Bovie Movie

Abel Ferrara directed this erotic thriller adapted by Ferrara and Christ Zois from a short story by science fiction author William Gibson (in his Burning Chrome collection). Global corporations rule the world, and corporate raider Fox (Christopher Walken) and his deputy X (Willem Dafoe) could pocket $100 million if they can get top scientist Hiroshi (Yoshitaka Amano) to defect from one corporation to another. Fox offers singer Sandii (Asia Argento) $1 million to seduce Hiroshi away from his wife, family, and employer. An affair develops between Sandii and X, while she studies facts about Hiroshi’s life. She departs on her assignment, but betrayals ensue, with Fox and X soon becoming targets themselves. With opening credits in three languages (English, German, Japanese), the soundtrack features the score-composition debut of hip-hopper Schoolly D, music which plays over a blank screen at the wrap-up (since the film has no closing credits). This Gibson short story was a property once in development by director Kathryn Bigelow. The title story of Gibson’s Burning Chrome collection was planned as the second Heavy Metal movie, intended for live-action and scripted but never filmed. Shown in competition at the 1998 Venice Film Festival.

Writer and director Sofia Coppola puts a new spin on the life and times of one of Europe’s most infamous monarchs in this lavish historical drama which fuses a contemporary sensibility with painstaking recreations of the look of the 18th century. Born to Austrian nobility, Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) is only 14 years old when she’s pledged to marry Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), the 15-year-old king of France, in an alliance that has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with love. Sent to France and literally stripped of her former life, Marie weds Louis, but to the consternation of the royal court, he seems either unwilling or unable to consummate the marriage while their advisors clamor for an heir to the throne. Young and more than a bit out of step with the new life that’s been thrust upon her, Marie gives herself over to the pleasures of life in Versailles, knowing and caring little of the political intrigue that surrounds her. In time, Marie’s trusted older brother, Joseph (Danny Huston), is brought in to coach Louis on the finer points of marital relations, and before long the couple is finally blessed with a child. However, as Marie tends to her children in the gilded cage of her palace and enjoys an affair with a Swedish nobleman, political power plays are throwing France into chaos, and the growing ranks of the poor rebel against the royals and their life of privilege. Also starring Rip Torn, Judy Davis, Steve Coogan, and Asia Argento, Marie Antoinette was given a controversial reception when it premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

George A. Romero, who revolutionized the American horror film in 1968 with the instant classic Night of the Living Dead, returns to his dystopian zombie cycle with this horror thriller. In Land of the Dead, the zombies whose numbers had been slowly but steadily growing through Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead now dominate the streets of most American cities, while urban skyscrapers have been taken over by surviving humans, usually greed-addled opportunists who allow the living to stay in their fortified compounds for a price. Guarding the buildings are rough-and-tumble mercenaries who have learned to do battle with the zombies, making use of powerful weapons to gain advantage. But as the zombie civilization grows, the creatures have begun to slowly evolve, with their dormant thought processes beginning to awaken, and as unrest begins to ferment among the mercenaries and the entrepreneurs who pay them, the ghouls may have found a way to defeat the last stronghold of humanity. Land of the Dead stars Dennis Hopper as arch capitalist Kaufman, and Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Robert Joy, and Asia Argento as some of the mercenaries; Asia Argento’s father, Dario Argento, served as a producer on one of the earlier films in the series, Dawn of the Dead.

The director (Rob Cohen) and star (Vin Diesel) of the previous summer’s hit The Fast and the Furious (2001) are reunited for this spy thriller billed as a next-generation James Bond adventure. Diesel stars as Xander Cage, a nihilist extreme sports enthusiast nicknamed “Triple X” because of a large tattoo covering his back and neck. Cage’s illegal stunts and poor attitude (he’s given to spouting dialogue such as, “Have you ever been punched in the face for talking too much?”) land him in jail, where he’s recruited/blackmailed into government service by the National Security Agency’s Augustus Gibbons, who likes Cage for his skills and expendability. The new secret agent is assigned to infiltrate a Russian crime ring called Anarchy 99, whose access to biochemical weaponry is making the United States extremely nervous. With the help of some high-tech gadgets from weapons master Toby Lee Shavers (Michael Roof), Cage is able to make his way into Anarchy 99, where he targets the group’s leader Yorgi (Marton Csokas) and falls for the organization’s second-in-command, Yelena (Asia Argento). XXX (2002) is the first in a hoped-for franchise of sequels for the film’s producer, Revolution Studios.