Selected by Tasha Robinson | A.V. Club

“I grew up addicted to escapist literature, from Andrew Lang’s fairy tales to Ray Bradbury’s creepy futurism, but nothing I ever read prepared me for Terry Gilliam’s version of escapism. On some level, all his films are about how much we need stories to survive. But Brazil is his most polished and perfect vision: an anarchic, hilarious, yet tragic fantasy that turns everything wrong with the world into a metaphor, then offers a not-at-all-metaphorical escape plan. It’s wild, angry, yet tongue-in-cheek filmmaking from someone who’s turned imaginative escapism into a lifelong cinematic obsession, and it’s one of my all-time favorites.” – T.R.

Tasha Robinson is a freelance film writer working in Chicago. After college at the University Of Iowa, she became an editor at The Onion’s arts and entertainment section, The A.V. Club. For 13 years, she wrote about film, books, comics, food, and just about everything else. In 2013, she went to work for The Dissolve, Pitchfork Media’s film site dedicated to new and old cinema from around the world. Since then, her writing and interviews have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The Verge, Chicagoist, The Comics Journal, Vulture, and at NPR Books. She’s been a recurring guest on the Filmspotting podcast and radio show, on Slashfilm’s /Filmcast, and on The Sound Of Young America, now known as Bullseye. The exploding-head version of the Brazil movie poster has always been one of her favorites, because that’s exactly how the movie made her feel the first time she watched it.