Bovie Movie

The ghetto drama genre was ripe for send-up when Don’t Be a Menace … was released in the US, but the fact that Paris Barclay’s film didn’t even make it to video in Britain is an indication of how dire it is. Poking fun at films such as Boyz N the Hood and Menace II Society, as well as rap music videos, this squanders its comic potential through lazy spoofing, ramshackle plotting and tasteless jokes. Not even the presence of what appears to be the entire Wayans family (Marlon and Shawn — who also co-wrote the screenplay with Phil Beauman — Keenen Ivory and Craig) can save this sorry mess. Shawn and Marlon teamed up again to co-write and star in the blockbuster Scary Movie, which suggests they at least learned from this misfiring mistake. 

Neither Jeff Bridges’s quiet authority nor the “in-your-face” dramatics of a killer storm can lift director Ridley Scott’s attempt to remake Top Gun (which was directed by brother Tony) at sea. School-ship skipper Bridges gathers a group of undisciplined students aboard the brigantine Albatross for a voyage of self-discovery to South America. Unfortunately, this undemanding but entertaining rite-of-passage adventure, based on a true story, takes a sudden lurch into disaster with the arrival of the storm of the title. It may be a tour de force set piece, but it represents such an abrupt change of tone that the movie’s credibility is almost blown away in the process. 

In Double Impact, we suffered the agony of two Jean-Claude Van Dammes for the entire movie. Here, thankfully, his twin gets bumped off in the opening few minutes. It’s still hard work, but at least in the hands of Hong Kong director Ringo Lam (City on Fire) there are plenty of tremendous action set pieces to relish as Van Damme takes on the might of the Russian Mafia with the help of his late sibling’s girlfriend (Natasha Henstridge from Species). French stars Jean-Hugues Anglade and Stéphane Audran are largely wasted, however. 

After he is framed for the death of several colleagues and falsely branded a traitor, a secret agent embarks on a daring scheme to clear his name in this spy adventure. Though it drew its name from the familiar television series, director Brian DePalma’s big-budget adaptation shares little more with the original show than the occasional self-destructing message and the name of team leader Jim Phelps (Jon Voight). The film focuses not on Phelps but his prot?g?, Ethan Hunt (a reserved Tom Cruise), who becomes a fugitive after taking the blame for a botched operation. He responds by banding together with a group of fellow renegades, and he is soon maneuvering his way through a twisted series of double crosses that mainly serve as excuses for spectacular high-tech action sequences. Much of the activity revolves around a missing computer disk, with the film’s most famous scene depicting Hunt’s delicate efforts to retrieve the disk from a secure, well-alarmed room in CIA headquarters.

Alec Baldwin stars here as ex-New Orleans cop Dave Robicheaux, a man at odds with himself over his alcoholism, loss of faith and love of violence. Adapted from the second in a series of crime novels by James Lee Burke, this atmospheric thriller has Robicheaux rescuing a small girl from a lagoon air-crash and thinking he’s spiritually saved, only to find he’s up to his neck in drug smuggling and murder. Baldwin is a little too engaging in the lead, and the plot becomes a rather routine tale of vengeance, but along the way director Phil Joanou keeps a good deal of the novel’s sinister atmosphere, and Eric Roberts is a suitably charming villain. 

Inevitably recalling Lawrence of Arabia with its desert setting and epic sweep, this skilful adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s difficult novel is at heart two love stories, one in the present, the other told in flashback. Ralph Fiennes plays the hideously burned “English patient” tended to by Juliette Binoche’s nurse in an Italian monastery at the end of the Second World War. His story, torrid and dangerous, is pieced together gradually, while Binoche falls in love with a bomb disposal officer (Naveen Andrews). Fiennes is in fact a Hungarian, a mapmaker charting the Sahara who got caught up in the war and in an affair with the unhappily married Kristin Scott Thomas. It’s an ambitious film and director Anthony Minghella’s skill lies equally in his screenplay, which delivers explanation only in fragments but keeps us involved for what is an epic running time. 

John Smith is an amoral gunslinger in the days of Prohibition. On the lam from his latest (unspecified) exploits, he happens upon the town of Jericho, Texas. Actually, calling Jericho a town would be too generous—it has become more like a ghost town, since two warring gangs have ‘driven off all the decent folk.’ Smith sees this as an opportunity to play both sides off against each other, earning himself a nice piece of change as a hired gun. Despite his strictly avowed mercenary intentions, he finds himself risking his life for his, albeit skewed, sense of honor….

There was no doubt after Shallow Grave that the arrival of director Danny Boyle, producer Andrew Macdonald and doctor-turned-writer John Hodge on the British film scene was a major cause for celebration. However, it was the trio’s follow-up — this devastatingly comic and tragic look at youth culture and its recreational habits — that put them firmly on the international map. Unapologetic and hard-hitting, Irvine Welsh’s controversial bestseller is brought to the screen as a dazzling assault on the senses. Fiercely original and provocative, this shocker focuses on the disintegrating friendship of four Edinburgh lads as they embark on an endless drugs and petty-crime bender. In a true masterstroke, the harrowing and bleak subject matter is presented as a hilariously funny walk on the wild side, with no moral stance taken or punches pulled. Ewan McGregor is absolutely brilliant as smart-aleck junkie Renton, and Robert Carlyle gives a stunning performance as the violent Begbie. This is a savagely sophisticated work and a landmark British classic. 

In this part-animated fantasy comedy, American basketball star Michael Jordan makes a charismatic big-screen acting debut alongside the entire Warner Bros cartoon catalogue. Children will love the energy of both the live and animated characters, and there’s plenty to keep adults amused, too, as aliens from an ailing intergalactic theme park called Moron Mountain are ordered to acquire the services of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig et al for a new attraction. In a desperate attempt to keep their freedom, the animated superstars challenge their would-be captors to a basketball game and increase their odds of success by kidnapping Jordan. The humour cleverly mixes typical Looney Tunes gags with references to Reservoir Dogs, comic jibes at their sports star’s new choice of career (baseball) and some hilarious moments provided by Bill Murray. And Jordan is joined in the film by other basketball luminaries, including Charles Barclay and Larry Bird. 

Speed director Jan De Bont takes destruction to new levels in this daft but breathtaking salute to the daredevil meteorologists who chase the tornados that plague America’s Midwest. Here, Bill Paxton stars as a TV weatherman who is drawn back to his dangerous former profession as a storm chaser to help estranged wife Helen Hunt place a tornado-measuring invention in the eye of a storm. Don’t worry about the laboured storyline or the lack of chemistry between Paxton and Hunt; just sit back and gape at the wondrous effects that allow cars, houses and even the odd farm animal to be sent spiralling through the air.