Your Name (2016)

This latest offering from Makoto Shinkai is a piece of brilliance and perhaps the best film I have seen this year. It is a beautiful Sci-fi/Fantasy drama that is full of great drama, humour and emotion. The characters are super likable and you can't help but care for them. The film is also visually stunning with both natural and city landscapes looking absolutely gorgeous. Sure it may be a little sappy but I had no problems with that all.
It's also a very thematically rich and current movie dealing with our connections and relationships with people, an outlook of traditional and modern japanese culture and in some ways the breaking down of gender barriers.
From the get go it's just an engrossing experience with it's story constantly feeding our intrigue. It's just fantastic and I highly recommend it.
*****

Pete's Dragon (2016)

The remake of the 1977 Disney musical film that I don't think I've ever seen fully but apparently is not all that good and is one of Disney's weaker efforts. It would seem then that this time around, they have taken the material and made something much better with it, dropping the musical elements for a more grounded approach, the new Pete's Dragon is actually a decent piece of harmless family entertainment.
It's got pretty solid performances across the board and the dragon is also quite adorable and has a very dog like inspired look to him. The films story is very simple and well executed, with a few emotional moments laced through it, including it's very touching ending.
Its nothing outstanding by any means, but certainly well made and decent overall. ***

Warcraft (2016)

The film adaptation of the famous Warcraft game series is finally here. Directed by Duncan Jones, Warcraft is a CG heavy fantasy film that I thought was actually pretty decent. It's got some got some good action(yay horse throwing) and some good visual effects (Orcs look great), it is a little weak in terms of drama and riddled with cliches, but the story did unfold differently than I expected and there was  enough there to keep it intriguing and entertaining. The Warcraft universe is something I'm unfamiliar with, so I enjoyed learning about some of it's elements for the first time. Performances are ok, nothing too compelling, though I did quite enjoy Ben Foster as the guardian and the film sets up a few nice things for a potential sequel.
All in all it's far from being great, but I think it's decent enough for what it is, an adequate bit of fantasy. ***

Kaiju Fever: Die Nibelungen Siegfried (1924)

Fritz Lang's silent fantasy epic, which again isn't much of a Kaiju film but it does feature a 60ft dragon puppet (pictured above) in it's first 30 minutes which is super cool and one of the films best highlights. The film itself though is still rather great, visually beautiful with top notch production design. It's a 140 minute epic based on the epic poem 'Nibelungenlied' and is followed by a second part 'Kriemhilds Rache'. It ts quite an astonishing film that really shows the masterful talent of Fritz Lang. A very engaging silent fantasy, that is definitely worth checking it out.
****