Time Keeps on Slipping

You can stuff all your Harry Potters in a sack -- Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits is the greatest children's film of all time. Kevin is an imaginative English kid from the suburbs whose parents are hooked on TV and gossip. It's gonna be a dead-end life for the lad, until Randall (David Rappaport) and his little gang of thieves burst into his room late at night (little because they're all little people). The gang has a map that shows all the wormholes in the fabric of time and space, allowing them to skip through history as they please. Kevin gets swept up with this gang of time-traveling mercenaries and ends up meeting King Agamemnon, Napoleon and Robin Hood, as well as some not-so-nice people. And he never whines about returning home nor even mentions his parents, because why would he miss those drips? On top of all that, Time Bandits is beautiful to look at, in that grimy Gilliam fashion. Time Bandits screens at 8 p.m. tonight at Schlafly Bottleworks (7260 Southwest Avenue, Maplewood; 314-968-7487 or www.webster.edu/filmseries) as part of the Strange Brew film series. Admission is $4.
Wed., Sept. 3, 8 p.m., 2014