The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

 Year of Release:  2018

Director:  Terry Gilliam

Screenplay:  Terry Gilliam and Tony Girsoni, based on the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Starring:  Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgård, Olga Kurylenko

Running Time:  132 minutes

Genre:  Action-adventure, comedy

Toby (Driver) is a disillusioned director who is in Spain shooting a commercial based on the story of Don Quixote, he also happens to be near the location of his student film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which he made with non-professional actors ten years previously.  Toby runs into his star, a cobbler, Javier (Pryce), who now believes that he really is Don Quixote, and that Toby is his loyal squire, Sancho Panza.  Javier drags Toby off in search of adventure.

This film has become almost notorious, due to how long it has been in the works.  Gilliam had been attempting to make a film based on Miguel de Cervantes' 17th century novel Don Quixote, since about 1990, and there have been several aborted attempts to film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, one of which has been immortalised in the 2002 documentary film Lost in La Mancha, so Gilliam deserves some credit just for getting the thing made.  Is the finished film worth waiting nearly 30 years for?  No.  Is it a good film and worth seeing?  Yes.  This features both the good and the bad of Terry Gilliam's work.  It is sprawling, overlong, uneven and indulgent.  It is also ambitious and imaginative.  When it is good, and it is good very often, then it is truly wonderful.  At it's worse, it's just a mess but, despite it's generous running time, it's never dull.  It's also surprisingly dark.  Adam Driver is good as a pretty unlikeable character, and Jonathan Pryce is great as the frail but noble Don Quixote who becomes almost admirable in his romantic delusion.  Stellan Skarsgård is good as ever as Toby's formidable Boss, and Olga Kurylenko is very good, if underused, as the Boss' seductive wife, Jacqui.  The film covers some very familiar Gilliam territory:  The individual versus society, dreams versus reality, and the nature of sanity or insanity.  The film looks fantastic throughout with some striking locations and set pieces.  When looking at Terry Gilliam's career, it is easy to see why Quixote holds such an attraction for him, and he is to be admired for succeeding in his quest to get this film made.

It is not a perfect film, and it may not be the masterpiece that Gilliam fans may have hoped for, but it is a flawed, enjoyable, eccentric work touched by moments of genius, and I will take that over the bland, committee led franchise fare that seems to make up a lot of modern movies any day of the week.  

Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce ride out in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

        

Shazam!

Year of Release:  2019
Director:  David F. Sandberg
Screenplay:  Henry Gayden, from a story by Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke, based on a character created by Bill Parker and C. C. Beck for DC Comics
Starring:  Zachary Levi, Mark Strong, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, Djimon Hounsou
Running Time:  130 minutes
Genre:  Fantasy, action adventure, comedy, superhero

In present day Philadelphia, 14 year old foster kid Billy Batson (Angel) runs into trouble with the law while searching for his birth mother.  He is placed in a group foster home, run by kindly Victor (Cooper Andrews) and Rosa Vasquez (Marta Milans).  Billy reluctantly befriends nerdy superhero fan Freddy (Grazer), although he is wary about getting close to anyone.  One day, while on the subway, Billy is transported to a strange temple run bay an ancient wizard named Shazam (Hounsou), who has been searching for one truly good person who is "pure of heart" and who can become his champion and defeat the powerful Seven Deadly Sins.  When Billy says the name "Shazam" he is transformed into an adult superhero (Levi). 

This is an enjoyable superhero film, which comes across at times as a superpowered remake of Big (1988), which is referenced in one scene.   It adopts a lighter, more comedic, tone than most of the other recent movies based on DC Comics.  However it is darker and more gritty than it initially appears, and has surprising emotional heft at times.  There is a lot of fun in the scenes where Billy is testing out his new superpowers, and the story is enjoyable and satisfying.  The performances are good, and the child actors really work well together, with Asher Angel and Jack Dylan Grazer being particularly good.  Zachary Levi is fun and charismatic as Billy's superhero form, and Mark Storng makes a suitably menacing villain.  Djimon Hounsou provides the appropriate gravitas as the ancient mystic. 
With a running time of over two hours, the film does feel stretched, and the climax does fall into the almost inevitable trap of superhero films of feeling like an extended special effects showreel.  It also has the problem of being a superhero origin story and having to hit the prerequisite beats to establish the characters, their powers and their world.  Another thing that I liked about the film was that, while it is set in the shared DC Comics Universe, and there are references to the other characters, the film is pretty much self-contained.  You don't need to have seen any other films in order to enjoy this.   
Just a note:  There are two post credit sequences.  One in the middle of the credits and one at the very end.

Jack Dylan Grazer and Zachary Levi in Shazam!