Bovie Movie

Blind Mia Farrow splashes mud on a young drifter’s cowboy boots while travelling to her uncle’s isolated mansion. In revenge, he slaughters her entire family and relentlessly pursues her around the old dark house. Written by Brian Clemens (The Avengers) on what must clearly have been an off-day, Richard Fleischer’s cumbersome chiller combines elements of Psycho and Wait until Dark for minimal shocks and suspense. Farrow tries her best to convince, but the half-baked premise is too full of ridiculous red herrings to be even remotely believable. 

Sci-fi action films don’t come any more simplistic than this offering from James Wong (writer and director of the highly entertaining Final Destination). Aware that the sole purpose of this sort of “high concept” crowd-pleaser is to provide maximum entertainment, Wong goes all out to deliver an exhilarating, nonstop adrenalin rush, unfettered by misplaced intellectual pretension. Once the preserve of Schwarzenegger and Stallone, the testosterone-charged lead role is here claimed by Hong Kong action star Jet Li. He gets to battle himself in his portrayal of two martial arts whirlwinds — one, a killer moving between parallel universes in order to murder his alter egos; the other, a Los Angeles police officer who’s the last intergalactic double and next intended victim. Wong is a celluloid magpie, mixing the style of Total Recall and Timecop with the fights and special effects of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix. While this means there’s no real innovation or surprise, it does ensure that jaw-droppingly extreme set pieces punctuate this wildly over-the-top but effective joy ride. 

One of suspense stylist Brian De Palma’s best over-the-top doodles on the B-movie film noir form, this cool, erotically charged déjà-vu Euro-thriller is a sumptuously elegant treat from its wordless lesbian encounter beginning at the Cannes film festival to its cleverly twisted end. Can reclusive French Ambassador’s wife Rebecca Romijn-Stamos hide her former identity as a jewel thief when secret snaps taken by paparazzi photographer Antonio Banderas alert her former partners in crime into reclaiming stolen diamonds? Complete with a mind-bending last-act shift in reality that many will find a complete cheat, De Palma’s audaciously seductive deception is a bold and imaginative exercise in film-making craft and devious sleight-of-hand audience manipulation, laced with his usual tongue-in-chic trademarks. And Romijn-Stamos makes a perfect, icy, duplicitous blonde heroine in the best Hitchcock tradition. 

It’s quite a feat to have sucked the life out of an attractive comic book-style vampire versus werewolf premise, but debut director Len Wiseman has crafted the most stylistically derivative and monotonously plotted horror film possible. The casting is equally defective, with Kate Beckinsale unconvincing as sullen bloodsucker Selene, a sort of waif-like female version of Blade, and Michael Sheen lacking stature as her “Lycan” enemy. Set against a hackneyed melancholy gothic backdrop, the story piles on scene after scene of portentous, humourless exposition, only stopping occasionally for these centuries-old rival gangs to fire off rounds of ammo. Why such rich potential for teeth-baring conflict is abandoned in favour of sub-Matrix gunplay is one of many questions posed before the film’s faintly enjoyable final battle. Only Bill Nighy, as a fearsome ancient vampire, really makes any sort of fanged impression on this dreary disappointment. 

Bob Clark’s 1974 movie Black Christmas was a progenitor of the slasher genre and paved the way for the likes of Halloween and Friday the 13th. This cheeky but no less brutal remake pays its dues to Clark’s cult classic, borrowing wholesale from its gruesome tableaux as a killer stalks a sorority house in the run-up to Christmas, suffocating his victims with plastic bags. Producer James Wong cut his teeth on the Final Destination franchise and employs the same mix of gore and black comedy here, as the incongruities of murder in a Christmas setting are given a grotesque spin. Eyeballs are used as Christmas tree decorations, a candy cane is turned into a deadly weapon and even Santa’s sack doubles as a body bag. All this gives an otherwise forgettable horror movie a likeable chutzpah. 

Kim Basinger stars as a reformed thief who is forced back into crime in director Russell Mulcahy’s fair comic thriller. To make matters worse, Basinger is also saddled with a klutzy partner played by Val Kilmer. Mulcahy’s cinematic eye for detail is on vivid show once more — the Highlander director really is one of cinema’s most underrated visual stylists — but the handsome stars have little to do except pose in front of his eye-popping electric backdrops. And, frankly, there doesn’t seem to be much chemistry between the two leads, either. As for villain Terence Stamp’s daft southern accent, what was everyone thinking? 

As with The Black Dahlia, this starry thriller is based on a sensational crime case that shocked the US in the 1940s. But, sadly, like Brian De Palma’s botched James Ellroy adaptation, this is all about surface authenticity — cool suits, hip jazz soundtrack, hard-boiled narration — rather than true noir. John Travolta plays a homicide detective still grieving over the suicide of his wife, who, together with loyal partner James Gandolfini, is on the trail of a pair of murderous con artists. Jared Leto and Salma Hayek play the predatory pair who contact their victims via the lonely hearts columns. Writer/director Todd Robinson nails the period details perfectly, but the characters themselves never really ring true — all the more surprising given that the detective Travolta plays, Elmer C Robinson, was the film-maker’s grandfather. 

The directorial debut of top screenwriter Scott Frank (Get Shorty, Out of Sight) is an offbeat thriller that confirms the rising-star status of Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Mysterious Skin, Brick). The former child star impresses again here as Chris, a brain-damaged teenager whose lack of self-esteem sees him easily seduced into facilitating a heist at the small-town bank where he works as a cleaner. The first half of the film, which concentrates on Chris’s relationship with his irascible blind flatmate Lewis (the always watchable Jeff Daniels), is much the better. In fact, the picture might have done well to maintain its focus on this storyline. The second half, in which the robbery plans of a former school friend (Matthew Goode) take centre stage, becomes rather too Rambo-like to be completely credible. Still, it’s a decent first-time effort from Frank and well worth a look. 

Anthony Michael Hall’s career started slipping the minute he lost his geeky teenage looks, and this was one of his failed bids to relaunch himself as an action star. It’s still worth a look, though, if only for a smarter-than-usual premise. Hall is the pampered Hollywood star researching a new film role who is reluctantly taken under the wing of maverick air force ace Michael Paré. Soon the pair find themselves caught up in a real-life war. There are shades of the similarly themed comedy The Hard Way in the beginning, although the film degenerates into Rambo-style clichés once the stars are caught behind enemy lines. 

… and another largely pointless reprise from the Hollywood mill. Although original stars Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte are reunited with director Walter Hill, all three seem to be going through the motions here. Nolte is the same rough and ready cop who is forced to team up again with con Murphy, this time in a bid to salvage his own career. Ironically, that seems to be the reason for this sequel in real life for Murphy; whereas in the original he was electrifying, here he verges on self-parody. The action is spectacular enough, though, and Hill makes sure he uses up his much bigger budget with increasingly ludicrous set pieces.