Search for Fantasy/Adventure

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...

The Northman is Hamlet. Or at least both were derived from the same source material, a Norse legend set in the early 900s about the revenge of a prince upon the uncle who murdered his father and wed his mother. However, while there was a surfeit o...

In recent years, some of the most outlandish and edgy movies have emerged from South Korea, where directors like Kim Ki-duk, Park Chan-wook, and Bong Joon-ho have challenged norms and defied conventions. The results, although not always succes...

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...

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, adapted from Ransom Riggs’ popular YA novel, offers a different flavor of teen-oriented fantasy. A mash-up of X-Men-influenced superhero material and more traditional fantasy elements (with tim...

As a stand-alone spin-off that takes us back to the enchanted world of Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them provides an engaging two hours. As the beginning of a new fantasy/adventure series intended to span several chapters, its suc...

The most important name associated with this new telling of the tale of King Arthur is “Guy Ritchie.” More than most working directors, Ritchie comes to projects with his own specific take on them – one that inevitably rubs some viewers ...

Oz the Great and Powerful is director Sam Raimi's prequel to The Wizard of Oz. This new vision of The Land of Oz is an imaginative mix of live-action and CGI that pays homage to the iconic images and timeless sense of wonder in the classic The Wiza...

Maleficent might best be described as an alternate universe re-imagination of Sleeping Beauty. Taking a page from Wicked (the stage show that presents Oz from the witches' perspective), Linda Woolverton's screenplay presents an inverted version of ...

This review is based on an IMAX 3-D screening. Lewis Carroll's "Wonderland" stories, much like the collected works of Roald Dahl, can be perceived from a number of perspectives. Although traditionally seen as a children's tale, Alice's Wonderla...