Bovie Movie

Charlotte Cory (Connie Nielsen) is a young woman convict on Death Row who has built up a friendship with Frank Nitzche (Aidan Quinn) through mail correspondence, whilst her attorney (Kelly Preston) desperately tries to appeal the verdict before Charlotte’s time runs out. With only days to spare Frank realizes that he has fallen in love with Charlotte and discovers that there is much more to the tragic circumstances of her imprisonment than he first thought - her life is now in his hands. Frank races to solve the puzzle that will reveal the truth, and tell the secrets that both he and Charlotte have been concealing, before it’s too late.

Shane goes to outer space in this depressingly unoriginal slice of science fiction from Event Horizon director Paul Anderson. A near monosyllabic Kurt Russell plays the brainwashed army killing machine dumped on a garbage planet when a newer DNA manipulated model is developed. There he finds a forgotten outpost of stranded humans who adopt him as their warrior saviour when Jason Scott Lee’s genetically enhanced battalion arrives for practice manoeuvres. There’s hardly an original bone in its body, despite the screenplay from Blade Runner’s) David Webb Peoples, and Anderson trots out familiar clichés against a tired postapocalyptic backdrop. It’s a by-the-numbers empty spectacle with zero emotional engagement, lots of mindless slam-bang action and heaps of unintentional laughs. 

Although director Harold Ramis made his reputation with broad comedies like Caddyshack and Groundhog Day, this comic thriller is much cooler in tone. Based on Scott Phillips’s noir novel, it follows the criminal misadventures of jaded lawyer Charlie Arglist, played by John Cusack with a touch more misanthropy than his familiar wise-ass routine. Still, Cusack invests the character with enough natural charm to temper his sordid antics, as he plans to skip town on Christmas Eve with a case of cash embezzled from his Mob employers. He’s both helped and hindered by a sleazy Billy Bob Thornton, aiming more for menace than laughs, while Randy Quaid’s crime boss sets about retrieving his stolen money. The humour is dark and dry, and far removed from the screwball dynamic stars Cusack and Thornton exhibited in Pushing Tin. It may not be that original or memorable, but The Ice Harvest does offer an amusingly blunt and sobering antidote to Hollywood’s usual overindulgent yuletide fare. 

You can see how the writer pitched this project: The Exorcist meets John Grisham. Keanu Reeves plays a hotshot lawyer from Florida who’s lured to a New York law firm run by Al Pacino. Pacino’s character name, John Milton, is an unsubtle signpost to the diabolical turn of events in a movie that sways unsteadily between a debate over good and evil and a half-successful attempt at black comedy. It’s the heavy-handed dropping of clues, including supernatural visions from Reeves’s ignored wife, Charlize Theron, that makes the eventual revelation a very tardy one as far as the viewer is concerned. There isn’t a single scene that’s remotely believable, but the whole concoction, right down to the Ghost Busters finale, is mindlessly enjoyable and directed by Taylor Hackford (An Officer and a Gentleman, Ray) with po-faced urgency. 

Following his understated role in Insomnia, funnyman Robin Williams put in another exquisitely straight performance in this psychological thriller. Almost unrecognisable behind a receding hairline and glasses, he is hauntingly moving as supermarket photo processor Sy Parrish, whose lonely existence feeds an escalating obsession with a glamorous local family. A simple yet effective reflection on modern society’s fixation with so-called flawless lifestyles, it’s meticulously composed and tautly executed. Each frame of this unnerving chiller is a visually stunning snapshot of an innocent world distorted by human complexities. Director Mark Romanek draws on his music video background of storytelling through imagery, by applying varying degrees of colour and contrast to reflect the positive and negative emotions on display. This slick technique adds extra force to Williams’s remarkable turn, while padding out the occasionally stilted supporting roles. The result is a startling and deeply atmospheric film, made all the more powerful by its unexpected climax. 

Ridley Scott and the boys from DreamWorks produced the first genuine Roman epic since 1964’s The Fall of the Roman Empire with this virtual remake that deals with the transition of power from the sage-like Marcus Aurelius to his monstrous son, Commodus. The fictional hero, General Maximus, is Caesar’s adopted heir, whom Commodus turns into an exile after killing his family. Becoming a gladiator, Maximus fights to avenge his loved ones and save the soul of Rome. The film’s strengths are a fine script, which doesn’t stint on the politics, and excellent performances from Richard Harris as Aurelius and Oliver Reed, in his final film, as a gladiator trainer. Also superb is Joaquin Phoenix as the paranoid, teenage Commodus, while Russell Crowe is utterly convincing as the Conan/Spartacus-like hero. As always with Scott, the visuals are fabulous: the computer-generated ancient Rome is simply staggering, allowing helicopter shots over the city and turning the Colosseum into a living building, a character in its own right and a blood-soaked stage on which the fate of the characters and the empire is enacted. For those old enough to remember the 70mm epics of yesteryear, this is a nostalgic synthesis of all of them. For those who haven’t seen those earlier movies, Scott will open their eyes to a “brand-new” old world. 

This military thriller from director William Friedkin is far-fetched in the extreme, but luckily the action sequences have a terrific, visceral impact — despite there being very little in the way of character development on which to hook them. A traumatised US veteran of the conflict in Kosovo (Benicio Del Toro) is loose in the woods, gruesomely dispatching game-hunters, and the man who taught him how to kill (a typically gruff Tommy Lee Jones) is brought in to track him down. In a case of individuality sacrificed at the altar of efficiency, the two leads have a hard time bringing distinct personalities to their rather clichéd characters (they run, they fight, they run again), though both have enough presence partly to overcome this. Friedkin’s film eventually runs into a blind alley, but until then it’s an enjoyably gritty ride powered by star charisma rather than logic. 

A risible attempt at a military thriller, John McTiernan’s follow up to the marginally worse Rollerball misfires on practically every level. A platoon of US Army Rangers goes into the Panamanian jungle on a routine training exercise and only two come out alive. DEA agent Tom Hardy (John Travolta) is brought in to investigate the killings — alongside inexperienced female interrogator Connie Nielsen — and uncovers a nexus of corruption. As the incoherent plotting reveals layer upon layer of deceit, it becomes difficult to care about anything or anybody as each development is bound to be revealed as bogus. Despite some enjoyable scenery-chewing moments, not even Travolta, reunited here with Pulp Fiction partner Samuel L Jackson who plays a gung-ho sergeant, can save this.