The Green Knight (2021)

 

I read The Quest of the Holy Grail once, and this adaptation of a related tale about the nephew of King Arthur, Sir Gawain, journeying to see a Green Knight to pay a due, brought that book back to mind, perfectly evoking the dreaminess and painterliness of the book's chapters, with some, like the episodes in the movie, ending without obvious point while others thrill with chivalrous exploits, all taking place against a beautifully realised medieval time steeped in magic and religion, albeit in a movie with two or three scenes, clanging attempts at modernity, which jolt the viewer out of the otherwise mesmerising fantasy.

★★★★☆

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Crowhaven Farm (1970)

In this 1970 made-for-tv horror, an unhappily married couple moves into the country estate she has inherited but far from benefitting their marriage as they had hoped, the move results in her having visions of distant-past witch trials and encountering other weirdness in her present day - but by far the most horrible thing in this mild tv distraction is not witches but an irksome subplot involving the couple's ten-year-old foster daughter.

★★☆☆☆

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The Witches (1990)

This is just exactly how you imagined it in your head as you read the Roald Dahl book as a child, with the witches a grotesque gaggle of foul bald creatures who plot to turn all the children of England into mice; one boy on holiday with his grandmother in a beachside hotel must stop the witches from enacting their dastardly plans but will he be able to after they've turned him into a mouse?

★★★★☆

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The Craft (1996)

The feminist subtext of 1987s The Witches of Eastwick is thoroughly undone in this misguided teenage witch movie made nine years later: where Sukie, Alexandra and Jane were a unified coven of creators of men, music, sculpture, and babies, here, a group of sullen teenage emos are literally to blame for magicking sexual assault upon themselves, immediately turn batshit crazy when faced with male rejection, are ultimately punished for their black arts by a flippantly introduced omniscient "he", and before you argue that comparison is unfair, it is Skeet Ulrich's high school jock who first uses the unflattering term 'the Bitches of Eastwick'.

★☆☆☆☆

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Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

L Frank Baum wrote fourteen stories about Oz - thirteen sequels to the book we all know - and this fantasy adventure doesn't appear to be any one of them but a kind of dreamt up origin story a la Gregory Maguire featuring early versions of myriad Oz characters - China Girl (not the China Princess), Finley, a winged monkey in a bellhop uniform, the witches before they have hit their good or evil strides (South, East, West, but not Locasta-Tattypoo), and James Franco is the wizard twenty years prior to his being sought out by Dorothy, and while it slightly disappoints fans of the books and hasn't a patch of the classic movie's wonder, it is fun, entertaining and a clever tie-in.

★★★☆☆

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The Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)

** SPOILER VVARNING **

An early scene confirms a vvitch inhabits the vvoods on the edge of the farm of young Thomasin's Puritan family but the greater horror of this movie is having to spend ninety minutes in the family's company - like a Jerry Springer "Help! My Puritan family thinks I'm a vvitch!" episode, they stand around shrieking unproductively at each other and it is little vvonder the vvitch stays vvell avvay (almost 'not-in-the-movie' avvay), leaving it to a random, introduced-at-the-last-minute Black Phillip (no, I don't knovv vvho or vvhat he is either) to step in and violently bring some vvelcome quiet to proceedings, in time for the visually stunning but miserable movie to end on its self-congratulatory note: a titlecard assuring vievvers vvhat an authentic Nevv England horror exercise it has been. 

★★☆☆☆

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Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters 3D (2013)

Witches can be fun (see the 1990 Roald Dahl's The Witches) but in this 2013 offering, just one of a spate of recent ultraviolent fairytales too adult for kids and too childish for adults (Jack the Giant Slayer, Snow White and the Huntsman, etc), everything is second to the 3D effects including the witches, a hohum bunch about as engaging as a parade of goth enthusiasts outside your window.

★☆☆☆☆

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The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

A trio of women, Jane, Sukie and Alexandra (Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Cher, redheaded, blonde and brunette) conjure up a dark, mysterious stranger using their collective feminine powers of creation, bringing havoc to their conservative New England town, in this riotous, star-studded film version of John Updike's distinctly feminist novel looking at gender politics, standards of social propriety (old-fashioned versus new) and good old good and evil, creation and destruction.

★★★★☆

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Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

The fairytale is given a grubby Middle Ages look and stretched to movielength by cgi sequences and extraneous details that are boring and add nothing to the clunkily told story, but as the queen with a personality disorder, Charlize Theron is effective.

★★☆☆☆

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Maleficent (2014)

Once upon a time, enormous hit Wicked told a backstory that sympathetically explained the wickedness of its fairytale anti-heroine, and perhaps that is what Maleficent, a boring fairytale not quite aimed at children and not quite aimed at adults, hoped to do too...but doesn't....The End.

★★☆☆☆

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47 Ronin (2013)

47 Ronin mostly disappoints viewers who watch it expecting i) a remake of an historical feudal Japan classic, ii) a big budget Gladiator-style war epic, or iii) a Lord of the Rings-style adventure fantasy full of witches and magic, which is a pity because if you watch it expecting a fairly routine Boys Own adventure, it doesn't seem so bad.

★★☆☆☆

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