Terry Gilliam - C/D, S/D

well this did get some good reviews... i hope we see it eventually

https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/05/19/keep-tilting-terry-with-the-magical-man-who-killed-don-quixote-gilliam-embraces-the-madness/

this film has leaked all over t0rr3nt sites btw. haven't watched it yet.

It came to the film festival here and was *much* better than I thought it would be, like 5/10

A One Night-Only Event!

https://deadline.com/2019/02/the-man-who-killed-don-quixote-trailer-adam-driver-jonathan-pryce-terry-gilliams-1202565160/

so as noted upthread, this movie is readily available in torrent form so last night I watched it. starts as a sort of normal movie and then rapidly goes off the rails into an hour and a half of surreal wandering through gorgeous countryside before breathlessly tying up the plot (such as it is) in the final castle scene, which I loved but is going to alienate anyone who isn't Team Gilliam probably. women in the movie are given absolutely nothing to do, and there is some hamfisted stuff about terrorists and immigrants that made me say thank god they didn't stick with Johnny Depp for the lead role, because Adam Driver overcomes this by being kind of self-absorbedly gentle about everything and it is an amazing performance. saves the movie from coming across as ugly as it might have otherwise. more than anything it reminds me of 12 Monkeys, as Gilliam films go... surprisingly more than Baron Munchausen which I would have expected.

I guess those first couple sentences could refer to many Gilliam movies so let me add I am talking about The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

Sounds cool. Is there still a legal battle going on?

dunno, it's screening in the US on April 10th and had already got a European blu-ray release, so I guess they sorted something out.

Separately, his rival re Brazil, Sid Sheinberg, passed on the other day.

Wow love really does conquer all

lol

hee hee

Anybody else see this today? Just got back and thought... not good. Parts of it - the Quixote/Driver stuff - were fun for me, and it was heartwarming to see it actually existing as a real movie in a movie theater. But the non-Quixote plot elements I thought were terrible, the stuff with the Russian bad guy didn't work for me at all. Lots of hammy acting, Driver working very hard to sell a lot of thin writing. Like some of Gilliam's other weaker moments, a lot of the plot is advanced by people running around screaming each other's names and falling over stuff, which wore thin for me pretty fast. And the handling of the female characters was really embarrassing, two sex objects that exist to be fought over. I'm glad I re-read Quixote earlier this year and had fun picking out scenes and references. But pretty rough overall imho. Honestly would have preferred a version that cuts out everything except Pryce & Driver and went for a more straight adaptation.

Also thought Pryce was a great choice for Quixote and he did a great job with what he had, but I felt disappointed that the script flattened out the character to basically comic relief. Q is obv one of the richest characters in fiction, but here it felt like he just kind of shows up and does schtick to activate the various setpieces.

A large part of Gilliam's problems stem from believing in his talents an abilities far beyond anything justified by his output. And that applies both to him and to anyone who has bankrolled his films in the past three decades.

his films were good for the first of those 3 decades & he’s barely had anything funded in the latter two


tho they might have been better if he’d had money

One Eye Open otm

the first 2/3 of Quixote wasn't that bad. (Driver as Sancho Panza is a good joke, and his physicality makes for its own action movie.) The last 40 mins is pretty much the usual TG mess.

wait how did you see this? I thought it was still in legal limbo

it's streaming on Amazon and the Blu-Ray was released on June 4th in the US, earlier this year in Europe. Also it's heavily torrented.

Very limited theatrical run in April too.

ah ok thx

it seemed to get zero promotion, not surprising it's invisible (it's not the triumph of filmmaking you'd hope for from 25 years of production, but Driver is great in it)

like many gilliam misfires, i felt like I could see the bones of a really good film buried somewhere in there, but it never quite makes it out from underneath all the mess.

That's how he gets me every time, even after being disappointed so many times, theres always this sense that theres a great movie thats tantalizingly close to snapping into place, but then it just lurches and stumbles around and smashes into stuff until it collapses from exhaustion.

He actually had a pretty good streak going until Fear and Loathing. Then there was a long gap, and it's been kind of flop-city ever since then.

the last one that entirely satisfied me was Time Bandits

I would say Brazil but... yeah

no wait I mean Baron Munchausen

twelve monkeys and id listen to a case for parnassus

Time Bandits is my fave - what a batshit movie. But I really like 12 Monkeys and Fisher King.

A strong read.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/12/sarah-polley-terry-gilliam-run-towards-danger-baron-munchausen-interview

Very well written. Also solves the puzzle of why she didn’t use any explosives in Stories We Tell.