Bovie Movie

Kirk Wong directed this comedy actioner about mild-mannered, beleaguered hitman Melvin Smiley (Mark Wahlberg), who very much wants to be liked. However, the naive Mel is being taken advantage of by both his girlfriends and associates (who cheat him out of his bonuses). Mel and his “Odd Squad” — Cisco (Lou Diamond Phillips), Crunch (Bokeem Woodbine), Vince (Antonio Sabato Jr.), and Gump (Robin Dunne) — work for Paris (Avery Brooks), head of an international crime cartel and a contractor for hit jobs. Mel’s mistress Chantel (Lela Rochon), who views him as a meal ticket, lives rent-free in his house, misspends his money, and is continually thinking of ways to get more from him. Her latest scheme is concocting tales about overdue mortgage and car payments, but she really wants the money to run away with her lover Sergio. Mel and his team head into a big shootout to waste some rival mobsters. One person kills the electricity; the others don night-vision goggles. Melvin handles most of the action, including shooting while bungee-bouncing near a staircase, finally making a spectacular bungee-exit from the top floors of the building just as it explodes in flames. A quick and easy weekend job backfires when their kidnap victim, a rich industrialist’s teenage daughter Keiko Nishi (China Chow), turns out to be the godchild of their boss, crime czar Paris. When Cisco, mastermind of the plan, is summoned by Paris, he manages to shift blame to Mel. Meanwhile, Chantel absconds with Mel’s earnings just as the disapproving parents (Elliott Gould, Lainie Kazan) of Mel’s fiancee Pam (Christina Applegate) are due for a visit. Since Pam gave her parents $50,000 from Mel’s bank account, they’re on their way to thank him and hopefully benefit from another financial windfall. As his professional and domestic woes collide, Mel finds himself dodging bullets while trying to impress his potential in-laws. Throw in an overzealous video-store clerk demanding the return of an overdue tape (King Kong Returns), and it’s not long before Mel’s life starts to unravel.

One woman’s rocky road to the altar gets played for laughs in this comedy, adapted from the one-woman off-Broadway show written by and starring Nia Vardalos. Toula (Vardalos) is a Greek-American woman who is in her early thirties and single, with no immediate prospects of changing that status any time soon. This bothers Toula a bit, but not half as much as it distresses her mother (Lainie Kazan) and father (Michael Constantine), who want to send her to Greece in hopes of finding a husband in the old country. Toula isn’t interested in leaving the country to find a man, but since she works in the family business — a Greek restaurant in Chicago called Dancing Zorba’s — she has to hear about it whether she likes it or not. One day, after seeing a handsome stranger in the restaurant and not having the courage to talk to him, Toula decides she needs a bit of self-improvement. Despite her dad’s misgivings, Toula signs up for a night-school class studying computers, trades in her glasses for contact lenses, gets a different job at a travel agency, and spruces herself up with a new look and a new attitude. To her very pleasant surprise, she once again encounters the handsome stranger, who soon asks her out on a date. Schoolteacher Ian Miller (John Corbett) is seemingly perfect — he’s tall, handsome, smart, good-natured, and soon in love with Toula — except for two little things: he’s not Greek, and he’s a vegetarian, both of which horrify Toula’s family. When Ian pops the question (and Toula says yes), the bride-to-be has to negotiate a reasonably peaceful meeting between Ian’s upper-class parents and her own working-class extended family. There’s also the matter of the wedding, which Toula’s mother is planning around the notion that quantity IS quality. My Big Fat Greek Wedding also features Ian Gomez (Vardalos’ real-life husband), Louis Mandylor, Andrea Martin, and Joey Fatone (from the pop group *NSYNC). Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson helped produce the film through the auspices of their production company, Playtone.

This crime comedy from director Craig Singer is the filmmaker’s third independent feature and his second outing with screenwriter Robert Dean Klein and star Gary Stretch, who had contributed to 2001’s Dead Dogs Lie, Singer’s sophomore effort. Stretch plays Ronnie, a hitman who, three years prior, vouched for his pal and fellow contract killer, August, played by Michael Rapaport (Zebrahead, Mighty Aphrodite). Unfortunately for Ronnie, over the years, August has gotten himself into some trouble and made a few enemies. Now, over the course of one day, Ronnie has to somehow clean up all of August’s messes or both men will be facing the consequences of their unhappy bosses. In addition to Frank Whaley and Seymour Cassel, the supporting cast boasts a bevy of 1980s artifacts including Ralph Macchio, Robin Givens, Deborah Harry, and Ally Sheedy. A Cold Day in August screened at Robert De Niro’s 2003 Tribeca Film Festival under the title A Good Night to Die.