Release Year: 1995

Genre: Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Director: Terry Gilliam

Writer: David Peoples and Janet Peoples

Stars: Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt

With the way technology is advancing, one of these days you'll be enjoying your very own time machine. Chances are it'll be an app you download to your smartphone—free, of course, but those ads for the Roman Coliseum will be super annoying.

Now, your time-traveling adventures may prove to be a comedic romp where you try to keep your own mother from crushing on you. They may be a rip-roaring adventure where you save humanity from an army of evil robots. But most of your adventures will probably end—or at least start—with everybody in the past thinking you are completely crazy.

Enter 12 Monkeys or, as we like to think of it, The Hitchhiker's Guide to Time Travel.

12 Monkeys tells the tale of James Cole, a time-traveler sent from the year 2035 to the 1990s to gather information on a virus that will wipe out humanity. Or perhaps he's a mentally ill homeless man with a serious case of mental divergence. Who knows? We sure don't, but one thing becomes clear as Cole is incarcerated, beaten, shot, and endures an all-around miserable life in his quest to save humanity from its terrible fate.

Time travel (or mental illness) is not for the faint-hearted.

A modest success upon release in 1995, the film combined scrumptious set design and an eye for unusual shots to join Brazil and Time Bandits as one of director Terry Gilliam's best offerings. Based on an avant-garde French short film from 1962, 12 Monkeys stars Bruce Willis as Cole, a role that required the actor to step out of the shadow of his indestructible-action-man persona and play a character who treats being shot with more gravity than a mosquito bite. He succeeds quite well, and by the end, you'll be so invested in his story that you'll forgive his lack of yippee ki-yays.

The film co-stars the wonderful, yet underappreciated, Madeleine Stowe as Dr. Kathryn Railly and Brad Pitt as Jeffery Goines. Pitt's performance, in particular, is the wholly engrossing kind that makes you think, "Oh, yeah, that's why this guy is so great!" For his efforts, Pitt won a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and was nominated for the same at the 1996 Academy Awards.

After its initial run, 12 Monkeys kind of fell out of our cultural consciousness for a while, but was revived thanks to a television show remake on the SyFy channel. But before diving into four seasons of time-traveling shenanigans, let's go back to where the mind-bendingness all started.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone and about halfway through thought, "What planet is this guy from?" Whether the subject is politics, religion, sports, or film theories about what the Avengers were doing during Iron Man 3, you'll find people everywhere who have worldviews that are startling different from your own.

But aren't these people getting their facts from the same reality you are? How can two people witness something identical…yet derive different understandings of that same event? They must be wrong. They must be.

Then something unsettling happens. Weeks, months, or even years later, you have the same conversation—maybe with a different person, maybe the same person—and you find your opinion on the matter has changed. (Sure, it makes sense that the Avengers didn't show up; they have their own stuff going on, like curling league or whatever.)

You're still getting your facts from the same reality, so what gives? Are you somehow different?

Folks: Terry Gilliam understands your pain and befuddlement. Because 12 Monkeys is all about questioning your powers of perception and understanding. If you want to break out the ten-dollar words, it's about the fragility of human perspective and the subjectivity of reality.

Take Cole and Dr. Railly. Cole is convinced he's from the future, sent back in time to gather information on a virus that will eradicate humanity. But as he travels through the past, evidence begins to mount that maybe his fear for the future is all a delusion conjured by an ill mind.

On the other hand, Dr. Railly is convinced Cole isn't from the future because…well, obviously that's impossible. Right? But over time she starts to wonder if maybe there isn't something to this future man's deranged story.

Through its characters, the film asks those Big Deal philosophical questions. It's not so much about answering them, though—it's more about getting immersed in our own understanding of the film and puzzling over the many possible realities it inhabits.

Maybe the closest thing we get to an answer is when Cole is watching Vertigo and says:

COLE: It's just like what's happening to us. Like the past. The movie never changes. It can't change. But every time you see it, it seems different because you're different. You see different things.

It is just like what's happening to us, every time we watch 12 Monkeys.