5 Depressing movies you've probably never heard of

In the words of Mel Brooks: "Life Stinks!" We all go through so much BS in our daily lives that it’s a miracle we an endure any of it. But for thick and thin, society created methods to escape the cruel pangs of life and find some comfort in it; meditation, religion, reading and, of course, cinema. Cinema, in the past century, has become a staple-mark of an American industry that allowed people to escape into the world the movie creates. But no matter how hard you try to escape from reality, reality always finds a way to catch up with you and with reality calling, filmmakers have created movies to remind audiences that we can’t ignore reality and instead of trying to escape from it, we have to confront it. But why settle for sad movies everybody already knows, like “Old Yeller" or “Million Dollar Baby," when I can delve into the catacombs of cinematic history and pull out the unheard and the obscure. Let’s go really hipster today and list down five movies that, you’ve probably never heard of.

1. Bicycle Thieves (1948)

The headliner for the Italian Neorealism era, an era of filmmaking that came after World War II where Italian cinema dispensed with the hard truth of their suffering after the War. Leading this movement was Vittorio De Sica, who broke ground by employing non-professional actors to cement the element of everyday life to the average audience. The movie follows a man who sells his bedsheets to reclaim his bicycle to acquire a job putting up posters around the city so he can feed his family, but that all changes when a thief runs off with his bicycle. The rest of the movie is the man and his young son searching the city for his bicycle, running into dead ends, even being desperate enough to steal a bicycle. I wish I could tell you there was a happy ending, but regretfully, there isn't. He holds his son's hand and walks into a crowd, almost resigned to their fate as the father is ashamed to have been a terrible example to his son.

2. Ikiru (1952)

Any self-respecting film-maker will likely explain in great detail Akira Kurosawa and his achievements in cinema and the major influence his films have on modern day cinema. He is widely known for his samurai-era films, but his contemporary dramas also hold equal power to the movie-goer looking for a little bit more outside the Hollywood system. "Ikiru" follows the story of Kanji Wantanabe (Takashi Shimura), an elderly businessman whose life is forever changed when he learns he has stomach cancer, sending him into a deep depression. Wishing to make his final moments mean something, he works to convince a bureaucratic board to turn a filth-ridden cesspool into a playground for children. The big tear-jerker scene moment for this movie nears the end where Kanji's co-workers discuss the events leading up to his death, pondering if he knew he was going to die or if this caught him off-guard. A police officer arrives telling them of the last time he saw Kanji alive, he swinging on a swingset, snow falling around him as he sings 'Gonolda No Uta.' Even though the co-workers make a vow to be more open and confrontational as Kanji was, the next day, each and every one of them find they simply lack the courage to speak up for the common man. The late Roger Ebert once wrote of this movie "…and the older I get, the less Wantanabe seems like a pathetic old man, and the more he seems like every one of us." In many ways, there is a Kanji Wantanabe in all of us, wanting to speak up against the higher authority.

3. Der Letzte Mann ("The Last Laugh") (1924)

Here's one that's so depressing, American distributors demanded the filmmaker make an alternative happy ending just to show it overseas. Emil Jannings, the first man to receive the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1929, stars as an aged hotel doorman, a position that has deep respect in his poor German neighborhood, especially with his daughter getting married recently. But his life is turned upside down when he is demoted by the hotel manager to a bathroom attendant and he tries to hide his demotion from his family and friends. Eventually, the truth comes out and instead of support, he is mocked and ridiculed out of his home and forced to sleep in the bathroom of the hotel he works at, the only kindness he is shown from a nightwatchman who puts his coat over him as he sleeps. What made this film in particular as being unique was the lack of intertitles that identified the Silent Movie era of the time, but honestly, I feel this makes the movie better for it, with the lack of title cards, it allows the actors to tell the story for you and this allows the viewer to form what is being said in their mind. As I said before, the movie's depressing ending forced the filmmaker to make an alternative ending, the only title card in this movie, where the movie has to tell you that "the author decided to give the old man a happy ending" as this incredibly tacked-on ending explaining that this millionaire gave all his money to a guy he met in a bathroom. While that ending definitely fits the English title "The Last Laugh," the movie's true ending is so saddening that i shows much more emotional bravados than what America showed in 1925. For anyone who is curious, you can see the full movie on Netflix.

4. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)

In the modern era, someone would probably name this movie as "What Will You Do For A Klondike Bar?" But in the time the movie is set, the title is all too appropriate for this downer of a movie. In the 1930s, money was scare because of the Great Depression, everyone needed work to get money to pay for food. Directed by Sydney Pollack, the movie shows a group of couples who compete in a dance competition for $1500, each character we're meant to care about is established and we are told why they need the money. But the real shock in the ending comes with this twist that, I won't spoil, but it'll make you very angry, which, considering the kind of movies Sydney Pollack made in his life, that was his intention. Get mad. Get very mad. But then get sad at the end where the last main character we felt bad for is given no happy ending for his choices as the marathon continues with couples still dance away, hoping to win something to keep them alive.

5. When the Wind Blows (1986)

You'd probably expect of me to include "Grave of the Fireflies" or some Japanese anime, but I'm choosing movies that you wouldn't have heard of and for this sort of movie, you wouldn't exactly see it as depressing until the ending. Released during a time of the fear of nuclear war, "When the Wind Blows" tells the tale of an elderly couple that prepares their home for nuclear war and their subsequent survival after the bomb's blast. Just like the TV movie "The Day After," "When the Wind Blows" capsulated the paranoia of radiation fallout during the 1980's while Ronald Reagan was in office and his threats to nuke the Russians scared everyone stiff. This movie takes us through an animated journey of this post-World War II English couple try to survive and keep positive after the nuclear bomb, sadly their greatest failing is their lack of understanding radiation and as they begin to feel the effects of radiation poisoning, the old man tries to keep positive and find a rational explanation for all the things happening to them. "The Powers that be will no doubt take care of us…" Though I will admit, David Bowie's theme song and Roger Waters' score does distract slightly from the movie's feel, I can't hep but admire this movie for being so ballsy to show these two suffering and yet they try to keep a positive attitude through it all. While "Grave of the Fireflies" is very, very depressing, this one is a rare time capsule that shows the UK's viewpoint of the possibility of nuclear fallout.

Pacific Rim

Released in 2013 under the direction of Guillermo del Toro ("Hellboy," "Pan's Labyrinth") on a budget of $180 million with distribution from Warner Bros.; "Pacific Rim" is del Toro's love letter to Japanese pop culture obsessed with giant mecha fighting giant enemies while leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. The list of mecha anime itself is a long list that stretches back to the 1960's; Evangelion, Code Geass, Full Metal Panic, Gurren Lagann, and 50 billion versions of Gundam. Guillermo del Toro stated that he made this movie mostly to appeal to the nostalgic adults who watched mecha anime growing up but also have it appeal to kids to get them interested in the genre as well. Did it work though?

At least a decade into the future, giant aliens known as Kaiju erupt from a portal in the pacific ocean and, naturally, begin to attack cities mostly bordering around the Pacific ocean. The world bands together to pool their resources into creating giant fighting robots, referred to as Jaeger, that have to be controlled by two people, cause, ya know, if Evangelion or Gundam taught us anything, it's that it's impossible for one person to control a giant robot. At first, everything seems to go well until the Kaiju begin to adapt to these attacks and develop their ways of defeating the Jaeger. In a last ditch effort to stop the Kaiju, Jaeger program marshall Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) plans to drop a nuke into the Kaiju portal. To help make this possible, he brings together former Jaeger pilot Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam) teamed up with Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) to suit up and defend Hong Kong and end the war.

The story is so predictable that, again, you might as well should bring a checklist of all movie cliches and check them off. Main character traumatized by death of loved one, badass minor characters killed off in one battle, motivation speech, self-sacrifice; been there, done that. The characters are so dull, I thought they were played by robots

Really, the only reason this movie should be seen is for the fighting giant robots and let's be honest here, the fights are amazing to watch. They're big, loud, and bombastic; too bad there are only three fights in the entire movie and the last one isn't even as good as the second one, watching Hong Kong get torn to bits made me laugh happily.

I've been getting requests to go see this from my fellow critics, hailing it as "this summer's best." While I definitely enjoyed it more than my family did, I can't really say that I would want to pay IMAX 3D price to see this again. I'd rather sneak in to watch the second Kaiju/Jaeger fight than sit through the entire movie again, or better still, wait till it's available on XFinity. I really liked the fight scenes, but the movie's plot could have been stronger to warrant rewatch.

Final Rating: 2/5

The Lone Ranger 2013

Directed by Gore Verbinski ("The Ring," "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl," "Rango") on a budget of $250 million with distribution by Disney Pictures; "The Lone Ranger" is Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney's attempt to bring back the fictional Western hero of the same name who was created in 1933. Like John Wayne, The Lone Ranger has endured as an American icon in pop culture, the masked Texas Ranger who rides across the Old West, shooting silver bullets, fighting injustice with his trusty Native American sidekick Tonto and from out of the west with the speed of light and a hearty hi-yo Silver!…sorry…I just reverted back to my childhood youth of watching some of these campy episodes on the TCM channel... The Lone Ranger began as a radio serial in the 30's By George W. Trendle and Fran Striker (Wikipedia says "or" but I feel both men deserve credit) the serials grew in popularity, but it exploded in the 1950's, the golden age of American Westerns with the television show that began in 1949 and starred Clayton Moore as The Lone Ranger, cementing the image of this American icon.

Now the history of The Lone Ranger with film has not been one to show promise, there exist two movies that featured Clayton Moore, a poorly commercialized 1981 flop "The Legend of the Lone Ranger," a 2003 TV movie pilot that failed to attract attention and Disney's 2013 effort. Disney for the longest time struggled to get "The Lone Ranger" off the ground, going through different writers, directors and actors to play the lead. Eventually, the movie was finally made, but recently, the movie has become a major box office flop for Disney, one to compare to the likes of "John Carter." So what about this film is making it hard to win it's money back? Let's take a look.

Plot:

Being narrated by an elderly Tonto (Johnny Depp) in 1933, the movie is set in Texas of 1869 where lawyer John Reid (Armie Hammer and before you ask, yes, the John Reid is supposed to be related to Britt Reid, The Green Hornet, believe me, I've got enough to be pissed off at) arrives via a train that carries sadistic criminal Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) who is freed by his gang. Deciding to take the law into their hands to apprehend him, John's Texas Ranger brother Dan Reid (James Badge Dale) makes John a Texas Ranger and takes him along on their ride to recover Butch. However, they are shot down and left for dead, with Butch eating Dan's heart…for some reason…Tonto (still Johnny Depp), however, discovers John and, with some comedic prodding from a white horse, Tonto saves John's life and encourages him to wear a mask and seek justice for his brother's murder. So after that 45 minutes, we then sit through, mm, at least an hour of random stuff, a dull main character and so many nods to other Westerns I could be watching that you forget you're watching "The Lone Ranger" until the last 10-20 minutes. Oh yeah, the movie also has Tom Wilkinson as that one character who isn't as he seems, Helena Bonham Carter as a Madame with an ivory leg/built in leg gun, and Ruth Wilson is John's love interest even though they barely share any scenes together.

I've said before that I've noticed a pattern in bad movies where if you have more than one or two writers, chances are, your movie will suck. That isn't always true (just look at a lot of Disney movies), but for major action movies this day in age, three writers and you can see why a movie is as bad as it is. So, who's writing this movie? (checks) Justin Haythe, screenwriter for "Revolutionary Road," huh, that wasn't too bad. Ted Elliott, screenwriter for Disney's "Aladdin," and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies as well as "Shrek," again, those were pretty good movies, for the most part, that just leaves Terry Rossio, he should be the one responsible, right? Well, he's actually worked on the same films as Ted Elliot, even working together for that really good 1998 remake "The Mask of Zorro." So damn, you would think these guys would at least know when there's too much in the movie to be shown that they would need to take out to make the movie shorter.

The movie feels long, many scenes feel dragged out longer than necessary and as a result, times where the movie establishes character development, really are just used to show off more of Johnny Depp's Tonto. It takes about 40 minutes or so before John finally puts on the Lone Ranger mask and once he finally does, he spends the majority of the movie whining, acting like a stereotypical city boy and complaining…at like, everything. But all of that can be forgiven for the big scale finale where Tonto and The Lone Ranger battle the villains on two trains that roll around on the tracks while John and Tonto leap back and forth on the trains while Hans Zimmer's version of "The William Tell Overture" plays over the action. 

Characters:

Armie Hammer: He's boring.

That's all I can say. I could go into detail about how much of a wimp he acts like when he has all these chances to shoot the bad guys and make the movie end sooner, but he hesitates and we're forced to endure more of the movie's length, Guy Farmer said it best in a Johnny Depp movie I reviewed before, "stupid f*cking white man." Also, this is something the movie never really explains, Tonto says to John that he is a spiritwalker and he cannot die, but we're explained by a Comanche tribe that Tonto isn't right in the head, so does that mean John can actually die or did Tonto telling the truth? Also, Tonto states that Butch is an evil spirit, yet he's never killed by a silver bullet and there's no mysticism to him except why Armie just can't shoot his dumb ass and get it over with.

Johnny Depp: He's pretty much Captain Jack Sparrow without the drunken swagger.

And the same can be said with the majority of his actions in the movie, the facial expressions he makes, his reactions to certain situations and how he casually steps off a ladder just before it runs into a tree; don't lie to yourself, he's Jack Sparrow without the swagger. I guess as a marketing ploy to get more people to the theater or the Comanche native American tribe really like Johnny Depp that much that they made him an honorary Comanche. While his performance isn't really offensive like many others from back in the 1950's in that old Golden Hollywood age of Movie Westerns, while I would have liked to have seen an actual Native American actor play Tonto, I doubt the movie would have made as much of it's money back if Johnny wasn't in the role. By the way, I read an article that raised a good point about the movie's narrative; since Tonto isn't right in the head, that would mean, by that logical, all the weird things that are seen in the movie, from cannibal rabbits to the horse Silver being able to appear on the rooftop of a burning barn to being in a tree with a hat on. By that then, all the improbable and ridiculous elements of the movie, you could say, were fabricated by Tonto. Interesting theory right?

Everyone else, left no impact on me whatsoever. Helena Bonham Carter is amusing, but she is given so little screentime you might as well forgotten she was in the movie. Tom Wilkinson is forgettable, Butch Cavendish has one scene of brutality early on where he eats Dan's heart…still don't understand the significance of doing so but, whatever…but after that, he's just a disgusting nasty asshole with no depth or humanity to him. Ruth Wilson is the most boring love interest in a western since Selma Hyak in "Wild Wild West" and her little kid is just…well, he just fills the camera with something to look at, not like we have Johnny Depp's bird to do that.

Production:

Typical of a Gore Verbinski picture, the locations recreate the feel of an old Sergio Leone or John Ford western (in fact, for hard core movie-goers, give a Halleluiah when you spot the obvious reference to "The Searchers"). The locations look fantastic, from a small pool surrounded by large rock formations to a large valley where The Lone Ranger and Tonto blow up a bridge. The music by Hans Zimmer (any long term fans who have ready my reviews since 2009 know I can't stand Hans Zimmer, well, it's been a few years, I've gotten over it and can respect that the guy has done some very good music. The music in this movie sounds like a combination of classic Elmer Bernstien-esqe flair with the grandiose of "Pirates of the Caribbean" and a touch of Neil Young's "Dead Man" in certain places if you hear it right. Visually, the movie looks pretty good, even for all the implausible death-defying points of the film. Even the makeup looks pretty nifty, you have to give some credit to the makeup team for creating a makeup for Johnny Depp where the face paint looks as though it's been dried onto his face, give them credit, that is not an easy makeup effect if you're trying to rush a makeup session. Not to mention seeing Johnny Depp look so freaking old, dang dude.

Bottom Line:

So now the question I must ask; why is this movie failing while other Westerns like "Django Unchained," and "True Grit" make back double or triple it's money while movies like "Wild Wild West," Jonah Hex" and "Cowboys & Aliens" fail to break even at the box office? The issue stems from the movie's budget with the amount of marketing one can do for a movie. The movie mentioned before failed to attract an audience because of most people aren't too fond of mysticism or science-fiction in Westerns since it tends to ruin the aesthetic feel of a Western. Even in something as ridiculous as "Shanghai Noon," the world the movie sets itself still gives the Western aesthetic. Movies like "Wild Wild West" miscast actors that fail to bring box office draw, write screenplays that require three people to write them and try to force in some sense of modernization that effectively breaks the film aesthetic and thus you, the audience, are instead left to sit and wonder "Why is there a giant mechanical Spider here?" or "Why is Jonah Hex carrying around a machine gun on his horse?" or "Why the hell are the cowboys even bothering with guns when it's established they only hurt the aliens when the aliens feel like bullets can hurt them?" Doing outrageous stunts like the ones in this movie ruins the effective reality of a Western if you have characters who are supposedly superhuman.

Again, that's my theory as to why High-concept Westerns fail, I can't say for sure that's the reason, but it's a reason.

As for "The Lone Ranger," there was a lot of promise and a lot of big names attached to the movie to ensure that it couldn't possibly fail, but it suffered from the same problems with "Wild Wild West" and now, Disney is the one going to suffer for it. There were things I did like, I was invested in what was going on…for the most part…Johnny Depp and Silver were the funniest things in this movie and the ending, while ridiculous and implausible, is awesome as hell.

But for as much as I want this movie to at least be successful so that this doesn't ruin the careers of Gore Verbinski, Jerry Bruckheimer and Johnny Depp, I honestly can only recommend this movie as a rental. The train scenes and the cinematography are the only legitimate reason I can recommend to see the movie on the big screen, the size and scale of the movie and seeing it fill the screen is it's own visual treat to a seasoned ciniphile. But for the average movie goer who wouldn't know John Ford or Sergio Leone, this is honestly, at best, a rental.

Final Rating: 2.75/5

I really want to give it higher, but, from the bottom of my heart, I can't.