Time Bandits By Terry Gilliam.

Time Bandits by Terry Gilliam.

This just might be one of the very best "children's story" films ever produced. Outstanding imagination and poignant humanism.

It's a Roald Dahl–esque landmark to all fantasy films.

Freaks (also re-released as The Monster Story, Forbidden Love, and Nature's Mistakes) by Tod Browning.

Based on elements from the short story "Spurs" by Tod Robbins.

Step right up and be horrified! Or be sympathetic, that works too. This is a unique film. Believe me, there has never been and will never be a film like this again.

Get this: After the success of Universal's original "Dracula" in 1931, MGM approached its director Tod Browning to make "the scariest film ever made". So what did Browning do? He gathered real circus sideshow performers from all over the country and made the movie "Freaks". The movie's so shocking that MGM was sued by one audience member who claimed that seeing the movie gave her a miscarriage. This movie is so controversial that there are still cities in the United States where it's illegal to even show it!

Just a word of warning before you decide to go see this, some of the people in this movie do look very disturbing. If you'd rather not subject yourself to that kind of imagery, then it would probably be best to not see it. Regardless, this film is full of iconic moments of pure cinema, pulpy horror, carny noir, and perverse melodrama. Freaks is still unclassifiable after many decades. It's still sick, twisted, perverse and profoundly human. It contains Tod Browning's view of the world at its purest.

"Cigarettes and chocolate milk These are just a couple of my cravings Everything it seems I like’s a little bit stronger A little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me." —Rufus Wainwright, "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk"

Some of my favorite Ghost Stories on film.

1) Casper

2) Personal Shopper

3) The Innocents (1961)

4) The Uninvited (1944)

5) Ringu (リング, "Ring")

6) The Haunting (1963)

7) The Stone Tape

8 ) The Shining (1980)

9) The Others (Spanish: Los otros)

10) The Sixth Sense

11) Kuroneko (藪の中の黒猫, "A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove"; or simply "The Black Cat")

12) The Woman in Black (1989)

13) Any episode of BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas

14) Kwaidan (怪談, "Ghost Stories")

15) David Lowery's A Ghost Story (Masterpiece.)

16) The Changeling

17) Hasta el viento tiene miedo (known in English as "Even the Wind is Afraid" and "The Wind of Fear")

18) Stir Of Echoes

Favorite non-DC/Marvel, comic book adaptations:

The Mask

The Crow

The Rocketeer (released internationally as The Adventures of the Rocketeer)

Ghost World

A History of Violence

The Lone Wolf and Cub films

Ichi the Killer (殺し屋１)

The Amazing Screw-On Head

The Rabbi's Cat (Le chat du rabbin)

Danger: Diabolik

Urusei Yatsura: Only You/Beautiful Dreamer

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky

Snowpiercer

Persepolis

Blue is the Warmest Color

Tales from the Crypt (1972)

The Death of Stalin

Wrinkles (Arrugas)

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

Akira (アキラ)

Gantz (2010)

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Road to Perdition

American Splendor

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Oldboy (올드보이)

La Belle et la Bête: journal d'un film (Beauty and the Beast: Diary of a Film) by Jean Cocteau.

A superb book about the making of a masterpiece.