12 Monkeys (1995)

This is what happens when you let an eclectic filmmaker fully realize his vision for a project that inspires him. Daring, jarring, and unsettling as it is, there is a strange beauty in 12 Monkeys that is hard to pin down. It features excellent performances by Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt and makes up for a lack of flashy sci-fi effects by being chock full of nerdy, intellectual talking points.

In the year 2038, inmate James Cole (Bruce Willis) is offered a chance at parole. In exchange for his freedom, he must help subject himself to crude time travel technology and help government scientists research the outbreak of a virus that decimated the world’s population and sent all survivors underground to avoid contamination. While in the past, Cole teams up with a psychiatrist (Madeline Stowe) and attempts to shed light on Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt) and his Army of the Twelve Monkeys, the group believed responsible for the virus’s release in 1996.

For me, it all starts with the story. If a film doesn’t have anything original to say or a unique spin on a concept or idea we’ve seen before, then it is already running behind. Hard core sci-fi nerds know that this film takes the same premise as French short film called Le Jetée but adds additional details and conflicts to bring it to full feature length. Audiences must digest issues like causality, mental instability, and radical environmentalism.

One thing viewers don’t get much time to think about is time travel itself. Tackling this subject is no easy task but the filmmakers treat it with care and respect. I appreciate the lack of a technological explanation. Being told that time travel exists and being forced to just go with it help to suspend disbelief. Sure, we inevitably ask ‘how?’ but I would much rather wonder about how it’s done than to mentally dissect and judge the acceptability of the filmmakers’ explanation of how it’s done. It’s more sleight of hand than movie magic but it’s effective all the same.

And really, 12 Monkeys is not a film about time travel. Time travel, though vital to the story, is just a tool used to tell the tale of a troubled man trying to earn his freedom by saving the world. Bruce Willis nails his role as a tormented lab rat. The world Cole returns to is both foreign and familiar. Cole has been in prison and surrounded by enough post-outbreak technology for enough time to find the world of his childhood memories confusing and alarming at times. Though my own acting experience is quite limited, I know that confusion is a very difficult emotion to convincingly portray; it is easy to overdo and under-do and audiences can typically spot when you’re doing it wrong.

The other standout performance in this film is Brad Pitt’s unstable and unhinged Jeffrey Goines. I don’t know where he pulled from to bring this character to life but it is nothing short of amazing. The physicality of Goines mannerisms, from his spastic outbursts down to his wild and contorted stare, is enough to make you feel tired just watching it. Madeline Stowe is stuck with the weakest of the three main characters but she carries her weight well enough. She conveys a different but equally effective form of confusion as she tries to figure out who Cole is and what he’s dragging her into.

Even more interesting is that director Terry Gilliam manages to share Cole’s sense of confusion with the audience. Through a number of tricks with lighting, camera angle, and his choice of camera and lens to take the shot, Gilliam finds clever and subtle ways to make the familiar feel bizarre. It disorients us slightly and helps increase our empathy for Cole. Gilliam also uses restraint in keeping the future looking just futuristic enough yet composed of technology left over from the pre-virus era. Some of the future set decorations don’t quite fit or even seem too strange but the overall effect works well.

I will always have a soft spot for intelligent cinema, especially intelligent sci-fi. This film is abundant with talking points but it isn’t too smart for its own good. Some filmmakers go overboard in an attempt to make themselves look intellectually superior (Matrix Reloaded anybody?) but you can watch 12 Monkeys at face value and still enjoy the ride. That comes from a careful mix of indulgence and restraint that is a real gift to cinema when balanced just right.

12 Monkeys is depressing yet hopeful, convoluted yet captivating. The fantasy of time travel mixes with the realities of dissidence and terrorism in ways that entertain but also hit close to home. This is a film that is watchable in its own right and worth repeat viewings simply for the thrill of seeing how it unfolds. It is also the kind of film that could launch you into a night-long conversation about all kinds of heady topics. The choice is yours. Either way, it is entirely worth it.

RATING: 4 out of 5

The Sixth Sense* (1999)

In a cinematic world that was all too tightly embracing slasher gore for cheap scares, M. Night Shyamalan came out of virtually nowhere and reeducated us all in the art of fright. In his major motion picture directorial debut, Shyamalan crafts a nearly perfect mystery thriller that knows all the right strings to pull. The depth and range of emotions that he manages to pull from his actors and the quality product that he produces with this film leaves little doubt as to why he was being hailed as the next Alfred Hitchcock.

Bruce Willis stars as a child psychologist trying to help a young boy with a peculiar dilemma. The boy, named Cole (brilliantly played by Haley Joel Osment), has a secret that he is too scared to reveal to anyone. Slowly, Willis earns the boy's trust and he begins to help Cole conquer his demons. Along the way, there are plenty of jolts and classical scares.

Instead of overusing blood and gore that teen horror flicks had come to rely on for chills, Shyamalan crafts a genuinely creepy tale that knows what scares us most- the unknown and the unseen. Some of the scariest moments in the film come while we’re anticipating something to happen. Shyamalan really has a handle on how to manipulate the subtle surroundings that cause our own minds to scare ourselves silly when we’re alone in the house.

And not enough can be said about Osment’s Oscar-nominated performance. It must be psychological, but seeing a child frozen with fear is itself terrifying. Had the film been about an adult suffering the same problems as Cole, it wouldn’t have been nearly as successful. The inclusion of children as an element of terror works almost like clockwork.

If you can’t tell, I’m being very protective of the film’s big secrets because I don’t want to spoil it for anybody. Sure, it was made nearly 10 years ago, but this film is so ingenious that I’m not willing to risk spoiling it. It’s seriously that good.

The fantastic and shocking story makes the film worth watching. The symbolic and significant use of color, camera angles and imagery that you’re likely to miss the first time through make it worth repeat viewings. The chills and thrills may not work as well your second or third time through, but it’s unlikely that you’ll ever forget the first time you saw The Sixth Sense.

Unfortunately, Shyamalan had hit-or-miss success with his later films. His unparalleled success with his first major film really set the bar unfairly high and few have been able to give him a fair shake since, but no one can take away the greatness he accomplished with this film.

RATING: 4.5 out of 5

Sin City (2005)

If this film had been shot and produced in the same manner as conventional films, it would have been a failure. The saving grace of this neo-noir comic book film is its style and art direction. Sin City is a visual masterpiece that really looks like a comic book in motion. Because of this, some of the effects that would seem laughable in any other film are laudable here.

Sin City accomplishes a rare feat for me- it is a film that I nearly fell asleep watching, but rather enjoyed. The high concept and suspenseful payoff at the end of this installment make up for the weighty, overblown and overlong feel this movie carries through much of the middle. Under normal circumstances, this film would have been at least a whole star lower on my scale. It’s uncommon for technical aspects to save a film, and should certainly not be tried more often, because it usually won’t work.

This film is mainly for readers of the Sin City series of comic books (the industry would like me to refer to them as graphic novel, but I don't really care) and for those who enjoy high concept comic book film adaptations (of which there are few). It can be hard to follow at first, because Sin City brings you into an already living world. Nothing is explained to you about this world’s construct except through dialog. It takes a few minutes to get used to, but more focused viewers will catch on quick.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5