I'm a major movie freak and this one is at the top of the list for me. The story line is great, actors/actresses are awesome and the effects were right on point for me. Julianne Moore is one of my all time favorite actresses and plays such an awesome evil witch. She is such a top notch versatile actress that is just truly awesome in any movie she takes a role in.

Unlike some of the other reviewers and critics here, I LIKED THIS MOVIE!It was a good fantasy action film and had a decent story line. By the way, ALL heroic and fantasy stories have been told again and again throughout history. Read Joseph Campbell's and others' works on the mythology of mankind and human archetypes that appear again and again throughout all cultures from the Mahabharata, to the Norse legends like Beowulf, to the Lord of the Rings, to Star Wars, to Asian sword movies to many classic American Westerns. The same themes play out, so it always seems rather shallow of reviewers to pan a production for using a classic plot line. This movie had good character interplay (partly thanks to an excellent cast!), it had good action, and in general IT WAS A GOOD AND VERY ENJOYABLE MOVIE. Could it have been better? Probably, but that was not the actors' faults, and I found the parts of the main characters, Gregory, Tom, Alice, Mam Ward, and Mother Malkin, all well delivered and with more depth than they were given credit for. Could there have been more character development? Certainly, if you wanted a 3 or 4 hour movie. Movies by their very nature have to pack a lot into a limited amount of time.There were a number of twists in the story I liked, and some details it took multiple viewings to notice, e.g. Alice wandering at the edge of the crowd when Gregory and Tom first arrive at the walled city, and the guy with shaved head and heavy earrings outside the tavern as Gregory enters shortly after their arrival, then he cropped up later to confirm seeing the Spook (Gregory) enter the tavern when Tom announced he was Master Gregory's apprentice as he rescued Alice from the mob. Some scenes just flit by quickly and without enough emphasis to make an impression, then they are subtly referenced later. Watching the "making of" features, I realized a great deal of thought went into this by the creative and production staff. I was truly sorry it was not received better or more of a financial success.Special effects and cinematography were very good, as was costuming and attention to technical details in clothing, weapons, and even buildings. My only gripe in these details might be that a number of time periods and cultural intersections seem to have been conflated to create crowds and city populations, even technologies, that I seriously doubt ever coexisted. However, as this was a fantasy, these peripheral characters added some interesting complexity to the crowd scenes.Reading some of the backstory on Wikipedia, I agree with others here that I am amazed (and delighted) this movie made it to the screen in as good a form as it did. With changes in cast, support, and having to work through the special effects house bankruptcy, I would say they did a heroic job turning out a very good movie. I was not even aware of the cinematic release, and I stumbled across a poor copy on YouTube. This prompted me to go buy the DVD, and I am glad I did. Not only was it much better quality and not cropped at the edges like the YT version, but it had some nice bonus features I also enjoyed watching, e.g. the "making of" in several facets was best, giving some insight into the creative process, the Legend and Lore of the Seventh Son (not great but passable), and a few entries in the Visual Effects Gallery. If there is a BluRay with even more features, I might pick it up, too. I know I would have paid twice the modest price the DVD cost, which was less than half the price of a movie theater ticket these days.Whenever I read critics picking apart this or other good or just plain enjoyable movies, I am reminded of a definition of "critic" I once read: "A critic is a person who, having no talent of their own, feels eminently qualified to pass judgment on the talent of others." Take that as you may.

As a fan of the books, I was disappointed to see that the director had clearly never read them himself or, indeed, ever been to England, where the story was supposed to have been set. (I say this as the film bears very little resemblance to the book and the scenery is nothing like the English landscape either). This is a perfect example of what happens when the author has no clout in Hollywood and allows a director to simply do whatever they like. Obviously Sergei Budrov thought he understood the book better than the author, so happily stuck two fingers up at the fans and made it up as he went.

HORRIBLE just plain bad. I didn't start with high expectations but that didn't stop me from being severely disappointed. Had I been watching in a theater I would have asked for my money back. Between the predictable story line and the acting seen in a middle school play, I can just ask you to save yourselves the time. I would have stopped maybe ten minuets in but I was with my family so I had to sit through the whole thing. It's so predictable and just so stereotypical of a fantasy movie. The forced love story was just absolute trash. do not watch this movie it is quite possibly one of the worst I have ever seen and iv'e seen Beverly hills Chihuahua