DARK CRYSTAL + MINORITY REPORT + PAN’S LABYRINTH
by: Nathan Swank
You can’t go out and party every weekend, so on those nights you want to take it easy, Flix66.com has put together a bi-weekly column to help you with your movie selection. The Trifecta is a recommendation of three movies that set a mood, that showcase an actor or director, that acquaint the viewer with a geographic location, or maybe even have some obscure link like a Best Boy or Key Grip.
The eyeballs are a disgusting little body part. They are just fine inside our head but once they pop out of our eye socket they become a whole other world of disgusting. These are three films that feature the eyeball being removed yet still functional in some memorable scenes. Lets be clear, the eyeball must still be functional. Movies like KILL BILL VOL. 2, HOSTEL and I’m sure countless horror films where the eye is being gruesomely destroyed are out of contention. This may seem like an R rated discussion but I will cover the spectrum so people of all ages can enjoy an eyeball out its socket.
THE DARK CRYSTAL- This PG rated Jim Henson Muppet world was a classic in our household. It’s a wonderment to behold with some very strange and scary creatures. Even the plants are Muppet made. One such odd creature is Aughra, the wise old lady wizard, who helps one of the last Gelflings, Jen; pick out a shard to a crystal on his path to heal their world. Aughra has the unusual talent of popping her eyeball out. She can hold it or set it down and it will still see things. It’s like a little mobile camera. These are oddly dark creatures in a sort of a creepy film and I appreciate Jim Henson adding these characters in his children/family movies. I was raised on them and I’m a better person for it. Now if only the nightmares would stop.
MINORITY REPORT- An undervalued intelligent sci-fi thriller, directed by the always great Steven Spielberg, this PG- 13 film is full of scenes involving the eyes or happening because of the eyes. In the future everything identifies you by one’s optical organs. Even walking down the street, advertisements can scan your eye then advertise directly toward you. Police are able to stop murder crimes before they happen with the aid of Pre Cogs who can see the future. This system is called Pre-Crime and raises the question that if you stop something before it happens does it exist? Could there be a flaw in the system? Tom Cruise must find out to prove his innocence before being hunted down by his peers in the Pre-Crime division. The only way to not be identified is to replace his eyeballs from an unlicensed surgeon about as trusty as Dr. Nic of Simpsons fame. He then uses his old eyeballs to get back into the Pre Crime agency and kidnap a Pre Cog. All very exhilarating with eyeball cringe-inducing importance, especially when his eyeballs slip from his fingers as they go rolling away.
PAN’S LABYRINTH- Directed by the imaginative Guillermo del Toro, this is an R rated story about a little girl who creates a horrific fantasy world to deal with an even more horrific real world in 1944 Spain. The specific scene in reference is when the little girl is on a mission to retrieve a blade from a mysterious room underneath the floor of her bedroom. She retrieves the blade but stops and steals some food, awakening the pale man, who is a tall man like monster with yellowish skin and no eyes….well so you think. His eyes are resting on a small plate in front of him as he sits motionless in front of a large table full of food. The little girl steals a couple of grapes, which I can’t imagine how hungry you have to be to steal from a child-eating monster. This awakens the creature, who picks up his eyes and inserts them into his eye sockets. Did I mention his eye sockets are located in the palm of his hand? Yeah, freaky. He chases her down the hall eating a couple of fairy friends along the way. Mmmmmm. I’m getting hungry.
