Search for Fantasy

The majority of this review is taken from what I wrote in 2009. I have tweaked and edited it to update it for 2022. Following the main review are a few new comments written following my re-watching of the film on September 23, 2022.Avatar has been d...

Ever wondered what Dorothy's trip along the Yellow Brick Road might have been like if, instead of traveling with the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion, she had been accompanied by H.G. Welles, Roald Dahl, and Monty Python? Or how C.S. ...

For veteran director Victor Fleming, who began making movies during the black-and-white, silent era, 1939 represented the pinnacle of his career. Not only did Fleming's Gone with the Wind claim the Best Picture Oscar, but his other big feature, Th...

"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." When William Goldman wrote those words, he did not intend for them to become a fragment of '80s pop culture. When Mandy Patinkin spoke those words, he didn't expect his every i...

In the pantheon of fantasy writers, no diety is treated with greater reverence than J.R.R. Tolkien, who is regarded by most readers as the Father of Modern Fantasy. During the past three decades, the fantasy area in bookstores has expanded from a ...

If there is a primary quality needed to bring J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to the screen, it is vision - an attribute possessed in abundance by director Peter Jackson. In more than 100 years of motion pictures, few cinematic campaigns of...

According to the calendar, Christmas is December 25. According to the movie release schedule, it's December 17. There can be no greater gift for a movie lover than the one bestowed upon audiences by Peter Jackson, whose The Lord of the Rings: Th...

In 2005, genre fans were able to celebrate the day when the entire six-film Star Wars saga was available for public consumption. Nine and one-half years later, the same can be said of Peter Jackson's Middle Earth epic. As George Lucas learned, th...

The re-interpretation of an animated film into a live-action version is a tricky and difficult process - one made more uncertain when the movie in question is one of the classics. Cinderella, released by Disney in 1951, has been beloved by three gene...

We all have monsters - dark impulses that dwell in the deepest recesses of our minds, occasionally forcing their way into our nightmares or impinging on our consciousness. A Monster Calls asks (but doesn’t answer) the question of whether such m...