The Adventures of Baron Munchausen [Blu-ray]

I can't remember if I saw this on the big screen or not. Clearly, it is meant for the big screen. It's a huge film, visually. The intensity of the Baron's opponents overcome by his profound faith in fantasy. I've seen this film numerous times and it's one where you will probably always find more on the screen. I call this the film that spent a lot of money and it's all up there on the screen. The sets, the costumes, the chaos, the improbability of various situations, all with panache, wit, style and a central theme, that the Age of Reason is not good for us, that our imagination is crucial to a wonderful life.If yer an Uma Thurman fan, anticipate seeing one of the most visually stunning scenes of a natural beauty as The natural beauty, Venus. Breathtaking. It's totally a family film except for a couple of course terms and some scary scenes. So, I'd not take anyone younger than 12. Otherwise, it's totally a film for all ages.Terry Gilliam gets a lot out of his actors in this movie. Oliver Reed, R.I.P., feels, to me, to be at his comedic best here. John Neville, R.I.P., looks made for the role. I imagine he went nuts when given the opportunity to play this wide ranging character. Robin Williams provides a cameo that has given me many opportunities to cite logic and thought versus our carnal selves.I've made a list of my favorite 300 or so films and this is about number 5. Given the insufficient distribution of the film upon it's original release, it's nice for fans to continue to turn others onto this lovely film. There's aspects to the story, there's depths to the costumes and sets, there's depth of concepts here that can keep ya learning from the film over the years.I've yet to watch the extras on this 20th anniversary edition. I'm glad they did this for the film and can only hope that Criterion would do a release of this incredible film. This does belong with other Monty Python related films like Erik the Viking and Time Bandits (which is itself, brilliant, though not in the same deep ways Baron Munchausen film is, but grand and wonderful, lasting as high quality over the decades just like this film). And, if you like this I would recommend Stardust with Robert de Niro in a comedy role another woefully underviewed, less than well known great fantasy film.I love film. The movies can take us places like music, poetry, sculpture and art can, places that our ordinary senses don't always take us on our own. When imagination is matched with millions of dollars and, seemingly, literally, all that money is up on the screen, and it's done with great humor and struggles between concepts that we may not recognize are presented to us in a grand visually sumptuous feast, we apparently can get The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. If, per chance, it is shown on a big screen somewhere, I urge you to take the time to see it. I'm so glad that we can see it widescreen and, if we're blessed with the resources, to see it on a big screen in our home. To see this cut up for the square TV screen by cutting out chunks of the original using pan and scan would be an artistic crime.Somehow, Gilliam and crew were able to overcome the business difficulties of the movie studio and still create, truly, this masterpiece. There are moments in it when it takes my breath away. And others when I'm simply startled. "Just cut some from the top." I don't worry about what is true or fantasy in this film, what is real or made up. I believe that is the point. Let fantasy live and we are rewarded, in this case, with this beautiful and fascinating film. Sure, there's some confusion off and on. What we should be asking is, how could this film come into being when so many films are, well, not this. Are action or comedy or drama. This film has story, lessons, pure joy, elicits laughter and a great bad guy(s) as well as very unconventional heroes. I haven't seen it in some years and can't wait to pop it on the dvd player again.I did notice that a number of amazon reviewers talked about first seeing it as a child. I was 34 when it came out. This really should be viewable by children, in the same sense that Grimm's fairy tales could have quite some scary aspects to them, but that was part of the lessons learned. I don't mean to over emphasize the scary as they are but, really, fleeting moments. I'm not quite sure when I've had this much fun at the theater, if that's where I actually first saw it. Needless to say, I highly recommend this film. If you are disappointed then I have to assume the core lessons Terry Gilliam is trying to teach simply could not bloom in you. For the avid fans who have posted reviews here, it is clear that his (and his team's) message hit home, dearly, to many people and, fortunately, continues to year after year. God bless whomever released this film. Clearly, a one of a kind film and one that can easily leave an impression for the rest of one's life, with a bit of glint in our eye something akin to the Baron's maybe!

I love this movie. I was happy to find it on prime and share it with my kids.

A thrilling, lively Classical-era fanfare heralds the Columbia logo and signals high adventure and romance, as we open in "the late 18th Century", the "Age of Reason", on a "Wednesday." Already we know that we are in the universe of the man behind Brazil, Terry Gilliam as the expectation caused by the opening chords is quickly subverted by the grim wartime feeling of a starving city under siege by the Turks. Even death itself makes an early appearance, a black winged skeletal angel that will continue to show up throughout the film and which seems to presage an ominous and early end indeed for the characters we meet in the beginning. Young Sally is the daughter of a traveling actor (and head of his theatrical troupe) who plays the magical Baron Munchausen, a fabulous hero famed for his tall tales revolving around such feats as a trip to the moon and the theft of a sultan's treasure. The pathetic troupe puts on its poor mockery of theater in a disintegrating, cavernous building as the town's leader, the Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson (note that title), only to be upstaged by the "real" Baron (John Neville), a drunken and crazy old man - with a real and sharp sword - who proceeds to tell the story of how the town got into this mess....Gilliam's film is the summation of all of his work as director up until this point, blending the childhood wonder of Time Bandits, the satire on bureaucracy and the feeling for the importance of imagination in the face of hopeless "rationality" of "Brazil", the broad humor of Monty Python and the references to Alice in Wonderland and medieval romance and tall tales of "Jabberwocky". Most of the film charts in a relatively linear way the adventures of the (real) Baron and Sally as they fly off in a balloon made of ladies' underwear in search of Munchausen's four fabulous servants - all of whom we have glimpsed in the opening scene, denying that they are anything but actors. Is the Baron crazy? Is the child Sally the only one who believes him, or in fact the only one who can experience his exploits, or save him from death? The film explores these and many other questions of storytelling and belief and the Baron grows more youthful with success, ages with failure -- as his friends seem at first not to recognize him, and then to be too old and feeble to help him. The baron himself loses faith at times, and only Sally is there to prop him up. At the end, a mind-boggling mixture of battles, triumph, death and funeral, resurrection and above all the Story of The Way It Should End all fuse into one of the most joyous and potent conclusions in film.The director draws on a wonderful array of sources for this film, which is certainly postmodern in the lightest yet most serious and beautiful sense - there are nods to "Alice in Wonderland", "The Wizard of Oz", "Pinocchio", Renaissance painting, "Cyrano de Bergerac" and the 1940 "Thief of Bagdad" among countless others, but the film never seems derivative or obvious; always it is focused on the pure joy of the tale and the strength and power of myth-making in the face of the tedium and joylessness represented by the unscrupulous and ultimately murderous Jackson - played with vicious glee by Jonathan Pryce in an ironic reversal of his role in Gilliam's previous film, "Brazil".The cast is uniformly fine -- some may be irritated by Sarah Polley's admittedly shrill Sally though it seemed an appropriate (and necessary) characterization to me -- with standouts being Pryce, Eric Idle as the fleet-footed but somewhat dimwitted Berthold, and John Neville as the Baron in one of the most unjustly slighted performances from a banner year for film. Giuseppe Rotunno's photography makes much more of an impact on the big screen for sure but it is certainly beautiful enough (particularly in the outdoors/sky sequences) even on the DVD; and Michael Kamen's score is one of my all-time favorites and possibly the best work in his film career. The dialog may strike some as odd, in its mixture of late-20th-century idioms (particularly when voiced by the King of the Moon, Robin Williams) and the more carefully "authentic" 200-year-old jargon of characters like Jackson -- but like most elements of the film, this is carefully designed to throw us off and keep our sense of what is real and not always in doubt.This is a film I've seen over and over - it scored a big impression when I saw it new, alas not on very many people - and it grows greater with each re-watch. Gilliam really manages here to articulate a very profound statement about how we are losing out way, about how the bottom line and the "rational" way of winning a war - or making a film - may in fact be heartless, cold, and ultimately more dead than the Baron seems to be just before the triumphant finish of the film. As much as I love "Brazil, this is easily my favorite Terry Gilliam film, and in its failure ultimately a signal for a new and less potent (though still interesting) direction in his work. A triumph then, and a tragedy - the film is the career, the career is the film.

This is entertaining with its twists and turns. If you liked Monty Pythons Flying Circus, you will probably like this. It is surprising and funny.

Worth at least one view, needs more than one to fit more puzzle pieces in place. I'm really happy to finally have it.For people who didn't read the book, it's a parody of superheroes stories, from before superheroes were even a thing. Started as a collection of tall/dreamstate tales similar to the Cyrano travels to the Moon and Sun, or Guliver's Travels, the Wizard of OZ books or Alice in Wonderland. In similar vein, as self-derisive "fantasy", it affords the leeway to sneak in a lot of social critique; some of it does shine through the movie in classic Monty Python dryness. Some such critique goes by so fast to be almost missed, like the one involving the character Sting cameos in.The BluRay main menu animation is a quick summary of the movie. Just like the movie is a quick summary of the Baron's adventures. Sadly, this is the best adaptation we have so far. There's enough material in these stories to fit in a TV miniseries to even start fleshing out all the characters, let alone include the stories from the book which didn't fit in the movie. Everything in the movie is a sketch, some of them are self-reflecting and intertwined. That includes the lavish decors and costumes. Of course, that fits the director's style just fine, a match for the rest of his movies and shows. That comes straight out of the book one may say... there are tens of adventures and hundreds of twists in the tiny book itself (even in the smallest first edition from 1785, slightly increased in 1796 and then in 1901).As it's directed, the movie doesn't quite make up its mind on whether it's a children's story or an adult one. So both viewer categories have to make concessions on the rendition, the young ones with a bit more patience as the story lumbers along and doesn't really explain the various versions of the characters, the grownups with reading between the lines. And that's not limited to things like feet tickling, or the varying [in]compatibility of mind and body over time. That example's from an over-the-top yet typical Robin Williams sketch ([un]credited as an Italian "King of Everything").While the book is told as an autobiography, the movie adds the "theatric" layer, a bit of story-in-a-story stack that doesn't quite pop out all the way back to the movie's starting reality (or pops out too far, depending on interpretation of the ending), just like it sometimes happens in the 1001 nights stories about stories.

Off the wall stuff.. Great.

Tout ok

Schnelle Lieferung und im top Zustand

この映画のDVDをなかなか見つけられずにいたので、今回購入できて本当に嬉しいです。ありがとうございました。個人的な感想ですが、こういう年代のセットの味が大胆に活かされていて、カメラワークが美しく効果的で、夢のあるお話で、むちゃくちゃ大好きな映画です。