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Jumanji (1995)   My main recollection of this original Jumanji-verse outing was that it was overly reliant on shoddy CGI. There is a hefty wodge of that, in particular the monkeys, but there’s also a significant physical effects element in Joe Johnston’s characteristically serviceable-but-nothing-more-than-that movie. Otherwise, while the actual environment is very different to the recent computer game-ised incarnations, it’s structurally fairly similar, in that the best of Jumanji is in the set-up, faltering somewhat once all hell breaks loose. But while the new movies have comedy antics on their side – yes, I know this one has Robin Williams, but he’s in relatively restrained

Game of Thrones  Season 8   How many TV series that rely on ongoing plotlines – which is most of them these days – have actually arrived at a wholly satisfying conclusion? As in, one that not only surprises, but also pays off the investment viewers have made over (maybe) seven or eight years? I can think of a few that shocked or dazzled (Angel, The Leftovers) and some that disappointed profoundly (Lost), but most often, they end on an “okay” (reasonably satisfying, if you like) rather than on a spectacular or, conversely, enormously disappointing note.  Game of Thrones may not have

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)   Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is good fun, and sometimes, that’s enough. It doesn’t break any new ground, and the establishing act is considerably better than the rather rote plotting and character development that follows, but Jake Kasdan’s semi-sequel more than justifies the decision to return to the stomping ground of the tepid 1995 original, a movie sold on its pixels, and is comfortably able to coast on the selling point of hormonal teenagers embodying grown adults. This is by some distance Kasdan’s biggest movie, and he benefits considerably from Gyula Pados’s cinematography. Kasdan

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II (2010)   The final Harry Potter is somewhat better than I recalled, but it still counts as a disappointment following a significant run of quality since David Yates took over on megaphone duties. I was put in mind at times of the Wachowskis’ Matrix capper, in which much of the running time is given over to uninvolving battle action featuring characters we wonder why we should care about. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II’s particular saving grace is the resolution of the Snape arc, but it isn’t enough in a movie that feels long and

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone aka Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)   If you want a functional, serviceable, unremarkable version of Harry Potter, look no further than Chris Columbus’ chocolate-box, Hollywood-anglophile vision. It’s studiously inoffensive and almost entirely lifeless. I should emphasise at the outset that I’m not a Harry Potter fan; I don’t have anything particularly against the series, but by and large it failed to captivate me on screen, so I’ve had little inclination to reach out for the novels. However, I was curious to revisit each film successively, having seen them exactly once. Columbus’ offerings are much

The BFG (2016)   Big Friendly Giant? Big Fucking Git? Baggy Flaccid Grind, more like. I can only account for the generally positive critical reception to The BFG being down to the Hollywood-royalty status reserved for Steven Spielberg these days. Audiences weren’t going to buy a lame duck, though, which is why it rightly bombed. This is the director’s weakest picture since Hook, and while it isn’t an outright disaster the way that sorry spectacle is (Dustin Hoffman honourably excepted), it suggests, ironically, that the mastermind behind one of the most successful kids’ movies ever – E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, in case you were wondering –

Legend (1985)   (Director’s Cut) Despite being nearly as much of a creative and financial bust as the majority of family fantasy epics made during the ’80s (Willow, Krull, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, Dragonslayer, Ladyhawke) – the lustre of sepia-tinged childhood nostalgia notwithstanding – I’m fairly charitably inclined towards Legend. It doesn’t really work, but I can’t help but admire (Sir) Ridley Scott’s attempts to make it float. Part of the problem is his lead, a whippersnappery Tom Cruise on the cusp of mega-stardom who just cannot make anything of such a bland character and so whose perma-curtained hair and cheese-devouring grin become continually irksome

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)   It can definitely be a positive to approach a picture with lowered expectations. I could quite easily have skipped JK Rowling’s self-penned Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them on the big screen, as I did the latter five Harry Potters. While I’ve never been a devotee of the series, I’ve never had much against either, and a few of them (The Prisoner of Azkaban, The Half-Blood Prince) I was even rather impressed by. But there was a nagging feeling that, whenever I caught up with the latest instalment, it was foremost intended for devotees

Willow (1988)   There’s a reason most ’80s fantasy films, Willow included, were failures at the box office; they weren’t very good. Sure, a nostalgic hue envelops many a Krull, or Labyrinth, or Dark Crystal, and they have their redeeming aspects, sporadically, but they fall far short of the storytelling drive, ambition or filmmaking flourish of the movie that inspired the trend they were a part of. That picture, Star Wars, was, of course, formulated by George Lucas over the course of a period when he had considered various options before pinning down the ideas for his family sci-fi/fantasy effort, among them reviving Flash Gordon; it is

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)   I suspect I’ve said this before, but a cardinal mistakes critics of Tim Burton’s current output make is suggesting he has somehow dumped on a magnificent early career. Really, he’s been forever hit and miss, at least since Batman. The chief charge you could lay against him is that, somewhere around Planet of the Apes, he began training a keener eye for what might make a no-brainer commercial property, what might benefit his bank account, rather than attaching himself to material he felt passionate about or enthused by. That said, his last, Big Eyes, was

Game of Thrones Season Six   The most distracting thing about Season Six of Game of Thrones (and I’ve begun writing this at the end of the seventh episode, The Broken Man) is how breakneck its pace is, and how worryingly – only relatively, mind – upbeat it’s become. Suddenly, characters are meeting and joining forces, not necessarily mired in pits of despair but actually moving towards positive, attainable goals, even if those goals are ultimately doomed (depending on the party concerned). It feels, in a sense, that liberated from George R R Martin’s text, producers are going full-throttle, and you half-wonder if

Krull (1983)   Krull is the embodiment of what happens when a studio has a vision of money to be made but lacks a visionary to make it. It wasn’t just that it came late to the sci-fi-fantasy party, released the same year as the finale of Star Wars, the trilogy that spawned a thousand imitators. More damagingly, it was armed a paucity of inspiration and no grasp of the alchemy required to turn a huge budget into a blockbuster, or mould the tried-and-tested principles of the hero’s journey into something that would resonate with audiences. What Peter Yates’ film actually is

Pan (2016)   An inexcusably wretched excrescence, and perhaps a lesson to those who think Disney makes it look easy, refashioning fairy tales for undiscerning young audiences ready and waiting to lap them up. Pan, or rather Pan: Origins, would, I think it’s safe to say, emphatically not meet with JM Barrie’s approval. It’s a listless, drama-free mess, smeared with a muddy, ugly, “realist” aesthetic that someone hunched at a Hollywood editing desk presumably believe audiences can’t get enough of. Worst of all, Pan lacks any sense of wonder, magic, and most importantly, fun. Ironically, Hanna, director Joe Wright’s last-but-one film, offered an engaging, invigorating modern fairy

Warcraft: The Beginning aka Warcraft (2016)   Warcraft: The Beginning (promises, promises) is surely exactly what the great unwashed (I know, it’s actually the other way round), pre-Lord of the Rings genre respectability, would have expected from a fantasy epic. Indistinct characters cast adrift in vast empty landscapes, engaging in mighty battles for dreary and/or impenetrably elusive reasons while magical incantations transpire portentously all around, but not terribly impressively. And the whole strung together on the slenderest of threads. Duncan Jones’ film is as deathly dull as ‘80s fantasy misfire Krull, but without the homemade personality that gives that picture, if not a

Maleficent (2014)   Probably the most charitable thing one can say about Maleficent is that it’s inoffensive. Except to Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent that is, who would likely take great exception to being thoroughly debased as a sentimentalist with a warmest of hearts beneath the cruelty and darkness. Whatever next, a cuddly Shere Khan? It might be its bland innocuousness that explains Maleficent’s unlikely success (it’s 2014’s third most popular movie worldwide), that and an evident (hitherto untapped) appetite for female-led fantasy movies. Parents probably didn’t mind taking their kids to a picture that wasn’t especially scary, didn’t last all that long, and had an

47 Ronin (2013)   47 Ronin was pronounced DOA well before it actually bombed at the box office. It’s rare for critics to push against the tide and come out in support of such fare, invariably because the warning signs of a troubled production tend to be an accurate yardstick for the quality of the finished movie. And so, 47 Ronin was dutifully slaughtered. I’d be hard-pressed to present the case that the picture is an unsung classic, a masterpiece waiting to be re-discovered and re-appraised, but it has certainly been given short shrift. As many column inches have gone into reviewing its

Game of Thrones Season Four   At this point, it seems much of the Game of Thrones discussion relates to its divergences from George R R Martin’s novels. These have increased gradually throughout the latest season, and there is a general furrowing of brows and clutching at straws in attempts to working out just where it is the series will go from here. It has hit many of the books’ most acclaimed events, the ones spoken of in hushed tones so as not to spoil it for the unsullied. I haven’t made much headway with the novels, and as such I’m rather

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013)   This might be the least glorious of the endless line of Young Adult fiction adaptations of late. Which is saying something, given they’re at-best modest merits. Adapted from the first of Cassandra Clare’s fantasy series (of six), The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones sports a mish-mash of familiar destiny-based and more-than-human tropes, without ever once crossing into anything distinctive and individual in its own right. The at once over-portentous and underwhelming title says it all. Tangentially, the subtitle also evokes memories of one of the Marvel Star Wars comics. Death in the City of Bone found the post-Empire

The Land That Time Forgot (1975)   Perhaps the question shouldn’t be why Amicus decided to make these cheap and cheerful adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs stories during the mid-70s (also including the sequel and At the Earth’s Core) but why no one was tempted to do so before. A litany of Tarzan variations all but excluded any of the writer’s other works. And the recent failure of John Carter may have dented further forays into Burroughs outside of the vine-swinger. But someone really needs to look into bringing his Caspak Trilogy to life once more. That is, someone outside of Asylum, the ultimate modern-day

Scrooged (1988)   If attaching one’s name to classic properties can be a sign of star power on the wane (both for directors and actors), a proclivity for appearing in Christmas movies most definitely is. Just look at Vince Vaughn’s career. So was Bill Murray running on empty a mere 25 years ago? He’d gone to ground following the rejection of his straight-playing The Razor’s Edge by audiences and critics alike, meaning this was his first comedy lead since Ghostbusters four years earlier. Perhaps he thought he needed a sure-fire hit (with ghosts) to confirm he was still a marquee name. Perhaps his agent persuaded him.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)   It’s alarming how quickly Peter Jackson sabotaged all the goodwill he amassed in the wake of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. A guy who started out directing deliciously deranged homemade horror movies ended up taking home the Oscar for a fantasy movie, of all genres. And then he blew it. He went from a filmmaker whose naysayers were the exception to one whose remaining cheerleaders are considered slightly maladjusted. The Desolation of Smaug recovers some of the territory Jackson has lost over the last decade, but he may be too far-gone to ever regain his

Scrooge (1951)   New film or television adaptations of A Christmas Carol arrive every year, and Hollywood sporadically mounts lavish big screen versions. There have been modern takes (Scrooged), motion capture takes (Jim Carrey in 2009’s A Christmas Carol), muppet takes (Michael Caine – singing! – in A Muppet Christmas Carol). But the definitive version, thus far, remains this British production. And the reason is simple; Alastair Sim’s masterful performance as Ebenezer Scrooge is unbeatable. Sim, an actor blessed with the visage of one who has spent a harrowing night in a graveyard, was one of Britain’s great comic actors. He was one of

The Box of Delights 6: Leave us not Little, nor yet Dark   The final episode exhibits many of the strengths and flaws of the previous instalments. The first half wonderfully ups the stakes, only to have them effortlessly blown away. It’s a more serious error than releasing Joe minutes after he has been locked up because, even given Abner’s poor choices, he needs to be demonstrated as an effective villain. But, during the first ten minutes at least, he is at his peak. First of all, he draws an upturned pentacle on a stone wall to produce a hidden

The Box of Delights (1984)   If you were at a formative age when it was first broadcast, a festive viewing of The Box of Delights may well have become an annual ritual. The BBC adaptation of John Masefield’s 1935 novel is perhaps the ultimate cosy yuletide treat. On a TV screen, at any rate. To an extent, this is exactly the kind of unashamedly middle class-orientated bread-and-butter period production the corporation now thinks twice about; ever so posh kids having jolly adventures in a nostalgic netherworld of Interwar Britannia. Fortunately, there’s more to it than that. There is something genuinely evocative

Children of the Stones (1977)   The reputation of Children of the Stones, as both “the scariest kids’ TV series ever” and “The Wicker Man for children” is almost entirely earned. It sits in the post-Nigel Kneale landscape where science and the ancient supernatural entwine, a captivating cocktail that flourished in the 1970s, post-von Daniken, fascination with ancient astronauts and hidden history. There is still a will to that kind of storytelling (look at Lost), but it is tempered compared to the post-hippy embrace of all things pagan. At the time Children of the Stones was made cynicism of Flower Power had taken hold,

The Owl Service Episode Six   The helpful recap establishes that Nancy was gifted the plates by Bertram (if this was stated earlier, I missed it). Should the adult themes of the serial have failed induce parental qualms over its suitability, then the strong language of this episode probably decided the case. Gwyn tells Nancy, “Drop dead, you miserable cow!” to which she replies “Is that what they teach you at the grammar?” Later he’s even more disrespectful, referring to Alison’s mother as a “Dirty minded bitch!” It’s enough to make you choke on your Rich Tea! This might be construed

The Owl Service (1969-70)   I may have caught a glimpse of Channel 4’s repeat of The Owl Service in 1987, but not enough to stick in the mind. My formative experience was Alan Garner’s novel, which was read several years earlier during English lessons. Garner’s tapestry of magical-mythical storytelling had an impact, with its possession theme and blending of legend with the here and now. Garner depicts a Britain where past and present are mutable, and where there is no safety net of objective reality; life becomes a strange waking dream. His fantasy landscapes are both attractive and disturbing; the uncanny

Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)   I can’t say I’m very surprised to discover that the director of Superman Returns has no sense of fun. Bryan Singer has mostly disguised this for the best part of two decades by shooting thrillers, or making sure his comic book movies take themselves very seriously. Jack is his stab at a family fantasy movie, and he’s all-at-sea. Not that Singer has any great claim to auteurship. A few of us thought he had the makings of a voice when his sophomore film, The Usual Suspects, sprang out of nowhere. It showed astonishing confidence, and still ranks as far and away

Terry Gilliam Ranked (Updated)   I first fashioned this run down mid-2013, before The Zero Theorem had been released, and limited it to Gilliam’s solo, bona fide features. To justify this 2016 re-edit (Gilliam would never approve of a director’s cut), I’ve included not only his co-effort with Terry Jones, but the various, more notable shorts he has produced over the years; alas, there has recently been a feeling of taking whatever you can, however meagre, as his fully-fledged gigs have been increasingly thin on the ground. I’ve also adjusted the placings somewhat, such are fickleness and passing moods. Number 1 is

Game of Thrones  Season Two   There is something about consistently high quality in a series that elicits limited further discussion, beyond “It’s superb!” At least, that’s generally how I’ve felt about the best of HBO’s output. In part, this is likely a consequence of the serialised nature of most of their dramas. Episodes may have a defined path, but their structure very much evolves from the whole. There are no “stand alone” episodes. If the arc format has become a standard for seasons of television drama over the last 20 years, it nevertheless continues to subsist on single stories

The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008)   Just as there is currently a glut of “young adult” novels bombarding cinema screens, many of them doomed to stall on an initial installment, so the success of Harry Potter ensured that every studio wished to try its hand at young fantasy adaptations. The Hunger Games’ success at least meant that Twilight did not represent a flash-in-the-pan for the former sub-genre, but nothing, as yet, has inherited the mantle of the Hogwarts’ spellcaster (Percy Jackson has stumbled to a second outing, but to the surprise of many). The Spiderwick Chronicles adapts (as far as I can tell) plot elements from the first

Ruby Sparks (2012)   The problem with Zoe Kazan’s script for Ruby Sparks isn’t a lack of laughs, or that it stretches its premise beyond breaking point. It’s that this little subgenre of “writer creates fantasy world/character and then learns it ain’t so marvellous” is overly familiar. There is so little that is new left to draw from this murky pond, at least on the evidence here. In addition, while Kazan’s moral concerning the unrealistic illusions that (men) project onto their relationships is a sturdy one, she doesn’t so much gently hammer home the message as inflict blunt force trauma on the

Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)   Rupert Sanders brings a certain panache to his directorial debut, but he’s ultimately subdued by a blandest-of-the-bland script. There’s a sense of committee management to elements of design and casting that prevents it ever getting beyond the slightly derivative. The producers cast Kristen Stewart because she might bring in the Twilight crowd, rather than because she can hold a candle to Charlize Theron or look remotely convincing wielding a sword. And they designed the world to echo The Lord of the Rings, complete with pitched battles, to promote the idea that this is the next big fantasy

Wrath of the Titans (2012)   I was very disappointed by the botched Clash remake, but adapting the Greek myths successfully seems to be a curious blindspot for studios. Particularly since they lend themselves to cinematic interpretation with relatively little meddling. Immortals was rubbish too. Only the director’s cut of Troy can hold its head up, and that dispensed completely with the gods. The 1981 Clash wasn’t that great, certainly not on a par with Ray Harryhausen’s earlier efforts, so the remake didn’t have to do all that much to look like an improvement. But it ended up utterly derivative of movies being made around it, afraid to