58.
Uh Oh! (2004)
This was a giant bowl of hot garbage. Also, it doesn't have the Fantasy tag on IMDB but it has a mermaid, a giant squid, a magic scepter and other fantastical nonsense. I submitted a change to the genre tag but it's still pending.
59.
Thunderbirds Are GO (1966)
60.
Thunderbird 6 (1968)
It's been a loooong time since I've seen some Thunderbirds, so I thought it'd be good to check out the double feature blu-ray that got released a couple years ago. The verdict? Well, the miniature work is absolutely charming and I still dig the retro futurist designs. But man, the pacing is rough in both of these. The exposition sequences really drag and the marionette work is by its nature somewhat limited which gives many scenes that should have more suspense an airless quality to them. Also many of the Lady Penelope scenes almost feel like something out of a totally different movie and really mess with the tone. Overall, they're definitely a mixed bag probably best suited for nostalgia.
61.
Liu lang di qiu a.k.a. The Wandering Earth (2019)
This epic sci-fi disaster flick from China makes Roland Emmerich a proud papa, taking his penchant for mass destruction of the earth and running with it via a ludicrous premise which involves the sun dying out and the best solution people can come up with is just strapping some giant rockets to the Earth and blasting out of orbit to find a better place to hang. Despite the silly premise, like Roland Emmerich, director Frant Gwo (of the previous ludicrous film Lee's Adventure) plays it totally straight, granting the proceedings with an emotional gravitas worthy of the most emotive k-dramas. The effects work is actually well above average for a Chinese production with some scenes looking absolutely breathtaking. Other times though, the chinks in the armor show and the green screen work sticks out more. Overall, if you want some large-scale planet devastation while waiting on Roland Emmerich's "moon crashing into the earth" movie, this will do fine. Just be prepared for some terrible dialogue and a bloated script.
62.
Tenet (2020)
There's always a meta element to reviewing a Christopher Nolan movie. It's a balancing act because you have the Nolan haters who like to shit on him because its cool even if they don't believe what they're saying. You also have the Nolan acolytes that worship at his altar and believe everything he does is flawless. The reality is as one would guess generally somewhere between. Nolan is indeed a very good filmmaker with an unusually skilled grasp of how time flows in his films even if most people watching them don't. He is able to take complex concepts and distill them into something approaching popcorn entertainment which is no small feat on its own. Tenet is as exhilarating as it is confounding to watch with its chronal reversal entropy central concept that posits not so much that time travel exists but that the property of time on a given object is a bilateral concept extending out in both directions and given the proper trigger, it can set an object into behaving in reverse. Tenet is constructed for a rewatch. The film itself structures as one big palindrome where events in the second half inform events in the first half that may not come together on the first watch. Is Nolan being willfully obtuse here? I don't think so. I think he just had a really neat concept he wanted to share with everybody. I can also see why he wanted it shown in theaters. In addition to the grand scope of some of the action scenes like the car chase and the big siege in the climax, it's a film that demands your full attention. No playing on your phone or wandering off to the bathroom or to get a snack. Nolan does do some subtle and not-so-subtle things to help bring the audience along though. He uses red and blue hues to signify whether time is moving forward or backward as well as having people wear oxygen masks if they're reversed. Despite all that, it is still very hard to follow exactly what's happening when in places.
Now having said all that, is it a perfect movie? Definitely not. Many of the negative reviews I've seen just lazily complain about how convoluted the plot is which is by design (and I'm sure many of these same reviewers praised stuff like Primer for the same reasons). A valid complaint I could see with it is that the movie gets so caught up in its gimmick that it lacks a certain emotional resonance. Both John David Washington and Robert Pattinson are very good as the unflappable agents thrust into this middle of this sturm und drang but the movie's emotional core is more with Elizabeth Debicki as the wife of time terrorist Andrei Sator who is basically being held hostage mentally and emotionally by her husband over a forged artwork. While this subplot isn't completely dismissed, it does feel at times like it takes a backseat to the crazy time inversion stuff, using Debicki more like a plot device to use as leverage against the Protagonist instead of as her own character. She ultimately does play a pretty pivotal role in the whole thing though.
Ultimately I quite liked this one and will probably give it another watch sometime in the not so distant future. While not Nolan's best, just to have a $200 million dollar movie this strange and heady and not part of a franchise is something to celebrate in Hollywood these days.
63.
Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)
Why does this exist? Was someone really chomping at the bit for a big budget, dark and serious version of Jack & the Beanstalk? I mean, it's not awful but it is pretty relentlessly mediocre with so-so effects work and a really predictable plot.
64.
Disturbing Behavior (1998)
Basically the late '90s horror boom takes on a Stepford Wives style plot. The teens in James Marsden's new town he just moved to are so perfect (unless they get horny...then look out...) aside from a handful of outsiders. But when one of his slacker friends starts acting super panicky and suddenly shows up the next day as a well-groomed preppy guy wearing a letterman jacket and hanging out with the popular kids, he knows something is awry. As you can imagine, there's some mad science mind fuckery going on that Marsden's character and the "town slut" Katie Holmes get pulled into. I have a vague memory of watching this back in the day but didn't remember anything about it. It's fine and is a nice break from all the teen slashers that were so prevalent during this time but the MTV editing and the constant alt-rock song cues randomly thrown in lessens its impact.
65.
To the Ends of Time (1996)
Man, what a relentlessly cheesy, strangely old-fashioned movie... This one concerns an evil queen who constructs a giant magic clock that causes time to start moving forward one year every week so she can kill everyone and take over the kingdom. The protagonist begins the film as a young boy enamored with the princess in the castle. As time accelerates, he grows into a young man who falls in love with the blossoming girl. But he must set out to stop the queen from killing everyone of old age. So there's a certain earnestness to this movie that's a little endearing and it seemed to have a decent budget. The core problem with the film is that by its nature, it comes across extremely anti-climactic. As the film progresses, the characters get older. So by the end, the big climax of the movie involves a doddering old man slowly climbing some scaffolding. It also makes the curious choice to focus much more on the princess and her buddy the royal cook trying to stop a usurper of the throne after the king dies instead of on the epic journey of the protagonist to stop the queen. Plus there's the generally creepy idea of while these characters appear to be aging, they're still mentally like 12 years old. And having a romance between 12 year olds seems very dodgy to me...
66.
Baio hantâ a.k.a. Bio Hunter (1995)
Oh boy. Here we've got one of those notorious anime from the 80s/90s that solidified the style as "ANIMATION FOR GROWN-UPS!" in the western world by folks like Manga Video back in the day. The plot involves a grotesque virus that infects people with a Cronenbergian demon mutation and two scientists who race to find a cure and save the city before it's too late. While it does try to develop the conflicted situation one of the scientists finds themselves in when he becomes infected with the virus, it's most an excuse for wall-to-wall sex and gore with imaginative monster deformities. It's fine for what it is but don't expect anything deep or meaningful out of it.
1. Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
2. The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special (2020)
3. Robo Vampire (1988)
4. Temptation Island (1980)
5. Les trois couronnes du matelot a.k.a. Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983)
6. No Escape (1994)
7. Soul (2020)
8a. Shirley Temple's Storybook: The Princess and the Goblins (1961)
8b. Ballet of the Mermaids (1938)
8c. Ropáci a.k.a. Oil Gobblers (1988)
9. Thunder Rock (1942)
10. Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie (1997)
11. Aniara (2018)
12. Heartbeeps (1981)
13. Blue My Mind (2017)
14. Eunhaengnamoo chimdae a.k.a. Gingko Bed (1996)
15. Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941)
16. Tales from the Neverending Story: The Beginning (2001)
17. The Reluctant Astronaut (1967)
18. Earth to Echo (2014)
19. Bijo to ekitai ningen a.k.a. The H-Man (1958)
20. The Bamboo Saucer (1968)
21. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013)
22. The Curious Female (1970)
23a. Black Mirror: USS Callister (2017)
23b. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910)
24. His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (1914)
25. The Magic Cloak of Oz (1914)
26. Source Code (2011)
27. The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)
28. FairyTale: A True Story (1997)
29. Journey to the Center of the Earth (1988)
30. Golok setan a.k.a. The Devil's Sword (1984)
31. The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914)
32. The Wizard of Oz (1925)
33. Singularity (2017)
34. The Mind's Eye (2015)
35. Village of the Giants (1965)
36. Na srebrnym globie a.k.a. On the Silver Globe (1988)
37. Tammy and the T-Rex (1994)
38. Cinderfella (1960)
39. The Atomic Kid (1954)
40. Kamisama no pazuru a.k.a. God's Puzzle (2008)
41. Minoes (2001)
42. Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)
43. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
44. Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)
45. Beastly (2011)
46. Djävulens öga a.k.a. The Devil's Eye (1960)
47. Crack in the World (1965)
48a. Black Mirror: Crocodile (2017)
48b. The Legend of Loch Lomond (2001)
49. Xi you ji: Da nao tian gong a.k.a. The Monkey King (2014)
50. Warlords of Atlantis a.k.a. Warlords of the Deep (1978)
51. The Boys from Brazil (1978)
52. Operetta tanuki goten a.k.a. Princess Raccoon (2005)
53. Monster Trucks (2016)
54. Merlin (1998)
55-57. The Mandalorian Season 2 E1-8 (2020)
58. Uh Oh! (2004)
59. Thunderbirds Are GO (1966)
60. Thunderbird 6 (1968)
61. Liu lang di qiu a.k.a. The Wandering Earth (2019)
62. Tenet (2020)
63. Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)
64. Disturbing Behavior (1998)
65. To the Ends of Time (1996)
66. Baio hantâ a.k.a. Bio Hunter (1995)
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's Fantasy Top 50.
