Going Medieval: 25 films to watch while waiting for Game of Thrones season 8

23) The Tale of Tales (Il Racconto dei Racconti), 2015)

And now for something completely different. Alternately exhilarating and bizarre, The Tale of Tales offers a visually magnificent journey through fascinating narratives you don’t expect and can’t predict. It’s a European dark fantasy film, but it has some Hollywood star power in there, too, including John C. Reilly and Selma Hayek.

The Tale of Tales is a big-screen adaptation of baroque stories by Italian poet and courtier Giambattista Basile, including the earliest-known appearances of beloved fables such as Cinderella, Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty. But beware of this trilogy — from the pregnancy quest of the Queen of Longtrelli in “The Enchanted Doe” to the king’s obsession with a Kafkaesque insect in “The Flea” to the misguided lustfulness of a ruler in “The Flayed Old Lady,” these are not your mom’s fluffy bedtime stories.

Remember Daenerys eating that horse heart? It could have been worse.

The Tale of Tales received generally favorable reviews. The Boston Globe’s Peter Keough called it “luminous” and “magical,” approving of how “It balances otherworldliness and banality, sublimity and grotesquery, wonder and horror.” Critic Michael O’Sullivan of The Washington Post writes that “[Director Matteo] Garrone has created a world of both rich and ugly textures – visual, narrative and imaginative – that transports, delights and imparts disturbing lessons.”

If you’re a fan of challenging, grotesque, sumptuous movies with complex philosophical insights, The Tale of Tales is probably up your alley. Rotten Tomatoes critics love it, with an average score of 82%. Audiences were more split at 52%. It’s not going to appeal to everybody.