Twelve Monkeys (1995)

I saw this when it came out, which must mean that I was in high school, and I have to say, I didn't "get" it back then (just like I didn't "get" Moby-Dick - pearls before swine, I tell you). Nick recently made me watch "La Jetee," the short film made by Chris Marker which was the inspiration for this movie, and after seeing that I couldn't wait to revisit this longer version. There's the same basic plot and structure, but obviously this version is much more elaborate, since it's, like, seven times the length.

The conceit in both: an apocalyptic event (in "Jetee", nuclear war; in "Monkeys," a virus) has forced humanity underground. Evil scientist figures (in "Jetee," you barely see them and they're characterized mostly by their rapid-fire whispering in German - awesome; in "Monkeys," they're a fully visible council of learned evil-doers) keep people in prisons and force them to "volunteer" for fact-finding missions focused on figuring out what happened and retrieving a magic bullet to help humanity survive and be able to get aboveground again.

The human-guinea-pig-in-a-pen scenario is neatly paralleled, in "Monkeys," with the mental institution that the Willis character ends up in after being sent back in time for information-gathering. (The kind psychiatrist, Madeline Stowe, asks the Willis character whether he's been institutionalized before - the answer, of course, is far more horrific than she can imagine.)

There's something neat about imagining, hey, what if all the prophets of the apocalypse throughout history have been TIME TRAVELERS sent back to save humanity, and we're ignoring them at our peril? But the movie is also great in its visual style - the institution, the underground tunnels, even the airport are all more-beautiful versions of their actual grungy real-life selves, just like how in "Brazil" even the gross housing projects feel like pretty sets in some underlying, arranged way.

Or maybe I'm just a sucker for movies in which animals take over the earth. Hey, it worked for "I Am Legend." Or did it?