Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

 

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES  (1988)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Isao Takahata

As American planes firebomb Japan in the last days of World War Two, a young boy and his kid sister on the ground below struggle to escape starvation. This is an animated film, but you won't find a minion, a caped superhero, or a friendly talking animal anywhere. It's a haunting look at the horror of war, with burned bodies, mass graves, casual cruelty and a stark depiction of death by malnutrition. It might have more impact if parts of it weren't quite so cute, but it gets the message across, ending on a note of tragedy and transcendence. Keep a handkerchief handy, just in case.

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (2013)

GORE VIDAL: THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA  

    D: Nicholas D. Wrathall                              (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

This documentary begins with Gore Vidal standing over his own grave and ends with him in it. In between, he shares his opinions on everything, while talking about his life as a novelist, pundit, political candidate, public intellectual and famously sharp-tongued thorn in the side of William F. Buckley Jr. Late in the movie, a very old Vidal is asked what his legacy is likely to be. His reply is that he couldn't care less, which may or may not be bullshit. What's obvious is that there's nobody quite like him on the scene today, and the world's a duller place because of that. 

Gods and Monsters (1998)

 

GODS AND MONSTERS  (1998)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Bill Condon

    Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave,

    Lolita Davidovich, Arthur Dignam, David Dukes,

    Kevin J. O'Connor, Rosalind Ayres, Jack Betts,

    Cornelia Hayes O'Herlihy, Martin Ferrero

The last days of James Whale, the Hollywood director who made a couple of monster movies everybody's seen, retired when he couldn't control his own work anymore, and turned up dead at the bottom of his swimming pool in 1957. The movie opens with Whale (Ian McKellen), old, frail and recovering from a stroke, looking out the window of his modest but beautifully appointed home. He perks up visibly when his gaze falls on a hunky new gardener named Clayton Boone (Brendan Fraser) who's come to mow the lawn. The rest of the movie's about the relationship between the two men, the openly gay Whale and the adamantly straight Boone, with Whale's devoted housekeeper (Lynn Redgrave) running interference now and then. Both men are a little contradictory (and more alike than it might first appear), and Condon does a nice job of conflating Fraser's character with the Frankenstein monster, but the results aren't entirely convincing. Flashbacks to the making of "Bride of Frankenstein" aren't convincing, either, for anybody who's seen "Bride of Frankenstein". (Nobody could really do Elsa Lanchester except Elsa Lanchester, though Arthur Dignam as Ernest Thesiger isn't bad.) There were rumors of foul play after his death, but Whale did leave a suicide note, and it's generally believed that, faced with failing health and a deteriorating mental state, he conducted his own demise.

The Game (1984)

 

THE GAME  (1984)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Bill Rebane

    Tom Blair, Jim Iaquinta, Carol Perry,

    Wally Flaherty, Don Arthur, Debbie Martin,

    Lori Minnetti, Pamela Rohleder, Randy Hicks,

    Ronnie Hicks, Aaron Harper, J.D. Beckman

A super-low-budget horror thriller with some people at an island resort competing in a possibly deadly game in which the last one still playing - and breathing - at the end wins $1 million. So one of the contestants gets hanged. And one gets chewed on by rats. And a horny couple get locked in a sauna and almost freeze to death. And what's with all the dry-ice fog? That's pretty scary, huh? Um, no, not really. Wisconsin auteur Bill Rebane strikes again. His movies aren't very good, but, well, let's just leave it at that.

Freud (1962)

 

FREUD  (1962)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: John Huston

    Montgomery Clift, Susannah York, Larry Parks,

    Susan Kohner, David McCallum, Eric Portman,

    Eileen Herlie, Rosalie Crutchley, Fernando Ledoux

Montgomery Clift plays Sigmund Freud, working to unlock the secrets of the subconscious. What do our dreams tell us? Are we sexual beings from infancy? And are symptoms like tremors and paralysis always physiological, or is the mind sometimes involved? The movie's a lot of talk, and unless you've cracked a psych book somewhere along the way, it's easy to get lost. Clift spent the last few years of his own life cracking up, and you can't help wondering how much his troubled emotional state played into his performance. He was also dealing with cataracts at the time, while giving a performance that relies a great deal on the way he uses his eyes. Another thought that has little or nothing to do with the film: When you see Clift in a beard and a top hat, smoking a cigar, a different historical figure comes to mind - U.S. Grant.

Forsaken (2015)

FORSAKEN  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Jon Cassar

    Kiefer Sutherland, Donald Sutherland, Brian Cox, 

    Michael Wincott, Demi Moore, Greg Ellis

A remake of "Unforgiven" by way of "Pale Rider", with Kiefer Sutherland in what would be the Clint Eastwood role as a man trying to move on from a violent past he can never escape. It's nice to see the Sutherland boys working together playing father and son. Donald has the more flamboyant role as an inflexibly righteous preacher, but it's Kiefer's haunted stoicism that moves the story along and carries the film. You know it's only a matter of time before he gets out his gun again, and it's going to be hell for somebody when he does. Brian Cox plays the corrupt local kingpin, Michael Wincott's an elegant rival gunman, and Demi Moore plays an old flame, now marred with a young kid. They're all good and so is the movie, but it's Kiefer, lost, forsaken, and never more than a stone's throw from madness, who makes the movie hard to forget. 

Important News (1936)

IMPORTANT NEWS  (1936)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Edwin Lawrence 

    Charles "Chic" Sale, Charles Trowbridge, Granville Bates

A small-town newspaper publisher has to make a crucial editorial decision when he witnesses a shooting in the street. Ten minutes of homespun Americana, playing on the notion that what constitutes front-page news in Chicago or New York might be relatively less important in Deerfield or Cottage Grove. The gangly, bespectacled layout guy in the newspaper office is a young Jimmy Stewart.