WillSushyMedia
This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.
Erica Derrick
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
Jakoba
True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.
Jesper Brun
I love both animation and Edgar Allan Poe and that made me curious about this animated anthology movie. Let me start off by saying that the narration and the voice acting is the most consistent in its quality through the relatively short running time. I can't pick my exact favorite of the narrators, but I think my over all favorite of the segments was "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar". It really comes down to personal taste. Each segment has its own unique visual style, and even though it can be a little hard on the eye adjusting to new styles for every segment, I found it adding to the atmosphere and the experience. The one which awoke the fewest reactions of "wow" or "interesting" in me was the last segment in which it looked nice when characters remained still, but didn't have fluid movements. An interesting watch with great atmosphere done through great narration, ominous music and mostly nice visuals, but too uneven to be called extraordinary.
encyes
This animated anthology based on 5 of Edgar Allen Poe's stories is well done, complete with choice actors for narration such as Christopher Lee, Julian Sands and a surprising (but obviously dated) monologue from Bela Lugosi who does a fine job reading through one of Poe's most well-known tales, "The Tell-Tale Heart". Animation is slick in 5 different computer-enhanced styles including a linking story between Poe in the guise of a Raven and a mysterious entity desperately trying to conceal her identity when it's obvious from the start that it is Death. This anthology focuses solely on Poe's more famous dismal stories ("The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", "The Pit and the Pandulum", "The Masque of the Red Death" as well as the aforementioned "Tell-Tale Heart") and only hint at the less gruesome works and love poems Poe produced during his lifetime. Designed primarily of kids, the interaction between Raven and Death touch on some historical facts of Poe that are quite adult and sad if you know anything about the writer. It's interesting to note how they seem to talk about Poe in both present and past tense. The problem with this anthology is not in the end result but on the material; Poe's works can be very cryptic, hard to read, filled with lavish but difficult to comprehend wording, and host periods of history that sometimes does not translate well with younger generations albeit adults. This anthology may truly only be for Poe fans, as those who do not know his works, or only lightly, may find themselves lost in the imagery and symbolism that he's most famous for.
dobolevente
The movie is likely to be entertaining for those who have read little to none of Poe's oeuvre, but it fails to deliver for those who know Poe very well. It didn't live up to my expectations, and they were not too high.Were the stories presented back to back, the whole would be much better than with the cheesy conversation between a crow (shouldn't it be a raven?) that represents Poe and a feminine Death. The bird is poorly drawn and speaks nonsense that would never have left Poe's mouth, making the dumb dialog in the cemetery rather cringeworthy. With a more Poe-like Raven and a more Gothic feel, the tone could have been much closer to that of Poe's tales.The short story adaptations are OK, although the recording of Bela Lugosi is (understandably) very bad quality, and the last story just didn't feel like a story at all. Naturally, not much happens in the original short story; it has a vivid imagery, full of gloomy impressions. This is why it probably shouldn't have been included in the movie. The other four stories are decently realized. Sadly, at the end, a word of the famous line from The Raven is misspelled: "quot", instead of "quoth", adding insult to injury.A good effort, overall. It's a pity that the stories were "linked" to each other in such an awkward manner.
David M Farrington
The works of Edgar Allan Poe are nothing if not macabre. In his work, one finds an element of romance and fantasy, almost a love letter to the release of grief that death provides. This is the connecting thread with which writer/director Raul Garcia (The Missing Lynx, Animarathon) ties together five short animated adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe short stories in the new(ish) film Extraordinary Tales. Each short film is stunningly realized in a different aesthetic and each is deserving of high praise. In putting them together as a collection though, to be experienced concurrently, Garcia has attempted to unite the tales with a superficial thread that falls short of being much more than an interruption of each disparate but beautiful love letter to Poe's work. Extraordinary Tales opens on a collection of statues in a cemetery in a style that seems to be a thrilling symbiosis of painted backdrop and stop motion papier mâché animation. A raven, serving as Poe himself and voiced by Stephen Hughes, enters the scene only to be confronted by...
