Flashback: My #1 Film: 1995

My selection for the best film of 1995, Terry Gilliam's dystopian nightmare, 12 Monkeys, also owns the distinction of being the worst theater experience I ever had. It was one of those screenings where exactly the wrong kind of crowd shows up for the movie you're watching and commits themselves to making it as miserable for everyone else as they can. It's a good thing this film can't be digested on a single viewing anyway.

I saw it again the following week and countless times after that in the years that followed. Did you know it's actually taught in schools? It's so difficult to make science fiction films that say something new, especially when they involve time travel. But Gilliam did it. The best performance of Bruce Willis' career, the first movie to convince the world that Brad Pitt is to be taken very seriously, a criminally underrated soundtrack and score and one of cinema's most haunting, cruelly ironic endings. A classic in every sense of the word, only in recent years getting the respect it always deserved.

Other Contenders: Leaving Las Vegas, Casino, Babe, The Usual Suspects, To Die For, Dead Man Walking, Before Sunrise, Se7en