Barbara VanDenburgh

USA TODAY Network

The best cinema transports viewers, at least for a couple hours, to another world. So naturally it's a medium well-suited for fantasy. Like this week's return to the world of Harry Potter, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," these 10 visually stunning films represent the best of a genre where imagination runs gloriously amok.

10. 'The City of Lost Children' (1995)

Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s French tale gracefully tiptoes the line between fantasy and horror, populated with such wonders as conjoined twins, a talking brain, narcoleptic clones and Ron Perlman speaking French. A demented scientist incapable of having dreams kidnaps children to steal theirs in a plot that’s every bit as twisted and surreal as its disorienting visuals and steampunk verve.

9. 'The Last Unicorn' (1982)

It’s a children’s classic, but to call the animated adaptation of Peter S. Beagle's plaintive fantasy novel a movie for children would be to do it a tremendous disservice. Upon discovering she is the last of her kind, a unicorn goes on a quest to discover the fate of her species. Along the way she is transformed by magic into a woman – just long enough to find and feel mortal love before being made to lose it. There’s tremendous melancholy in a creature of innocence burdened by regret.

8. 'Labyrinth' (1986)

Jim Henson's final feature film was a commercial failure upon its release, but it's since gained such a titanic cult following you'd never guess. That's partly because '80s kids are finally old enough to feel nostalgia. But there's something genuinely fascinating about this last great hurrah of practical-effects magic in children's fantasy filmmaking. David Bowie stars as Jareth, the Goblin King who whisks Sarah's (Jennifer Connelly) infant brother to his kingdom populated by fantastical creatures made real by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. And there's nothing not awesome about Bowie singing and dancing with puppets while wearing the tightest possible pants.

7. 'The NeverEnding Story' (1984)

In a decade full of them, this is the great children's fantasy film of the '80s. It's based on German writer Michael Ende's classic novel about a bullied boy named Bastian who escapes into a book and finds himself the key to saving the fantasy world of Fantasia and its Childlike Empress, who are threatened by a forced called "The Nothing." The escapist fantasy and thrilling heroics are dreamed to life with the help of a host of practical effects, none more impressive than luckdragon Falkor, a 43-foot-long motorized puppet covered in scales and fur. The best part, though? The film's most potent magic is that the power of reading and imagination.

6. 'Pan’s Labyrinth' (2006)

Real fairy tales are dark. Rumpelstiltskin rips himself in half. The evil queen in “Snow White” is forced into red-hot iron shoes and dances herself to death. Little Red Riding Hood gets eaten by the wolf. The Little Mermaid? Yeah, she’s toast, too. Guillermo del Toro understands that’s part of their appeal, and so his Spanish-language fairy tale doesn’t skimp on the darkness, even for the sake of Ofelia, the film’s cute child protagonist. Set during the Spanish Civil War, there’s a fascist military stepfather to contend with — and he’s only slightly less terrifying than the Pale Man (or, as you may remember him when you wake up screaming in a cold sweat, the freaky dude with eyeballs in his hands). A crack combination of makeup, animatronics and CGI help make this del Toro’s most visually arresting movie.

5. 'La Belle et la Bete' (1946)

It's silly to quibble over which version of "Beauty and the Beast" is superior as they're both utterly perfect in their own distinctive ways. But if one must be ranked higher, the edge goes to Jean Cocteau's sparkling black-and-white adaptation. The magic is old school, the camera fakery ancient, and it's all the more stunning and otherworldly for it. Few scenes in cinema are as filled with such dread and wonder as Belle (the radiant Josette Day) roaming the halls of Beast's enchanted castle, the corridors festooned with living hands that point the way. It was a needed dose of magic in post-WWII France.

4. 'Spirited Away' (2001)

It's one of Hayao Miyazaki's most gorgeous films (and they're all gorgeous), perhaps because the unhinged fantasy gives his imagination room to run wild. It tells the story of 10-year-old girl Chihiro, who ends up trapped in the spirit world after a witch transforms her parents into pigs. The resulting journey is a little like a Japanese "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," and it's just as appealing — it won the Oscar for best animated feature and remains the highest-grossing film in Japanese history.

3. “The Princess Bride” (1987)

Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles – what more could you ask of a movie? And all you have to do is stomach some of that kissing stuff. True love conquers all in Rob Reiner’s adaption of William Goldman’s 1973 novel, which trumps its source material with wit and charm in a celebration of storybook tropes. On top of which it’s the world’s most quotable movie this side of Monty Python.

2. 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy (2001-2003)

We can be forgiven for being a mite skeptical that Peter Jackson, Kiwi director of splatter horror and naughty puppet movie “Meet the Feebles,” could pull off the impossible: a respectable adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s thousand-plus-page tome, the alpha and omega of literary fantasy. But thanks to a ton of money, even more time and an obsessive attention to detail, he brought Middle Earth to glorious life and populated it with hobbits, orcs, elves, dwarfs and Ents – though perhaps nothing is more impressive than marrying the talent of Andy Serkis with the motion-capture technology that made Gollum possible.

1. 'The Wizard of Oz' (1939)

Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) leaving sepia-toned Kansas for the glorious Technicolor world of Oz is the stuff of movie magic. But the wonder of the best-loved film adaptation of L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" — and one of the best-loved films of all time — goes far beyond the technical wizardry of tornadoes, a talking tin man and flying monkeys. It's still a classic more than seven decades later because of how deeply it taps into the dreams and fears that fuel childhood.