From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Jan 23 11:08:28 1996
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From: dune2@gardenia.berkeley.edu (John Robertson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: 12 MONKEYS
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12 MONKEYS
A film review by John Robertson
Copyright 1996 John Robertson
Directed by: Terry Gilliam
Starring: Bruce Willis, Madeline Stowe, Brad Pitt, Frank Gorshin,
Michael Malone, David Morse, and Christopher Plummer.
Perfect Person Rating*: The Perfect Person for this film is is a
person with an appreciation for Terry Gilliam's sense of style, a
lover of science fiction, and The Twilight Zone as well as the top
three stars of the film. The Perfect Person would probably give this
film a 10 out of 10.
Twelve Monkeys is a remake of the film La Jetee (1962), and although I
have not seen the original, I think I understand what it is about, and
have a new appreciation for it. Twelve Monkeys has a plot that we
have seen before, though not often in a Hollywood film.
Bruce Willis plays a man from a horrible future, where mankind has
almost been wiped out by a virus which ravaged the earth in 1996. A
convicted felon, he is volunteered to perform a mission in the not so
distant past, to try and find the origin of the plague so scientists
of his time can create a cure in their time.
Willis' time travel is slightly off the mark, and he ends up arriving
in 1991 instead of 1996, and to make matters worse, he assaults a
policeman and finds himself in an insane asylum after babbling about
his "mission" to find the Army of the Twelve Monkeys and stop a virus
that will wipe out humanity in six years.
Madeline Stowe is Willis' psychiatrist, and Brad Pitt is a fellow
resident of the insane asylum. After several days of treatment,
followed by a return to the future and several trips back into several
pasts, Willis, Stowe and Pitt's lives become intertwined in a web of
causality, flashbacks and flash forwards, and questions about just who
is insane and who isn't.
All three main actors give surprising performances, particularly Pitt,
who although not shy about taking non-leading man, non-beefcake roles
in the past, plays a role that is something of a departure for him.
Twelve Monkeys is a fine film and I recommend it highly to anyone who
comes close to the Perfect Person profile above. Although there are
holes in the film, what time travel film is without them?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1996 by John Robertson. Retransmit freely if unedited. My
opinions are solely my own, and in no way reflect those of my
employer.
* Perfect Person Rating: The Perfect Person Rating is an attempt to
give the reader a new way of understanding my rating. Rather than
give a film a score, either overall, or on several attributes, the
Perfect Person Rating tries to identify the type of person would enjoy
this movie the most. Since a reviewer is by nature someone with a
great deal of experience in what they are reviewing, their experience
may not be the same as someone who is less informed, less jaded, or
more attuned to the subject. Hopefully the Perfect Person Rating will
go further toward eliminating reviewer bias than a simple rating
scale. Comments are appreciated.
From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Jan 23 11:08:36 1996
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From: legeros@nando.net (Michael J. Legeros)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: 12 MONKEYS
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12 MONKEYS
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1996 Michael John Legeros
(Uni)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Written by David Webb Peoples and Janet Peoples, inspired by the
film LA JETEE by Chris Marker
Cast Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, Christopher
Plummer, Frank Gorshin, David Morse
MPAA Rating "R" (presumably for language and violence)
Running Time 130 minutes
Reviewed at General Cinemas at Pleasant Valley, Raleigh, NC (3JAN96)
==
"Try to blend in."
- Willis to Stowe
This wild, weird time-travel tale is equal parts fantasy and
figment. Once again, director Terry Gilliam (BRAZIL, THE FISHER
KING) is charting the waters of madness. Both in his vision of a
decimated future-- where 99% of the human race has perished in a
plague, forcing the survivors to live underground-- and in his
portrayal of a man sent from that future to save what's left of the
human race. The man in question is Cole (Bruce Willis), a convict
from 2035 who is sent to present-day and, upon arrival, is promptly
placed in a mental institution. Sound familiar?
Writers David and Janet Peoples-- working from Chris Marker's
1962 short LA JETEE-- have written a strapping sci-fi saga that
wouldn't be out of a place as a TERMINATOR sequel. Terry Gilliam,
of course, isn't interested in simple, slick story mechanics. He has
something else in mind. Literally. Gilliam takes us *inside* of
Cole's head, to watch as he becomes increasingly disoriented by his
continued trips between "realities." What is real? The question
is a recurring theme in 12 MONKEYS, and one that is ultimately left
to the discretion of the viewer. Even after the dust of a dynamite
finale has cleared, all the answers do *not* stand revealed.
The challenges of this movie are numerous. In addition to the
paradoxes of the plot, there's the shock and disorientation from
stepping into Gilliam's "distorted reality." Skewered camera
angles and exaggerated close-ups are the norm, here. With the
exception of Bruce Willis, the actors all play human cartoons.
Madelene Stowe transforms from a short-skirted psychiatrist to
Cole's raving accomplice. Brad Pitt is a marvel of twitches and
tics as a cross-eyed mental patient. Even old pro Christopher
Plummer, as a virologist, gets to play with a preposterous Old
South southern accent.
The barrage continues with an array of film clips, pop songs,
Hitchcock allusions, and other symbolism. Blink and you'll miss
something spectacular-- such as the shot of a department-store
angel rising behind Stowe. Gorgeous. With a superb production
design and stunning art direction-- based, apparently, on the color
of mucus-- it all adds up to a welcome assault on the senses. In
an era when motion picture have become too safe for their own good,
it's nice (and downright exciting) to see a movie that goes in so
many directions at once, and still lands on its feet. Thank God
for Terry Gilliam.
Grade: A
--
Mike Legeros - Raleigh, NC
legeros@nando.net (h) - legeros@unx.sas.com (w)
Visit the MOVIE HELL site
From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Jan 24 11:06:00 1996
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From: edchamp@apollo.sfsu.edu (EDWARD ROBERT CHAMPION)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: 12 MONKEYS
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Date: 16 Jan 1996 02:58:52 GMT
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12 MONKEYS
A film review by Edward Robert Champion
Copyright 1996 Edward Robert Champion
Rating: ***1/2 (out of four stars)
One could argue that the concept of time travel has been explored
in practically every facet in science fiction to the point of
mind-numbing exhaustion. Endless STAR TREK episodes with alternate
realities, the mainstream foray via the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy and
even a Jean Claude Van Damme film have all derived their stories from
endless repetitions of the same plot, which begs the question, "How
can Terry Gilliam make a time travel film original and different from all
others?"
By drawing "inspiration" from Chris Marker's unique 1962 film, LA
JETEE and extricating the wit and intelligence of David and Janet
People's rather scattershot script, he has, with his amazing use of
visuals, created something unique and original and perhaps produced his most
profound film yet.
The film is about a plague-ridden future sometime in the 2020's
and the recruitment of James Cole (played by Bruce Willis) to find the
leader of the Army of the 12 Monkeys, who may or may not be Brad Pitt.
He enlists the help of a psychiatrist (Madeline Stowe) along the way and
begins to question whether or not his mission is an apparition inside of
his head that he concocted. Is he sick or is society?
The film's look is remarkable. Gilliam has made quite an effort
to retain an interesting, dilapidated look throughout the film, from the
opening shots of abandoned Philadelphia with its bears and tigers running
through the streets to the asylum of the 1990 scenes. Bright colors and
oddly misplaced hues go hand in hand with crumbling walls and decay.
The film is refreshingly chaotic, almost schizophrenic in its
pace, which might cause a viewer to lose himself within the plot. But
plot is not the key factor for this film.
The film continues to evince many of Gilliam's ongoing themes:
the need for fantasy in a decaying world of materialism, the definition
of sanity by those who determine the rules and the definition of sanity
by the bohemian individual and the infiltration of the phantasmagorical
and the outre into industrialized society. Yet 12 MONKEYS is more
pessimistic than Gilliam's other films and Gilliam speaks more with
the voice of a wise sage on the edge of the world than a free spirit.
Instead of the hopeful escape from a feudal and technological society by
an individual's own fantasy, fantasy is engineered via the deranged Brad
Pitt, himself the son of a member of the American elite.
12 MONKEYS echoes many of Kubrick's views of humanity, portraying
man as an ignoble savage, and leaves the audience with quite a lot to
think about as the credits roll. 12 MONKEYS is a deeply visceral film,
one that nearly erases Gilliam's other film for Universal, BRAZIL, out of
existence in favor of Gilliam's more refined and dejected perspective of
mankind.
--
-Edward Champion
edchamp@sfsu.edu
From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Jan 24 11:06:47 1996
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From: ram@mbisgi.umd.edu (Ram Samudrala)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: 12 MONKEYS
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12 MONKEYS
A film review by Ram Samudrala
Copyright 1996 Ram Samudrala
/12 Monkeys/ addresses, among other things, the paradoxical nature of
time travel (and time travel movies) in a parodoxical way. The movie
is highly circular and incestuous: It is the year 2035. A deadly
virus (unleashed in 1996) has destroyed most of the world's
population, enabling the animals to rule the world again. The human
survivors move deep underground and build their cities there; cities
that seem to be mostly composed of prison guards and prison convicts.
James Cole (Bruce Willis) plays a prison convict/time traveller from
this dystopian future who "volunteers" to be sent back to 1996 in
order to allow his virus-ravaged world to move back to the surface.
He cannot change the events of his past. All he has to do is bring
back a pure sample of the virus so his people can overcome it and
become the rulers of the planet.
However, time travel in the year 2035 isn't perfect yet (probably
because they have ex-insurance agents in charge of it). The first
time he is sent back, he ends up in the year 1990, where he is
promptly put in an asylum. He then meets two of the people who play
key roles in the destruction of the human life on this planet: his
psychiatrist Kathryn Reilly (Madeline Stowe) and co-asylum inmate
Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt).
The plot is set up so it looks as though Cole is responsible for
Doomsday. His ramblings about the virus influences Goines' plans, once
his father (the Nobel prize winning virologist whose lab
coincidentally keeps an amply stock of the deadly virus at hand) gets
him out of the asylum. Goines then goes on to become the leader of
the Army of the 12 Monkeys, who the people in 2035 believe are the
ones responsible for unleasing the virus.
Meanwhile, the scientists in Cole's future bring him back and have
another go at putting him in the right year. This time, after a
couple of bumps (notably one in WWI where Cole is shot in the leg), he
ends up in the right year where he once again ends up with Reilly and
manages to convince her of his story. However, Reilly's psychiatry
and the continuous time travel appears to have taken its toll on Cole,
and when he is brought back to 2035 and sent back to 1996 again, he is
convinced that he is just a mental patient with delusions about the
future. This time, however, Reilly convinces him otherwise and
together they try to stop the Army of the 12 Monkeys.
History can lie. Cole discovers this (in 1996) and passes this on to
the future (2035) and becomes a hero. At this point, there are
numerous options to end the story after tieing up the lose ends. But
the story is left very open-ended and the issue of whether there are
more loops in the future and the question whether the past can really
be changed is left unexplained and unanswered.
Viewers of this movie may recall a /Star Trek: The Next Generation/
episode where the Enterprise is caught is a time loop of destruction,
and each time the crew travels back through time, they experience a
deja vu sensation that finally allows them to break out of the
destructive loop. The memory Kathyrn Reilly experiences, that she has
seen James Cole before, could be one such instance. Thus viewers who
like happy endings may wish to imagine another loop where Reilly and
Cole actually manage to save the world. Viewers who like complete
endings may wish to imagine that the people in 2035 were eventually
able to go back to the surface with Cole's help. Cynical viewers may
opt for an ending where nothing changes and everything the people in
2035 do ends up being futile.
While the main focus of this review is on the plot itself, the movie
is worth watching for its amazing cinematography, excellent acting by
all the people involved, and the sci-fi effects.
me@ram.org || http://www.ram.org || http://www.twisted-helices.com/th
From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Feb 1 14:07:57 1996
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From: 73210.2521@CompuServe.COM (Jim Potter)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: 12 MONKEYS
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12 MONKEYS
A film review by Jim Potter
Copyright 1996 Jim Potter
This motion picture is a synthesis of Dante's Inferno, "Blade
Runner" and Diary of a Death Foretold. It begins with the dream
of a prisoner, James Cole, played by Bruce Willis. In the dream
James is a child at an airport who watches as the police gun down
a man running through the terminal. The man then dies cradled in
the arms of his lover, a young woman, played by Madeleine Stowe.
The dream sequence, shot in slow motion has the eerie feel of
deja vu and recurs throughout the picture. It becomes the
leitmotif of inevitable disaster that underlies the film. The
prisoner then awakens. He is in a cage deep in the bowels of the
earth. Visually stunning, this prison consists of stacks of wire
cubes, such as one would find in a laboratory, each inhabited by
a single prisoner with only a hammock to sleep on. Prisoners are
shuttled in and out of their cages by mechanical arms which
transport them to their various "volunteer" assignments.
On its most basic level, 12 Monkeys is a riveting sci-fi
action thriller. It recounts a future society's efforts to
escape subterranean exile by intercepting a deadly virus that has
conquered the earth's surface in an earlier era. Prisoners are
drafted for specimen gathering topside and to travel in time back
to the point of contamination. The scientist/jailers who send
them out on their coerced quest have discovered that the surface
contamination occurred in 1996. However, they have not yet
learned the precise cause of the catastrophic viral release.
Therefore, they enlist prisoners to make the perilous journey and
force them to detect the original virus before it mutates out of
control. This is a dangerous task because time travel is full of
surprises. At one point James is arrested and placed in a mental
institution where he meets the woman who appears in his dreams.
She is a staff psychiatrist at the hospital with a special
interest in the deranged Cassandras who have predicted world
plague at various points in history. She is intrigued by James
and ambivalent about his presumed insanity. At another juncture
James finds himself naked, projected into the middle of a World
War I battlefield. He is mistaken for a German infiltrator by
French soldiers, and is shot and wounded. Survivors of such
misbegotten time travels are sent out repeatedly if they are
lucky enough to be retrieved. Some never return.
The 12 Monkeys of the film title refers to a motley guerilla
band of animal lovers led by a scientist's deranged son, played
by Brad Pitt, who gives an unforgettable performance. The 12
Monkeys are outraged by the inhumane treatment of laboratory
animals subjected to grisly and painful experiments. Scientists
of the future suspect that this group of romantics caused the
release of the virus by freeing laboratory monkeys. Willis'
assignment is to find this group and report back to his keepers.
He faces many obstacles along the way and is finally assisted in
this project by the female psychiatrist whom he kidnaps. They
eventually fall in love and try to escape after Willis, in an act
of self-mutilation, painfully removes his own teeth which contain
the electronic leash that presumably allows his retrieval through
time.
On another level, the film is about postmodern consciousness: the
feeling that fascism is inevitable, our lack of a political
compass to combat it, and our impotence in influencing the
rapidly advancing course of events. Scenes of blood, water,
encapsulated nakedness, and cyclical rebirth mark each journey on
the time machine. Willis is merely a laboratory animal doomed to
suffer repeated experiments and then be returned to his cage.
Each trip to the past ends in frustration when the hero returns
to his subterranean Hell where he faces his Judges and
Interlocutors time and again. There is no way to change this
cycle. His only hope is to escape.
Past, present and future are so interchangeable that they are
conflated into a collage of the remembered present. But the
remembered present is as fragmentary and disjointed as the image
in a broken mirror. The real and the artificial become
indistinguishable and the line between sanity and insanity is
blurred. There is no coherent future, no linear past and every
moment is on the edge of contingency. In short, the film aptly
describes the present human condition throughout the advanced
capitalist world. It is a world rocked by economic dislocation,
rapidly shifting capital, wild swings in the market, and a sense
of uncertainty and chaos. These insecurities translate into a
consciousness in which humanity has lost its bearings and is
rocketing down the rails to a destination that can only be
disastrous. No one seems to have the answer anymore.
Science, once the hope of humanity, has become an instrument of
oppression. In the past of 1996 it is used to subjugate and
torture animals for crass commercial gain rather than for the
good of humanity or to save the biosphere. In the futurist
world, man has become the guinea pig. Fascism has triumphed.
This film explores the emptiness of the postmodern condition.
The Enlightenment Project posits that history unfolds in a way
that can be comprehended by human reason and which follows a
progressive trajectory toward ever increasing freedom. The
Enlightenment teaches that man can control his own destiny and
change his world for the greater benefit of all. We can learn
from history because it has meaning. Postmodernism on the other
hand, has lost this faith in progress, abandoned the project, and
become mired in impotence. It sees all change as superficial and
cyclical and sees man as a victim rather than an agent of change.
There is no longer cause and effect on a societal scale. The
problems are too monumental. Our ability to make change occurs
only on the most basic interpersonal levels. Therefore,
concerted human political action has no consequence; it is
futile.
12 Monkeys captures this mood of postmodernist despair. The
future is devolution. Man has become animal. Human
consciousness loses its higher order function and sinks into the
primary consciousness of the animal world, the consciousness of
the remembered fragmentary present. The animals may as well rule
the world because Man has become incapable of doing so.
12 Monkeys is a serious warning about the nature of our time.
Unless collective action led by an organized social movement is
resurrected as a pole around which humanity can rally to build an
alternative culture and society, the world may sink into the
Fascist despair of late capitalist collapse.
From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Feb 7 23:40:11 1996
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From: bvermill@ux5.cso.uiuc.edu (vermillion billy bud)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: 12 MONKEYS
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12 MONKEYS
A film review by Billy Bud Vermillion
Copyright 1996 Billy Bud Vermillion
Twelve Monkeys, a film by Terry Gilliam
starring Bruce Willis, Madeline Stowe, Brad Pitt,
and(hee-hee!)Frank Gorshin
I've always been a great admirer of Terry Gilliam's films. His
dark, often humorous, always edgy vision of the world has had me
enthralled since Time Bandits(one of my favorite films--favorite as
opposed to those films which I acknowledge as great; it just has that
certain magic which grabs me).
Twelve Monkeys, in a lot of ways, is sort of a follow-up piece to
his other films. He manages to incorporate the idea that insanity is
relative(seen in The Fisher King), the concept of a dystopian future
where one cannot trust anyone else(Brazil), and, the death of loved
ones(seen in Time Bandits--though they weren't really so well-liked in
that case, The Fisher King, The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen, and,
in a weird kind of reversal, Brazil). In fact, Twelve Monkeys seems to
place Gilliam in the position of reworking many old ideas, often those of
other people(La Jetee is mentioned as source material, and Vertigo is
actually paid tribute to in the narrative, itself).
This aside, the film is very much Gilliam's own novel work. He
has created a strikingly original time travel movie, drawing some fine
performances out of Bruce Willis(wow, I didn't use to think this guy
could act!)and Brad Pitt(who, for a welcome change, isn't playing a dumb
bohunk in this one, but rather an intelligent lunatic).
Time travel movies tend to be difficult for filmmakers to present
in realistic ways, the paradoxes involved often clouding up viewers minds
to the point of numbness. Gilliam doesn't elude this bugaboo, though he
does throw some interesting tricks into the mix. I especially enjoyed the
ambiguity Willis felt towards his perceptions of reality. At the end, we
are left wondering whether Willis' character, James Cole, caused the end
of the world or not.
Lemme explain: sometime in the future, Cole is sent back in time
by a group of scientists to learn about the Army of the Twelve Monkeys
who, in 1996, allegedly let loose a virus capable of destroying the
world.He is sent back to 1991, however, where he meets Pitt and Madeline
Stowe, a psychiatrist. He's incarcerated in a mental institution(Gilliam
may be making a strong statement of social and moral outrage at the state
of mental health care by his depictions of the hospital). He tries to
warn them about the future, but it only helps in cementing his status as
"insane." He is then brought back to the future, sent back to 1996, where
he kidnaps Stowe(who has written a book on lunatics with end-of-the-world
theories, shuttles back and forth a few more times, becomes convinced
he's crazy, gets shot in 1918, Stowe ends up believing his story, they
search for the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, etc. etc. Kinda confusing, but
the confusion is necessary for Gilliam to keep his form consistent with
his intentions. Did Cole, by going back in time to 1991, cause Stowe to
write her book, which was read by a virologist/nutbar,which in turn led
to the unleashing of the plague and the endanger-ification of mankind?
Don't know the answer to that one. Gilliam gives us a few clues, but no
hard and fast answers. The film's final shot is touching and provacative
and is the best pseudo-answer available: a boy's eyes, staring up into
the sky, weeping. The boy is Cole(woops, gave it away!sorry to those who
ain't done seen it)and this scene seems to suggest a circularity to time,
that the future has ramifications for the past and present and vice
versa.
In short, it's a damn tasty flick.
From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Sep 5 16:38:06 1996
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From: chuckd21@southeast.net (Chuck Dowling)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: 12 MONKEYS (1995)
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12 MONKEYS
A film review by Chuck Dowling
Copyright 1996 Chuck Dowling
(1995) ****1/2 - C:Bruce Willis, Madeline Stowe, Brad Pitt, Christopher
Plummer, David Morse, Frank Gorshin.
A very entertaining science fiction story about a man from the future
(Willis) who is sent into the past to gather information about a virus which
virtually wipes out the world's population. The plague forces the survivors
to live underground while animals take control of the earth's surface. Now
those people have developed the ability of time travel and aren't trying to
prevent the virus from starting, but simply to find information about it's
beginnings to develop a cure for themselves.
What makes the film so good is that it's completely different from 99% of
the films Hollywood churns out of its cookie cutter factory. Most films are
linear, and you know exactly where the film is going and what will happen
when it gets there. But not "12 Monkeys". This film is all over the place,
bouncing from World War I to 1990 to 1996 to the future, and not necessarily
in that order. BUT, not in a way that's confusing. As long as you give the
film your full attention, it will make sense.
I also liked the fact that their time travel system was far from perfect.
Willis is sent to a couple of incorrect time periods before finally reaching
his objecive, and even those mistakes figure into the plot. Now as far as
the theory of time travel goes, about what if you can change the past by
blinking because you weren't supposed to be there to blink in the grand
scheme of things, etc. etc. I don't even want to jump into that type of
discussion. But my main argument in defense of time travel films is that
time travel has never been accomplished, so no one can argue about how it's
supposed to work. So until time travel is made possible (which is doubtful,
especially in my lifetime), sci-fi films can use it almost anyway they wish
and they'll get no argument from me.
I was immensely entertained by "12 Monkeys". It kept me guessing, it was
original, and that's good enough for me. Brad Pitt received a well deserved
Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe award for his performance as the
deranged son of a scientist, who may or may not be responsible for the
spread of the virus.
--
Chuck Dowling
Visit Chuck's Movie Reviews at http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/
Over 1,500 movies rated and/or reviewed! Movie news, box office
reports, film related links, and reader's polls and reviews.
From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 19 22:13:53 1996
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From: cyberc6@hilink.com.au (Richard Haridy)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: 12 MONKEYS (1995)
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12 MONKEYS
A film review by Richard Haridy
Copyright 1996 Richard Haridy
Terry Gilliam is certainly an original director. All his films
have had the unique Gilliam stamp, from "TIME BANDITS" to "THE FISHER
KING". You either like them or hate them. Up till "12 MONKEYS" I did
not like Gilliam's movies. The movie his fans call his 'masterpeice',
"BRAZIL" I think is a boring mess. I was not impressed by Gilliams
writing skill either. The only movie I faintly liked was "THE
ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN" which was fun but let down by a
confusing ending.
"12 MONKEYS" is complex, to be sure, the ending is confusing
also but unusually satisfying for a movie of this type. I don't like
talking about plot so I'll just briefly describe it.
Bruce Willis is James Cole. A prisoner in the future. It seems
almost everyone died from a virus in 96-7. Cole is sent back in time
to get information. Thats about all I'll say about the plot as it is
just one of the elements that make this film fantastic.
Bruce Willis is great ( that feels weird saying ) and Brad Pitt is
fantastic ( this guy is turning into a very good actor apart from a
few major duds. You could make up a nice list of films he's done,
SEVEN, KALIFORNIA, and this ) The major problem of this film ( and
that isn't really that big ) is Madeleine Stowe. It could be her
acting and it could be just that the part is written rather blankly
but there is something that I don't like about the charcter.
Apparently Gilliam gave Willis a list of "Bruce Willis Acting
Cliches" to keep the film from becoming more run-of-the-mill. These
are the type of cliches that plagued Willis in "PULP FICTION". Gilliam
really used Willis unusually in this movie, from drool running out of
his mouth ( this actually happens a fair bit ) to him being drugged
out of his mind in a mental asylum.
I have seen this film three times now and each time I see it I
feel differently about it. The first time I saw it I didn't like it. I
was frustrated at the complexity of it and when a film outsmarts me I
get pissed off and attack it. So on video I saw it a second time and
willed myself to give this film the finger and understand every little
thing. Well that is impossible of course but I was much more
enlightened about it. I took a page out of Roger Ebert's book and
changed my opinion of it. Hereby I urge people to see it again. For it
is a film that you will want to talk about with your friends
afterwards. I mean there is a lot to discuss ( Time loops, the
insurance lady, the fate of the future, and much more)
I don't put a rating on films I just recommend them and I very
much recommend this one.
Richard Haridy
From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Mar 25 15:38:07 1997
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From: syegul@ix.netcom.com (Serdar Yegulalp)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: RETROSPECTIVE: 12 MONKEYS (1995)
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12 MONKEYS
A film review by Serdar Yegulalp
Copyright 1997 Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: Much ado about something, but what? Terry Gilliam's latest
offering builds and builds towards some kind of incredible payoff, and
gives us much to look at and adsorb along the way, but only burps instead
of exploding.
Terry Gilliam is a rare bird: possibly gifted by genius, but at the same
time hampered by far too much *near*-genius for his own good. TWELVE
MONKEYS is a good example of this, a film of near-genius that has many
moments of greatness but never quite finishes what it starts.
In one of his best performances, Bruce Willis is a member of a hive-like
commune of criminals who live far underground in a future world that's been
decimated by a mysterious disease. The scientists who run the place (all of
whom look like mutant versions of the War Room staff in DR. STRANGELOVE)
want to send Willis's character back in time to gather clues about how the
disease was propagated. Willis's character also remembers something from
his own childhood, a death in an airport at around the time of the
outbreak, that he is itching to resolve. He is a lonely, longing fellow,
one whom it turns out to be far easier to feel empathy for than we
initially think.
Willis appears in Baltimore, 1990, and meets several intriguing characters.
When thrown into an asylum, he meets Brad Pitt (in another excellent acting
job), a certifiably insane fellow with more ideas than his head can
possibly do justice to. He also meets Madeline Stowe, a doctor who takes a
very strange and persistent interest in Cole. Beyond that, I'd be loathe to
reveal any more -- and in fact, it'd be difficult to do so without
extensive notes. The script becomes incredibly thorny and complicated at
times, but Gilliam is an expert at making those convolutions seem clear and
self-explanatory, especially in a nightmare flashback that changes every
time we see it.
What makes the movie unsatisfying are two things. One, Gilliam's lack of
on-screen restraint is legendary. He seems compelled to include things that
aren't really thematically essential -- or at least he doesn't make their
thematical need visible -- such as the extended insane-asylum sequences. I
got the feeling they wound up in the script because Gilliam is a sucker for
insane asylum sequences and the attendant over-acting. And two, the movie
has a totally closed-ended ending -- meaning that everything gets tied up
so completely that we sit there wondering, "Was that it?"
That, indeed, seems to have been it. If that's the point, then the setup
was leading us astray. And while the movie is enjoyable to watch and never
insulting or confusing, it doesn't quite fulfill its promise.
Two and a half out of four straitjackets.
____________________________________________________________________________
syegul@ix.netcom.com EFNet IRC: GinRei
http://serdar.home.ml.org another worldly device...
____________________________________________________________________________
you can crush me as I speak/write on rocks what you feel/now feel this truth
From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu May 7 12:46:56 1998
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From: redman@bvoice.com (Michael Redman)
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Subject: Retrospective: 12 Monkeys (1996)
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12 Monkeys
A Film Review By Michael Redman
Copyright 1996 By Michael Redman
**** (out of ****)
Terry Gilliam’s latest is a slam bang science fiction tour de force. Drawing
from the same deep swirling pool of inspiration that he did for "Brazil", the
former Monty Python member has another winner – at least for some of us.
Like most of his films, this is one of those “love it or hate it”s. Some will
find it brilliant, dark but dazzling. Others will find it tedious, dark but
dazzling.
I’ve heard the plot referred to as confusing by some, but to anyone who’s
well-versed with time travel story lines, the themes are familiar. Bruce
Willis is incarcerated in a hell hole of a prison in the future where the
entire human population lives underground because of a deadly virus that
covers the planet surface. “Volunteering” (more like being chosen by a giant
grab-a-toy-with-the-claw machine) to be sent into the past, he gets a chance
at freedom.
His mission is to return to 1996 and find a pure strain of the virus so the
scientists of the future can return the people to the surface. Their time
travel device, like many of the futuristic artifacts (which look as if they
were borrowed from Brazil), isn’t exactly high tech and only gets him to
the right time after sending him first to 1990 and then W.W.I. During his stay
in 1990, he is thrown into a mental institution where he meets Brad Pitt.
Finally making it to the right time, he finds that Pitt is head of the animal
rights group Army Of The 12 Monkeys, the organization thought to be
responsible for unleashing the virus.
Bouncing back and forth from the future to our time and back again, Willis
follows clues from incomplete historical records trying to find the virus only
to discover that he, himself is the cause of most of the clues.
Come to think of it, the plot is somewhat convoluted, but in the end
everything makes sense. Well, almost everything. The real key to the ending is
the insurance salesperson sitting next to the red-haired scientist on an
airplane. Which time period is she from?
There has been much talk about how this is a new groundbreaking role for
Willis. In truth, it’s not. He plays the same character that he has for years:
tough guy beaten down time after time only to rise back up, bloody and broken,
to go after the bad guys once again. The difference here is that he is even
better at it than ever before. Willis may only play one role, but he’s got
that one down cold.
The surprise is Brad Pitt. Looking nothing like the Fabio clone from previous
films, he is masterful as the insane prisoner turned ecoterrorist mastermind.
Maybe he’s more than just a pretty face after all.
[This appeared in the 1/17/96 "Bloomington Voice", Bloomington, Indiana.
Michael Redman can be contacted at redman@bvoice.com]
--
mailto:redman@bvoice.com
This week's film review at http://www.bvoice.com/
Film reviews archive at http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman