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DVD : Brazil - Criterion CollectionIn association with Amazon.comstarring: Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins directed by: Terry Gilliam  List Price: $59.95 Price: $15.48 You Save: $44.47 (74%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD EAN: 9780780022188 Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Director's Cut, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC ISBN: 0780022181 Label: Criterion Manufacturer: Criterion Number Of Items: 3 Picture Format: Letterbox Publisher: Criterion Release Date: July 13, 1999 Running Time: 142 minutes Studio: Criterion Theatrical Release Date: December 18, 1985 Sales Rank: 30057 Related Items:
Editorial Review: Amazon.com essential video: If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--this is the sort of outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him making. However, Brazil was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may, Gilliam sure captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic nightmare-comedy about a meek governmental clerk named Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. Not a software bug, a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous Metamorphosis insect) that gets smooshed in a printer and causes a typographical error unjustly identifying an innocent citizen, one Mr. Buttle, as suspected terrorist Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro). When Sam becomes enmeshed in unraveling this bureaucratic glitch, he himself winds up labeled as a miscreant. The movie presents such an unrelentingly imaginative and savage vision of 20th-century bureaucracy that it almost became a victim of small-minded studio management itself--until Gilliam surreptitiously screened his cut for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, who named it the best movie of 1985 and virtually embarrassed Universal into releasing it. This DVD version of Brazil is the special director's cut that first appeared in Criterion's comprehensive (and expensive) six-disc laser package in 1996. --Jim Emerson Average Rating:
 Rating:  - If Orwell had a sense of humourTerry Gilliam's unique satire is as funny as it is absurd and dark. With the character of Sam Lowry he created the perfect anti-hero, not in the least thanks to the brilliant performance by Jonathan Pryce. Equally well known is the conflict that Gilliam had to enter into to get his movie released as he wanted it, because the studio heads suddenly got not only cold feet but also the crazy notion to have a happy ending and drastically make cuts in the movie to make it shorter. Gilliam ... Read More Rating:  - Not Into It...I saw most of this movie years ago, and I just tried to watch it entire to see the first part I missed. Quit half-way through. This movie has fantastic art direction, and is filled with small bits of good comedy, but it basically has one or two jokes told over and over again: jibes at the petty status-seeking of bureacratic society; satire of technological utopianism, as shown by the constantly screwing up duct systems, robots, anachronistic typing machines, etc. The story ... Read More Rating: - Terry Gilliam's vastly underrated masterpieceThis is a masterpiece of a movie, one that a director can only accomplish once in a lifetime, and has to be watched without distraction. For young viewers who got used to today's nausea inducing camera shots and ultra quick half second edits, the pacing could come off as ponderous at first. One one level, it's a beautiful and even by today's computerized standards awesome cinematic masterpiece, one that's done without any 3D graphics at all, and even trying to imagine some of the scenes being constructed ... Read More Rating: - Weird, wacky, wonderfulThere aren't too many movies like "Brazil" around. It's been assigned to the category "steampunk" but I'm not sure that is correct- it has some cyberpunk attributes as well. Anyway, the labels aren't too important. What matters is the clever 3-way mix of human story, technology fantasy/satire, and sharp cynicism about the future of society. Imagine a version of "1984" where everything is pretty much governed by the "information Ministry." But rather than being a horrifyingly efficient organ ... Read More Rating: - A Remarkable AchievementWhat can I possibly say about this movie that hasn't already been said? I'm just sitting here, a day later, still blown away. Made in 1985, its predictions of a techno-future are eerily prescient while at the same time looking way cooler. Or more probably filming was happening in 1984, since it has shades of that fine novel. A hint of Clockwork Orange... And really, comparing it to anything else is just wrong. We have the menacing future, yet we have some powerfully ... Read More Browse for similar items by category:
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