Terry Gilliam can’t get a movie made today to save his life (which is partly his own fault, as his stubborn refusal to compromise borders on being sociopathic), but back in the day, he somehow managed to get the funding to bring his strange and uncompromised visions to life — and Time Bandits certain is both “strange” and “uncompromised.” This tale of a young boy who ends up joining a group of time-traveling dwarves in their multi-dimensional adventures (which includes run-ins with John Cleese‘s Robin Hood and Ian Holm’s Napoleon, among others) is even more bizarre in retrospect — really, Gilliam can’t get a damn Don Quixote movie together, but this weirdo piece of cinema got the green light (and, indeed, got finished)? We’re glad it did, as it’s a fantastic piece of gonzo cinema, a pastiche of Gilliam-isms vomited onto a canvas and called “Art” — we’re especially fans of David Warner as Evil Genius, a bombastic villain prone to blowing up his minions (or turning them into dogs) and delivering random existential and theological musings (“Slugs? God invented slugs?”). Of all the crazy goings-on, nothing quite tops that jaw-dropping ending: “Mum, Dad, don’t touch it! It’s evil!” Whoa!
Director Brad Anderson has a truly great movie in him… and we hope that one day he’ll actually make that movie. For now, he’s somewhat cursed to make films that are almost great, and Happy Accidents is no exception. While Anderson is more well-known for psychological thrillers such as Session 9, The Machinist and Transsiberian, Accidents is his attempt at a romantic drama — one that features a time traveler from the future, played with surprising sensitivity and sincerity by Vincent D’Onofrio. Marisa Tomei is charming and cute as the unlucky-in-love New York gal whose latest lover claims he’s from the year 2470 and has traveled back in time to avoid prosecution for his sister’s death — she thinks the guy’s whacko at first, of course, but as his stories become increasingly strange, so too do they become somehow more believable. It ultimately doesn’t ever quite come together, but Happy Accidents will keep you guessing right up to the very end, making it as much an effective sci-fi mystery as a “quirky” love story.
Well, this one didn’t quite work at all, did it? Disney can certainly be mediocre, but they’re rarely lazy, which makes this by-the-numbers adaptation of the popular video game series more of an oddity than a disappointment. You’ve seen most of this movie before, and better, as it’s little more than a hodgepodge of other popular action-adventure movies with some random references to the video games thrown in “for the fans.” Jake Gyllenhaal (miscast, but he sure looks great) is the Prince in question who teams up with the beautiful Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton, the doomed Strawberry Fields from the latest 007 outing, Quantum of Solace) to keep the forces of evil from releasing the Sands of Time, an act which will effectively destroy the universe (or something); meanwhile, Alfred Molina provides comic relief as a shady ostrich-racing entrepreneur and Ben Kingsley goes further into Anthony Hopkins territory as a classically-trained and formerly classy actor who will now do anything for a paycheck. This confusing silliness has its moments, though we guarantee you won’t remember at least 80% of the movie by the time the closing credits roll.