Ten Statements About....TIME BANDITS (1981)

"I think the reason I've gotten top billing over you is called...
oh, I don't know, celebrity?"

"Who was that man?"
"That was no man. That was the Supreme Being."
"You mean God?"
"Well, we don't know Him that well. We only work for Him."

1) At the core, this is a children's fantasy, and one of its strengths is how Terry Gilliam makes it a children's fantasy as a child would imagine it, not how an adult would.  Thus it's messy, it's gross at times, it's illogical....and it is sophisticated only to the lengths a particularly bright child can achieve.

2) And let's be honest here; the other strength is Gilliam's incredible attention to detail both visually and story-wise.  I was particularly struck by how the Castle Of Evil in certain shots seems to be made out of Lego Bricks...thus making it something a child can build itself.

3) However, it's not perfect.  It's obvious that Gilliam's script (written in collaboration with Michael Palin) hasn't shaken off his Monty Python sketch structure.  There are moments--like the frequent visits with Palin and Shelly Duvall's lovers--where the film stops so we can get a sketch.  Hell, the whole first half plays out like an extended, star-studded Python episode.  And speaking of that first half....

4) It really could have used some trimming.  I understand that we needed to establish the idea of the time holes and all, but did we really need to spend as much time as we do with Napoleon and Robin Hood?  The Napoleon sequence in particular seems very drawn out.  So does the King Agamemnon sequence, but that one serves the secondary purpose of showing us what Kevin's ideal father would be like before we get the diametrically opposite father figures of Evil and The Supreme Creator....

"What do you mean this is supposed to be a comedy?"

5) While we're on the subject, I like how both David Warner's Evil and Ralph Richardson's Supreme Being are designed as reflections on Kevin's thoughts on what fathers are like.  Warner's is capricious and cruel and prone to punishing for the sake of punishing, while Richardson's is condescending and lecturing to his assistants, making his punishments seem like kindness.  These are both valid ways a child like Kevin might see his own father as being.

6) I find it fascinating that Warner's Evil is obsessed with recreating the world with technology, as opposed to humanity, coming first.  But then, there's a definite luddite-ness to the whole film; it's technology that seems to obsess Kevin's parents to the point of neglecting him, it's technology that tempts the Bandits to their capture by Evil, it's technology that backfires on the Bandits when they're fighting Evil, and it's ultimately technology that ends up delivering Kevin's parents to their fate.

7) As much as I liked Sean Connery's Agamemnon--and I liked him alike--he seems to be in an entirely different movie.  Whereas John Cleese's Robin Hood and Ian Holm's Napoleon are aware they're in some form of a comedy, Connery plays his role absolutely straight.  Even the one moment that could appear comedic, where he does a magic trick for Kevin, is done very seriously.

In its last days, some of the members of Menudo were...
Questionable Choices.

8) I appreciate how everything that Kevin experiences on his adventure can be ascribed to a dream he has inspired by his toys and surrounding and exacerbated by what we learn in the very last sequence has been happening to his house....but attention is never drawn to this fact.  We see the items that might inspire his fantasy in very tiny glimspes so that if we catch it, that's good but if we don't we still get a strange adventure.

9) I totally adore the way Warner has this weird sort of dynamic with his three minions.  There's an active....affection Evil seems to have for these three misshapen lackey, and yet he is incapable of showing that affection except through cruelty and torment.  And the even weirder thing is how much the minions seem to delight in this, to the point that they cheer when they're about to be destroyed.

10) You know, that ending leaves a strange taste in my mouth, especially given what The Supreme Beings says about Kevin's future.  It seems maybe too dark a note to end the film on, even for a film like this that has some really, really dark notes.

Overall...a good children's fantasy that marks a particular moment of development in an excellent director, this film is glorious for its flaws and a compelling watch.

Ten Statements About....THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944)

Apparently in the afterlife, you're made to dress as if you were
in the school play....

"You don't know about this woman, my first wife Irena. You don't know what happened to her just because she told lies to herself and believed them."

1) And here we have, yet again, another film that couldn't have been made in the here and now, simply because this film chooses to move forward from the original while violently changing its tone away from a horror and into a family fantasy steeped in psychology and fairy tale mythology. Hell, I wonder how they pulled it off back in 1944.

2) Maybe it was her accent, but after watching this I wonder why Simone Simon didn't have a larger career. She's got this definite charisma that draws your eye, and even though she has a very small part, the scenes she's in she just dominates.

(Update: After hearing the commentary, it turns out Simone Simon didn't have a larger career because she was a nasty, complaining lil' nit....)

3) I love how the script by DeWitt Bodeen (with uncredited assists from producer Val Lewton) seeds the story with a number of fairy-tale analogs that help emphasizes that this story is a fantasy about story telling. Mrs. Farrin's house, in particular, is unapologetically the movie's witch's house...although the script flips the story elements so that it's Elizabeth Russell's Barbara and not old Mrs. Farrin who's the witch....

She may live in a witch house, but this is not the witch...

4) God, do I love Nicholas Musuraca's cinematography. It totally plays to Lewton's sensibilities, and many of the visual compositions--like the sequences where we see how Ann Carter's Amy segues from the real world to the fantasy one occupied by Irena--are breathtaking.

5) Okay, let's get the biggest weakness out of the way...I recognize that Ann Carter's performance as Amy is in keeping with the standard of child actors of the day, and that this breathy, recitation-style of emoting was acceptable back then. But, to be fair, it does not age well, and in the modern age her performance can grate, as can....

6) ...for different reasons, Sir Lancelot as Edward, the Reed's butler/cook. Edward, quite frankly, is ever-present, talks in a pronounced accent and seems to be, well, not very competent in his job. I'd almost assume that Edward is a comic relief character except that he's treated totally seriously--even with respect by the Reeds. It's a weird performance, weirdly written that might have made sense at the time but now makes no sense.

7) It's to the credit of Lewton as a producer that he uses major footage shot from two separate directors....yet the film itself looks seamless, especially when you look at scenes where shots from both Gunther Von Fritsch and Robert Wise are intergrated in the same scene.

The real hero of this production may very well be Nicholas
Musuraca's cinematography....

8) Another thing I don't think they could get away with if they remade this--much like in the original, this film never commits one way or another, leaving it to the audience to decide if what they're watching is just a figment of Amy's imagination or an actual ghost story.

9) Even though this film does carry over many characters from the original, the most intriguing figure has to be Elizabeth Russell's Barbara Farrin. I won't go so far as to say that Russell, who appeared as Irena's countrywoman in the original, was beautiful--but she certainly was striking, and I like how the film may give us visual cues to make us think of Barbara as the real witch in this movie's witch house...yet seems to have a strange bit of sympathy for her, never letting us forget that her madness and extreme actions come out of living as an outcast from her mother's love.

10) I like how this film not only completes Amy's character arc--allowing her to integrate her imaginary life with her real life in a way that makes her a fully functioning person--but Oliver's--allowing him to finally accept what happened to his first wife and making unafraid to discuss her.

Overall...while prolly not what people who saw the original expected, a wonderful and unexpected little psychological fantasy that takes elements of the first story and builds on them to create something unique.