Bovie Movie

This remake of the 1986 cult thriller works best when it tries to emulate the intense claustrophobia of the original. Sean Bean’s attempts to match Rutger Hauer’s icy sneer as the menace of the highway are fairly successful. He involves innocent road trippers Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton in his horrific murders, so the pair must elude both the pursuing redneck cops and their motiveless persecutor. But substituting the lone hero of the first movie with a bickering couple is a major misstep in a mostly enjoyable effort, as it severely diminishes the tension. And the increased scale of the action — police car convoys and helicopter chases — actually generates less suspense. But debut director Dave Meyers’s music-video background means that the desert vistas look great, and the gory deaths deliver some well-timed shocks. 

In 1501, in the Western Europe, in a period when the black plague is jeopardizing the populations, an army of mercenary peasants leaded by Martin (Rutger Hauer) fights side-by-side with the noble Arnolfini (Fernando Hilbeck) to retrieve his castle, with the promise of a huge reward. However, the band is betrayed by Arnolfini, and decides to pay him back, assaulting and stealing a caravan under the command of Arnolfini and his son and student, Steven (Tom Burlinson). In one of the wagon is traveling the fiancée of Steven, Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who is accidentally kidnapped and later raped by the group. Agnes becomes Martin’s mate, and the mercenaries decide to invade a castle, without knowing that the army of Arnolfini is chasing them.

Director Ron Howard has become one of the most accomplished of Hollywood craftsmen, and this sturdy star-studded action drama was deservedly a mainstream hit. Kurt Russell and William Baldwin play the warring, firefighting brothers who have to cope with a rash of blazes started by a seemingly deranged arsonist, whose lethal “backdrafts” are resulting in death and destruction. The plot is hardly original, but Howard marshals the sprawling elements with great finesse and the fire footage, if harrowing at times, is genuinely exhilarating. The list of stars is never-ending: supporting the two leads are Jennifer Jason Leigh, Robert De Niro, Donald Sutherland, Rebecca De Mornay and JT Walsh. 

A THOUSAND ACRES is a drama about an American family who meets with tragedy on their land. It is the story of a father, his daughters, and their husbands, and their passion to subdue the history of their land and its stories.

More Capra-Coen than Capra-corn, this is a throwback to the good old days of the screwball comedy. When Joel and Ethan Coen pay tribute to a period or a style of film-making, however, they never slavishly re-create, but always manage to impart some of their own unique vision. In The Hudsucker Proxy they marry the Art Deco designs of the 1930s with the go-get-’em attitudes of the 1950s to fashion a parable that might just have something to say about America in the 1990s. And, if they miss the odd trick in saluting the good old days of Frank Capra and that harder-bitten director of screwball comedy Howard Hawks, it has to be said that a Coen misfire easily outguns the best work of many of their contemporaries. Mocking the “anything is possible” ethos of the Truman era, it has a classic “little man against the system” scenario, with Tim Robbins wonderfully ingenuous as the mail-room nobody who hits gold when he invents the Hula-Hoop. In attempting to portray the kind of heartless villains associated with Edward Arnold and Eugene Pallette, Paul Newman mistakes excessive for comic, unlike Jennifer Jason Leigh, whose impression of Rosalind Russell doing a Katharine Hepburn is a hoot. Special mention, too, for cinematographer Roger Deakins and the art department (led by Dennis Gassner) because, for all its strengths as a comedy, this is also a visual triumph. 

Susanna Moore’s notoriously explicit novel gives director Jane Campion another opportunity to explore her favourite theme — the self-destructive elements of female desire. Meg Ryan stars as Frannie Avery, a New York teacher who falls for Detective Malloy (Mark Ruffalo), a man who’s all wrong for her, yet helps Avery to get in touch with herself and experience unknown pleasures. But Malloy is enigmatic, if not dangerous — he’s investigating a series of murders in her neighbourhood that he himself might have committed. And it’s not only Ryan who’s in trouble, but also her half-sister, Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Campion’s trademark off-kilter camerawork matches the increasingly skewed world view of her protagonist and Ryan is a revelation, albeit doing an impression of a fragile Nicole Kidman (who acts as producer and was originally going to star). Ultimately, the film works as a study of sexual longing, but fails as a thriller. The plot mechanics are too obvious, the twist too predictable and the novel’s original, searing ending has been changed. Despite the frank talk and naked bodies, this is just another Hollywood cop-out. 

Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the lodger from hell who makes nice Bridget Fonda’s life a misery in this ludicrous but hugely enjoyable thriller from director Barbet Schroeder. Based on John Lutz’s novel, it has Fonda as a chic Manhattanite looking for a roommate, and Leigh as the shy, frumpy “perfect” candidate. That is, until she starts dressing like Fonda and even tries to steal her boyfriend. You may be able to guess the end from the first five minutes, but that doesn’t make it any less enthralling, and it should certainly win a few plaudits for the most ingenious use of a stiletto heel in a movie.