Extraordinary Tales (2015)

Purely Joyful Movie!

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

As anthology films go, it's very good. Poe is one of the most popular authors of all time, so adapting his work is nothing new, but presenting it in this style is refreshing. I liked the art style for all 5 segments, especially "Th House of Usher" sequence with Christopher Lee narrating. It does the stories justice as well, because they're not stretched to fill a whole movie. A couple problems though, while I understand the significance of Bela Lugosi narrating, the audio quality is the worst of the segments. However, the story is super familiar to me, and the animation helps show what's happening, so I won't complain that much. The second complaint I have is del Toro narrating. His accent is almost too thick to actually tell what he's saying, and the story isn't as familiar to me as the other ones, so I was left confused. Aside from that though, this is a very well done adaptation of multiple Poe stories, that treats it's author with respect.

You get Poe as animated as ever could be a pun, some might wanna make watching this. Seriously though: Poe interpreted by different artists and therefor different styles is a mixed bag as could be expected. First of all you have to like animation and horror to even think about watching this. If not you may want to stay clear of this, which also has a lot of Horror talent at voicing department.The different animation styles can also be viewed as a curse (no pun intended) or a blessing. Some might have wanted one style throughout the whole thing, I personally like the change and the different approaches. But it's important you know before deciding to watch this. Especially if it's not your thing.Depending on your knowledge of Poe, you will have a different degree of information concerning the plots of the stories. Whatever that will do to your viewing pleasure

"Extraordinary Tales" is an animated film which consists of five Edgar Allen Poe stories and the notion of such an animated project sounds very exciting. I was also excited because the reviews I read on this were rather positive. Imagine my surprise when the film began and the computer graphics looked as if they were created back in the late 1990s! In fact, almost any video game you'd buy today would look nicer. The characters are sometimes blocky, there is little fluidity and the film just looks cheap at the beginning of the picture. The quality, unfortunately, was generally this poor throughout. Perhaps the praise for this is because a lot of people love Poe. Additionally, several amazingly good actors provide voices for the characters...such as Christopher Lee, Roger Corman, Guillermo del Toro and even, oddly, Bela Lugosi (using archival a rather archaic archival recording). But with these talents and this writer, it should have been magnificent....not an ugly mess of an animated film that looks as if some first-year film students created it. Each of the five stories is animated very differently in style...but all are rather lacking, though the fifth story at least was interesting when it came to the animation style. I cannot ignore the glaring ugliness of the CGI and only focus on the stories and voice actors. For my time, I'd much rather just listen to audio records of the stories by these voice actors. This just debuted on DVD from Netflix...don't say I didn't warn you.

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...