Swamp Thing (1991)
This is the kind of series I watched as a kid on TV with overwhelming glee. These days there’s not so enthusiasm for that kind of entertainment left. Taking elements from the comic series but remixing it too look and feel a bit like Captain Planet, one of these worst animation series to ever have grazed television screens. Gone is the brooding and dark atmosphere of the comic, instead we get a Swamp Thing with a cheerful attitude, annoying sidekicks, a seriously dumbed down Arcane as a megalomaniac villain and his evil and stupid henchmen. All in all it’s quite dumb, the dialog is wooden and ridiculous, the characters are cardboard and the plots can be summarized in one-liners. Basically Arcane is trying to become immortal through various means and Swamp Thing has to stop him in every episode. Thankfully they only made five.
Reaper S1 (2007-2008)
I think part of why I enjoy Reaper so much is that does what I wanted from Dead Like Me, but didn’t got. Dead Like Me was about a girl that got herself killed and ended up as a grim reaper, escorting souls to their afterlife. I thought the show had so much possibilities, but as it went on, the supernatural aspect became downplayed more and more, as if the makers were embarrassed of those aspects. It became a mildly entertaining slice-of-life show that meandered aimlessly around until it was cut down. There were so many chances to build on the idea of the grim reapers, to built a complex and interesting mythology. Never happened.
Reaper on the other hand completely embraces its supernatural elements. The show is about a guy whose soul has been sold to the devil by his parents and who has to work for him as reaper, bringing back escaped souls. There are demons everywhere, the devil is a regular character and the souls that escape from hell are quite fantastic too.
I like the show because it takes one concept and explores it from every angle, building an ever more complex mythology in the process. It doesn’t try to be something else than what it is, which is light and fun entertainment most of the time. But when it needs to be it, can be quite serious, without losing all the elements that make it fun too. It’s one of those rare shows that can do both, comedy and drama, well, sometimes at the same time, by using its supernatural elements to the fullest instead of forgetting them.
Rating: 5/5
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (2008)
directed by Guillermo del Toro
The same thing that stopped me from enjoying the first part too much rears its head again. Hellboy and his companions looks so much like their comic-counterparts, but characterwise the movie misses the mark completely. The comic-Hellboy is a smart and self-independent investigator, at times he feels like an old noir detective at work.
The movie hellboy is a goofy and not too smart buffoon. Sure, he can fight and looks impressive, but underneath there’s a teenager who hasn’t grown up yet. This sadly is also true for his companions. And what’s with this stupid the-BRPD-must-remain-secret idea. Nobody cared about Hellboy and the BRPD remaining a secret in the comics. That’s just stupid.
That said, when it comes to monsters and other fantastical creatures, Hellboy 2 is far more varied than his predecessor. There’s a certain opulence to the fantasy elements that reminds me of old, stop-motion fantasy movies. And while the characters never really worked for me, I did enjoy the movie to a certain extend for its pure entertainment value, a mindless but occasionally fun action-adventure. If they tone down the soap-opera elements a bit, the third part could be even more fun.
Rating: 3/5
The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008)
directed by Mark Waters
Story Skeleton: family moves into an old estate, one of the kids opens a book that collects fairy lore, an evil ogre wants the book to conquer fairy- and menkind, kids to the rescue
This is a pleasant enough fantasy movie for the whole family that is just a tad too predictable and generic for my taste. The movie felt like a melange of scenes from similar movies I’ve seen in the past, the evil trolls, the lovely fairies or whatever they were. Everything is played safe, the good and the bad guys are easily identifiable, the plot becomes obvious in the first ten minutes. Maybe I’m getting to cranky for this kind of stuff, but I miss a little bit of bite and uniqueness. And I find the old fantasy-wisdom of There Are Things That Are Better Not Meant To Be Written Down annoying. I’m sure nobody ever tried to inject such a movie with an anti-science message, it just comes with the territory. Still grating. As is using a deus ex machina for winning.
Rating: 3/5
Kindred: The Embraced (1996)
created by John Leekley and Mark Rein-Hagen
Kindred: The Embrace is a reminder, a least to me, how much taste can change. When I first watched it nearly ten years ago, I thought I was quite well done. The second time around I had a hard time finishing it. It takes the already inherent pretentious elements of the Vampire: The Masquerade setting and cranks them up to soap opera levels. The acting is so overdone, the dialog so awful it makes watching this painful. The only explanation how I ever perceived this as good was that there’s a time when your mind is conditioned to view the world and your place in it in a way that resonates with everything pretentious and über-dramatized. Brooding, dark characters that bear the pain of the whole word on their shoulders. Tragic and sad loves stories and all that crap. Most people were that teenager at one time or another. Most people thankfully outgrow that phase. Not that we get smarter or such. There are enough idiocies for grown-ups to believe in or apply to.
Rating: 1/5
Amon Saga (1986)
directed by Shunji Oga
Amon Saga is standard fantasy fare. A lone, silent hero bent on revenge on some generic fantasy villain. There’s also a princess involved, who needs saving and doesn’t do much apart from standing around and looking gorgeous. That said, it’s not a bad movie, just a tad too generic to make much of an impression. The most interesting thing are some of the visuals, for example the fortress of the villain is located on the back of a gigantic turtle, which indeed looks impressive.
Rating: 3/5
Highlander: The Source (2007)
directed by Brett Leonard
H:tS leaves the same kind of bad taste behind, that every piece of really bad fan fiction does. It has all the typical elements of any Highlander movie (save for Lambert, who mercifully got killed off in the last part): sword fights, rolling heads, dying immortals, and yet everything feels slightly off. It’s about some mystical source, for which the immortals quest. Some guardian of said source has also awakened and is out to kill the remaining immortals.
Where to start? The look seems inspired by the hyper-stylized look that became all so common in the wake of the Matrix, but done with a TV movie budget. The plot has holes the size of the grand canyon and is riddled with rampant stupidity, the new characters cannot act and look ridiculous, especially the immortal priest and the evil guardian (who looks like a cheap man’s Marilyn Manson). The locations were everything takes place are puzzling at best, everything feels artificial and slightly unreal, bereft of humans, as if they had not enough money for extras. I really felt sorry for some of the guys from the TV series. I’ve seen them act, at least good enough to entertain and make their roles believable. Here, most of them just felt misplaced, out of sync with their original performances. Only Adrian Paul has some good moments, but they are lost admit the awful rest.
As movie two to four have already shown, there can be only one (cliched, but true). Part five is no exception, beating a dead horse even more. Hopefully this is the end of the road for the franchise.
Rating: 1/5
Highlander: Endgame (2000)
directed by Douglas Aarniokoski
A curious movie. It doesn’t have the filler-episode feeling of the the third one, or the WTF insanity of the second one, but it’s not really good either. It follows the known formula: flashbacks to the past, fights between immortals, some nearly invincible immortal and general sins from the past that haunt the McLeod’s in the present. It feels like someone tried too hard to capture the spirit of the first movie and of the good parts of the TV-series, but instead created a collage that makes you feel like seeing Frankenstein’s Highlander movie. It is alive, but only in a zombielike way. And the über-immortal turns out to be completely emo and bend on revenge on Lambert (who looks really old, makes you glad this was his last Highlander movie). Overall, it’s watchable and somehow entertaining (I was never bored), but like the other sequels it’s completely inferior to the first movie and you’ll wonder why they are still making sequels, as if there’s a need for more Highlander movies.
Rating: 2/5
The Lost Room (2006)
created by Christopher Leone, Laura Harkcom & Paul Workman
One of the few SciFi Channel series that managed to be not only watchable but also to be quite good. It’s a fantasy series about a motel room that somehow has left conventional space and has become endowed with extraordinary powers (and every item in it as well). There’s a whole secret history of different groups trying to collect those items and fighting each other with them. The main story is about a cop who has lost his daughter to the room (with a key the room can be used as a doorway to every existing door, but if something or someone gets lost in the room without the key, they disappear). He’s trying to get her back and has to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding the room to do that.
The fun thing about the items is that they seem to make users more or less crazy, which means that Joe Miller (the cop) has to deal with some lunatics, which provides some fun scenes. If there’s one disappointment about the series, it’s that we never find out what actually happened to the room (the mini was intended as a trial to jump start a longer series, but this never happened). But since it’s mostly self-contained when it comes to Miller’s story arc and there are some excellent twists, it’s worth the watch.
Rating: 4/5
The Halloween Tree (1993)
directed by Mario Piluso
The perfect Halloween movie, a guided tour through the ages, a mysterious man showing four kids the origins of their Halloween costumes and the true meaning of the holiday they’re celebrating, while searching for one of their friends. There are some excellent scenes, the passage from time period to time period or the building of Notre Dame. But what really makes this movie shine is how it captures the spirit of Halloween, much more than most live action movies I’ve seen. Sure, in some ways it’s more a lecture than really a plot driven movie, but it’s such a neat package and so much fun, and the characters of the kids really come alive, that you’ll easily forget the educational aspect of the movie.
Rating: 5/5
