Criterion wrote:
One of Agnès Varda least-seen films is also one of her most fascinating: an eccentrically imaginative science-fiction fantasia that touches on human nature, free will, and the creative process. Working with major stars for the first time on a feature film, Varda casts Michel Piccoli as a writer and Catherine Deneuve as his silent wife, a couple who relocate to the island of Noirmoutier (a longtime second home for Varda and her husband, Jacques Demy) where strange goings-on hint at a sinister force controlling the minds and actions of the residents. Slipping between “reality” and fiction, genre spectacle and avant-garde experimentation, Les créatures is a beguiling, endlessly inventive exploration of the mysterious alchemy that transforms life into art.Read More »
Fantasy
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Agnès Varda – Les créatures AKA The Creatures (1966)
1961-1970Agnès VardaArthouseFantasyFrance -
Sally Potter – Orlando (1992)
1991-2000ArthouseFantasyQueer Cinema(s)Sally PotterUnited KingdomQuote:
Young nobleman Orlando is commanded by Queen Elizabeth I to stay forever young. Miraculously, he does just that. The film follows him as he moves through several centuries of British history, experiencing a variety of lives and relationships along the way, and even changing sex.Read More » -
Shinji Sômai – Hikaru onna AKA A Luminous Woman (1987)
1981-1990CrimeFantasyJapanShinji SômaiSynopsis: A mountain man from Hokkaido comes to Tokyo in search of the woman he loves, but has to brave the city’s dystopic underworld of gladiatorial fights and underground opera to rescue her.Read More »
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Juraj Jakubisko – Perinbaba aka The Feather Fairy (1985)
1981-1990FantasyJuraj JakubiskoSlovakiaA 1985 adaptation of the Brothers Grimm’s Mother Hulda short story directed by Slovak director Juraj Jakubisko. A fairy tale about a grandma who cares for snow and a boy who isn’t afraid of death.Read More »
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Josef von Báky – Münchhausen AKA The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1943)
1941-1950AdventureFantasyGermanyJosef von BákyThird Reich CinemaThis lavish, impudent, adult fairy tale takes the viewer from 18th-century Braunschweig to St. Petersburg, Constantinople, Venice, and then to the moon using ingenious special effects, stunning location shooting.Read More »
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Onur Ünlü – Sen Aydinlatirsin Geceyi AKA Thou Gild’st the Even (2013)
2011-2020DramaFantasyOnur ÜnlüTurkeyCemal, a moustachioed embodiment of awkwardness and anguish, inhabits an Anatolian rural village where everyone is gifted with some sort of super power.
Turkish writer-director Onur Ünlü’s surreal and fantastical fable follows a barber who survives a suicide attempt and finds himself falling in love, succumbing to murderous jealousy, and trying to make sense of life in a village where his neighbours are invisible, immortal, or possess the ability to stop time. In this village, the fantastic is never far from the quotidian. Amongst Cemal’s neighbours are a giant, an immortal, an invisible woman, and a bookseller who can stop time by clapping her hands.Read More »
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Hark Tsui – Shu Shan – Xin Shu shan jian ke AKA Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983)
1981-1990FantasyHark TsuiHong KongMartial ArtsIn the fifth century, constant civil war scars western China. To escape death, Ti, a young scout, jumps through a crevice in the Zu mountains where he meets and becomes the apprentice of Ting Yin, a spiritual man with great fighting powers. They encounter a monk, Hsiao Yu, also a great fighter and a good man, but unfriendly to Ting. Because Ting and Hsiao can’t work together, it falls to Ti to team with Hsiao’s acolyte Yi Chen: they have 49 days to travel far to claim two swords that are the only weapons that can defeat the Blood Demon, who has decided the wreak havoc on the world. They get help from Long Brows, Ting falls in love with a countess, and civil war still rages.Read More »
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Angelos Frantzis – To Oneiro tou Skylou aka A Dog’s Dream (2004)
2001-2010Angelos FrantzisFantasyGreeceMysteryThe film tells the story of a magical night in Athens. A man has a dream that concerns a strange robbery. When he returns home, he finds that all his belongings have been stolen in an equally strange manner. The man calls the police and an experienced cop tries to solve the case with rather unorthodox methods. But as the night drags on the mystery gradually appears to spread throughout the city. Strange incidents lead the heroes on a journey that appears to escape reality and meet the world of the dream.Read More »
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Paul Kenworthy & Ralph Wright – A True-Life Fantasy: Perri (1957)
1951-1960DocumentaryFantasyPaul KenworthyRalph WrightUSAQuote:
Perri is a 1957 film from Walt Disney Productions, based on Felix Salten’s 1938 Perri: The Youth of a Squirrel. It was the company’s fifth feature entry in their True-Life Adventures series, and the only one to be labeled a True Life Fantasy. In doing so, the Disney team combined the documentary aspects of earlier efforts with fictional scenarios and characters.Read More »