TURN-ONS AND TURN-OFFS IN CURRENT HOME ENTERTAINMET RELEASES : Excellent Good Fair Poor : VIDEOCASSETTES

“Ikiru.” Cinematheque. $59.95. Akira Kurosawa is better known for his samurai and other historical Japanese films, but this contemporarily set 1952 picture stands among the director’s finest works. One of realist cinema’s most unforgettable treasures, “Ikiru” (“To Live”) follows an elderly bureaucrat (Takshi Shimura) through devastating despair, as he learns that he is dying, to eventual transcendence as he realizes the value of life--and what one dedicated man can accomplish. A film of not only sadness and insight but great liveliness and humor. Black and white, subtitled.