# Fantasy Film Suggestions



## The Master™ (Feb 15, 2005)

Just some ideas for fantasy films to be reviewed:

Conan the Barbarian
Conan the Destroyer
Krull
Dragonslayer
Dragonheart 
Willow 
Legend 
Highlander (I/II/III/IV)
Lord of the Rings 
Excaliber 
The Princess Bride 
Pirates of the Caribbean 
Monty Pyton and the Holy Grail
Labyrinth 
Red Sonja 
First Knight 
A Midsummer Night's Dream 
Reign of Fire 
Dungeons & Dragons
Jason and the Argonauts
Three Musketeers 
LadyHawke
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves 
A Knights Tale 
The Count of Monte Cristo 
13th Warrior 
Man in the Iron Mask 
Braveheart
Black Knight
Matrix (I/II/III)
Equilibrium
The Sword and the Sorcerer 
Beastmaster
Hawk the Slayer
Muppet Treasure Island 
Blade (I/II/III)  
Van Helsing
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Scorpion King


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## Princess Ivy (Feb 15, 2005)

sad thing is, i've seen most of them.


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## Lacedaemonian (Feb 15, 2005)

Same here.  There are very few on that list that I haven't seen.  The Dark Crystal should be there though.


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## Winters_Sorrow (Feb 15, 2005)

yup, I've seen them all (except Black Knight & Dragonslayer)

I think Frankenstein needs to be on the list to (maybe American Werewolf in London too)


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## Circus Cranium (Feb 15, 2005)

Those are great suggestions. And there are several on there I would watch again in a second. In fact, I think I've seen Brave Heart about 7 times.


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## Leto (Feb 15, 2005)

Same as above, seen most of them. But I could survive another vision of Excalibur.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Feb 15, 2005)

But why The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask and The Count of Monte Cristo?  Great stories, but surely period pieces rather than fantasy?  If they're reviewed, shouldn't it be under some other heading?

If it was up to me, I would add The Court Jester, Camelot, and Orlando to the list.

And Restoration in with the other period pieces, wherever they might go.


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## Leto (Feb 15, 2005)

The same way, these : 
Pirates of the Caribbean 
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves 
Braveheart
Matrix (I/II/III)
Equilibrium 
Blade (I/II/III) 
Van Helsing
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

are not fantasy films


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## Teresa Edgerton (Feb 15, 2005)

I haven't seen the others, so I don't know whether they might have some slight fantasy element somewhere in them that I never heard about, but Pirates has living skeletons and a curse, and isn't there a witch in Prince of Thieves?  That's enough to fit my broadest definition of fantasy.


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## The Master™ (Feb 16, 2005)

Leto said:
			
		

> The same way, these :
> Pirates of the Caribbean
> Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
> Braveheart
> ...



I think you'll find that they are all fantasy in one form or another...  

The list is merely one of those that I plucked from the air that covers fantasy... Whether is be "true" fantasy or a hollywood version... And feel free to add to those... Now, all we have to do is get people to watch them, and do reviews... 

Oh, and *Dark Crystal* should be there... As well as *Muppets from Space*... 

Now, get out there and watch and do a review...


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## Leto (Feb 16, 2005)

Matrix is pure sci-fi. And equilibrium too. 

If you want to add fantasy, why didn't you list Ghost inside ?


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## McMurphy (Feb 17, 2005)

The Master™ said:
			
		

> I think you'll find that they are all fantasy in one form or another...
> 
> The list is merely one of those that I plucked from the air that covers fantasy... Whether is be "true" fantasy or a hollywood version... And feel free to add to those... Now, all we have to do is get people to watch them, and do reviews...
> 
> ...


 
I agree with Master. A discussion thread in regards to what does and what does not qualify as science fiction or fantasy films would make a great topic....on a different forum. Maybe Leto or someone could start the thread in the general movie board: I know I would be interested in hearing everyone's personal definations of the genre.

For here, however, it would probably be better to keep the focus on reviews.


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## PenDragon (Feb 17, 2005)

Leto said:
			
		

> Matrix is pure sci-fi.


 
Yet it has a plot straight out of archetypal epic fantasy - A nobody kid looking for answers in a world he can't make sense of, is pursued by 'dark' agents, rescued and guided by a wise older advisor, who believes he is 'the one' the oracle speaks of. Then he falls in love, turns into a god and kicks much ass.

Pure fantasy.


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## hodor (Feb 17, 2005)

Robin Hood: Men in Tights all the way 

Monty Python: Holy Grail


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## Leto (Feb 17, 2005)

PenDragon said:
			
		

> Yet it has a plot straight out of archetypal epic fantasy - A nobody kid looking for answers in a world he can't make sense of, is pursued by 'dark' agents, rescued and guided by a wise older advisor, who believes he is 'the one' the oracle speaks of. Then he falls in love, turns into a god and kicks much ass.
> 
> Pure fantasy.



Pure epic and "coming-of-age story", even without magical or sci-fi element. 
No it's not a fantasy film, or put the Godfather on the list too.


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## Foxbat (Feb 17, 2005)

Monty Python: Holy Grail - The Lego Version of the song 'Knights Of The Round Table' is worth a review in itself


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## mr furious (Jul 1, 2006)

the best fantasy film is mystery men starring ben stiller


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## ScottSF (Jul 27, 2006)

My thoughts on the 13th Warrior

I think this is one of those movies that gets it right.  It’s on my list of things to own.  I must admit, when I saw it in the theaters when it first came out, it went over my head.  I was hoping for a more fantastical movie.  I really wanted the fire worm to be a real dragon.  What I got instead where real slices of an imagined culture based on history.  I think what the movie really had going for it was the theme of culture clash.   Some of the most enjoyable moments were when the Vikings prejudged Ahmad concerning his small horse and small scimitar and he was able to make them eat their words (after he learned their words).  It was nice to see them reassess their ideas of “power” i.e. brute strength vs. agility or a sword’s size vs. its sharpness.

What I didn’t know the first time I saw it was that it was a re-telling of Beowulf.   I saw it again after reading Beowulf for the first time and the realization was like a peppermint axe splitting my brain. It showed how reality becomes myth when a story is passed to the next generation.  I heard that the length of the movie was cut down which is unfortunate; I wonder what kind of moments were cut.  I do think it could have been better, given more time to breathe, but it still had a great character that stays with me years after seeing it.  Now I am tempted to read the book “Eater’s of the Dead” that the movie was based on to see what didn’t make it in.


One down!


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## Spiritdragon (Aug 12, 2006)

Just watched BEOWULF and GRENDEL!!
Reminded me of the 13th Warrior...but more realistic!!
It was a sad and fascinating movie with beautiful scenery and a captivating story....based on the ancient poem of the same name...


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## ScottSF (Aug 13, 2006)

yeah, I read a indifferent review of it but I want to see it for myself.  Now I have more feul to that fire.


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## Rosemary (Aug 13, 2006)

Spiritdragon said:
			
		

> Just watched BEOWULF and GRENDEL!!
> Reminded me of the 13th Warrior...but more realistic!!
> It was a sad and fascinating movie with beautiful scenery and a captivating story....based on the ancient poem of the same name...


Now this one I do have to see!  Beowulf, one of the best of ancient poems for me...


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## j d worthington (Aug 13, 2006)

I see a listing for Harryhausen's *Jason*, but none for *The 7th Voyage of Sinbad*, nor *Mysterious Island* nor *First Men in the Moon*, all of which definitely deserve mention, as well as others that he did... There are also the exceptional sff films of the 1950s (those that rose above the generic mutant monster menace), such as *The Incredible Shrinking Man*, which remains an intelligent film today... Even *THEM!* has much to recommend it, as does the original *The Thing from Another Planet*, at very least as a suspenseful first contact film. An odd, flawed, but rather worthwhile film for the curious handling of an unusual idea (for the time) is *The Curse of the Faceless Man*... There are some odd little gems of the second and third water waiting to be rediscovered in those old 1950s sf films... look for ones directed by Edward Cahn... they're low-budget, and on the surface the typical sort of thing, but he actually did quite a competent job of bringing life to some very hackneyed plots... and he worked with people like Jerome Bixby for the scripts...


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## Nesacat (Aug 13, 2006)

*The Saragossa Manuscript* (1965).

Directed by Wojciech Has, the film is an adaptation of at least part of a legendary, massive novel by Count Jan Potocki (1761-1815). _The Manuscript Found in Saragossa_ (1813) was his crowning work, favorably compared to *The Decameron* and *The Arabian Nights* for its rich folkloric elements, supernatural motifs, humor, and surreal touches. Like its predecessors it has a very modern, labyrinthine, story-within-a-story structure, but it’s even more multilayered. 

The film version is a mostly faithful adaptation of this literary cat’s cradle. Zbigniew Cybulski stars as Alphonse van Worden, a young Belgian captain of the Walloon guards traveling through the arid landscapes of 17th-century Spain on his way to Madrid. 

In an abandoned house he becomes entranced by an old book (the "Saragossa manuscript") that chronicles the life of one of his famous ancestors. He becomes so spellbound that he fails to notice the group of enemy soldiers that have come to arrest him. In the first of many twists, they too succumb to the book’s spell, and the action moves into a series of dreamlike adventures starring Alphonse and a gallery of memorable characters. 

In the first of these adventures, he meets two princesses — actually ghosts — who alternately terrorise and seduce him, finally proposing a series of tests he must pass. On the verge of succumbing to their charms, he suddenly awakens next to a gallows on which two corpses are hung. This kind of collision of the horrific with the sensual permeates the film.

 This scene only occupies the first ten or fifteen minutes of the film, but it sets the tone for what follows. From there, the story escalates into a series of increasingly complex enchantments. Alphonse is captured by the Inquisition in a fetish-drenched sequence, complete with metal masks and a rack. He fends off ghosts, fights duels, frequently wakes up to find himself in the shadow of the gallows, and best of all, listens as we do to a series of richly detailed stories of cuckolded husbands, treacherous business rivals, and deals with the devil told by those he encounters in what may or may not be a dream. 



Besides the convoluted structure, characters pop in and out of each other’s stories with random logic. The ghost-princesses meander in and out of several of the other stories, moving mysteriously in the background or popping up in other guises. Sudden, startling imagery like Alphonse reaching out to touch one of these ghostly girls but finding his hand on a corpse recur throughout. 



And of course no one is who he or she seems. The kindly hermit priest who takes Alphonse in and counsels him on how to avoid perdition turns out to be a shiek who claims he’s arranged all the scenarios and hired the players to enact them in the interest of Alphonse’s enlightenment. The priest’s howling, allegedly demon-possessed assistant Pasheko, whose eye is removed and eaten by ghouls in a gruesome scene, is revealed as an acrobat who was blinded in a fall.


Has deserves praise for bringing Potocki’s droll anti-clericalism to the fore. When the Inquisitors grab Alphonse, they’re amusingly blasé about their methods: "His confession," one of them says, "though slightly forced, has its advantages." Bracing, too, is the film’s charming sense of the value of camaraderie. During one of the later stories — a Byzantine affair involving rival bankers, a naïve son, a coquettish daughter, and a trickster who manipulates them all for his own amusement — one of the characters says "Good company is more precious than wealth or black magic." There’s plenty of wealth and black magic in the film, but it’s also enthralling good company.


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## j d worthington (Aug 13, 2006)

Now, this one sounds a delight! Thanks for the wonderful review, Nesa... I'm going to have to see if I can't track this one down.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Aug 13, 2006)

It does sound like an amazing film.

I just searched the catalogue for our local library system, and the branch I usually frequent has it!  (Although it's been checked out just at the moment.)


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## Nesacat (Aug 13, 2006)

I hope the both of you enjoy the movie. I watched with a friend and she actually got out a pencil and paper to keep track of all the different layers and we ended up watching it twice. The book is equally wonderful.


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## -putawaythosepliers- (Aug 22, 2006)

Foxbat said:
			
		

> Monty Python: Holy Grail - The Lego Version of the song 'Knights Of The Round Table' is worth a review in itself



yes it's great... 

when dining here in camelot we eat ham and jam and spamalot!!!

ahhh monty python is great! holy grail is excellent, but And Here's Something Completely Different and The Life Of Brian is great too. The Meaning of Life has some great laughs as well. 
watching monty python with friends is recommended. 

my friends and i love the part in the holy grail with the knights of ni and the shrubberies...

i am a shrubber. my name is roger the shrubber. shrubberies are my trade. i arrange, design, and sell shrubberies.

nooooo no shrubberies here!

okkkkkk.... i'll go now...


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## Teresa Edgerton (Aug 22, 2006)

I went to the library yesterday and _The Saragossa Manuscript_ was in, hiding on the very last bottom shelf of the S's (though I would have expected better from a library, they group them by initial letter like a video store, rather than alphabetize them further) so I was able to bring it home with me.  Very happy about that.  Now to reserve a good chunk of time to watch it.  (And hope that the video is in decent shape.)


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## Nesacat (Sep 5, 2006)

*City of Lost Children (1995)*

The version I have is the original in French with sub-titles and not the dubbed one.

City of Lost Children is written and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and it's a disturbed fairy tale filled with visual  extravaganza of the most intricate kind. 

The tale revolves around Krank (Daniel  Emilfork), a bizarre man, prematurely aged, who suffers from the inability to  dream. Krank lives with the diminutive Mademoiselle Bismuth (Mireille Mosse),  six clones (Domnique Pinon) who suffer from narcolepsy, and a wise, but migraine  enduring, brain in a tank. A scientist – the “original” that the clones were  based upon – now long missing, created the entire troupe, each with their own  flaws; each imperfect. Driven insane by his inability to dream, his lost  innocent youth, Krank enlists the aid of the Cyclops – a gang of mechanically  enhanced men – to kidnap children and bring them to his isolated artificial  island. By inserting the sleeping children into a dream machine, Krank hopes to  take their dreams as his own, and regain his innocence, and perhaps  his youth. 

Among the victims of the Cyclops’ raids is Denree (a very  young, and perpetually wide eyed, Joseph Lucien who says nothing but eats and burps pretty much every single time he appears on screen) who happens to be the adopted  brother of One (Ron Perlman). Now a strongman in a fair (having given up his whaling  ways), One falls in with a gang of child thieves, led by the emotionally mature  Miette (Judith Vittet). Together, One and Miette seek to rescue Denree and the other children  from the evil clutches of Krank and his “family”. 

This is a twisted,  bizarre, world. It is filled with men like the blind  Cyclops who see with the aid of a single, mechanical, eye. It is home to the  conjoint twins known as “the Octopus” who keep the gang of child thieves under  their power. It presents Marcello (Jean-Claude Dreyfuss) as a washed up freak  show proprietor who now, in a flea-eye view sequence, uses his trained  flea as an assassin. The film simply drips imagination and colour. It presents a fabulously intricate fairy tale  amongst a dark and fantastic world. A fairy tale full of evil and monsters yet  thoughtful and fascinating – full of what it means to be young. Lost Children is wonderfully Dahl-esque and captures the spirit of fairy tales. Wicked things happen to wicked  people, and the movie pulls no punches. 

*Teresa* ... tell me what you think of Saragossa Manuscript.


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## Memnoch (Sep 5, 2006)

I have seen every 1 of those films oh my god!!!!!! Is that sad or fanatical!!

Flight of Dragons (Cartoon film) - I watched over and over as a kid!! lol


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## ScottSF (Sep 6, 2006)

City of Lost Children. . . YES!  I was in awe.  It was like a dream.  Really, I don't know how they capture that sense of dreaming so well and still told a story.  Maybe I just always dream about dark port towns, but the cause and effect scenes!  Everyone who hasn't seen it RUN to the video store.  You know my friend ordered it on VHS once and got the dubbed version.  He was furrious.  Of course if you liked City, then you'll probably like Delacatessent.


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## Nesacat (Sep 6, 2006)

Memnoch ... I still watch Flight Of Dragons every so often. It's wonderful. 

ScottSF ... I saw Delicatessen first and then Lost Children. His movies are amazing and I love the city and the eternal twilight. All those nuts and rivets and bolts and how there's odd drains and streams of water. I loved that little place at the end of the bridge where the children were hiding at first.

Tha cause and effect scenes were awesome. I was holding my breathe the whole time and waiting, waiting and trying to urge everyone to hurry, hurry at the same time.


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