Bovie Movie

In this sci-fi thriller, six strangers wake up to find themselves in a 14ft by 14ft cube. When they try to get out they find they are snared in a seemingly endless maze of interlocking cubicles armed with lethal booby traps. How did they get there? Why have they been incarcerated? Director Vincenzo Natali’s extraordinary debut feature takes a unique idea and milks its potential to the maximum with panache and visual dexterity. Genuinely creepy and gory, with the discernible influence of David Cronenberg, this puzzler is awash with bold ideas and unsettling tension. 

Actor/director Kevin Costner’s skill with westerns was proven by his masterpiece Dances with Wolves. This doesn’t aspire to the epic scope or profound themes of that movie, but it’s still a beautifully crafted, well-acted example of the genre that only very occasionally lurches a little too close to cliché for comfort. It’s set in a fascinating transitional period of frontier history, as the traditional free-ranging cattlemen and their herds were harassed and attacked by settled ranchers. But Costner finds most of the film’s interest in the subtle relationships between the main characters. He is impressive as the taciturn Charley, whose Civil War memories haunt him, and Diego Luna (of Y Tu Mamá También) and Abraham Benrubi are likeable as the younger team members. But it is Robert Duvall’s restrained, dignified performance as Boss Spearman, the gruff de facto father to the “family” of travelling cow-pokes, that’s the movie’s real treat. Gorgeously shot, robustly written and solidly sentimental, this will be a delight for those who like their westerns on the traditional side. 

Three women living in Toronto find themselves confronting emotional crises regarding the men in their lives in this drama. Olivia (Sophia Loren) is a woman who spends her days looking after her husband, John (Pete Postlethwaite), who is confined to a wheelchair. Olivia has long aspired to a career as an artist, but John, not emotionally generous, refuses to hear of her wasting her time on such things. However, Olivia does find encouragement from an unlikely source — Max (G?rard Depardieu), an eccentric French gardener. Natalia (Mira Sorvino) is a news photographer who, while on assignment in Angola, took a memorable portrait of a crying child orphaned by war. Her father, Alexander (Klaus-Maria Brandauer), also a well-known photojournalist, is understandably proud of Natalia when her photo is used on the cover of a major news magazine, but she is haunted by the knowledge that while she made the child famous, she couldn’t save its life. And Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger) is a woman whose father, Alan (Malcolm McDowell), beat her mother to death when she was young. Catherine has never been able to resolve her hatred of her father, and when Alan is released from prison, she’s willing to abandon her husband, her children, and her career as a musician to track him down and kill him, unable to accept the notion that he’s a changed man. Between Strangers was directed by Edoardo Ponti, whose mother happens to be Sophia Loren; it marks the first time the two have worked together.