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Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Film Comment: Time Bandits

Film Comments: Time Bandits, 1981, PG, Color, Great Britain.
Directed by Terry Gilliam.  Cast: Craig Warnock, John Cleese, Sean Connery, Shelly Duvall, Katherine Hellmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Sir Ralph Richardson, Kenny Baker, Peter Vaughn, David Rappaport, David Warner.
Plot Synopsis:   A young boy named Kevin (Warnock) hears a commotion in his closet  and, then, is surpised when an armored knight comes crashing into his bedroom.  The next night, a group of overly excitable dwarves abduct the boy and take him on a wild adventure across time as they run from Evil Incarnate (Warner) and also from the angry Supreme Being (Richardson).  It seems that the dwarves have stolen God's map of the universe and are using it to collect treasure and wealth.  God, otherwise totally uninterested in His universe, is annoyed at the loss of His map.
     A final confrontation between Evil Incarnate and the Supreme  Being leaves everything destroyed.  God gets His map back and Kevin is unceremoniously returned to his home, orphaned, and left to fend for himself. 
     The message of the film is that there is no meaning to life or anything else.  We exist as specks of dust on an insignificant speck of dust within a massive dust cloud.  God may exist, but He is uninterested in our affairs and will be irritated if we bother Him.  
     This nihilistic philosophy has been adopted by many modern people, especially in the form known as materialistic determinism, which holds that we are merely the sum of our chemical and physical processes, completely devoid of free will, and, in the most extreme versions of this philosophy, even of conscious thought.  Since there is no meaning outside of the physical processes involved, there are no moral absolutes. 

Friday, July 17, 2009

Film Comment: The Man Who Could Work Miracles

Movie Comments: The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936)

     Roland Young (1887-1953) was one of those constantly working, highly talented, and versatile actors of the early Twentieth Century who could elevate any part he played, even if the film he was in was, itself, inferior.
     The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936), remade as the comedic Bruce Almighty with Jim Carrey in 2003, plays it straight instead of going for the yucks.  The special effects are astounding for 1936.
     The gods wonder what would happen if they suddenly gave the full range of their powers to a man.  They choose an unlikely little guy (Young) who is an unnoticed clerk working in a department store.
     At first, the man plays with his new powers, but, soon, he gets ambitious.  He's going to fix the world.  That's when the trouble starts.  He quickly learns that divine is divine and human is human.  
      

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Film Comment: Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter

The sacriligious comedic film, Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter, an otherwise almost totally worthless piece of anti-Christian garbage, gets this one point right.  The resurrected Jesus, a kung-fu master and all-around cool guy, tells one of his followers, "My death was never the end of the story."