The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Fairies are magical beings. The idea of the fairy emerges out of European and Celtic folklore (principally from Ireland) where they are creatures that can be magical and sometimes dangerous. The term fairy derives from the original Old English word faerie. The fairies we have on screen are usually a more sanitised version of these.
Fairies appear in works of Fairytale and fantasy where their appearance is usually one that is accompanied by enchantment and the ability to bestow Magic or aid the protagonists of a tale. In appearance, they are usually tiny and ethereal, often about thumb or palm sized. They are winged and fly and they are usually female (there rarely seem to be any male fairies) and, in effect, act as magical and capricious nymphs.
The most famous fairy on screen is Tinkerbell in the various film versions of Peter Pan (1904). We have also seen films devoted to the Tooth Fairy and the real-life Cottingley Fairies Hoax. Occasional other works delve into the faerie of Celtic mythology where they are seen as an ancient, magical people, not always ethereal and enchanted and sometimes malevolent.
Adaptation of the popular Young Adult series about a twelve-year-old super-villain and his adventures with assorted magical creatures. Audiences hated this but I though it overspilled with a madcap creativity
Next to Hayao Miyazaki, Michel Ocelot is the greatest animators of all time but one of the least widely recognised. Here he conducts a beautifully made Arabian fairytale
The previous Barbie animated films had adapted various fairytales but this casts her as a fairy in a magical kingdom – simplistic, but one of the most colourfully animated of Mainframe’s Barbie films
Sequel to the earlier Barbie animated film Barbie Fairytopia. Extremely colourful but essentially a fantasy version of a teenage girl high school drama that quickly slips into pre-packaged formula
The first in a long series of animated films based on Mattel’s girl’s doll Barbie. This casts Barbie as a lead in an adaptation of The Nutcracker ballet, although is largely routine
Another of Mainframe’s interminable Barbie films that soon slip into a sameness. This is at least directed with a visual sweep
Seventh of the animated Barbie films, spinoff of the earlier Barbie Fairytopia, all delivered in sugary upbeat sentiments amid pastel colour schemes that would look eye-poppingly psychedelic if one were high
The third animated film based on the popular girl’s doll Barbie. This places Barbie into Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake in an okay telling, if one that suffers from the usual limited animation of Mainframe’s early films
With the success of The Wizard of Oz, 20th Century sought to capture the same by casting Shirley Temple in this appallingly schmaltzy fairytale about two children on a quest for the Blue Bird of Happiness
Set in an alternate version of the present where fantasy creatures – orcs, elves, fairies – live alongside humans, this comes with a cleverness, while being played as a buddy cop drama that anchors it with a realism
Another cheap Disney made-for-video-release sequel. This at least offers the novelty of an alternate retelling of Cinderella but everything transpires predictably
A Disney animated film whose classic stature has been overrated. The fairytale is too familiar to hold much interest, while the cutsie talking animals get to take over proceedings
This was one of the earliest films from Charles Band who has since gone on to become a prolific producer/director of low-budget films. Here Band offers a very adult take on the Cinderella fairytale
Live-action remake of the Disney animated film. This varies little from the well-worn elements of the story to the point of over-familiarity but director Kenneth Branagh manages a lush and beautifully staged effort
From the people behind the Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey films, a horror version of Cinderella. And yes, the glass slipper is used to stab people
A horror version of Cinderella where she gets to stab people with the glass slipper. This also features several modernisms where instead of a pumpkin coach, the fairy godmother conjures up Elon Musk to drive Cinderella to the ball in a Tesla
This has an appealing premise – the children of all the Disney villains have grown up and go to school together. This is promptly killed by the awfulness of the film itself, which is essentially High School Musical set in the Disney universe
Sequel to the painfully bad Disney Channel film that copied the success of High School Musical and featured the teenage children of classic Disney animated villains. This is just as empty-headed and unwatchable
Eccentric French fairytale filled with appealingly absurdist and surreal touches and with visuals that remind of the extravagance of a Barbarella. Charming and visually engaging
Excruciatingly awful take on Cinderella, which overruns the fairytale with hip contemporary in-jokes and pop culture references, shredding any suspension of disbelief in its desire to appeal to a modern teen cool
Hong Kong film that blends gauzy erotica and supernatural (although no ghosts despite the title). Not as a good as the first sequel (one of several that followed) due to crude direction
The second and best in the series of Hong Kong films filled with wonderfully tongue-in-cheek erotica and a series of entertainingly over-the-top fantastical set-pieces
Film posing as a sequel in the Hong Kong-made Erotic Ghost Story series, this consists of random sexual encounters and comic interludes without much connecting plot
Crass attempt by George Lucas to further milk the Star Wars phenomenon with a tv movie (released to theatres outside the US) given over the Ewoks from Return of the Jedi
Entirely charming film about a woman who claims to be a fairy. In the best tradition of Jacques Tati, this consists of a series of deliriously nonsensical sight gags that become an utter delight
A nicely produced film based on the true-life Cottingley Fairies hoax in the 1920s where two girls produced photos supposedly of fairies that convinced some people. Despite the original being a hoax, the film wants to convince us that the fairies were real
The best animated film Disney ever made, created as a work of art with animation set to classical music. The segments vary between abstraction, comic eccentricity and evocations of nightmare. The results are magical.
Animated film where fairies face the threat to their forest posed by a logging operation. Preachy message-making that is all but a recruitment film for Greenpeace and the Sierra Club
Adaptation of a classic British children’s book made by Jim Henson Productions where children discover a sand fairy that grants wishes. The film is largely centered around creating slapstick chaos
Guillermo Del Toro offers up his dark, more adult take on the classic children’s story in this beautifully made stop-motion animated film. Winner of that year’s Academy Award for Best Animated Film.
Reboot of the Hellboy series promisingly comes from Neil Marshall but is also made by Millennium Films who have a habit of buying up previously successful properties and churning out cheaper spinoffs
The first in a series of Terry Pratchett Discworld adaptations for tv. This makes the odd choice of adapting one of the more complex and darker of Pratchett’s usually comic books but it works fairly well overall
Steven Spielberg’s long-planned live-action version of Peter Pan emerges as a sequel that asks the question “What would happen if Peter Pan grew up?” Unfortunately, the results are not one of Spielberg’s better films
An extremely good Filipino film about a family abandoned at the end of WWII where the only recourse seems to be the children trusting a malevolent fairy
Susanna Clarke kicks J.K. Rowling completely out of the ring. This BBC adaptation of her book concerning rival 19th century magicians is an epic plot and a beautifully staged costume drama, all written with a superb Austen-esque dryness of wit
Hugely underrated Ridley Scott film that was a box-office flop. Scott attempts to reconstruct the fairytale as something dark and primal and creates moments that are superlative cinema
A head-scratchingly odd effort – a woman who stayed inside all her life goes in search of love only for the jealous ghost of a 1950s pop singer to kill every man who looks at her. Imagine a weird collision between the fluffy whimsicality of Amelie and Gus Van Sant’s Restless
Lively and undeniably likeable Hallmark mini-series that celebrates Irish myth. Giddily silly nonsense conducted with a boisterous energy
1980s light fantasy comedy where spoilt rich girl Ally Sheedy wakes up in a world where nobody recognises her and is forced to take a job as the maid
Another in the early 2010s fad for fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasy films – in this case, a version of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (as opposed to the original fairytale version) told from the viewpoint of the witch. Nicely produced, not much substance – the most interesting parts are when it gets to mess around with the fairytale
Nobody much liked Maleficent but did make a reasonable amount of money, hence we get this sequel. The surprise is that in the hands of Norwegian director Joachim Rønning, it is far better than anything one expected
Amid Kenneth Branagh’s dynamic cinematic revival of Shakespeare in the 1990s, there was this all-star adaptation of Shakespeare’s whimsy about fairy enchantments. An okay adaptation but it is eclipsed by other superior versions of the story
Under the umbrella title ShakespeareRetold, one of several Shakespeare plays that were reimagined in modern-day settings by the BBC. Here Shakespeare’s tale of fairy enchantments and romantic mix-ups is reimagined in a British holiday camp
A filmed version of Julie Taymor’s staging of the Shakespeare play. Classic theatre is not to everybody’s tastes but forget standard interpretations, Taymor opens the play up with both an extraordinary visual flair
Adaptation of the Shakespeare play about fairy enchantments made for tv by former Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies. In many regards, Davies goes with a standard interpretation; in others – like portraying Athens as a fascist dictatorship – he offers radical reinvention
An anthology of comedy skits that sets out to be in as bad taste as possible – you are left astounded how far a film has to go to offend in this post-South Park era. That and wondering if the producers had kidnapped some of the stars’ family members to force them to participate
I praised Mythica: A Quest for Heroes, a fan-made epic fantasy film made with a high degree of creativity and professionalism on a limited budget; this is a sequel. This is slightly the lesser, dropping into a standard fantasy adventure, but still maintains the very high degree of quality all around the first film did
Following Tin Man and Alice, another of Nick Willing’s ingenious rewritings and rationalisations of classic children’s tales in science-fiction terms. Here the essentials of Peter Pan are transported to another planet
Sequel to the 1996 CGI The Adventures of Pinocchio, this is a shabby and drearily made piece of filler that unimaginatively shuffles around the basic elements of the first film without making an effort at all
The 22nd animated film from Pixar and also the least successful (being released only a week before theatrical chains closing down due to Coronavirus). This has an appealingly quirky and original concept not unakin to Bright that takes place in an alternate reality where magic creatures live in a world akin to our own
Sam Raimi’s prequel to The Wizard of Oz is now; the story of how a conman fools an entire land rather than of an innocent girl just trying to find her way home. The reconceptualisation of Oz comes with a colourful sweep
Ostensibly a Peter Pan prequel and origin story, this is a massively over-produced turkey – colossally scaled effects set-pieces, everything obtrusively arranged to pop out at us in 3D – that seems to completely miss the innocent charms that the original story had
Critically acclaimed Guillermo Del Toro film set during the Spanish Civil War where a young girl finds the entrance to a dark realm. This plays like a very dark version of the Narnia films
One of the animated Disney classics, if probably an overrated film. It throws slapstick and derring-do together in a likeable package
Live-action remake of the classic story this has some lovely moments but also feels over-produced and adds unnecessary adult psychological motivations to the mix
Disney conduct a live-action remake of their Peter Pan and promisingly place it in the hands of David Lowery, director of A Ghost Story and The Green Knight
One of two films that came out in 1997 about the Cottingley Fairies Hoax. In comparison to the other, FairyTale: A true Story, this expands the premise out into a remarkable study of altered perception
A beautifully made new live-action version of the classic story about a puppet boy. More faithful to the original story than any other screen version and with amazing creature effects. Think something that resembles Jim Henson circa The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth made with the sensibilities of a Terry Gilliam
The first of two Pinocchio adaptations of 2022, Here Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis delivers a live-action remake of the Disney animated film
One of the great Disney animated classics from the still unsurpassed era between 1937-42. The studio were at the peak of their game artistically and the film embodies a near-perfect sense of childlike innocence
Another of Disney’s Tinker Bell spinoff adventures. This has some slickly produced animation and does some occasionally cute pieces of fanservice that tie in to Peter Pan but is ultimately fantasy being produced for the single digit age groups
Another entry in the burgeoning Folk Horror genre, a moody work about a couple of musicians living in the Welsh countryside in the 1970s befriend a very mysterious boy who shows them the secrets of the landscape
Among the cheap video-released sequels to their classics Disney made during the 00s, this Peter Pan sequel emerges as halfway reasonable
The concept – sort of akin to
A British horror anthology made up of three stories from director Michael Armstrong. As always the episodes are variable but the episode with the killer Punch and Judy dolls stands out
Beautifully made animated film that won surprise recognition at the Academy Awards. More a festival film than necessarily a box-office one
Shrek was a fresh and original hit. The first of four insipid sequels, this seems to merely coast by on our liking of the characters while upping the fairytale parody
Ghastly children’s film with Martin Short as an inept fairy godmother. Inanity ensues where there seems no ceiling on how over-the-top performances are allowed to go
One of the finest of all Disney animated films, an adaptation of the fairytale made with the full artistic resources that studio could bring to bear
Catherine Breillat, a director usually known for tackling issues of female sexuality, adapts the classic fairytale in a muddled effort that singularly fails to fly either as fairytale or deconstruction
In the early 2010s, we had a series of fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasies; The Asylum served up their own cheap copies – this was their version of Maleficent. Directed by actor Casper Van Dien, this not uninterestingly plays out as a fantasy adventure that follows the prince’s attempts to enter the castle
A musical adaptation of Cinderella from the Sherman Brothers, behind the hit of Mary Poppins
The second of 2012’s Snow White films after Mirror Mirror, this turns the fairytale into an epic fantasy. Well produced but ultimately a film that lacks anything unique nor pushes far enough into the dark fantasy it promises to be
An Oscar nominees for Best Animated Film – a unique and exquisitely drawn dive into Celtic mythology that comes with wit, humour and the emotional tenderness of a Hayao Miyazaki. This deserves to be seen far more widely than it ended up being
Film version of a popular series of children’s books that has a good deal of fun bringing to life a secret world of trolls and goblins
George Lucas’s venture into animation was critically pilloried. It’s not bad, just no different from a formula film like Rise of the Guardians or Epic. From the man who made Star Wars, you had higher expectations
The only film ever directed by actor Roddy McDowall. Based on a folktale, it is the story of two lovers trying to escape when one is in thrall to the Queen of the Fairies. McDowall creates a lush film that is oddly ponderous and non-fantastical but what a cast he assembles
Animated film from Don Bluth, an insipid adaptation of the fairytale that eventually bogs down as a comic picaresque (*)
The first in a series of Disney video-released films based around the Peter Pan fairy who is now reconceived as a contemporary Can Do girl
George Pal adapts the Brothers Grimm fairytale with Russ Tamblyn as a miniature youth amid colourful effects and extended slapstick scenes
From the top wrestling superstar in the world in the early 00s to movie action hero to being dressed in a pink tutu with fairy wings, it is hard to believe that Dwayne Johnson’s box-office star would have ever recovered from this family film embarrassment that sees him cast as a fairy
M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter Ishana directs a film of her own. Say what you will about nepotism, it is a really good film
Outside of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, not much else that George Lucas has made has been a success. This Ron Howard-directed epic fantasy proved to be a big flop where Howard’s lightweight touch fails to make a one-dimensional plot fly
Ralph Bakshi left behind counter-culture animation to embark on this original fantasy film that comes with a trippily surreal quality, mixing fantasy tropes with a science-fictional rationalisation
Anthology of Brothers Grimm stories from George Pal where the brothers are wound in as characters. The film’s effectiveness is killed by Pal pitching everything down at a mawkish and simple-minded level
Frenetic Hong Kong comedy about fairy enchantments involving all the cast undergoing gender reversals
An animated film based on the hit playing card phenomenon, which proves largely incomprehensible to anybody not versed in the game
Tsui Hark’s follow-up to Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain the film that popularised Wu Xia cinema. The point where Tsui discovered CGI and latches onto it to do more than just show flying swordsmen but create an exquisitely dreamy world of pure fantastique imagination