The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2019)

So much average

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I saw this as a surprise screening just now and when the name Terry Gilliam popped up everyone was really happy and excited about what we were about to witness. Unfortunately the movie - ambitious as the idea might be, paying hommage to Don Quixote placing it in a real contemporary setting - it was a chaotic and upsetting disaster with me at times feeling embarrassed for the awful lines "f**k you! Alexey is the only one who does that!" and being incredibly bored inbeetween. Can't believe Adam Driver gave himself for that. This is no Brazil, it's confusingly bad and written to hurt you! Ok the costumes are cool but that doesn't save it.. Stay away!

Ok, Toby (adam driver) actually sucks so much as a character. he doesn't earn anything that he gets by the end. He is upset that Anjelica (Joana Ribeiro) is "owned/objectified" by Russian Trump Alexei (Jordi Mollà) so much so that he throws coins at her feet offering to buy her himself, still seeing/treating her as an object, and at no point in the story realising the irony of this. Whats more, he manslaughters innocent and delusional Don Quixote (Jonathan Pryce) only to become the Hero by films end without ever earning the redemption for his past mistakes. Anjelica should have been the one to become Quixote. she is the one who's character arc from the beginning was to set out to do great things (to become a hero). Toby's arc was kind of unclear, was he looking for his youthful inspiration? The better ending is Anjelica becoming Dona Quixote, subverting the 16th century Male Hero Fantasy, bringing it into the 21st century (something Gilliam was attempting anyway), and breaking free of objectification to become her own master. A true character arc, moving from being owned (by Raul/Alexei) to becoming the story's Hero. Instead she was delegated to Toby's sideshow. ick. 5 stars.

Let me start by stealing a line from another review: "Quixote reminds us of the romantic ideal that the world needs dreamers who dare to defy convention. "Terry Gilliam has always been that dreamer. And so have I. And that's why this movie made me sad. It's both an ode and a swansong to the world of dreamers. Moving along the same lines as the fantastical Baron Munchausen or the embellishing of Tim Burton's Big Fish, Don Quixote mixes fantasy with reality, fiction with fact and gives both hope and warning to dreamers in this world. It's not without its flaws. But reality never is.

Terry Gilliam has battled long and hard to make this film. I for one and grateful he persevered. It is not only beautiful to look at, but is at times funny, at times surreal, at times touching, at times dreamlike, but at all times involving of both the brains and hearts of the audience. Adam Driver is the Hollywood brat given a huge budget to make a movie about Don Quixote in Spain. One day he realised that he close to the village where he made his student version of the story, using locals. Curiosity gets the better of him when he sees a sign pointing the way to Don Quixote and discovers the man he cast in his student film has since stopped being a cobbler but believes himself to be the real Don Quixote. When the brat frees him from the prison his wife has him locked up in as a tourist exhibit, they embark on a series of adventures that mix up dreams and reality, and show the young man the damage he inflicted on those he used in his student film. The dreams and reality seamlessly overlap and provide the audience with non stop inclusion in what is going on. I absolutely adored this film, and went back to see it a second time only a few days later, knowing I will have missed a lot first time around, so full of images and colour and character that it is. Bravo Terry! And thank you.