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The Company of Wolves (1984)
Director: Neil Jordan By Roderick Heath “What big teeth you have! She saw how his jaw began to slaver and the room was full of the clamour of the forest’s Liebestod but the wise child never flinched,...
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Watermelon Man (1970)
Director: Melvin Van Peebles By Marilyn Ferdinand “This ain’t America, is it?” The 1970s, the decade in which the American independent film movement and the careers of many of today’s iconic filmmakers...
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Duelle (une quarantaine) (aka Twhylight, 1976)
Director: Jacques Rivette By Roderick Heath Unlike most of the New Wave directors to emerge from the critical collective at Cahiers du Cinema, Jacques Rivette’s most admired work came in the early...
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The Saragossa Manuscript (Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie, 1965)
Director: Wojciech Has By Roderick Heath In a town in war-torn, Napoleonic-era Spain, a French officer is distracted from the important business of killing when he discovers an old book in a building...
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The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed, 1926)
Director/Screenwriter/Animator: Lotte Reiniger By Marilyn Ferdinand When films were born, the inventiveness of the many, many film production companies that sprung up all over the world boggles the...
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The Sleeping Beauty (La Belle Endormie, TV, 2010)
Director/Screenwriter: Catherine Breillat By Marilyn Ferdinand I think it’s very interesting that Catherine Breillat has continued her recently begun survey of female-centric fairy tales (the first,...
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Legend (1985)
Director: Ridley Scott By Marilyn Ferdinand Even in its early stages, Tom Cruise’s career has been marked by risk taking. Not long after his star-making turn as the privileged teen having a wild...
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The Bride with White Hair (Bai fa mo nu zhuan, 1993)/The Bride with White...
Directors: Ronnie Yu and David Wu By Roderick Heath Yusheng Liang, who died in 2009, is credited as one of the writers who modernised the wu xia novel, the imperishably popular Chinese mythological...
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Krull (1983)
Director: Peter Yates By Roderick Heath The early 1980s saw a brief, but admirable flowering in pure fantasy filmmaking. Sailing on the zephyr of the Star Wars cash cow, the fantasy genre, which had...
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X-Men (2000)/X2 (2003)/X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Directors: Bryan Singer/Brett Ratner By Roderick Heath The recent release of Matthew Vaughan’s X-Men: First Class has tried to capitalize on not just the 50-year-old comic book source, but also the...
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two (2011)
Director: David Yates By Roderick Heath Here there be spoilers. A decade and many dollars later, the Harry Potter saga comes to an end, and I found myself looking back on why I even got interested in...
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part Two (2011)
Director: David Yates By Marilyn Ferdinand A fantasy 10 years in execution, wildly popular as both a book series and film-adaptation franchise, can bear a multitude of commentary. So, while my...
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Passion Play (2010)
Director/Screenwriter: Mitch Glazer By Roderick Heath Good and bad movies are supposed to be easy things to tell apart, but I’ll never pretend to know why some movies are taken seriously in the...
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Melancholia (2011)
Director/Screenwriter: Lars von Trier By Marilyn Ferdinand Melancholia, the film that garnered for its star, Kirsten Dunst, the award for best leading actress at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, has been...
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Superman (1978)
Director: Richard Donner By Roderick Heath Love them, hate them, or prefer Jane Austen movies as your cup of escapism, the superhero tale has evolved from ephemeral, junky, adolescent power fantasy...
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John Carter (2012)
Director/Coscreenwriter: Andrew Stanton By Roderick Heath I take the popular dismissal of John Carter a little bit personally. When I was young, I loved films based on Edgar Rice Burroughs novels—any...
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The Hunger Games (2012)
Director/Coscreenwriter: Gary Ross By Roderick Heath Suzanne Collins’ hugely successful novel and its follow-ups about Katniss Everdeen, teenage huntress at war with a futuristic dystopia, were...
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The Avengers (2012)
Director/Screenwriter: Joss Whedon By Roderick Heath Here there be spoilers The Avengers could well be the most hyped movie ever made, surpassing the likes of Gone with the Wind (1939), Ben-Hur (1959),...
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Die Nibelungen: Siegfried / Kriemhild’s Revenge (1924)
The Days of High Adventure: A Journey Through Adventure Film Director: Fritz Lang By Roderick Heath The ancient Germanic and Scandinavian tales of Siegfried or Sigurd were vital building blocks for...
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Judex (1963)
The Days of High Adventure: A Journey through Adventure Film Director: Georges Franju By Roderick Heath Amongst early pioneers in film, Louis Feuillade, who made his famous serials between the lead-up...
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