Tag Archives: Film

The Devil’s Details: I’ve Seen That Minotaur Before

I am admittedly a bit of a technology geek. Not that I’m into coding and all that mess – I just like my toys. Life would be impossible without my iPhone, and very, very difficult without my iPad.

The truth is, though, that whilst I do read, check news, and sometimes even work on these devices, I actually end up mostly just playing games on them. Kind of sad, right?

One of the games that has sucked my time more than others is a thing called Infinity Blade. It’s honestly a pretty basic, boring game: you are a knight, you fight your way through hordes of demons to reach the God King, and try to defeat him. If you don’t, you go back to the beginning. If you do…you go back to the beginning. The main draw of Infinity Blade is that, for a mobile device like an iPhone, the graphics are actually pretty decent.

However, that’s really besides the point. One of the enemies in Infinity Blade is a ghastly creature called a Rookbane, who sports a scary horse head and wields an unpleasant-looking sword:

Rookbane from Infinity Blade. Kind of creepy.

Rookbane from Infinity Blade. Kind of creepy.

The other day, Little Satis and I were watching Time Bandits for the first time. There’s a scene where the little boy Kevin inadvertently helps Agamemnon defeat a minotaur in ancient Greece:

Minotaur from Time Bandits. Also kind of creepy.

Minotaur from Time Bandits. Also kind of creepy.

Is it just me, or is the resemblance uncanny?

 

Movie Night: Explorers

Year: 1985

Director: Joe Dante

Production Company: Paramount Pictures

Leads: Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix
explorers_01This one was very much chosen by the title and synopsis. I’d never heard of it before – which doesn’t mean anything – and Little Satis certainly seemed taken by the plot. For me, I was drawn in by the thought of watching a little Ethan and River.

The plot requires a fairly serious suspension of disbelief, but the good news is that it makes this abundantly clear from the very outset. Little Ben Crandall has a dream of a state-of-the-art 80s 3D circuit board, and describes it to his friend Wolfgang, who happens to be a computer geek from a family of lab-coat-in-the-kitchen-wearing scientists. When Wolfgang builds the circuit, it turns out to create a sphere of pure energy (yes – bear with me on this one) that can be directed simply by typing 3D coordinates into a computer program.

Testing it one day on a hill, Ben manages to inadvertently trap Wolfgang inside the sphere, where he discovers that it’s both airtight, and completely excused from all Newtonian physics (no acceleration, no deceleration, no gravity, etc.). Of course, this leads to the idea of building a kid-sized spaceship to sit inside the sphere, so they can go into space.

It’s there that they discover the dreams weren’t an accident – they were sent to Ben by aliens. Aliens who turn out to be…

Well, I wouldn’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it.

Plot aside, there were some genuinely (and surprisingly) powerful moments in the movie. Without delving too deep, we are shown a well-portrayed view of 14-year-old life. There are the geeks, cool kids and bullies, the junior-high crushes, and a deliberate range of backgrounds and upbringings. The opening of the film is particularly well-executed in introducing the characters and their natures; we see Wolfgang stumbling down a morning street with a laughably over-sized stack of school books in his arms (navel-high trousers, face-frame glasses and all), who is naturally stopped by bullies. Arriving on his bike moments after his books are tossed into a neighbor’s front lawn, Ben nonchalantly lets Wolfgang put his books in his basket, and walks the bike to school with him. Then, moments after establishing Ben as the cool kid, we see Ben himself beat up for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. And that’s when the real cool kid – Darren – steps in and saves the day (Darren rides a scooter, so we know for sure he’s cool).

Darren poses an interesting character in himself; though Jason Presson isn’t on the same level as Ethan and River, he does a fine job as a quiet introvert from a broken home, eventually pulled from his shell by the excitement and enthusiasm of his friends. The three have a wonderful dynamic presence with each other, each possessing their own quirks and manners. When they first take their spaceship for a test flight (and decimate a drive-in theater), Wolfgang wants to run test after test; Ben isn’t sure what to think, and Darren, of all people, is jumping to go again.

In the end, there is nothing profound about this movie; it’s not exactly a coming-of-age movie, a children’s movie, or even a comedy. It’s a unique little gem that doesn’t take itself too seriously, has no problem completely fudging reality in favor of plot, and pits three excellent actors together in a very convincing portrayal of teen friendship.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Movie Night: The Avengers

Year: 2012

Director: Joss Whedon

Production Company: Marvel Studios

Leads: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans

avengers-assemble-poster-500x742Well, well, well. Here is a movie both Little Satis and I have been dying to watch for I don’t know how long, and finally decided it was just time to get it out of the way.

I should start by saying that I am a fan of good superhero movies; that is to say, movies that both respect the style and material of the original comic book, while at the same time humanizing the characters by giving them flaws deep enough to destroy themselves, never mind the bad guys. In essence: The Crow = good; Batman & Robin = bad.

One of the most successful of these in recent years has been, of course, Chris Nolan‘s Batman trilogy (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight & The Dark Knight Rises). We are introduced to a Bruce Wayne who fights not for a noble cause but for revenge; a man who has no desire to continue his crusade against Gotham’s underbelly other than for his own self-flagellation, driven by hate and guilt.

But this is the DC Comics universe. Responsible for the two most formidable superheroes ever created – Superman and Batman – Marvel ought to be the underdog, always caught in the shadow of their larger-than-life siblings.

But not so. Other than the recent Batman films, D.C.’s output has been mediocre, at best; meanwhile, Marvel Studios has had nearly incessant success over the past decade with the Blade trilogy, the insanely popular X-Men franchise, Iron Man and Captain America: The First Avenger (I’ll let them off for the first Hulk and Fantastic Four). More than this, though, they’ve carefully built an entire universe of co-existing and overlapping story lines, threading the continuity between Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America in so deft a way that there was really nowhere left to go but: The Avengers.

Though obviously distorted by necessity for Hollywood, The Avengers retains a remarkable affinity for the comic book origins; though many of the characters are different, Iron Man/Tony Stark and Captain America/Steve Rogers are core members of the group, and this is evidenced in the film by the focus of drama on these two (and indeed the conflict that arises between them). Even the story is retained: demigod Loki comes to earth seeking revenge on his brother, Thor. Loki’s power of illusion and manipulation causes near-fatal rifts between the fledgeling group’s members, until they realize that they can only defeat Loki together.

To be perfectly honest, there’s not a lot else you need to know about this movie. In the past, Marvel Studios has done a good job of digging deep into their characters’ history and bringing out the ‘person’ behind the superhero, something that is particularly noticeable in the X-Men films as well as Captain America. While there is an attempt to retain this in The Avengers, the very fact of having an ensemble cast of superheroes dooms this from the beginning: it would be nearly impossible to focus equally on six different characters and still have room for self-reflection.

Not that it matters. Perhaps the most enjoyable thing about The Avengers is that, frankly, it doesn’t try to pretend to be anything other than a mindless, visually thrilling romp of destruction. And at this, it is very successful. Despite the knowledge that at least half of what’s on screen at any given moment was created by ILM, the visuals are nonetheless stunning, and – astonishing, really, in an era of CGI-anything – there are a few moments that are quite literally jaw-dropping, including the ridiculous aircraft carrier scene (if you’ve seen it, you know what I mean).

This is not an intellectual movie. In fact, it doesn’t even advance the stories of any of the individual heroes (something Kurt Vonnegut would understand), and no one leaves any different to how they entered. It’s basically good guys kick bad-guy ass. The genius of this movie is that it works anyway; having come to know the characters so intimately through their previous filmic incarnations, it’s actually kind of relaxing to sit back and watch them blow shit up.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆