filmbriefs
Actor · Voice actor · 1952–2003

Michael Jeter

4
briefs
13:00
average
52 min
in total
On film.briefs4
13:00

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Terry Gilliam · 1998

Terry Gilliam’s 1998 adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas commits fully to the novel’s hallucinatory logic and period specificity. Starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro as Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo, it charts their chemically accelerated descent through Las Vegas in 1971 — less a story than a sensory and moral autopsy of a fraying American dream. The film’s craft serves immersion over clarity, its themes revolve around eroded reality and institutional decay, and its value lies in fidelity, not comfort.

13:00

The Fisher King

Terry Gilliam · 1991

Terry Gilliam’s 1991 film follows a disgraced radio host who seeks redemption by helping a delusional homeless man haunted by visions of the Red Knight. Built around Robin Williams’s layered performance as Parry and Jeff Bridges’s restrained turn as Jack, it blends New York realism with Arthurian myth to explore grief, class, and the slow, non-linear work of healing. Though uneven in its framing devices, its emotional honesty and commitment to psychological fidelity make it a singular, unsentimental portrait of care.

13:00

Miller's Crossing

Ethan Coen, Joel Coen · 1990

A 1990 neo-noir gangster film directed by the Coen brothers, set in an unnamed Prohibition-era city. Gabriel Byrne stars as Tom Reagan, a strategist caught between rival mob bosses Albert Finney and Jon Polito. Built on Hammett’s The Glass Key, it prioritises formal rigour over emotional exposition — its dialogue elliptical, its violence understated, its moral universe amoral. Shot in New Orleans by Barry Sonnenfeld, with a restrained score by Carter Burwell, it is a study in control: of image, rhythm, and implication.

13:00

The Polar Express

Robert Zemeckis · 2004

The Polar Express expands Chris Van Allsburg's picture book about a boy's magical Christmas Eve train ride to the North Pole into a full performance-captured feature, using Tom Hanks in six separate roles. Directed by Robert Zemeckis for Castle Rock Entertainment on the highest budget ever given an animated film at the time, it grossed $311 million but drew mixed reviews, with critics divided over its motion-capture human faces.