Tag Archives: Movies

Movie Night: Time Bandits

Year: 1981

Director: Terry Gilliam

Production Company: HandMade Films

Leads: John Cleese, Sean Connery

time_bandits_movie_poster_01Time Bandits is one of those wonderful films that I started watching many years ago, and somehow never got to finish (like Pulp Fiction – it was nearly ten years before I saw how it ended). Written alongside the Monty Python films, it shares many of the hallmark characteristics (and actors) of those inimitable televisual feasts, not the least of which is their complete and utter disregard for anything making any sense at all. Little Satis has not seen any Monty Python yet, but I suspect the time is coming.

In a nutshell, Kevin is a oppressed and imaginative 11-year-old who is whisked off by a band of six time-travelling dwarves in search of treasure, and on the run from the Supreme Being from whom their time map was stolen (still with me so far?). Enter a series of irreverent clashes with famous moments and figures in history, including Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Castiglione, Robin Hood, and the sinking of the Titanic. The seven eventually end up in the Time of Legends, face off with Ultimate Evil in the Fortress of Ultimate Evil, and are rescued by the Supreme Being. Supreme Being sets things right, sends Kevin back to bed, and everything ends with a hunky-oh-it-was-just-a-dream feeling. Only…

Not giving that one away. All I’ll say is the ending to Time Bandits is one of the most paradoxical and nonsensical moments I’ve ever seen in film, and Little Satis and I were discussing for days afterwards.

It was interesting to watch this film with Little Satis, for he hasn’t grown up with the same British humor that I did. This film, along with pretty much all of the Monty Python canon, is a blend of slapstick, nonsense and subtle wit, and there were a number of times when I had to point out to Little Satis why something was funny.

The poor are going to be absolutely thrilled. Have you met them at all?

Who?

The poor.

The poor?

Oh you must meet them – I’m sure you’ll like them. Of course, they haven’t got two pennies to rub together, but that’s because they’re poor.

This is followed by a fellow who decks every person they give gold to – because it is necessary, actually. Dear me…John Cleese as Robin Hood couldn’t be more perfect. Then again, he couldn’t be more perfect as Napoleon’s extremely tall general; watching Ian Holm as Napoleon Bonaparte descending into a drunken stupor whilst rambling about extremely short military conquerors of the past is one of the most exquisitely funny things I’ve seen. But this was lost on Little Satis of course, because they don’t teach kids about the Napoleonic Wars these days in third grade.

There are some surprising twists in the film, and they are twists of the tiny and subtle kind. A pivotal point is when Agamemnon is talking to Kevin about finding his friends and returning home. He asks Kevin if he wouldn’t like to be with his own mother and father again, and where pretty much any other film would take the heartstring-puller “yes,” Gilliam goes for the “no; it’s much better here.”

Given the limits of technology and budget of the time, the visual effects are splendid. It helps, I suppose, that in keeping with Monty Python’s aesthetic there are many effects which are quite deliberately “obvious”, but effective nonetheless: the giant who rises from the sea with their ship on his head is, of course, simply a man with a ship on his head. Other sets – in particular the scenes in the Fortress of Ultimate Evil – are striking and impressive, and the scene in which the dwarfs swing on ropes from great iron cages above a bottomless abyss is genuinely heart-stopping.

Gilliam hits all the right notes with this gem; from slapstick and nonsense to pithy wit and genuine emotion, he directs a seasoned cast in a delightful fantasy that never takes itself too seriously, yet somehow feels as though it has a serious point to make. If only we could work out what it is…

If anyone else has seen Time Bandits, what were your thoughts about the ending? Is it genuinely impossible, or am I missing something?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

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.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆