopian animation

16 Oct 2009

With visionary heavyweights Tim Burton and Nightwatch / Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov amongst the producers, Shane Acker’s feature-length animation, based on his own Oscar-nominated short, promises revolutionary animation, but never delivers the…

The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus

An enthralling morality tale

1 Oct 2009

Terry Gilliam has pulled a rabbit from his mad hat with his latest, a lively if flawed fantasy that looks set to reward him with one of his biggest hits. Notorious for having been interrupted by the death of Heath Ledger, the film only saw the light of…

Mathias Malzieu - The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart

30 Jul 2009

Perhaps the most fantastical thing about this book is its depiction of an Edinburgh where a tumble-down old house owned by a woman who births the children of prostitutes and unfaithful women sits at the top of Arthur’s Seat. In any event, it’s the…

Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince

23 Jul 2009

The sixth instalment in the Harry Potter franchise suffers from as many growing pains as its young wizards. While Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince does venture into darker, more adult areas than its predecessors it also injects more humour and…

Coraline

30 Apr 2009

(PG) 100min ANIMATION/FANTASY Although The Nightmare Before Christmas reflected the gothic imagination of Tim Burton, much of the charm was down to the directorial skills of Henry Selick, whose latest film Coraline places him alongside Nick Park as a…

Race to Witch Mountain

2 Apr 2009

FANTASY/ADVENTURE Director Andy Fickman (She’s the Man, The Game Plan) revives one of Disney’s most venerable properties by pimping out 1975 ‘alien kid’ adventure Escape to Witch Mountain as a high-concept vehicle for the studio’s current star Dwayne…

The Devil and Daniel Webster

19 Feb 2009

(U) 106min (Eureka DVD retail) FANTASY A very welcome release for this diabolically undervalued 1941 masterpiece of 19th century American folklore fantasy. Based on a story by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet-writer Stephen Vincent Benét (upon…

Marc Phillips - The Legend of Sander Grant

5 Feb 2009

FANTASY DRAMA Sander Grant is a giant, but that’s no surprise because he comes from a long line of giants. The Grants have been cattle ranchers in Texas since anyone can remember, and the locals have gotten used to their ten-feet-tall…

Twilight

11 Dec 2008

(12A) 121min ‘I hope you enjoy disappointment,’ murmurs surly vampire-next door Edward (Robert Pattinson) in Catherine Thirteen Hardwicke’s adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s vampire-romance novel, but Twilight is likely to be a matter of extreme…

Inkheart

11 Dec 2008

(PG) 106min Christmas may not have been cancelled, but the withdrawal of the latest Harry Potter instalment left a gaping hole in the festive cinema schedules, with Iain Backbeat Softley’s long-shelved adaptation of Cornelia Funke’s children’s novel…

The Fall (Myrin)

2 Oct 2008

FANTASY Extravagant, self-indulgent, amazing, eye-catching, confusing: the second feature by Tarsem Singh, the Indian-born director who gave us the wacky The Cell with Jennifer Lopez, warrants all these adjectives and more. By the end of it all, you…

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

21 Aug 2008

Fresh from the critical and commercial success of his Oscar-feted Spanish horror-fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth, Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro returns to Hollywood with a second blockbuster adaptation of Dark Horse Comics’ cult supernatural title. A…

Tropical Malady

14 Aug 2008

DRAMA/FANTASY (12A) 118min (Second Run DVD retail) Thai architect, artist, writer and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul has made a handful of experimental documentaries and fictional films that are so wayward and quirky in structure that they…

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

19 Jun 2008

FANTASY/ACTION (PG) 143min In the second instalment of the Narnia film adaptations, the Pevensie children are summoned back to CS Lewis’ fantasy kingdom by Prince Caspian’s blowing of a magic horn, expecting lion king Aslan to rear his head and…

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

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…

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…

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…

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 - 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.

The Science of Sleep (La Science des Reves)

12 Feb 2007

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 confusion between…

Stranger Than Fiction

27 Nov 2006

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 upside down when he hears…

Pan's Labyrinth

(15) 119min

13 Nov 2006

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 supernatural events within…

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…