Sure. I will go to the Tomatometer, as an aggregator of critical opinion. I do not intend to be exhastive.
How to Train Your Dragon - 99%.
The Wizard of Oz - 98%
Kiki's Delivery Service - 98% (There's a bunch of Miyazaki over 90%)
Nosferatu (1922) - 97%
The Princess Bride - 97%.
Ghostbusters - 97%.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt 2 - 96% (in fact, all of the Potter movies score over 75% on the meter)
Raiders of the Lost Ark - 95%
Pan's Labyrinth - 95%
Moana - 95% (there's a bunch of Disney animated flicks in the 90%+ range)
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen - 92%
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - 90%
I left in Nosferatu and Ghostbusters as examples of how genres are hardly "pure", easily defined things - if you wann akick me and say they are horror and sci-fi, take it to some other thread: Ghosts and vampires are fantasy creatures.
A good start, for sure. I'd add the Star Wars OT, The Last Unicorn (only so low as 72% because of it's animation, which I strongly disagree with them on), Labyrinth (which has mixed reviews but is a culturally iconic work of art that doesn't so much borrow from other works, as show a different way the same themes can be addressed), and there are probably many more in that range of positivity that we could talk about.
But then, critical reception just doesn't actually mean all that much, in the end. Siskel and Ebert and their colleagues are often so up their own sense of rules and norms and expectations that they wouldn't know something beautiful and inspiring and affecting from a slightly above average drawing of a rose.
The film Legend was so poorly received that it crippled Hollywood's willingness to make fantasy films for a decade, but it is also one of the most beautiful, effective, well-made and inspiring works of fantasy film ever made.
Sometimes, the academic eye toward art is simply not the correct lens through which to view art. The viewpoint that matters is that of the honest, open, audience, who simply want to enjoy, or to be challenged, to gain catharthis or hopeful inspiration, to be made afraid or to be put at ease, in short, to be affected emotionally, mentally, and sometimes even spiritually, by the work.
Whether a plot thread gets resolved, or something focused on in act one matters in act 3, or whatever, is all just a set of tools people have come up with to help artists avoid or overcome trouble in creating the work, and to help students learn about the parts and tools involved in creating similar work. They don't
actually matter.
We can always annoy them some more and remind them that the Arthurian Legends are just fantasy literature, because, well.......magic.
Yes, and the Arthurian legends we know are an amalgam of retold stories, ripped off in succession by generations of authors. As are Shakespeare's works, every Fairy Tale or Folk Tale, and pretty damn much everything else.
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