Terry Gilliam (The Brothers Grimm | Tideland)

2005 | The Brothers Grimm
Stale. That's the word that pops into mind when I think of this movie. If Gilliam were a chef and Brazil was the best steak you've ever eaten, Grimm would be something approaching soda crackers and 7-Up. The spark of life usually present in his films is neigh-absent here, replaced by poorly computer-animated creatures jumping all over the place. At times -- and this might be an extraordinarily cruel thing to write -- I felt like I was watching Van Helsing.

The story of supernatural scam artists who run into the real thing isn't particularly original. Gilliam has already explored the collision of evil French rationalists with heroic German dreamers much better in Munchausen. Hell, I'm sure Gilliam was well-aware of this: he cast Jonathan Pryce in essentially the same role from that movie. The performances -- with perhaps the exception of Heath Ledger -- were either lifeless or, in Peter Stormare's case, spastic and almost unintelligible (a Swede trying to do an Italian accent in English?).

According to Wikipedia (and according to the DVD commentary), Gilliam didn't like the script, but had no other projects to direct at the time. Fair enough. This was something for him to do because -- due to an undeserved reputation as a madman -- no one wants to give him money to direct his own projects. It worked. Not only did Grimm make a respectable $105 million worldwide -- presumably helping his rep a bit -- but it also helped him line up the financing for Tideland, which was something he really did want to direct. A film technically directed by Terry Gilliam, but not really a "Terry Gilliam Film," I figure. (5/10)

Watched: Blu-ray released by Miramax in 2006. Worst video quality I've seen on a BD so far. Embarrassing.


2005 | Tideland
On the DVD before the movie begins is a short introduction by Gilliam. He predicts that some people will love the film, others will hate it and many won't know what to think of it at all. I think I fall into that latter category. I know I don't hate it, but I'm not sure if there's much to take from this film other than some excellent performances and cinematography.

I've owned the DVD for a year and the movie was released over two years ago. During that time -- patiently waiting to watch the movie at the end of this chronocinethon -- I fastidiously avoided spoilers about the story. Still, I kept seeing one word popping up in reference to the movie: "disturbing. Coupled with the knowledge from the trailer that it was about a girl with a drug-addicted father who escaped into her fantasies, I was prepared for the worst. Memories of Ketchum's sledgehammer-to-the-gut of a novel, The Girl Next Door -- easily the most disturbing work I've ever read or seen -- danced in my head. What horrors were going to befall that poor little girl? What did madman Gilliam have in store for me?

Nothing too bad. I forget, as a horror movie fan, that my definition of "disturbing" is about thirteen levels beyond the general public's. My guess is that normal folks were most bothered by Jeliza-Rose preparing her father's heroin, cuddling with his dried-out, taxidermied corpse and having innocent kisses with a retarded man twice her age . Nothing new for horror fans in the first two instances.

For the latter, J-R and Dickens' relationship certainly had the potential of going the wrong way. I'll admit I felt some tension while watching them, hoping that Dickens' man-body would not overpower his child-mind. I think this tension was a part of Gilliam's intentions for the pair. He mentions in an interview on the DVD that the hysteria in recent years over pedophilia bothers him; that it forces adults to view everything -- no matter how innocent -- though a lens of sexuality. In the end, J-R and Dicken relationship really was purely childish and innocent; Gilliam gets to say to the viewers: "see, you're the one who is corrupt, imaging the evil that wasn't there to begin with."

The film is beautifully shot. The prairies really do look like golden seas as Dickens scuba dives through them. Jodelle Ferland gives what is probably the best child performance in the history of film. She's in nearly every scene of this 120-minute movie and never falters a step, as far as I can see. Guiding a child actor through nearly every single scene of a 2-hour movie while dealing with her limited working hours is also a strong testament to Gilliam's directing prowess. Brendan Fletcher as Dickens is equally as good; he's far more deserving of an Oscar nomination than Brad Pitt was. I enjoyed the world Gilliam created and wouldn't have minded an even longer cut.

But, what's it all amount to? I'm still not sure. Basically, we view a few very odd days (weeks?) in a girl's life. She watches both of her parents die (peacefully) of drug overdoses and sublimates her grief though fantasy and semi-insanity. She stumbles upon a pair of rather improbable characters nearby, who create a sort of substitute family for her. There is a musical cleaning montage. Her substitute family also falls apart, due to the instability of the improbable characters, and she is delivered into the caring arms of a woman who's survived a train explosion. "If you drop them, they bounce," says Gilliam of children. Is that all there is to this film? That kids can survive the damnedest things thrown at them? I don't know. I do know that the more I think about this strange, unique film, the more I like it. That is the damnedest thing. (8/10)

Watched: NTSC 2-DVD set released by THINKFilm in 2007. A failure of a DVD release: these morons present the film in the wrong aspect ratio. It's 1.78:1 on the DVD and Gilliam's intended ratio is 2.25:1. Though they promised they would release a corrected version, it's been a year without any news on this. I'm guessing the real reason for the botched release was a misguided idea that it would make the movie more palatable to the mouth-breathers who "hate them black bars." Embarrassing.

Terry Gilliam (addendum)

2002 | Lost in La Mancha (directed by Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe)
The directors of The Hamster Factor return to shoot another fly-on-the-wall documentary, this time for Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. As fate would have it, they have the incredible luck to be rolling as this film completely falls apart before their eyes within the short space of 6 days. Though plenty of films have been started and never finished, as far as I can tell this is the first behind-the-scenes documentary that actually captured the unmaking as it happened.

Fortunately, the timidity displayed during their previous documentary is gone here. Fulton and Pepe capture the anguish of all involved as they struggle to preserve their film. Ailing Jean Rochefort tries and fails to hid a grimace of pain as he dismounts his horse. A.D. Phil Patterson tries to single-handedly keep everything together before quitting in utter frustration. Gilliam tries to keep his game face on while shooting -- which he pushes to do as often as possible despite accumulating production issues -- but his eyes betray that he's all-too-aware he's in the middle of another Munchausen.

Worth watching for the biblical monsoon/hail storm scene alone. (7/10)

Terry Gilliam (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)

1998 | Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I hate the 1960s. Growing up in the 1980s, Boomer-controlled pop culture incessantly declared the "greatness" of their favorite decade. Seemingly paralyzed by their nostalgia, Boomers were incapable doing much beyond reminiscing over Woodstock, Kennedys, war protests, free love, tuning in and turning on, the summer of love, and the music of their youth. It got old.

Enter Hunter S. Thompson. Just four years after the summer of love, he's already figured out that flower power just ain't enough to fuel a cultural revolution. Drugs aren't a shortcut to enlightenment; at best, they're a way of making the absurd world we live in tolerable and at worst, a great way to annoy the hell out of the swine not using them. The protests and insistence that "all you need is love" aren't going to accomplish much: Vietnam lasted more than a decade with over 58000 Americans killed and the ultimate authoritarian square -- Nixon -- got elected twice (and once in landslide victory). The "high water mark" speech from both the novel and the film sums this up better than I could ever:

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

As for the movie itself, here Gilliam joins Cronenberg in the exclusive club of successfully filming an "unfilmable" film. The script is great at extracting the best film story from the novel. It wisely cuts, for example, the "preparing for the trip" chapters from the beginning of the book and dumps us directly on the road to Las Vegas during the bat-infested desert drive. It also changes just enough to make the story work visually. Towards the end of the novel the narrative becomes disjointed, with the in-book excuse that the editor is transcribing Duke's tape verbatim without any editing. Though the film could've done the same thing -- editing the final days of Dr. Gonzo in Las Vegas randomly -- it might've come off looking like a bad college art film. Instead, they construct it as an adrenochrome flashback. In addition to allowed Gilliam to cut the ending as a mixed-up drug trip, it functions as a sort of ur-drug to cap off the film's journey. After all of the alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, LSD and ether, the mythically powerful adrenochrome has to be the only way for Duke's experience in Vegas to stop.

Complementing the script, Gilliam's shooting style on the film is perfect for the subject matter. The camera drunkenly bobs and weaves when the duo are high on ether. Patterns on carpeting flow like snakes and people's faces mutate during Duke's acid trip. Fish eyes lenses, stedicams and quick cuts make the Circus Circus-ish casino several times more insane and surreal than it would be otherwise. At a bare minimum, this is the best drug movie ever made. Happily, the story has some ideas worth chewing on as well, for those who make the effort.

"Let's get down to brass tacks: how much for the ape?" (9/10)

Watched: NTSC 2-DVD set released by Criterion in 2003. Good picture and sound. I wish Criterion would've put together a real documentary to go with the movie, though the 1978 BBC one was a lot of fun.

Terry Gilliam (addendum)

1996 | The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys (directed by Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe)
This is a fly-on-the-wall documentary that follows Gilliam from the shooting to the editing to the ADR sessions to the test screenings for 12 Monkeys. Apparently, Gilliam decided to have someone document the process in case it turned into a disaster like Baron. That way, he'd have evidence that it wasn't his fault. In the end, nothing like that happened and 12 Monkeys went on to become a huge success.

Perhaps because the movie was largely untroubled, the documentary isn't quite as exciting to watch as it could be. The timidity of the filmmakers didn't help. Early in the film, they announce that they're too scared to point the camera at Gilliam while he's in the middle of yelling at someone. The screen randomly focuses on a craft services table for a moment, but we can't even hear what Gilliam is upset about and it quickly cuts to something else. They lost my support right there. If you're not up to standing in the path of a pissed Gilliam -- granted a scary sight -- then don't accept the job of behind-the-scenes documentarian on one of his movies.

The one bit of the documentary that I did find interesting covered the disastrous test screenings. The agony displayed on the faces of Gilliam and the writers as they learn the results of the first test screening is quite a sight. Confidence melts into confusion and worry which melts into anger. In the end, they decided not to change the film based on the screenings and 12 Monkeys went on to earn $160 million worldwide. Lesson learned, no doubt. (6/10)

Terry Gilliam (The Fisher King | 12 Monkeys)

1991 | The Fisher King
Gilliam's Intolerable Cruelty. I've seen this movie-type a million times: a free spirit teaches the down-and-out main character how to love himself again so that he's able to love others. Also in there: boy meets girls, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. Yawn. Just wake me up when the Red Knight is on screen. (Even my wife, a connoisseur of romance novels, hates this movie).

Rather than complain about the awful script, I'll list what I did like about the movie. I thought Mercedes Ruehl was excellent in her role as The Dude's long-suffering girlfriend. Maybe she was just playing a stereotype -- I've never been to NYC -- but she seemed to have completely inhabited her character down to the tap-tap-tapping of too-long fingernails. The aforementioned Red Knight was pure Gilliam medieval fun. Despite having Robin Williams play the insane character, Gilliam seems to have miraculously reined him in for the most part. The transvestite homeless cabaret singer was hilarious.

I suppose this was a necessary step in Gilliam's career. After the disaster that was Baron, Gilliam needed to prove that he could make a successful movie under budget. He accomplished just that: The Fisher King was a moderate success at the time and generated a profit. Considering the two films that followed this one, I can't really complain. (5/10)

Watched: NTSC DVD released by TriStar/Sony in 1998. Video has compression artifacts visible all over the place dancing in sometimes interesting patterns, but -- given that the disc is a decade old and came out at the dawn of the DVD era -- this isn't a surprise.


1995 | 12 Monkeys
I can't seem to decide if there's anything to 12 Monkeys. Is it hard sci-fi, or just a neat time travel/apocalyptic movie? Do Gilliam and the writers have anything to say here?

There's an attempt at a subplot in the middle of the film that suggests Cole may be imagining his travels through time, but I don't think this has anything to do with the main thrust of the film. It's hard to imagine we're supposed to seriously consider this idea, really. There just isn't enough ambiguity built into the script for it to really go in such a Dickian direction. Cole disappears from his restraints and a locked room in the insane asylum. He gets a WWI bullet lodged in his leg. He correctly remembers that the boy trapped in the well was a hoax. None of these things can be written off on his mental condition by the viewer.

However, the insanity subplot does allow the film to play with the idea of the malleability of memory. Cole's dream of the shooting in the airport -- which is actually a memory from childhood -- constantly changes throughout the movie. His mind -- as all our minds do -- edits his own memory based on the new information he's gathered to that point. Towards the end of the movie, he has such a strong desire for 1996 to be the present that he relegates his memories of his life in the future to delusions. In an -- probably not unintentional -- ironic twist, the scientists in the future choose Cole for his excellent memory.

Perhaps this is set up to contrast with the reality presented in the film. As Philip K. Dick once said, "reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." No matter what Cole talks himself into believing and no matter what he does, fate continues to march him towards his end. Fate, like film itself, unwinds inexorably to its conclusion. Though our expectation for this type of movie is that the hero will figure out a way to save the day, this cannot be no matter how much Cole or the viewers want it. The day was already lost decades ago; the future is the preset and Cole is simply playing his part in history.

Whether all of this qualifies as serious, hard sci-fi or not, I enjoy the movie a great deal. Anything involving time travel, a super-virus wiping out most of the population and insanity is not going to have to do much more to get on my "great flicks" list. (8/10)

Watched: NTSC DVD released by Universal in 2005. Excellent picture and sound.

Terry Gilliam (addendum)

1985 | Brazil: The "Love Conquers All" Version
I went into this with an open mind. Despite admiring the director's cut a great deal, I was thinking: "it's still 100% Gilliam's footage, they have to follow the basic script, the actor's performances won't change: how can it be bad?" It can be plenty bad, actually. Through the power of editing, the idiot suits from Universal cut the film into worthless pabulum. The change in the ending is, of course, the absolute greatest sin. The shot of Lint and Helpmann interrupting Sam's dream in the torture chamber is removed, making Sam's dream of Tuttle's rescue and country living with Jill a reality.

There are a myriad of smaller changes that grate almost as badly, especially if you're familiar with the director's cut. There's only one dream sequence -- "helpfully" surrounded in a sitcom-style white, hazy border so you know what it is -- and it's merely the pleasant part of the first dream in which Sam flies through the clouds and spies Jill. Tuttle is specifically IDed as a terrorist. The rack of TVs playing the Central Services ad at the beginning does not explode. Lines by Jill wisely cut by Gilliam are reinserted, weakening her character quite a bit. Michael Kamen's score is applied in an entirely different way, drastically changing the mood of certain scenes. I could go on, but it's not worth any more thought. (4/10)


2008 | The Madness and Misadventures of Munchausen (produced by Constantine Nasr)
A feature-length documentary found on the 20th anniversary DVD and BD that chronicles the problematic production of the movie. Unlike the debacle that was The Making of Alien³, this documentary is impressively candid. None of the interview subjects have trouble speaking their minds and none appear to have been censored. Eric Idle dubs the whole experience a nightmare, Sarah Polley essentially accuses the production of breaking child labor laws, producer Thomas Schühly talks a whole lot of smack, and Gilliam himself describes how he punched out his own windshield after screaming at a financier. It was all quite interesting and answered all of the questions I had about the making the movie (like, Robin Williams refused to be credited because he hated Schühly). Nice work. (7/10)

Terry Gilliam (Brazil | The Adventures of Baron Munchausen)

1985 | Brazil
Gilliam's masterpiece and, until Children of Men, my favorite dystopian movie. Everything about the film rings pitch-perfect to me, and I think it plays much better in our current political era than it did during the Reagan/Thatcher '80s.

One reason this film works so well is that the universe it creates never violates its own style. I think it's important for comedies -- black comedies especially -- to be consistent in their tone. Jabberwocky, for example, failed at this. Every time something funny would happen, it would jar me out of the taken-very-seriously medieval setting. In Brazil, the retro-idiocy of the design of Sam's telephone clearly exists in the same universe in which old women's faces are stretched like Silly Putty during plastic surgery. I would say the same for the ubiquitous ducts, a receipt for a receipt for a snatched husband, a suffocatingly billboard-enclosed highway, or a stenographer recording every scream of pain in an interrogation transcript. Though bits of it may be absurd if transplanted into our world, nothing ever feels out of place in Brazil.

Speaking of the production design: whoa! Outside of Blade Runner, is there a more confident, original, fully-realized sci-fi world on film? The technology used in the film essentially established an entirely new sci-fi subgenre. Some call it "retro-sci-fi"; I kind of see it as a '30s version of steampunk in a way. The tech combined with the sub-sub-compact cars, the gray suits and the art deco/industrial architecture all create a can't-take-your-eyes-off-it setting in which the story and characters rest perfectly.

Brazil might also be called the start of the so-called "Gilliam Curse." In brief: MCA/Universal studio exec Sid Sheinberg thought the film could be made more commercial in the United States if it were shortened and the depressing ending removed. Gilliam took the fight to preserve his director's cut public and eventually prevailed. Not a bad way to start a "curse": Gilliam got what he wanted and generated a large amount of buzz for his movie at the same time. In the The Battle of Brazil: A Video History -- shot in 1996 -- he seems more amused than anything about the whole episode.

By far, Brazil is the best of Gilliam's unofficial dream trilogy. It might be that it's easier for me to identify with Sam -- I'm no longer a child like Kevin and not even close to being as ancient as the Baron -- but I also think he has the best enemy to escape from using his dreams. Bad parents and young punks with their new "reason" are one thing; being crushed in the gears of an unstoppable bureaucracy is altogether something else. (10/10)

Watched: NTSC 3-DVD set released by Criterion in 2006. I'm glad Criterion revisited this movie and gave it a proper anamorphic transfer. Brazil has too much detail in the background to be stuck with a crappy non-anamorphic made at the dawn of the DVD era.


1988 | The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
I regard this movie almost exactly as I do Time Bandits: it's a nice film, but I can never get into it as completely as I would like. My main complaints are the same as for Time Bandits: the pacing is off and we don't get to go on enough adventures. It takes a long 45 minutes before the Baron leaves the theater on his mission to save the town, and then we only get to visit three fantastic places:

• The Moon (where Berthold is found)
  
• A volcano (where Albrecht is found)
  
• Inside a giant fish (where Gustavus, Adolphus and Bucephalus the horse were found)

We could've jaunted to two more places had three companions not all been found inside of the fish. And, frankly, the inside of the fish was pretty dull, especially coming after the excellent Moon and volcano sequences. Luckily, we do get a flashback tale of the Baron's first encounter with the Sultan to break up the 45 minute prelude a bit, which is quite a bit of fun.

Though I didn't really care for any of the scenes set in the town, the flashback, the Moon and the volcano scenes make the whole thing worthwhile. Oliver Reed's performance as Vulcan is unsurprisingly excellent. Uma Thurman is the spitting image of the Botticelli painting and the scene of her and the Baron dancing in the air is beautiful. The giant moon royals with their detachable heads and split personalities were incredibly creative. The Sultan's "torture organ" had me cracking up out loud. There is a boatload of color, energy and imagination on screen in this movie.

The "Gilliam Curse" really got going during the production of this film. It famously ran far over budget, causing untold stress on everyone involved. Money was so tight, production was stopped for a couple of weeks and it looked like it might never resume. Unlike Brazil, Gilliam wasn't able to declare victory over the curse for this film. A regime change at Columbia resulted in the movie being shoved aside and not supported during its release. It failed to make its money back and, worse, got Gilliam branded as an out-of-control director. Yet, despite all of the behind-the-scenes pain, not one bit of this shows on the screen. If anything, this alone demonstrates Gilliam's ability to stick fast to his vision no matter what else is going on. (7/10)

Watched: Blu-ray 20th Anniversary Edition released by Columbia/Sony in 2008. Excellent picture and sound.

Terry Gilliam (Jabberwocky | Time Bandits)

1977 | Jabberwocky
Even though I'm skipping the Python films in this chronocinethon, it would be impossible not to mention Monty Python and the Holy Grail as it relates to Jabberwocky. Both are comedies set in the Middle Ages starring (all or some of) the Pythons and directed (partially or completely) by Gilliam. Jabberwocky is often called "pythonesque" and was advertised in America as Monty Python's Jabberwocky until Gilliam protested. There are certainly Python-style bits here and there: the flagellant whipping himself with wet noodles, the game of hide-and-seek to find the champion knight, the man pretending to be one of the princess' nuns.

Yet, there's a large difference in tone between the two films which I think illustrates how Gilliam's style and sensibilities differ when detached from his comedy troupe-mates. Holy Grail is purely silly. It has a killer rabbit, discussions of bird flight velocities and men clapping coconuts in lieu of actual horses. Jabberwocky begins with a man being eaten down to the bones by an unseen beast, his corpse causally dropped into the underbrush of a wood. Gilliam is dark; much darker than Monty Python. His version of "it's just a scratch" involves blood splattering across the faces of the king and princess as a knight loses a joust. His silly humor is a man cutting off his own foot in order to be a more successful beggar.

Does it work? Well, Jabberwocky is nowhere near as funny as Holy Grail. I don't think it was meant to be. Other than the humor, Gilliam's also busy playing with ideas of fate and capitalism. Maybe just capitalism. I don't know if a comedy of errors plot counts as an exploration of fate or not. But he was definitely trying to say something about capitalism. Well, maybe the only interesting bit on that subject was the part where the king and the merchants decide that the jabberwocky is good for the economy because it drives people into the city. Mostly, the movie feels chaotic and slapdash. Maybe Gilliam had something he wanted to say, but I have a feeling the enormous task of making his very first solo movie served as a distraction from this.

Most of the energy for the moviemaking seems to have gone into the production design, which is excellent. The Middle Ages are depicted as realistically filthy and decrepit. The castle is packed with details, from guild signs to a family living in a barrel to the unique pennants for each of the knights. I love the king's throne room, cloaked in darkness due to a lack of windows and candles, and constantly raining plaster as the castle rots. It would be worth watching this again just to pick out more of the details stuffed into the background.

Outside of the production design, the movie never worked for me. I didn't care about the main character. The humor was only ever able to elicit weak smiles from me. I wasn't even really interested in seeing how Dennis would inevitably fumble into killing the jabberwocky and marrying the princess. Still, it's not a bad first movie and shows plenty of signs of the director Gilliam will become. (6/10)

Watched: NTSC DVD released by Columbia Pictures/Sony in 2001. Terrible transfer. White speckles -- probably caused by dirt on the negative -- abound and I saw a hair or two dancing on the bottom of the frame towards the end of the film. Compression artifacts and banding are also common, probably partially caused by squeezing this 105-minute movie onto one side of a DVD-10.


1981 | Time Bandits
The first time I watched the movie was when I was already an adult, so I lack any nostalgic childhood memories of it. I wish I had those; I think I would've been nuts about this flick as a kid and would enjoy it more today. As it stands now, I have a hard time fully getting into the film.

The pacing never seemed right to me. It's either that the bandits spent too little time in each historical period, or that they didn't visit a good enough variety of them. Let's see, we got to visit:

• Battle of Castliglione, Italy, 1796
  
• Sherwood Forest, England, ~13th century
  
• Agamemnon's Greece, ~13th century BCE
  
• Onboard the Titanic, Atlantic Ocean, 1912
  
• The Time of Legends

I suppose that's a pretty good variety of time periods and places (though, unsurprisingly, all in Europe). And, maybe, spending more time in each of them would've dragged the movie down. But, due to the rapid pace, we never really got to know any of the characters the bandits ran into other than Sean Connery's Agamemnon. Blink and Ian Holm's hilarious Napoleon or John Cleese's aloof Robin Hood are already gone. I don't even think Evil had enough screentime to be established very well. Perhaps Time Bandits would've worked better as a TV mini-series, or even a trilogy of films? It would've been nice to see the bandits robbing Genghis Khan, the Great Pyramid of Giza before it was finished, or Aladdin of his lamp.

Gilliam comments on the pacing of the movie in the interview found on the Anchor Bay special edition DVD set. He observes that kids never had a problem with it. They were along for the ride and trusted where it was going. I guess I'm not in the right demographic for this movie anymore. I'll have to see what my daughter thinks of it in seven years or so.

Another problematic bit of the movie for me was that there were too many main characters. Six dwarves and a child were more than I was able to keep track of, or, frankly, care about. Randall, the leader, and Vermin, who would eat anything, are the only two dwarves I really remember after finishing the film. I think the number of dwarves could've easily been cut down to three or four without harming anything. Though, I did enjoy watching how Gilliam would stage all seven of these characters in his frames. No small task, to make a pun.

Despite all of my complaining, I like the movie. It's funny -- much funnier than Jabberwocky -- and clever and imaginative. The characters are fun to watch. I love the anti-consumerism / anti-lazy parent message conveyed through Kevin's parents. Their plastic-covered furniture and obsession with appliances were both hilarious and disturbingly real. I'm looking forward to seeing that idea expanded upon in Gilliam's next flick. (7/10)

Watched: NTSC 2-DVD special edition released by Anchor Bay in 2004. No complaints about this set. The audio and video are miles better than the non-anamorphic Criterion edition it replaced.

Terry Gilliam (Non-Python)

Terry Gilliam (1940 -)
Non-Python

1. 1977 - Jabberwocky
2. 1981 - Time Bandits
3. 1985 - Brazil
4. 1988 - The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
5. 1991 - The Fisher King
6. 1995 - Twelve Monkeys
7. 1998 - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
8. 2005 - The Brothers Grimm
9. 2005 - Tideland

The Terry Gilliam (Non-Python) Chronocinethon
12 Apr 2008 - 6 Jun 2008

1977-1981 - Jabberwocky | Time Bandits
1985-1988 - Brazil | The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
(addendum) - Brazil: The "Love Conquers All" Version | The Madness and Misadventures of Munchausen
1991-1995 - The Fisher King | 12 Monkeys
(addendum) - The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys
1998 - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
(addendum) - Lost in La Mancha
2005 - The Brothers Grimm | Tideland

Prev: Quentin Tarantino & Robert Rodriguez
Next: Alfred Hitchcock