Directors: Terry Gilliam

I love Terry Gilliam, because even before I gave two shits about directors, I loved his movies, "Time Bandits" and "The Adventures Of Baron Munchaussen".

This film is an epic childrens fantasy about getting old and dying, and the role of the imagination there in. As always illusions and dreams go hand in hand with minipulation and lies, and the story that can give you a baloon ride to the moon, can just as simply keep you enslaved in your community huddled together in fear of invading and ever present barbarians.

What I like about this film, is the fantastic set designs, and the creative zeal that oozes out of every frame. Not as funny as "Brazil" or "Fear And Loathing", but not as childlish as "Time Bandits", either.

It's just one of those great 80's fantasy films that has a texture CGI can't touch, as well as a genuine sense of humor, history, and a director who cares (maybe too much) about the images he is putting on screen. A classic fantasy story told by one of fantasy and cinema's great directors and visionaries.

There's a scene here were Robert Deniro and Johnathan Price, are escaping from a torture chamber, when suddenly the wind picks up and newspapers and rubbish from the streets, swells up and completely covers DeNiro, when it blows away, he's gone, vanished beneath the trash.

My idea of hell is endless paperwork. And Brazil distills the fears and anxieties of beurocracy into perfect metaphors and scenes like the one mentioned above, where a man is completely erased by the disgarded tissue of the world.

Aside from that, this has some of Gilliam's best direction, music, sets, writing, and performers. It's working title was "1984 1/2" a combo of George Orwell's dystopian sci-fi novel "1984" and Fellini's oneiric and surreal study of the creative process in his film "8 1/2", and if your familiar with these works, this film is a pretty accurat middle ground, albiet in a "Monty Python" kinda way.

Maybe my favorite film ever (it changes from time to time), books have been written about it, and the directors struggle to get it made when studio executives demanded a happier ending.

The imagination and fantasy vs buerocracy and reality. A future which looks like the past. A "future" where terrorism is a daily fact of life, a nauisance like foul weather. A hilarious hell-hole, and pure Terry Gilliam goodness.

Beautiful, bizarre, and heartbreaking. One of Terry Gilliams best films. Based on Mitch Cullin's novel "Tidealnd", this film goes overboard into disturbing territory that Pan's Labrynth always hinted at, but in a much more isolated setting, and with less reliance on magic realism. All the fantasy is definitely in the main characters head, and its the viewers knowledge of the intangibility of the fantasies that gives everything it's tragic and vital quality. Beyond "Psycho", "Alice In Wonderland", and "The Wizard Of Oz", exists a space for this film. One of Gilliam's most dramatic and moving works since The Fisher King. Its arguous and disturbing at times, but it's a one of a kind film. One of the best films of 05, and in the last decade in general, Terry Gilliam back at the top of his game.