Near, Holly

Slaughterhouse Five

Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) has a problem with time: he keeps jumping about in his own life, principally between three key scenes. The "present" is a kind of glowing suburban bliss involving a dutiful wife, large house, and presidency of the local Lions; the "past" is being a prisoner of World War II and experiencing the firebombing of Dresden from the wrong side; the "future" takes place in a glass dome on the planet Tralfamadore, to which Billy has been mysteriously spirited along with the woman of his fantasies (Montana Wildhack, played by Valerie Perrine). It isn't meant to make too much sense, since the point is to represent a man (and a century) that has witnessed things too unbearable for a wholly sane person to make sense of. In fact author Kurt Vonnegut's anguished cry on the insanity of war is one of those completely unfilmable books, so director George Roy Hill gets points even for trying. The whole package is thought provoking in a wholly Vonnegutian way. All this, and Glenn Gould playing Bach as well. --Richard Farr

Dogfight

Director Nancy Savoca tackles tough material in the battle of the sexes, late-teen division, and makes it bitterly moving. River Phoenix plays one of a group of youngish marines on the verge of shipping out to Southeast Asia in 1963 San Francisco. On their last night in port, they decide to hold a "dogfight": a contest to see who can get the ugliest girl to go out with him. Phoenix winds up with a pudgy waitress (Lili Taylor), who has dreams of being like her hero, Joan Baez. As he draws her out, he finds himself intrigued by the self-contained world she has created for herself and by the time he gets her to the dance he is regretting his decision--but is too macho to pull out. Barely released, the film features touching performances by both the late Phoenix and the always fascinating Taylor, who gives this character great dignity. --Marshall Fine

Four young Marines compete to see who can find the homliest date.

Minnie and Moskowitz

"Before I met you, I thought I was in trouble," says moneyed museum worker Minnie (Gena Rowlands) to longhaired car park attendant Seymour (Seymour Cassel) over a hot dog and a coffee. Such is the basis of true love in Minnie and Moskowitz, a shaggy, unusually romantic comedy that is nonetheless pure John Cassavetes. After a long introductory sequence in which each character fills the screen with the rhythm of their respective lives, they meet when Seymour rescues Minnie from a blind date gone hopelessly bad. Minnie and Seymour have almost nothing in common--he's a talkative, spontaneous goof with quicksilver emotions, a dead-end job, and little ambition, she's a shy, insecure but sincere upper-class single in an abusive affair with a married man (an uncredited Cassavetes, insidiously charming and cruelly bullying). But they are both lonely romantics with a love of Bogart movies. As in most of Cassavetes's work, the script is less a story than a string of dramatic engagements colored with the quirks and emotional impulses of its characters, and he takes his time exploring the nooks and crannies of the volatile relationship. But amidst the shouting matches and frenzied fights are moments of quiet intimacy, and it turns into the most hopeful portrait of romantic love in the Cassavetes canon, complete with a sunny, uncharacteristically happy home movie ending. --Sean Axmaker

Slaughterhouse Five

Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) has a problem with time: he keeps jumping about in his own life, principally between three key scenes. The "present" is a kind of glowing suburban bliss involving a dutiful wife, large house, and presidency of the local Lions; the "past" is being a prisoner of World War II and experiencing the firebombing of Dresden from the wrong side; the "future" takes place in a glass dome on the planet Tralfamadore, to which Billy has been mysteriously spirited along with the woman of his fantasies (Montana Wildhack, played by Valerie Perrine). It isn't meant to make too much sense, since the point is to represent a man (and a century) that has witnessed things too unbearable for a wholly sane person to make sense of. In fact author Kurt Vonnegut's anguished cry on the insanity of war is one of those completely unfilmable books, so director George Roy Hill gets points even for trying. The whole package is thought provoking in a wholly Vonnegutian way. All this, and Glenn Gould playing Bach as well. --Richard Farr

No one will believe Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) when he says he has come "unstuck in time," reliving in aimless order all the events in his life. Living in seclusion in llium, New York, the timid widower is typing out a letter to the local paper about his time treks when suddenly, he is trapped behind German lines in wintry World War II Belgium. Next he is in his wedding bed with his wealthy weighty bride Valencia (Sharon Gans). Interspersed with his leapfrog adventures in time, Billy also finds himself being transported to and from the distant planet Tralfamadore, whose invisible inhabitants enclose him in a glass dome furnished with Sears Roebuck furniture and a kittenish Hollywood starlet (Valerie Perrine), to whom Billy is expected to make love. This big-budget production of Kurt Vonnegut's best-selling, semi-autographical novel, was shot in Czechoslovakia, Minnesota, and the Universial Studios sound stages, under a shroud of secrecy, with no publicist and little information provided to the press. The devout "Vonnegut cult" of college students feared that the complex, highly-stylizwd 1969 novel would defy screen adaptation. Critics differed on the bizarre, dreamlike film, but none could argue with the movie's message that the world is a collection of moments, "and if we're going to survive, it's up to us to concentrate on the good moments and ignore the bad."