2009 · Wes Anderson · 87 min · Animation, Comedy, Adventure
Fantastic Mr. Fox is Wes Anderson's most purely enjoyable film, a stop-motion heist comedy that translates Roald Dahl's anarchic energy into Anderson's meticulously crafted visual world.
1996 · Danny DeVito · 98 min · Comedy / Fantasy
Matilda is the Roald Dahl adaptation that understood the assignment, keep the cruelty cartoonish, the justice sweet, and the child's power absolutely real. Danny DeVito directs and narrates the story of a brilliant girl neglected by her game-show-brained parents and terrorized by a shot-putting headmistress, and Mara Wilson's calm, bookish gravity holds the whole fable together while the telekinesis escalates from levitating carrots to full poltergeist justice. The edges are properly dark for a family film and the finale wraps fast. A generation of readers, teachers, and librarians consider it sacred text, and the newt scene remains immortal.
2005 · Tim Burton · 115 min · Fantasy
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a visually striking but emotionally polarizing adaptation that brings Roald Dahl's darker sensibilities to the screen while dividing audiences over Johnny Depp's deliberately unsettling take on Willy Wonka. It's Burton doing Dahl, for better and worse.