Brazil (1985)

Today is my dad's birthday!  Here's a completely unrelated movie.

This is yet another weird-ass Terry Gilliam feature.  Man, I don't know what is wrong with that dude but if I had to guess, I'd say A LOT.

It's a type of crazy I generally like, though, right up until he sucker punches me with the ending.  The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus wasn't too bad, but Time Bandits still makes me a little twitchy when I think about it.

This one falls closer to the Time Bandits end of the scale.  In a dystopian 1984-esque future, the world is governed by the Ministry of Information.  Sam Lowry works in Information Management when he discovers an administrative error that led to the arrest of Archibald Buttle instead of Archibald Tuttle.  He does some digging and discovers that Buttle has been killed during the investiagtion process.  While delivering a refund check for the wrongful arrest to the widow, he catches a glimpse of his dream girl.

He tries to find out more about her but the more he digs, the more involved he becomes until he ends up a suspected terrorist himself, running from his own Ministry. 

Some of it is really brilliant satire of consumerism, fashion, plastic surgery, and bureaucracy and there are some beautiful (very 80's) fantasy pieces when he's daydreaming.  Then there are incredibly disturbing things like the things that look like the trash heap creature from Labyrinth except with dirty Cabbage Patch doll heads that chase Sam around in his nightmares.

...And now in my nightmares.

This is as close to the actual thing as I could find in a GIS.

Then of course there's the ENTIRE ENDING OF THE FILM.  There are different versions of the movie out there, if you'd like to spare yourself.  There's the "Director's Cut" and the "Love Conquers All" cut, which is only 94 minutes as opposed to the almost 2.5 hour run time of the original.

Will not be buying this or ever watching it again but it was worth a one-time view.  And as a bonus, I finally know which specific movie Repo Men was ripping off.