Time Bandits

Dir: Terry Gilliam, 1981 (8.6*)

Terry Gilliam's most accessible and entertaining movie, produced by George Harrison's Dark Horse films. It begins with a small boy fantasizing about knights in his room, suddenly he is invaded from beyond the wall by a band of midgets, who, it turns out, have stolen God's map of the time portals and are using it to cavort through history. The boy gets gladly swept up into their adventure, and along their way meets Robin Hood (John Cleese), King Agamemnon (Sean Connery), and Napoleon (Ian Holm). We eventually meet Pure Evil itself, David Warner, and a peturbed but grandfatherly Creator, James Mason. In a funny recurring gag, whenever the dwarves fall into a new era in time, they always interrupt Shelley Duvall in a romantic interlude! A time travel classic for all ages.

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12 Monkeys

Dir: Terry Gilliam, 1995 (8.2*)
A murky, disturbing sf apocalypse film. Bruce Willis plays a criminal routinely "reawakened" in order to be sent back into the past by a state-operated time travel operation that is attempting to find the cause of a worldwide virus that nearly exterminated all of mankind. Willis is told to find a group of activists called "12 Monkeys", who turn out to be led by Brad Pitt, in a definitely psychotic and interesting role. Surprisingly captivating and a pretty danged good story, Gilliam’s most accessible and "normal" film, if any Gilliam film (Brazil, Fisher King, Time Bandits, Baron von Munchausen) can be called that.
[Note: this film was inspired by the short bw photo-montage film of Chris Marker, La Jetee, from 1964]

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Brazil

Dir: Terry Gilliam, 1985 (9.0*)

This outrageous and scary SF-fantasy will forever be debated: critics loved it, some moviegoers did not. Personally, I think it's Terry Gilliam's (Time Bandits, The Fisher King) best: daring, inventive, ambitious, and unique. It's a dystopean future society, controlled by a fascist intelligence system, one in which lead character Jonathan Pryce escapes his dreary reality into fantasies where he sees his "angel of love" (Kim Griest), and constantly hears the song "Brazil". Katherine Helmond ("Soap") is perfect as his ditzy mother, contantly getting facelifts and boyfriends.

Robert De Niro has a rare comedic part as a rogue repairman, who fixes appliances without proper paperwork and authority, which makes him a "seditious terrorist" wanted by authorities. Bob Hoskins is also a repairman, the antithesis of De Niro, who is a stickler for bureaucracy. Ian Holm is a paranoid, spineless manager, who depends on employee Pryce to solve his mistakes; and fellow Monty Pythoner (along with Gilliam) Michael Palin is a friend of the family's who happens to be a government torturer. Not for all tastes, but very rewarding if you give it a chance. Won numerious critics awards as film of the year.

Quote: I 'members 'im every day at work: "ere I am, J.H."

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