Fantastic Movie. Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt at their best. Love the Story. A

Gilliams best effort marginally from the full length version of Brazil. A lurid descent into madness. Willis and Pitt are on career best form and the ending packs a real punch

A+

I'd agree that Gilliam is at his best, though Brazil is equally masterful. One of Willis' best performances, second only to Die Hard. Pitt creates a supporting character more remarkable and memorable than Tyler Durden, in my opinion. Utterly fantastic work. The ending is touching, sharp, and perfectly finishes off this modern classic.

"I'm in insurance" was fantastically appropriate - funny and grim (like so many elements in Gilliam's pictures) and a great finale for the film.

I enjoyed it while I was watching it, but you know, I never had a desire to watch it a second time, so I graded it lower...

One of the all-time great science fiction works, as visionary and thought-provoking as Blade Runner or even Gilliam's own Brazil. Willis gives his best performance here, but he's outdone by Pitt's incredibly frenetic turn that's unlike anything he's done before or since. Even Stowe isn't out of her league here, though. The story is very layered and offers quite a lot to think about. The climactic scene is beautifully magnificent, and the last lines fit perfectly. The scenes in the mental hospital are creepy and yet so funny in their own way. Lots of dark humour on display here. Fantastic production design and suitably bizarre cinematography. In my top ten.

Loooove the last line.

Brazil is probably better, though.

I've been on a Gilliam kick the last few days, and this is one of his best.

1 Brazil
2 Adventures of Baron Munchausen
3 12 Monkeys
4 The Fisher King

I realize I never commented on this, after seeing it a month ago

A+

What makes this movie so special for me is not the sci-fi storyline, which is pretty standard for the genre, but rather, Willis' character himself, and his entire internal conflict. It's kind of beautiful actually, seeing him experiencing the real world bit by bit and eventually giving himself into sure death just for a few more weeks of living in it. The idea of having a man from an underground future who has never experienced things like fresh air, love, friends, regular life, movies, etc. and then watching him experience all of it, is a very very bril and enlightening idea for a film IMO.

It's almost a love letter to life... While it's of course a dire apocalypse film, this movie is actually kind of happy, it has joy. Cole feels joy even though the world is ending, because he for once feels.

Not that the sci-fi built future isn't great of course, it is. It's a very well directed movie, I've made a note to visit more Gillem films. Up there with career best performances for Willis and Pitt, Stowe is very good as well. The ending is something I saw coming, though it's still strong.

Anyways, I LOVED it. It'll probably stand as one of my favorite sci-fiers. And I now own it in my collection.

Twelve Monkeys

Well I finally got around to watching it. It starts off quite weird and remains so for about 40 minutes or so before you realise what's going on. Very much how I expect a Terry Gilliam movie to pan out. It was manic to begin with, and the set designs all seem weird until you get to the outdoors, then the film seems to normalise somewhat. Then once you get engrossed into the story it's pretty effective and you keep guessing at what might happen. The second half is very good leading to an ending that I didn't see coming, and the last lines; "I'm in insurance", I laughed and thought that was very appropriate. But I suppose the apocalypse still happens then, so it's kind of a downer (unless I missed something).

I thought that Bruce was great throughout, and Brad was surprisingly not in it as much as previously thought, but still pretty brilliant (shame he doesn't get much chance to act in those roles nowadays). In fact, that could be said for Willis too, what is it about young actors, they do all their crazy stuff in their youth and keep the boring roles for later on. Anyway, I was so happy to see David Morse in this, I kind of like that chap a lot.

It's funny that this came out within the same year as Outbreak, also about a deadly virus and monkeys. I think some inter-studio eavesdropping may have taken place there. I envisage that one studio overheard that Universal was making a movie "about a virus" and it was "called something to do with monkeys" and so Outbreak was written to counter.

Anyway...

Great plot, good execution, career defining performances and superbly written. This must be one of the first of those movies that mixes up the order of events. I'm glad I've seen this now. It was like one of the big movies of the 90s that I didn't see and it left a gaping hole in two stars' filmographies. Also, people rave about how good it is. I suppose if I saw it back then, I may have been on that bandwagon too, but I've seen it almost 17 years after it first came out, and since then there have been a lot of time travel movies and such, so for me it's just "fine" (good sci-fi enjoyment), but nothing spectacular.

B+

Oh come on, out of everything I said, you had to pick the one thing where you could reply by being the biggest arrogant smart-ass?

I don't actually care which movies came first in having non-linear timelines, plus if you were really being a smartass you'd have seen that I am in China and therefore cannot view imdb.

But because I'm such a polite person, thanks for the link

I could've responded in a much more arrogant, asshole fashion. You're lucky I was as polite as I was.

I suppose you've to ask yourself one question....do I feel lucky?

Go ahead, make my day.