Bovie Movie

Elf director Jon Favreau’s action-packed adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg’s (The Polar Express) book is great family entertainment. In this intergalactic Jumanji, brothers Jonah Bobo and Josh Hutcherson are taught life lessons playing a dusty board game found in the cellar that thrusts them into outer space to face meteor showers, a defective robot and lizard-like aliens. The witty script generates laughs from the cryonic freezing of the boys’ sister, but there are touching moments too, like the revelation of can-do astronaut Dax Shepard’s true identity. Having the entire universe just outside their front door creates huge imaginative scope, while the terrific retro Dan Dare-style design matches the film’s refreshing reliance on old-school special effects. Favreau brings a delightful sense of childlike wonder to this stellar comic-book fantasy adventure that offers fun — and scares — for all age groups. 

Absolutely ludicrous from its hokey start to senseless finish, the only shock in this ersatz haunted house thriller is that Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) considered it worth directing. When city slickers Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone move to a dilapidated country mansion, they face redneck prejudice and sinister threats from former owner and ex-con Stephen Dorff, who wants to keep a dark family secret buried there. With every plot twist telegraphed well in advance, the best thing to do is sit back and stoically tick off each plodding spooky cliché as it appears. Complete with Dorff emanating badness from scene one and his trailer-trash girlfriend (Juliette Lewis) and her inscrutable sheriff sister (Dana Eskelson) refusing to believe the patently obvious, nothing makes sense in this technically proficient but bogus horror. More hilarious than creepy — Dorff infesting the house with poisonous snakes is embarrassingly overacted — think cold, creaky mannerisms instead. 

Following up the superlative Fight Club was always going to be a Herculean task for director David Fincher. It’s little surprise, then, that from its innovative title sequence onwards, this dark thriller bristles with the nervous energy of a film-maker desperate to succeed. Here, Fincher exploits modern society’s home-security paranoia, as a bunker-like safe room becomes a source of escalating horror for a mother (Jodie Foster) and daughter trapped by thieves in their New York brownstone. Though the plot is formulaic, it’s ruthlessly executed, with the tension building to claustrophobic levels. However, Fincher seems obsessed with breakneck camera movement and unconventional angles, which means at times his extraordinary visual style gets in the way of the action. Fortunately, this doesn’t overshadow the cast: Foster is particularly fine as the gutsy heroine, while Forest Whitaker gives a poignant performance as one of the intruders. Ultimately, this is slick and sure entertainment, yet you can’t help feeling that Fincher could have done so much better. 

His world in complete disorder after his break-up with a famous actress, Carter, a young soft-core porn writer, goes to suburban Detroit to care for his sickly Grandmother and heal his broken heart. Along the way he forms a special bond with the family that lives across from his Grandma, and changes the life of each woman. In the course of this, as is required in every film—and thus the world, he changes his own life as well.

Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee DIANE LANE stars as a massage therapist who dreams of leaving New York City and joining her son’s father, a renowned anthropologist, who is studying a primitive South American tribe called Yanomano or “Fierce People.” She currently lives a carefree life in Manhattan, but when her son has a close brush with the law, she realizes it’s time to make a life-altering change, and she pulls some strings to enter them into a life of wealth and privilege. When her son is attacked, their perfect world is shattered.