12 monkeys distant voices

Although Chris Marker's 1962 short film La Jetee is part of the basic text in film schools across the country, the time travel photo play was generally unknown to mass audiences. Which made its clever conceit of a man witnessing his own death as a child the perfect starting place for Twelve Monkeys (1995), a much more elaborate (and needlessly complicated) extrapolation of Marker's themes of love, loss and memory.

A post apocalyptic "volunteer" sent back to the '90s to gather information on the disease that will destroy humanity, James Cole (Bruce Willis) is promptly locked up in a mental institution where he befriends fellow inmate Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt). A genuine psychotic with nihilistic tendencies, Goines is in turn inspired by James' alternate reality, plotting to use his father's medical research facility to return the world to its true owners: the animals. James eventually convinces his psychiatrist Madeleine Stowe) to help put a stop to the self-anointed Army of the Twelve Monkeys, and prevent the future he might have inadvertently created.

Director Terry Gilliam, desperate to prove his dependability to Hollywood, tweaked the story to incorporate his own eccentricities, essentially a continuation of the hand-me-down futuristic aesthetic that worked so brilliantly in Brazil. But with a pair of box office stars - Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt - eager to elevate their status as actors rather than icons, Gilliam's job here is really just to get out of the way. The script pays some lip service to the doomed romance illustrated in Marker's film (including an overly dramatic DePalma-like slow-motion finale), but focuses more on the Terminator-style mind games as Cole's mission impacts humanity and his own personal history.

Universal's marketing played up the Terminator angle as well (just check out the original artwork), perhaps nervous about the film's more intellectual ambitions. Maybe that's why, despite the talent involved, Twelve Monkeys feels like a project by committee. There's some good material for Gilliam to work with here, but his input seems neutered from the get go. Willis puts in a good effort and Madeleine Stowe performs well in the rather thankless role as supportive love interest. Pitt, however, seems so desperate to prove he's got real acting chops that he might want a chance to slip back in time for a do-over himself.

Arrow's new special edition Blu-ray starts with a restored 4K transfer and adds a Gilliam commentary, interviews, video appreciation, artwork archive, liner notes and a massive 90-minute plus making-of - The Hamster Factor - that brilliantly documents the production process.

A much more successful and low-key study of the passion and pitfalls of personal recollection, Distant Voice, Still Lives (1988) has been marching up the all-time best British film lists since its rather inconsequential release. An autobiographical rendering of his family's post-war experiences, writer / director Terence Davies recreates the elusive experience of memory through extraordinary cinematic means.

Meandering through time, we're introduced to the family's patriarch (Pete Postlethwaite), a physically and emotionally abusive monster who dominates every moment of his wife and children's lives. Even brief moments of joy are soon ruined by his uncontrollable rage, his presence a continuing legacy as they move to adulthood and try to break the vicious cycle and start their own families.

Make no mistake; Davies' film is relentlessly depressing ("My movies make Ingmar Bergman look like Jerry Lewis," the director admits). But you won't find a more innovative use of sound and vision released anywhere in the last 50 years, particularly in the film's first half (the segments were filmed two year apart). Davies' camera freezes time much like individual photographs, posing his actors for poignant still life portraits to capture important - and not so important - moments in their lives. But when his camera does move, it's with a sense of purpose, often accompanied by disembodied voiceover drifting in from some half-remembered past.

That the film holds together in such exhilarating fashion is almost miraculous. That is can't keep up the pace in the second half is understandable. Picking up after the death of their father, Still Lives presents more linear history of the family as the experiences of their youth ripple into the present. With a uniformly excellent cast, the film still crosses the finish line as a one of the best chronicles of post-war British life...and a uniquely orchestrated cinematic experience.

Arrow's new 4K restoration carried out by the British Film Institute will look like a pretty grainy affair to most Blu-ray afficionados. But we'll have to put our faith in the fact that the look is intentional and focus on the extras which include a commentary and interview with Davies, another sit-down with art director Miki van Zwanenberg, theatrical trailer and liner notes on the first pressing.