Awesome Fantasies

“Your father is dead, young Tampax!” Comedian and actor Alasdair Beckett-King pokes fun at some common tropes in fantasy films. He kicks things off with the start of the journey for our hero – including the thinly veiled exposition and the seemingly endless list of characters you’ll need to memorize for the story to make sense.

Filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite, The Lobster) applies his offbeat style to this movie about a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe) who brings a young woman back to life. But Bella (Emma Stone) is anything but the well-mannered lady of the times and runs off on a wild adventure with a slick and rakish lawyer (Mark Ruffalo). We’re getting a Tim Burton vibe here.

For the most part, Futurama takes place in a colorful and capitalistic 31st century. But how would the series have turned out if it were filmed in the aesthetic of David Lynch’s Dune or another similarly styled film? Through the power of AI image generation tech, Tenzin Tensor envisions just that. Hypnotoad is still highly effective.

(PG-13: Language/Gore) While running away from a battle, a soldier comes across a smart-mouthed rock that offers him a chance at immortality. But this darkly-humorous fantasy short film from writer/director Eron Sheean proves there’s a price to pay for everything.

Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek star in this fantasy about two people who come to believe they’re living in a simulation, and their struggles between blissful ignorance and the real “ugly” world. It sounds like The Matrix, but it appears to be a very different movie. Coming to Amazon Prime Video on 2.5.2021.

Jason Segel, Sally Field, André Benjamin, Eve Lindley, and Richard E. Grant star in this fantasy-drama about about a group of strangers who end up teaming up to unravel a mystery, and who end up discovering much about themselves along their journey. Premieres 3/1/20 on AMC.

Inspired by Andrzej Sapkowski’s award-winning fantasy books, this Netflix series stars Henry Cavill as monster hunter Geralt, who uses his supernatural powers and fighting skills to take down bad guys. But he finds that the most frightening creatures aren’t always evil, and the worst monsters are often the humans around him.

HBO’s next big bet is a collaboration with the BBC – based on Philip Pullman’s trilogy about a young woman on a quest to find her kidnapped friend, and the series of mysteries and conspiracies she unravels along the way. Stars Dafne Keen, James McAvoy, Ruth Wilson, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Premieres Fall 2019.