Fantasy at its best builds worlds that feel lived-in and true, whether that means Miyazaki's hand-drawn Japan in Spirited Away or the mud-and-grief of Middle-earth across Peter Jackson's trilogy. The genre earns its magic by grounding the impossible in real feeling. Browse Macca's reviews below and see which worlds hold up.
Rating: 2.5★
There's something genuinely lovely about seeing a Golden Age Disney animation back on a screen, even if the film in question isn't quite the studio's finest hour. Sleeping Beauty has bags of charm, no question about it, and as a piece of animation history
Rating: 3.0★
There are some films you feel like you already know before you've even sat down to watch them, and Disney's Cinderella is the textbook example of that. The rags-to-riches fairy tale, the glass slipper, the pumpkin carriage, the wicked stepmother, and that Fairy Godmother
Rating: 3.5★
Let's get the best bit out of the way first: Batman (1989) arguably has the greatest film poster of all time. That simple, striking yellow and black bat logo is so infinitely cool it practically sells the entire movie before you've even pressed play. No tagline,
Rating: 3.5★
I can't believe I'm about to say this, but here we go: I genuinely like Barbie. I, a 37-year-old man, sat down, watched it, and came out the other side having had a proper good time. I even quite like Ken, which is a
Rating: 3.0★
There's a version of this film that would've been one of the best horror pictures in years. Guillermo del Toro taking on Frankenstein, with a cast that includes Oscar Isaac, Christoph Waltz, Lars Mikkelsen and Mia Goth, shot through with his trademark gothic grandeur? On paper,
Rating: 2.5★
Will Smith is one of the most frustrating actors working today, and I mean that in the most conflicted way possible. The man is either absolutely brilliant or completely terrible, with very little middle ground in between. I've felt that watching Hancock, I've felt it watching
Rating: 3.0★
The hype around Flow had been building for months by the time I finally sat down with it, and I'll be honest: I went in expecting something genuinely special. What I got was a decent, engaging animated film that left me a little cold, and mostly because critics
Rating: 3.0★
Sometimes you put a film on for the kids and you end up genuinely enjoying it yourself. That's exactly what happened with Trolls. I wasn't expecting much beyond keeping the little ones occupied for ninety minutes, and instead I found myself tapping my foot and laughing
Rating: 2.0★
There's a moment in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives where a man sits at a dinner table making polite conversation with the ghost of his dead wife and the glowing-eyed spirit of his long-lost son, and everyone just... gets on with it. No
Rating: 1.0★
Franco Nero deserves better than this. That's not a particularly original observation, but sitting through Killer Mermaid, it's the thought that kept circling back to me. Here is an actor with genuine presence and a genuine legacy, turning up in a Montenegrin creature feature that can&
Rating: 3.5★
There's a moment early in The Snow Woman where the frame holds on a vast white landscape, the silence so complete you can almost feel the cold through the screen, and you know immediately that this film is going to do things its own way. Tokuzo Tanaka isn&
1960s
The last fifteen minutes of Viy are something else. A church fills with demons, spectral hands reach through stone walls, a levitating corpse traces slow circles through the dark, and then the creature itself is revealed: an ancient, monstrous thing with eyelids that have to be lifted by its servants
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