Those who have followed me for a long time will know that I am a big fan of the director Terry Gilliam. He is indoubtedly the director I most resonate with and over the course of this lockdown I have had the pleasure of rewatching all of his films. I'd like to give a summary.

Most fans put his first films as the classic Monty Python movies, but in fact he was only an actor and animator in these films (Life of Brian and Holy Grail). Of the two, Holy Grail bears the most Gilliamesque mark thanks to his unforgettable animations of God and Dragons.

Gilliam's directorial debut was in fact the piss-poor sub-Pythonesque "Jabberwocky". Though still light years ahead of Tim Burton's narcissistic Alice in Wonderland reinterpretation 40 years later, Jabberwocky was a poor debut by the fledgling creator.

The film is a poor and cheaply made anomaly where Gilliam was trying to break out from Monty Python but didn't have the confidence to fully go independent. He holds hands with his ex-Python collaborators by wrongly casting Michael Palin in the lead.

The rest of the film consists of recycled leftover medieval jokes from Monty Python's Holy Grail. The actors are a weird blend of cheaply acquired 1970's British comics and Monty Python remnants. There are a few reasonable jokes but Gilliam hadn't escaped Python just yet.

Gilliam hadn't quite escaped the Monty Python mindset with Jabberwocky and it showed. It's hard to call it a true international release. "Erik the Viking" by Gilliam's far less talented Python colleague Terry Jones was more of a real diversion than Gilliam's forgotten first try.

Thankfully, Jabberwocky remains as an amateur offering, and the true genius of Terry Gilliam quickly became apparent with his second cinema debut: the magnificent, the wonderful, the endlessly imaginative - TIME BANDITS.

Inarguably, the greatest midget film ever made.

This is where we must pause to admire the genius of Gilliam. This is also, arguably, the time when Gilliam makes his name and makes his greatest ever films. Time Bandits seems like a children's film but it is so much more than that. It's the gateway to a whole new philosophy.

Time Bandits serves as the start of Gilliam's "Dream Trilogy" but also starts as the true beginning of his film career. Here, the director invites you to follow the dreams of the child protagonist's imagination on a journey that continues throughout Gilliam's entire filmography.

On first glance, Time Bandits is another Monty Python franchise. John Cleese does his thing as a snobby Robin Hood, and the rest of the Python's pop up in familiar roles. But Time Bandits is really about dreams, specifically the dreams of children. Note the lego.

The entire time-travelling odyssey is a joyous yarn of childish adventure. The backdrop of the story is an epic encounter between a gentlemanly reactonary God verdus a deliciously accelerationist Devil played by David Warner invoking the spirit of a diabolical Nick Land.

I say reactionary because the Devil in this film has probably the greatest accelerationist line ever uttered in a movie. Honestly, all you wish to know about the victory and failure of Gnon is here in this one line...

"God isn't interested in technology! He knows nothing about the potential of the microchip or the silicon revolution. If I were creating the world I wouldn't mess about butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, day one!"

Paging @Outsideness

The wonder-point of Gilliam is that he made a series of films to grow up with. I vividly remember watching Time Bandits as a child and being enraptured with the story. Through this film I learnt first about Agamemnon and Napoleon. I hungered for more info as I watched the story.

This is important because Gilliam's best films during his Golden Age of the 80s not only addressed the topic of dreams but also how dreams progressed from the dreams of childhood, to middle age, to near-death. Time Bandits, Brazil, and Baron Munchuasen remain his best ever work

Time Bandits was a children's dream film, yet Gilliam prepared his juvenile audience for the disappointment of maturity by killing off the parents of the child-hero at the film's end. He ended childhood in a film in rapture with childhood. Why?

It was a move questioned by critics but a move that makes crucial sense when we consider what was to be Gilliam's next ... and his best.

The death of childhood is the world of work. And the world of work is... Brazil.

Gilliam's 3rd film and IMHO the greatest film ever made.

If you haven't seen a Terry Gilliam film, let this thread give you one piece of advice.

If you will only watch one of his films (and not all of them are good) make it Brazil.

The highlight of Gilliam's career. Never bettered. A film that still holds up today. A sci-fi classic.

To be continued...