Bovie Movie

A sci-fi thriller with a tremendous sense of scale and visual splendour, The Chronicles of Riddick is an ambitious but ultimately disappointing offering. Writer/director David Twohy takes Riddick (Vin Diesel), his monosyllabic antihero from Pitch Black, and thrusts him into an imaginative, fully realised universe populated by sleek spacecraft and war-ravaged cities. Diesel grunts his way through endless fights with bounty hunters, prison guards and an army of enslaved, zombie-like warriors called the Necromongers, but Twohy forgets to provide anything resembling a compelling story. The set pieces are impressive, but without any sense of narrative this comes across as an overblown and pompous space opera. 

Daniel Craig effortlessly makes James Bond his own, and the 21st movie in the series goes back to basics for this resoundingly entertaining spy adventure. GoldenEye director Martin Campbell has obviously been watching the Bourne franchise, and here he gives the superspy a gritty makeover, upping the violence content (the opening sequence, shot in grainy black and white, is particularly brutal). He also strips Bond of much of the slightly camp humour — thus no appearance from gadget-man Q. The plot is essentially an origins story, as a rough-around-the-edges Bond gains his two zeros (the two authorised kills he needs for his infamous licence) before tackling villain Le Chiffre (a splendidly thin-lipped Mads Mikkelsen) in a game of high-stakes poker. Craig’s humanised, more flawed interpretation of the role balances Campbell’s physical direction and co-writer Paul Haggis’s sparing wit, while Eva Green provides an alluring love interest. Apart from a chaotic and overlong last act, this is a triumphant new beginning. 

Legend tells of three magic diamonds that, if in the wrong hands, can be united to create a force powerful enough to freeze the sun. When the evil sorcerer Zeebad escapes from his ancient prison, he vows to exact revenge by deep-freezing the earth forever. Determined to save the world, a fellowship of four unlikely heroes band together to foil Zeebad’s villainous plot. Led by the candy-loving mutt Doogal, friends Dylan, Brian, and Ermintrude all embark on an epic adventure to save the world. In order to find the diamonds before Zeebad, they must climb icy mountains, navigate fiery pits of molten lava, sail across vast oceans and pass through a booby-trapped temple guarded by an army of ninja skeleton warriors. Along the way they learn that the most powerful weapon is their friendship - which even Zeebad’s evil magic cannot destroy.

Taking the writing process behind Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as its inspiration, John Madden’s follow-up to Mrs Brown combines contemporary humour with a convincing 16th-century setting. Young Will (Joseph Fiennes) falls for the soon-to-be-married Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow) after he casts her, disguised as a boy, as his Romeo. As their love affair unfolds, so does the play in a film that is passionate, intelligent and hysterically funny in turns. Fiennes and Paltrow are supported by an outstanding cast that includes Geoffrey Rush, Tom Wilkinson and Colin Firth, while Judi Dench delivers an Oscar-winning portrayal of Elizabeth I, making fine use of Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard’s Oscar-winning script. 

Barbara Covett is a veteran and cynical schoolteacher who is close to retirement. She is barely tolerated by her less brilliant and acerbic colleagues who know nothing about her private life which consists mainly of taking care of Portia, her aging cat, and spending countless hours alone. The only means she has found to take the edge off her desperate loneliness is writing in her journal. When Sheba Hart, a younger, attractive woman, joins the faculty as an art teacher, Barbara watches her from afar and has nothing but caustic things to say in her diary about her clothing and her care-free manner. Despite her disdain for this woman, Barbara finds herself reaching out to her. Sheba responds by inviting her to dinner at her house to meet Sheba’s lecturer husband, who is twenty years her senior, and their two children, a sexy and rebellious 16-year-old daughter and a younger boy with Downs Syndrome. Instead of opening herself to these people, Barbara immediately sees them as competition to be beaten in the battle for Sheba’s attention. Later, when Barbara discovers her new friend in a classroom having sex with Steven, a 15-year-old from the school who has artistic talent; she realizes that knowledge of this secret gives her power over Sheba which she can use for her own purposes. Barbara promises to not tell anyone but insists that the affair must end immediately. Sheba says she will but finds herself drawn back to the boy again and again. Sheba seems uneasy with Barbara’s friendship and is appalled when she discovers the older woman might have a sexual interest in her. The tenuous relationship between the two women reaches a crisis point when Barbara’s cat is dying and she asks Sheba to go with her to the vet. She chooses to go with her family to see their son in a play instead. In revenge, Barbara sets in motion the scandal that will rock both their lives in ways they never imagined.

Director Stephen Frears hits a jollier and generally more upbeat tone here after the grittiness of 2002’s Dirty Pretty Things with this benign — and only occasionally downbeat — period drama. Judi Dench stars as Laura Henderson, a wealthy widow with a gleeful sense of adventure, who buys a decrepit London theatre in 1937. With the help of impresario Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins), she turns it into a money-spinner by showing nonstop vaudeville shows. When business slackens, the unlikely partners launch Britain’s first all-nude revue, manoeuvring round censorship laws by ensuring the “artistically” lit, naked women stand stock-still. Dench delivers every one-liner with a tart but impish twinkle that’s consistently winning, a cast-against-type Hoskins is surprisingly effective, too, while Pop Idol winner Will Young isn’t at all bad in his film debut. However, the script tends to be in a perpetual panic to create drama, and, rather than invigorating the film, the musical numbers have the effect of grinding it to a halt. 

Director Lasse Hallström followed up The Cider House Rules with this delightful romantic comedy drama, adapted from the novel by Joanne Harris. Set in the late 1950s, it stars Juliette Binoche as a rootless mother who appears overnight in a small French village and brazenly opens a chocolate shop — during Lent. Staunch Catholic mayor Alfred Molina disapproves of her lifestyle and fears the challenge to his authority, but Binoche’s confections are soon raising spirits (and more), particularly among the local wives. The arrival of handsome river gypsy Johnny Depp further inflames passions. Hallström skilfully creates a sense of the stifling nature of provincial life, and of a deeper spiritual malaise for which the bewitching Binoche offers a panacea. Watching this is the cinematic equivalent of putting a piece of chocolate in your mouth — a truly delicious experience. 

The icy mists, haunting sounds and shadows of the Newfoundland shores imbue The Shipping News with a bleak sadness that the intriguing storyline and strong performances fail to dispel. A miscast Kevin Spacey stars as Quoyle, a dull, uninspired man who is seduced into marriage and fatherhood by the sluttish Petal Bear (Cate Blanchett), then deserted and widowed in short order. An estranged aunt (Judi Dench) invites him and his daughter to return with her to the family home — a fishing village in Newfoundland, seemingly populated solely by eccentrics. Quoyle lands a job writing the shipping news on the local paper and begins a tentative love affair with widow Julianne Moore. However, this glimmer of romantic hope and the eventual uncovering of disturbing family secrets aren’t enough to energise Lasse Hallström’s muted movie. Still, the always watchable Moore and Dench go a long way in compensating for the film’s overall emotional chilliness, investing their characters with warmth and life. 

For the first hour or so, this 18th Bond movie is up there with the best of them: it has terrific pace, Pierce Brosnan has romantic and rough-house appeal, Teri Hatcher is a match for him, and the post-Cold War story has grip and even plausibility. Sadly, the second half doesn’t quite sustain the momentum: the story moves from Europe to Asia (back to the locations of The Man with the Golden Gun) and Jonathan Pryce’s media mogul makes a pathetically unthreatening villain whose motto is “There’s no news like bad news”. Flaws aside, this was at the time the best Bond movie since the heyday of Mr Connery.