Twelve Monkeys (12 Monkeys) (1995)

All Critics (58) | Top Critics (21) | Fresh (56) | Rotten (7) | DVD (20)

While all of Gilliam's movies are worth seeing, there's a fair amount of his designer grimness here mixed in with the cabaret comedy.

May 27, 2011 Full Review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Chicago Reader

Top Critic

Neither as visually compelling as Brazil nor as emotionally gripping as The Fisher King.

March 26, 2009 Full Review | Comments (3)

Variety Staff

Variety

Top Critic

Gilliam gives the material a lunatic poetry of his own, but remains impervious to the requirements of narrative pacing.

June 24, 2006 Full Review

Geoff Andrew

Time Out

Top Critic

Dark and somber like Blade Runner, this sci-fi is a spectacular mess, a convoluted film with too many ideas for its own good, blending (among other things) the virus thriller with the post-apocalyptic genre.

August 12, 2005 Full Review

Emanuel Levy

Variety

Top Critic

There's always overripe method to his madness, but in the new 12 Monkeys Mr. Gilliam's methods are uncommonly wrenching and strong.

May 20, 2003 Full Review

Janet Maslin

New York Times

Top Critic

Bruce Willis, in an eruptive performance of startling emotional intensity, stars as Cole, a prisoner tagged for an experiment that may get him killed.

May 12, 2001

Peter Travers

Rolling Stone

Top Critic

One of the best-looking and smartest sci-fi films of the modern era.

December 19, 2012 Full Review

Tim Brayton

Antagony & Ecstasy

Terry Gilliam has seldom been more inventive or more compelling.

August 16, 2011 Full Review

Wesley Lovell

Cinema Sight

Gilliam goes on to deliver a movie that is not only rich in visual detail but offers an involving, occasionally baffling storyline and builds the tension to positively unbearable levels during the final reel.

May 27, 2011 Full Review | Comment (1)

Film4

Gilliam's greatest all around film.

March 4, 2011 Full Review

Scott Nash

Three Movie Buffs

speculative fiction at its best in that it doesn't just trifle with science fiction concepts, but rather tells a grander story with characters and world disasters

March 2, 2011 Full Review

Kevin Carr

7M Pictures

Terry Gilliam's violent dystopian masterpiece.

January 1, 2011 Full Review

Carly Kocurek

Common Sense Media

A dark and gritty sci-fi thriller, 12 Monkeys stands apart from other sci-fi films, due to its unique and twisted concept on the future of mankind.

July 6, 2010 Full Review

Matthew Pejkovic

Matt's Movie Reviews

Gilliam's polarizing style is at its near-best...a dazzling feat of storytelling that bristles with provocative ideas. [Blu-ray]

August 12, 2009 Full Review

Peter Canavese

Groucho Reviews

An Ambitious and amazing feature-length re-imagining of the classic short subject La Jetee.

July 7, 2008 Full Review

Steve Biodrowski

ESplatter

Gilliam has taken on a conventional Hollywood sci-fi thriller with big stars and turned it into his own rough beast.

July 23, 2007 Full Review

Rob Gonsalves

eFilmCritic.com

12 Monkeys seems to go down smoothly without compromising anything or dumbing itself down.

May 26, 2006 Full Review

Jeffrey M. Anderson

Combustible Celluloid

The film bears watching multiple times to catch everything that's going on and, honestly, isn't for stupid people.

July 8, 2005 Full Review

Widgett Walls

Needcoffee.com

Gilliam is at the top of his game in what may be his most gratifying picture.

June 1, 2005 Full Review

Brent Simon

Now Playing Magazine

Terry Gilliam must have had (and kept track of) some major acid trips in his life, because his films are weird. They're also brilliant.

May 15, 2005

Sarah Chauncey

Reel.com

• 1. Jeffrey Goines: You're here because of the system.
  – Submitted by Augusta M (7 months ago)
• 1. Jeffrey Goines: All the doors are locked too. They're protecting the people on the outside from us from the people on the outside who are as crazy as us.
  – Submitted by Dov D (7 months ago)
• 1. James Cole: I am insane. And you are my insanity.
  – Submitted by Dov D (7 months ago)
• 1. Dr. Kathryn Railly: Cassandra in Greek legend, you recall, was condemned to know the future but to be disbelieved when she foretold it. Hence the agony of foreknowledge combined with the impotence to do anything about it.
  – Submitted by Dov D (7 months ago)
• 1. Jeffrey Goines: You know what crazy is? Crazy is majority rules. Take germs, for example.
  2. James Cole: Germs?
  3. Jeffrey Goines: Uh-huh. In the eighteenth century, no such thing, nada, nothing. No one ever imagined such a thing. No sane person, anyway. Ah! Ah! Along comes this doctor, uh, uh, uh, Semmelweis, Semmelweis. Semmelweis comes along. He's trying to convince people, well, other doctors mainly, that's there's these teeny tiny invisible bad things called germs that get into your body and make you sick. Ah? He's trying to get doctors to wash their hands. What is this guy? Crazy? Teeny, tiny, invisible? What do you call it? Uh-uh, germs? Huh? What? Now, cut to the 20th century. Last week, as a matter of fact, before I got dragged into this hellhole. I go in to order a burger in this fast food joint, and the guy drops it on the floor. Jim, he picks it up, he wipes it off, he hands it to me like it's all OK. "What about the germs?" I say. He says, "I don't believe in germs. Germs is just a plot they made up so they can sell you disinfectants and soaps." Now he's crazy, right? See? Ah! Ah! There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion. You... you... you believe in germs, right?
  – Submitted by Dov D (7 months ago)
• 1. Jeffrey Goines: Telephone call? Telephone call? That's communication with the outside world. Doctor's *discretion*. Nuh-uh. Look, hey - all of these nuts could just make phone calls, they could spread insanity, oozing through telephone cables, oozing into the ears of all these poor sane people, infecting them. Wackos everywhere, plague of madness.
  – Submitted by Dov D (7 months ago)

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