"Youth in Revolt" and "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus"

Hey, the Weekly Standard has a new website! And hey, I’m in it today with reviews of the new Michael Cera film, Youth in Revolt, and the new Terry Gilliam film, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. I can’t say that I loved Gilliam’s new film — which also happens to be Heath Ledger’s final film — but I definitely admire the audacity and the insanity of it. I’d be interested to hear what casual fans of Gilliam’s make of the film.

I’m a little blinkered by the fact that I think he’s something an underrated auteur: Brazil remains one of my favorite films of the ’80s (and one of the few films that gets me to sit up and think about some of the darker aspects of the war on terror — it’s odd that the most biting satire of the GWOT was released a decade and a half before 9/11), and Time Bandits is probably my favorite children’s movie (as well as, interestingly enough, the first movie I can remember having seen). Add that to his work with Monty Python and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (which, again, I feel is a little muddled but overall pretty good), and you’ve got a director with a very solid body of work who doesn’t quite get the respect he deserves.