The best films for a group don't flatten the experience - they create one. You want something that generates opinions, debates, a reason to stay up later than planned.
The 2000s produced a remarkable run of intelligent, ambitious cinema - a decade that took genre seriously and rewarded patient audiences.
Fantasy cinema at its finest takes the impossible seriously, and finds more truth in it than realism allows.
Light Yagami finds the "Death Note," a notebook with the power to kill, and decides to create a Utopia by killing the world's criminals, and soon the world's greatest detective, "L," is hired to find the mysterious murderer. An all out battle between the two greatest minds on earth begins and the winner will control the world.
A young boy wins a tour through the most magnificent chocolate factory in the world, led by the world's most unusual candy maker.
When architect Alex Wyler moves into an unusual glass house on stilts over a lake, he discovers a note from the previous tenant in the mailbox--but no one's lived in the house for years. He replies and soon discovers that he's corresponding with a doctor named Kate Forster. Their correspondence, only through the 'magical' mailbox, turns romantic and their paths cross in unexpected ways, but when they try to truly connect, danger looms. They must try to unravel the mystery behind their extraordinary romance before it's too late.
After his impetuous musician girlfriend, Samantha, dies in an accident shortly after they had a fight (and nearly broke up), Ian Wyndham, a grief-stricken British businessman living in London gets a chance to relive the day all over again, in the hope of changing the events that led up to her getting killed.
When actress Nikki Grace gets the lead role in a cursed film, her world becomes more and more surreal, blending realities and ideas of infidelity, reincarnation, and supernatural forces.
The fantasy films that endure are the ones rooted in genuine emotion. The magic is the vehicle; the story is always about something human.
The sailor of legend is framed by the goddess Eris for the theft of the Book of Peace, and must travel to her realm at the end of the world to retrieve it and save the life of his childhood friend Prince Proteus.
Four interwoven stories that occur on Halloween: an everyday high school principal has a secret life as a serial killer; a college virgin might have just met the one guy for her; a group of teenagers pull a mean prank, and a bitter old recluse receives an uninvited guest.
A man entranced by his dreams and imagination is lovestruck with a French woman and feels he can show her his world.
Zia, distraught over breaking up with his girlfriend, decides to end it all. Unfortunately, he discovers that there is no real ending, only a run-down afterlife that is strikingly similar to his old one, just a bit worse. Discovering that his ex-girlfriend has also "offed" herself, he sets out on a road trip to find her.
A beautiful and mysterious woman helps an inept scam artist get his game together... but is their meeting purely coincidence?
These are films that earn their laughs - not through cheap gags, but through character, timing, and an understanding of what actually makes people laugh.
The sign of a truly great fantasy is that you mourn it when it's over. These films create that feeling.