 Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote may never be reviewed, because the film, after suffering one disaster after another, was never completed, but a movie about the making of the movie, Lost in La Mancha, is opening in New York and Los Angeles today and receiving near rapturous reviews. Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times comments: "After watching the spectacular Lost in La Mancha, you may wish you'd had your jaw wired shut, since having it drop wide open so often could exhaust you." Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News calls the film "an immediate classic, joining the likes of Hearts of Darkness and Burden of Dreams in the pantheon of riveting chronicles of moviemaking madness." All of the critics agree that director Gilliam emerges from the film a compelling, if tragic, figure. "When Gilliam is finally forced to admit defeat, it is nothing short of heartbreaking -- for audiences, too, as the few shots that made it into the can hold such promise," comments Megan Turner in the New York Post. Adds Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times: "Just those few minutes let us know that Gilliam's "Quixote" would have been something special." "This is a portrait of an artist who wants to keep making art," writes Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal. |
