Brazil

This film is the love-child of Monty Python and Blade Runner, but doesn't quite stand up to either of them. It manages to stay bizarre throughout, sometimes in a thoroughly enjoyable way, sometimes in a doesn't-work-at-all way. Worth a watch if you don't mind the unusual!

Quite why this movie is called 'Brazil', apart from the catchy theme which gets into your head in a sort of nice way, I'll never know. Unless perhaps its to contrast carefree life on the beach with the deadly serious and sinister underlying theme to this movie which is in effect a reiteration of Orwell's 1984. Everyone should read 1984 and everyone should try this movie. OK maybe its a bit self-indulgent in its running time but there are so many priceless moments of both humour and pathos. Hoskins is vintage, (before he went wrong). This is one of those films that bears watching several times because its full of so much detail. Barking mad and brilliant.

Wonderfully weird and strange dystopian cult film by Terry Gilliam has discontented Sam Lowry chasing the real identity of the girl of his dreams through reams of paperwork and a terrorist plot

Too long, too far out. Lost the plot very early on and ff through a lot of it. Comedy sci-fi just doesn't work - or am I in a parallel universe?

I hugely admire Terry Gilliam and had heard so many good things about this film that I had very high expectations. That it ultimately failed to live up to them does not make this a bad film. Far from it; Gilliam has more ideas in five minutes than in most entire films and I would rather watch this again than the vast majority of contemporary Hollywood dross.

The disappointment stems from the film's ultimate failure of theme and message. The opening minutes are terrifyingly dystopian. However, Gilliam has so many other targets that the dystopian menace is never as sustained as 1984. Instead, the film is more about satire. Dystopian films and satirical films both only succeed if they say something about contemporary society, either a warning of what society could become (1984) or a comment on an aspect of society (Four Lions). The difficulty with this is that so few of the targets remain relevant or important. The main target is bureaucracy, which comes across as more a personal bugbear than a central theme for a film. Satirising yuppies is now dated. Perhaps the most relevant target is consumerism and excess, but little novel is said.

The film has other weaknesses. It is somewhat bloated, the central love story is unconvincing and the dystopian imagery is repetitive and bettered in The Wall.

Having got the critique out of the way, there are many positives. Not surprisingly there is a lively Python-esque quirkiness. The acting performance of Jonathan Pryce is immense, and there are excellent cameos from De Niro, Palin, Holm, Hoskins, Vaughan and Broadbent. There is great scope to the imagination and execution of the film. The entire film is perhaps summed up by the final sequence of the protagonist's final descent into madness (probably). Slightly haphazard but brimming with ideas (including an oedipal theme out of nowhere), twists, turns and bizarre imagery, it is a fitting end.