Even now this film is still absolutely ground-breaking, it first came to international prominence following the release of 12 Monkeys as its inspiration. This is a film of a collection of still images with narrative made into a story. The story as it is, is that a group of post World War 3 scientists attempt to send a heroic man back in time to the days pre-war to try and ensure the war is stopped. They ask the man to concentrate on a boyhood memory whilst filling him with drugs to return to the past and this is where we see the iconic image of a man passing himself as a child. But once in the past the man has a dilemma, why would ...  Read the complete review

Chris Marker's La Jetee, later forming the basis of Terry Gilliam's glorious and seriously underrated 12 Monkeys, is a stunning half-hour film made up almost entirely of still photographs (ok, all films are made up almost entirely of still photographs at one level, but you know what I mean...) concerning the efforts of a man in post-WW3 Paris to uncover - with the assistance of time travel and a group of sinister scientists - the source of a particular childhood memory. Time, war, memory, the apocalypse... Weighty, then, if it's an adjective we're after. The story itself, related via voiceover, is compelling enough to warrant La Jetee's status with ...  Read the complete review

Yes, this short, French arthouse movie was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's big budget fantasy. It's far too experimental for a mass audience, but a must see if only to get an idea of where the ideas came from. La Jetee follows a man in a post-apocolyptic future. Mankind's survivors are living underground, but they seem to have mastered the art of time travel. Going back mentally rather than psyically (the hero has a body in the past, but his 'real' body stays in the future), the main character is haunted by a vision of the past. Anyone who's seen 12 Monkeys will know how this one ends, but how we get there is unusual. The experimental ...  Read the complete review