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100 Essential Films of the Fantastic (1-25)
First off, this list is entirely personal. You will have 100 of your own. The intention is to draw a broad outline of fantasy films since the start of cinema in hopes that the reader might find some...
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A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
“This is the universe. Big, isn’t it?” So opens A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven, 1946), one of the finest films from the acclaimed British filmmaking team known as the Archers –...
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Fantasia (1940)
Fantasia (1940) is not an animated film, not by its own description. The film’s narrator, Deems Taylor – an announcer for broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera – describes what you are about to...
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The Curse of the Cat People (1944)
The runaway box office success of A different kind of horror: a boy’s careless destruction of a butterfly admired by young Amy. Amy Reed can’t seem to find any friends, out of step with both the boys...
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Isle of the Dead (1945)
An often overlooked entry in the renowned Val Lewton cycle of atmospheric chillers for RKO, Isle of the Dead (1945) is one of three films Lewton made with Boris Karloff, who, typecast despite his...
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Dead of Night (1945)
The anthology film Dead of Night (1945) has an insidiously unsettling quality which sinks slowly into you, seemingly out of nowhere, but stretching into your veins like a virus. Quite literally,...
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The Meaningless Obligatory Midnight Only End of the Year Award List of...
Dragon Inn Happiest Retro Film Discoveries of 2018 Dragon Inn (King Hu, 1967) – Criterion Collection King Hu, who would later direct A Touch of Zen (1971), delivers a wuxia with physics-defying...
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The Stone Flower (1946)
Soviet cinema’s master fantasist, Aleksandr Ptushko, forged the path that would make his reputation following a forced hiatus from filmmaking during WWII. He had previously supervised the production...
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Kashchei the Immortal (1944)
After completing in rapid succession the Russian fantasy films Wish Upon a Pike (1938), Vassilisa the Beautiful (1939), and The Humpbacked Horse (1941), Aleksandr Rou wouldn’t make another full length...
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Cobra Woman (1943)
During WWII, Spanish born model Maria Montez enjoyed a brief burst of stardom, under contract with Universal and appearing in a string of pulp adventures and thrillers that were sold on her exoticism...
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