Happy Halloween! Here are ten of my favorite movie ghosts. (NOTE: Some of these have inferior remakes — stick with the originals.)
Topper Cary Grant and Constance Bennett are the most sophisticated, witty, and glamorous ghosts ever in this delightful comedy about a young couple who are killed in a car accident and come back as ghosts to brighten the life of a shy banker.
The Uninvited Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey play a brother and sister who move into a house on a Cornwall cliff. It turns out someone is already living there — a ghost. This movie introduced the jazz standard “Stella by Starlight.”
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir A ghost romance? Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison play the title roles in this story of a widow who moves into a house inhabited by the ghost of a handsome sea captain.
The Canterville Ghost Margaret O’Brien teaches her distant cousin Robert Young about noblesse oblige when American troops are bivouacked a her family’s ancestral home. It turns out their mutual ancestor is staying there, too, a ghost (Charles Laughton) who has to show some courage before he can go to heaven.
Ghostbusters Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson battle a number of ectoplasmic manifestations in this classic comedy (soon to be remade with an all-female team).
13 Ghosts People often ask me if I’ve ever walked out of a movie. The answer is: just once, and it was this movie when I was 9. I was a little freaked out by the special glasses you had to wear to see the ghosts, but it was when the Ouija board pointer was lifted off the board by a ghost that I turned to my mother and said, “I have to go home now.” I’ve since developed real affection for all of William Castle’s films, including this one.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is my favorite Christmas story and I love just about every version, but I think the best is the one starring Alistair Sim.
Pirates of Caribbean: Curse of Black Pearl “You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner… you’re in one!” Geoffrey Rush is the ghost captain of a pirate ship with a ghost crew in this rollicking adventure inspired by the Disney theme park ride.
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken Don Knotts is the nervous aspiring reporter assigned to spend the night in a haunted house. Or is it?
The Haunting Julie Harris stars in this classic of psychological horror about investigators who spend the night in a haunted house.
Filmed as though it was almost entirely one long, stunning, audacious, breathless and breathtaking shot, “Birdman” (subtitled “The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance”) explodes with ideas and visions, adopting the language of dreams to explore and upend the very idea of storytelling.
Michael Keaton plays a character in superficial ways like Keaton himself. He is Riggan, an actor who has undertaken at least three impossible tasks at once. He has adapted the acclaimed but notoriously difficult and difficult to adapt Raymond Carver collection of short stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, into a Broadway play. The translation of stories whose art is in the spareness and lyricism of the prose into a theatrical production is at best ambitious, at worst impossible. But Riggan is not just the writer. He is also the director and star. He has put his last dime into the show. If it fails, he loses everything. And there is more. His estranged and angry daughter Sam (Emma Stone), just out of rehab, is working as his assistant so he can keep an eye on her and perhaps repair their relationship. One of the actresses (Andrea Riseborough), may be pregnant with his child. And a piece of equipment has just fallen on the head of one of the actors. They are about to go into previews and he cannot perform.
Riggan and Jake, his best friend/lawyer/producer (a slimmed down and pitch-perfect Zach Galifianakis), throw out (real-life) names of possible actor replacements. The best of their generation: Michael Fassbender, Jeremy Renner, Robert Downey, Jr — but they are all in Hollywood playing superheroes. Riggan knows something about that. He played a superhero called Birdman in a series of wildly popular films. He had money, fame, success, and the kind of power all of that brings. But now he has an ex-wife (Amy Ryan), an angry daughter, a possible new child on the way, and he is risking his future on the longest of longshots, a serious play in the high-pressure world of Broadway theater, between the vicious barbs of dyspeptic, despotic critics and audiences who would rather be at the latest musical based on a movie.
Riggan and Jake argue about what to do next. The understudy? No! “It’s not like the perfect actor is just going to knock on the door!” Cue knock on the door. It is Lesley, the non-possibly pregnant actress in the show (Naomi Watts), volunteering her boyfriend, Michael (Edward Norton), who is available (he just got fired or quit or both) and wants to do it. He is a Broadway darling, a Serious Actor with a lot of fans. Jake is ecstatic. This will sell a lot of tickets.
Michael shows up with the script already memorized and able to give a dazzling performance that pushes Riggan to do his best. But Michael is also narcissistic and arrogant. His relationship with Lesley is deteriorating and he is hitting on Sam. Worse, he is sending her mixed signals, making her feel even more insecure and putting her recovery at risk. Riggan is under even more pressure externally and internally as a voice — his Birdman persona? His younger self? His future self? — is urging him, taunting him, distracting him.
It is a high wire act, the endless, dreamlike take festooned with farce-style slamming doors, fantasy interludes with monsters and explosions, sharp satire, poignant drama, and across the board performances of superb precision. As sheer, no-net, bravura filmmaking it is pure wonder, and if it raises more questions than it answers, at least they are the big questions of meaning, identity, work, love, art, and, of course, superheroes.
Parents should know that this film includes very strong and crude language, explicit sexual references and situation, gun violence, drinking, smoking, and drug use.
Family discussion: How much of what we see in this film is “real” and how can you tell? What do you think is happening in the final scene?
If you like this, try: “All That Jazz” and Woody Allen’s “Stardust Memories”
Rated PG for mild action, rude humor, some thematic elements and brief scary images
Profanity:
Some mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
None
Violence/ Scariness:
Themes of death and afterlife with some scary images of skeletons and desolation, peril including bull fights and snake bite, violence including sword fights and outlaws
Diversity Issues:
Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:
October 17, 2014
Date Released to DVD:
January 26, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:
B00Q599952
Copyright 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Animation
Jorge Gutierrez (Nickelodeon’s “El Tigre”) is co-writer and director of a dazzling new animated film that all but explodes off the screen in a kaleidoscope of color and energy and a love of life and storytelling and colorful characters and fantastic adventures. It is filled with the richness of love and passion and life and death and music and bullfighting and courage and family. It is a refreshing new aesthetic, inspired by Mexican folklore, with many of the characters looking as though they were carved from wood — not by trained experts and not recently. It has great songs and stunning images, covers of songs by artists from Elvis to Mumford and Sons, with a sweet new duet from Us the Duo. Plus, there is a sensational and wonderfully varied voice cast that includes Ice Cube (superbly funny and warm-hearted), Cheech Marin, Placido Domingo, and Anjelah Johnson-Reyes (“Bon Qui Qui”).
And it is very funny and a lot of fun.
Even the opening logo for 20th Century Fox has been transformed, letting us know right from the start that we are in another world, or maybe three of them.
A museum guide tells a school group the story, which begins with a wager. The afterlife has two parts: The Land of the Remembered, ruled by La Muerte (Kate del Castillo), where the newly dead are joyfully reunited with their families, and all is celebration, and The Land of the Forgotten, ruled by Xibalba (Ron Perlman of “Sons of Anarchy”), a bleak landscape where souls who are no longer cherished by the living are isolated and afraid. The two rulers make a bet over which of two boys will win the heart of the girl they both love. The winner will get to rule the Land of the Remembered.
The children grow up. Xibalba’s candidate is Joaquin (Channing Tatum), who has become a brave soldier with a chest full of medals. One he never lets anyone see was given to him by Xibalba, who is not above cheating to win the bet. It gives whoever carries it courage and invulnerability.
La Muerte is rooting for Manolo (Diego Luna), who is studying to be a bullfighter like his father and all the other men in their family, but whose real passion is for music. Both are still in love with Maria (Zoe Saldana), just returned from her studies in Spain. Maria’s father favors Joaquin, who can protect the town from the evil, predatory bandit Chacal (Dan Navarro). But Maria’s heart is touched by the romantic Manolo, even after his first attempt to serenade her turns into a disaster (hint: never let your companeros persuade you that the songs of either Biz Markie or Rod Stewart are romantic). When it looks like he will lose the bet, Xibalba cheats again, sending a poisonous snake to bite Maria and Manolo.
Manolo is killed, and finds himself in the Land of the Remembered, where he is happy to see his mother and many other relatives. But to get back to Maria, he will need to cross through the Land of the Forgotten. He meets the candle-maker (a warm and very funny Ice Cube) and a monstrous bull composed of all the bulls Manolo’s family has ever killed, makes a daring wager of his own before he gets back just in time for the arrival of Chacal.
It may seem thickly plotted at times, but that is all part of the Carnivale sensibility. And the cavalcade of incidents and characters, both living and dead, is reassuring in its matter-of-fact approach, reminding us that it is all a part of the book of life, and that we can never lose what or who we truly love.
Parents should know that this film includes Day of the Dead-inspired images with skeletons and afterlife settings, characters in peril and some violence, sad deaths of parents and grandparent (reunited in afterlife), some scary monsters and villains, brief potty humor and some mild language
Family discussion: How can you tell when you follow your parents’ advice and when to do what feels right to you? What is the best way to make sure we remember the people who are no longer with us?
If you like this, try: “The Princess and the Cobbler” and “Rio” and the documentary “Walt and El Groupo,” about the real-life trip Walt Disney and his animators took to South America and how it transformed the look of Disney animation.
Rated PG for action, some peril and mild rude humor
Profanity:
None
Alcohol/ Drugs:
None
Violence/ Scariness:
Cartoon-style peril and some violence, comic allergic reaction, references to disturbing violence, some gross images
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:
September 26, 2014
Date Released to DVD:
January 19, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:
B00HLTDARS
Copyright LAIKA Studios 2014
LAIKA Studios (Paranorman and Coraline) has created another loveably crooked world, this time inspired by Alan Snow’s Here Be Monsters! (The Ratbridge Chronicles). It’s their first period setting, a sort of slightly bent Edwardian with a touch of steampunk, in the town of Cheesebridge. LAIKA’s motto may be “No straight lines, no right angles, no perfect circles,” but this wobbly community is rigidly stratified, with the White Hats at the top of society, nibbling on exotic cheeses in the elegant Tasting Room and hosting elegant parties, the lower class Red Hats desperate to be accepted by them. There is an entirely separate group, the gentle Boxtrolls, who live underneath the city, turning rubbish into Rube Goldbergian machines and tending their garden. They are called Boxtrolls because of their attire — discarded cardboard boxes. And their names come from the boxes they wear: Fish, Fragile, Shoes, and Specs.
And then there is Eggs (Isaac Hempsted Wright). He thinks he is a Boxtroll, but he is a human, left as a baby by his father, who was trying to keep him safe. Apparently Cheesbridge follows Noam Chomsky’s theories of language: while the Boxtrolls speak in a sort of mumbly pidgin talk, Eggs speaks flawless and rather aristocratic-sounding English. Their happy life is disturbed by Snatcher (Sir Ben Kingsley), the leader of the Red Hats, who conducts raids to capture the Boxtrolls. He knows they are harmless, but he has persuaded the White Hats that the Boxtrolls capture and eat human children so that they will depend on him to exterminate them. If Snatcher gets rid of all of them, the Mayor of Cheesebridge has promised to give him a White Hat and allow him into the sanctum sanctorum, the Tasting Room. There is one problem, though. Snatcher, despite his protestations to the contrary, is massively lactose-intolerant.
Mayor Lord Portly-Rind (Jared Harris) and his wife Lady Portly-Rind (Toni Collette) have a daughter named Winnie (Elle Fanning, the sister of “Coraline” star Dakota Fanning). She longs for them to pay attention to her. Their neglect has led her to develop a macabre fascination with what she imagines are the atrocities of the Boxtrolls and she decides to investigate. When she finds out that the Boxtrolls are harmless, she agrees to help Eggs tell her father that Snatcher has lied. Eggs will need to be persuaded that he is in fact human and then taught some of the basics of human interaction so that he can deliver the message.
The word “immersive” is often used to describe movies with 3D effects that seem to make the images surround the viewer by extending both in front of and behind the screen. But LAIKA’s films are more deeply immersive than that because of the intricacy of the world they create. Most animated movies use miles of code to show us how every individual hair in an animal’s fur rustles in the wind. But the handmade touch and infinite care of LAIKA’s stop-motion films, where figures and props are nudged ever so slightly for each individual frame and craftspeople spend months creating practical (not digital or virtual) effects to evoke water, fire, and clouds, creates an environment that is tantalizingly complex and invites many viewings to explore its wonders.
LAIKA is perfectionist in its dedication to not being perfect. It embraces the messiness of life. The Boxtrolls’ cavern is grimy and dank, and the Portly-Rind home filled with dessicated finery, but both are brimming with endlessly inventive detail, especially the elaborate mechanics of the Boxtrolls’ cave and the meticulous choreography of the White Hats’ ball. Every single object reflects the care taken by the filmmakers and every detail reflects some element of character and story, which are messy as well. Winnie, who has so much, is lonely and neglected. But she is brave and honest.
Eggs, who has so little, is surrounded by love. He is loyal and courageous. And Snatcher, who is so desperate for acceptance that he will don an elaborate disguise, make libelous accusations, and put his health and even his life at risk, is ultimately not really able to destroy the Boxtrolls. His henchmen, played by Tracey Morgan, Nick Frost, and Richard Ayoade are less wicked than existentially confused, trying to persuade themselves that they are on the right side.
The visuals are deliciously grotesque at times, but the message is a sweet one: families come in all sizes and shapes, sometimes biological, sometimes not, but what defines them is love.
NOTE: Be sure to stay through the credits to see some existential ponderings by the characters and a brief cameo by animator/CEO Travis Knight.
Parents should know that there are some comic but grotesque and macabre images. Characters are in peril and apparently killed, though shown later to be imprisoned. A character appears to have lost his mind. Another character explodes (offscreen).
Family discussion: Why was it so important for Snatcher to be a White Hat? Why didn’t Winnie’s parents pay more attention to her? Why did some of the Red Hats think they were the good guys?
If you like this, try: “Coraline,” “Paranorman,” and “Monster House”
Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, including some disturbing images
Profanity:
Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Underage drinking
Violence/ Scariness:
Extended sci-fi action, peril and violence with many disturbing images, including monsters, dead bodies, apparent suicide, and wounds, many characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:
Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:
September 19, 2014
Date Released to DVD:
December 15, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:
B00OY7YPGK
Yes, it’s another dystopic YA trilogy (actually, there’s a fourth volume, a prequel), and yes, only a teenager with fabulous cheekbones can save the day. But “The Maze Runner” is not a lesser repeat. It is a worthy addition to the genre, an absorbing drama with surprising turns and even more surprising resonance to contemporary conflicts.
Our main character learns what is going on around him at the same time we do. He awakens with a gasp in an elevator cage hurtling to the surface. His memory is gone. He does not know who he is or where he is. When the elevator stops, he finds that he is in a wilderness, the entire population adolescent boys. They call it The Glade. For three years, one boy has arrived by that same elevator every month, along with some supplies in a box marked WCKD. We learn along with the boy, called “Greenie” by the others because he is new, that they have created a society with rules and assigned tasks. The Glade is surrounded by a massive maze that re-arranges itself every night. One group of boys, called Runners,” explore the maze every day to try to map its variations and figure out an escape path. They have to be out of the maze at night because horrible monsters called The Grievers come out. No one who was in the maze at night has ever survived. A “sting” from one of the monsters is toxic, causing madness. The other boys, led by Alby (Aml Ameen of “The Butler”), introduce the greenie to their world and tell him he will remember his name. “It’s the one thing they let us keep.” He does remember. His name is Thomas (Dylan O’Brien).
The boys understand the concept of parents but have no memory of ever having had any. Chuck (Blake Cooper), one of the youngest and most tender-hearted of the boys in The Glade, confides to Thomas that he has carved a little totem for the parents he cannot remember but hopes to be returned to some day.
Alby explains the rules to Thomas. Everyone must do his part. Never harm another Glader. “None of this works unless we have trust.” Never go beyond these walls. But those rules are based on the past. Thomas’ arrival signals some changes. Or did he create those changes? That is an issue that will be debated and then fought over.
“You’re not like the others,” someone says to Thomas. “You’re curious.” Thomas says that if they have not figured a way out in three years, it is time to try something new. Some of the others agree with him, especially after the elevator arrives with someone new — a girl — with a note that says she will be the last one.
A little bit “Lord of the Flies” (boys creating their own society, the struggle between animal instincts and human justice), a little bit “Hunger Games” (teenagers used as pawns by adults), it still manages to bring some imaginative and provocative themes and create distinctive characters. The maze itself is stunning. Production designer Marc Fisichella and the entire sound team have created a maze that is more than an obstacle course or a metaphor. The conflicts as the boys try to maintain some control in the midst of an environment that, like the maze, shifts and constricts are absorbing. The result is a film that you do not need to be a teenager or a YA fan to appreciate.
Parents should know that this film has sci-fi-style action, peril and violence, guns, knives, many young characters injured and killed, suicide, scary and disgusting monsters, some disturbing images, some strong language, and teen drinking.
Family discussion: Why do Thomas and Gally have different ideas about what to do? What was the maze supposed to test?
If you like this, try: the book series and other dystopian films like “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent”
, into a Broadway play. The translation of stories whose art is in the spareness and lyricism of the prose into a theatrical production is at best ambitious, at worst impossible. But Riggan is not just the writer. He is also the director and star. He has put his last dime into the show. If it fails, he loses everything. And there is more. His estranged and angry daughter Sam (Emma Stone), just out of rehab, is working as his assistant so he can keep an eye on her and perhaps repair their relationship. One of the actresses (Andrea Riseborough), may be pregnant with his child. And a piece of equipment has just fallen on the head of one of the actors. They are about to go into previews and he cannot perform.
) has created another loveably crooked world, this time inspired by Alan Snow’s 
. It’s their first period setting, a sort of slightly bent Edwardian with a touch of steampunk, in the town of Cheesebridge. LAIKA’s motto may be “No straight lines, no right angles, no perfect circles,” but this wobbly community is rigidly stratified, with the White Hats at the top of society, nibbling on exotic cheeses in the elegant Tasting Room and hosting elegant parties, the lower class Red Hats desperate to be accepted by them. There is an entirely separate group, the gentle Boxtrolls, who live underneath the city, turning rubbish into Rube Goldbergian machines and tending their garden. They are called Boxtrolls because of their attire — discarded cardboard boxes. And their names come from the boxes they wear: Fish, Fragile, Shoes, and Specs.