Word: eviler
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...capable of playing games with the audience, using his softened image for deceptive purposes. Until he whispers his last devastating line in Ragtime, the audience is likely to think of Police Commissioner Rheinlander Waldo as an agreeable authority figure, when he is actually the picture's symbol of evil genius...
...eerie lights of the encampments, the unreal G.I. show, Wagner pouring out of choppers. Francis Ford Coppola comes so close to coaxing this monstrous myth into flight. Yet, at the end he fails because he abandons it. Making myth isn't enough for Coppola, he has to lay bare Evil. But a behemoth--like Marlon Brando, fingering his pate in semi-darkness and blubbering out The Hollow Men isn't Evil. Conrad knew that Evil isn't shown, but alluded to, when he wrote "The horror, the horror". Isn't that why we have myths and symbols after...
...talents, underuses Cleese's and doesn't use Connery at all-there's no way to turn him into a figure of antic misanthropy. The film finally regains its footing, with the supernal battle between a dithery Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson) and a technocratic Evil Genius (David Warner) who has his own ideas about creating the world ("I would have started with lasers, 8 o'clock on Day One!"). But by then it has forfeited any residue of good feeling. Who can care about six dwarfs when they're all Dopey...
...degeneracy ("SMUT" and "The Masochism Tango") and human ineptitude in all its inglorious splendor. At the root of all Lehrer humor seemed to be the assumption that things could get better if only people stopped screwing up. He looked not for malevolence but rather for benign stupidity--not for evil but for incompetence...
...tale remaining: irreverent, bellicose, and tenuous in its morality. Time Bandits has a lot of heart, despite the clunky presence of some unworkable scenes, unbelievable sets, and untalented actors. It addresses itself to children and the child in everyone, demanding answers, imparting few. Kevin asks the Supreme Being why evil exists and learns "it has something to do with free will," a sad lesson for any eleven-year...