#135 – Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, (Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios), 1988, Pedro Almodóvar
Pepa resolves to kill herself with a batch of sleeping-pill-laced gazpacho after her lover leaves her. Fortunately, she is interrupted by a deliciously chaotic series of events.
#258 – Die Hard, 1988, John McTiernan
NYPD cop John McClane’s plan to reconcile with his estranged wife is thrown for a serious loop when, minutes after he arrives at her office, the entire building is overtaken by a group of terrorists. With little help from the LAPD, wisecracking McClane sets out to single-handedly rescue the hostages and bring the bad guys down.
JUMBO CACTUAR APPROVED FILM
#333 – Grave of the Fireflies, (火垂るの墓), 1988, Isao Takahata
In the final months of World War II, 14-year-old Seita and his sister Setsuko are orphaned when their mother is killed during an air raid in Kobe, Japan. After a falling out with their aunt, they move into an abandoned bomb shelter. With no surviving relatives and their emergency rations depleted, Seita and Setsuko struggle to survive.
JUMBO CACTUAR APPROVED FILM
#338 – My Neighbor Totoro, (となりのトトロ), 1988, Hayao Miyazaki
Two sisters move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, and discover the surrounding trees are inhabited by Totoros, magical spirits of the forest. When the youngest runs away from home, the older sister seeks help from the spirits to find her.
JUMBO CACTUAR APPROVED FILM
#364 – Cinema Paradiso, (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso), 1988, Giuseppe Tornatore
A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village’s theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater’s projectionist.
#520 – Akira, (アキラ), 1988, Katsuhiro Otomo
A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop.
#578 – Big, 1988, Penny Marshall
When a young boy makes a wish at a carnival machine to be big—he wakes up the following morning to find that it has been granted and his body has grown older overnight. But he is still the same 13-year-old boy inside. Now he must learn how to cope with the unfamiliar world of grown-ups including getting a job and having his first romantic encounter with a woman.
#607 – Distant Voices, Still Lives, 1988, Terence Davies
The second film in Terence Davies’s autobiographical series (along with “Trilogy” and “The Long Day Closes”) is an impressionistic view of a working-class family in 1940s and 1950s Liverpool, based on Davies’s own family. Through a series of exquisite tableaux Davies creates a deeply affecting photo album of a troubled family wrestling with the complexity of love.
#776 – Dead Ringers, 1988, David Cronenberg
Elliot, a successful gynecologist, works at the same practice as his identical twin, Beverly. Elliot is attracted to many of his patients and has affairs with them. When he inevitably loses interest, he will give the woman over to Beverly, the meeker of the two, without the woman knowing the difference. Beverly falls hard for one of the patients, Claire, but when she inadvertently deceives him, he slips into a state of madness.
#871 – The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, 1988, David Zucker
When the incompetent Officer Frank Drebin seeks the ruthless killer of his partner, he stumbles upon an attempt to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.
JUMBO CACTUAR APPROVED FILM
Jumbo Cactuar Film Index 