PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

kino1969 Even in its length, I wanted to see more. Yes, Gilliam has the "Cimino Curse," but it is unwarranted. This documentary shows his "madness," but it is no more than that of other directing legends (Kubrick comes to mind). What happens to Gilliam is NOT his fault. If not, very little is. As the filmmakers keep repeating, "Munchausen, Munchausen, Munchausen." This documentary shows its audience all of the problems with making movies. It isn't as easy as many think. Gilliam and others do as much as they can to get the movie made, but flight training overhead, storms, and medical problems are always sprouting. I remember the good days of making student movies. For me, it was just terrible. Everything had to fit into a perfect line: timetables, money, actors, crew, sets. Hollywood just throws everything to some talentless hack, but those directors who have talent are constantly fighting any and all problems that arise. Does that make them eccentric? No. It makes them hard workers with a true love for the art of cinema. That being said, this documentary shows the problems with film making. Extremely insightful and well done. To boot, the narration is given to Bridges.8 of 10, mostly for it feeling too brief! 9 of 10 for the DVD with the Salman Rushdie interview, which is MUST SEE! ----- E.

deadmanjones One of the participants of this documentary (line producer? I can't remember) sums two facts up perfectly:a) If you tried to think of things that could go wrong on a film set, you still wouldn't come near to what actually happened. The flash flood is SPECTACULAR; watching a desert turn to a wall of water upon which props and film equipment float away is unbelievable. b) Gilliam tried to scale down what couldn't be scaled down. He was too desperate to put his vision on screen.Ultimately the film finishes as unsatisfyingly as its subject; there is no ending, and the conclusion to the events is in equal measures inevitable and unexciting (how could watching the insurance men be anything but).We eagerly await the sequel, Found in La Mancha, in which our heroes make the film and win every award on the planet for it.

kelshawd "It can't exist. Because if it does exist, it's too painful." Terry GilliamLost in LaManchaLiterary themes of any depth endure across time. After Hours and The Matrix reflect elements of a prodigal journey. Peckinpah's westerns and Scorcese's street films illustrate baser forms of the survival instinct in a lawless frontier. This documentary rivals the value of titles of the classical canon.In the documentary Lost in LaMancha there is the fracture between Terry Gilliam's romantic vision (obsession?) with The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and the rational view of the modern film industry. Gilliam's phenomenology is elevated, romantic and remote from consensus reality. And Like Quixote, consensus reality wins out. And once again, film and fiction are built on a timeless theme.Both Don Q and Don G are middle-aged and, in a sense, "taking stock" of their life experiences. Quixote collects personal effects: a run-down steed, some make-shift armor, and a basin for a helmet. For Gilliam, the quest begins with a summation of the Python-esqe animation (for example, the Sisyphus figure pushing the movie reel up the hill in futility only to see it sail down the other side,) and references to the Munchausen debacle. "Is Gilliam pushing the stone up the hillside AGAIN?" Both shore up what they need for the journey ahead.Gilliam's windmills play out as the "force majuer," elements out of his control. Rains wash away the production equipment, celebrity schedules, contracts and deadlines hit and miss on the calendar, and failing health of one essential actor (deemed by "Dr." Gilliam as psychosomatic,) bring production to a halt. Quixote assails his windmills frontally, sword in hand as Sancho Panza tells him "They are only windmills." Gilliam waits for the wind to stop oscillating the blades of his windmills and his Sancho Panza (Phillip Patterson,) finally says "Look. You're not going to make the 'film' YOU want to make." In other words, "This is not a windmill, this is a crisis. Rochefort is NOT coming back, so get a clue. Dosomething or I will leave." Dropping Rochefort is not in Gilliam's agenda. Can Don G's will conquer the day to day grief of the film business? Or does he grow extravagant in his romance?In any case, Quixote's bottom line is to march forth in battle to earn merit of knighthood from any on-looking monarch willing to dub him. Gilliam's monarchs (the financiers,) don't bequeath titles of chivalry, but of stewardship. There lies the effects of time on a well-worn tale. Quixote's (and thus Cervantes',) culture and historic period served as a backdrop for Q's need to create a world he could exist in vs. the more pessimistic view of consensus reality. In Gilliam's world, consensus reality itself takes on magnanimous proportions beyond mythic fantasies. After Rochefort's back injury, rain storms and the bean-counting, number-crunching paradigm of the insurance company halt production, one wonders: Maybe Cervantes was right and didn't know it. Maybe giants ARE real. They do exist, and they are painful.This is a very well-done documentary with depth and substance that infrequently visits mortals, and almost consoles me over the failure of Gilliam's project.

Philip Van der Veken If you are like me and you are interested in how movies are made, then this is one of those documentaries that you shouldn't miss. Not only does it give a good idea of what needs to be done, how much organization it all asks, which obvious problems sometimes can occur... It also shows perfectly that sometimes really everything in life can go wrong.When you see Terry Gilliam's attempt to shoot the movie "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" completely fail, you can only feel sorry for the man, but at the same time you can't help smiling. Some situations are so unreal that you really start to wonder if there is some kind of curse that hangs over this project. Take for instance the scenes in the Spanish desert. It doesn't rain there for such a long time, but as soon as they start, their equipment is almost completely washed away by a small flood. Also the scenes that were completely spoiled by the F-16's, even though the government promised that this wasn't very likely to happen, were all so unreal.But even though the makers seem to be cursed from the beginning until the end with an actor who appears to be too sick to work, other actors who don't show up on time, a flood, F-16's,... I must say that the parts of the movie that were finished looked very promising. I really hope that he will be able to finish his project once, because I truly believe that it might become a good movie. Just by seeing how much fun he had while watching some scenes, made me look forward to it.As a conclusion I would like to add that this documentary might be interesting to show in all movie classes. Not only does it show the many hours of work that go before the actual shooting, it also shows into detail every possible aspect that might go wrong. I guess that this must be very interesting for all would-be and future directors. I give it at least a 7.5/10.