Nightbreed: The Director’s Cut (1990/2014)

Nightbreed: The Director’s Cut (1990/2014)

[8] See review of the Nightbreed theatrical cut here. Clive Barker's Nightbreed was originally released in 1990, dumped onto a handful of screens by the studio and barely marketed. It was a financial failure, and for the director it was…
Nightbreed (1990)

Nightbreed (1990)

[8] Nightbreed, directed by Clive Barker and based on his book Cabal, wants to be a sprawling horror-fantasy epic for the ages. But the multifaceted story is told so quickly and haphazardly in the studio's cut of the film, the…
The Boy Who Could Fly (1986)

The Boy Who Could Fly (1986)

[7] The Boy Who Could Fly is a goofy movie, but it has a lot of heart. Lucy Deakins stars as Milly, a fourteen-year-old girl who has just moved to a new town after her father committed suicide. She discovers…
The Dance of Reality (2014)

The Dance of Reality (2014)

[5] The Dance of Reality is the first film in decades from well-loved cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, The Holy Mountain). The film is a quasi-autobiography from the filmmaker, covering his childhood in a Chilean coastal town. Jodorowsky is…
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

[7] This sequel taps into two powerful currents of audience identification: the love between parents and children, and the love between people and animals. You can approach these with cloying calculation, as many family films do, or you can attack…
Maleficent (2014)

Maleficent (2014)

[7] Angelina Jolie headlines in this pleasantly surprising revisionist version of Disney's Sleeping Beauty. Jolie plays Maleficent, the dark fairy villain of the original fairytale. But in this new version of the story scripted by Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the…
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

[8] X-Men: Days of Future Past brings back most of the cast from the Bryan Singer films (X-Men and X2) and merges them with the cast of Matthew Vaughn's First Class for a storyline involving time-travel and the mutants' desperate…
Dreamchild (1985)

Dreamchild (1985)

[6] A provocative film about the real Alice in Wonderland, who at 80 years of age begins recollecting her memories of author Lewis Carroll. Through flashbacks with Carroll (played superbly by Ian Holm) and in twisted fantasy sequences featuring creations…
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

[6] Just as Robert Zemeckis had to make Forrest Gump and Tim Burton had to make Big Fish, so did David Fincher have to make The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. All three directors are known for their visual and/or…
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

[4] In this Sinbad adventure, the famed sailor is trying to wed a princess (imagine that), but can't get her brother's blessing until he reverses an evil spell that turned the brother into a baboon. The story isn't much, but…