Bovie Movie

Director Oliver Stone once again offers a powerful and provocative story based on real-life events in this drama. Sergeant John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and William J. Jimeno (Michael Pena) were two officers assigned to New York City’s Port Authority who were working their beats on a quiet day in early fall when they received an emergency call. The day was September 11, 2001, and McLoughlin and Jimeno were among the policemen who attempted to evacuate the World Trade Center towers after they were struck by airliners piloted by terrorists. Both McLoughlin and Jimeno were inside the fifth building of the World Trade Center when the towers fell, and were two of the last people found alive amidst the wreckage. As McLoughlin and Jimeno struggled to hold on to their lives as rescuers sifted through the rubble, their spouses — Donna McLoughlin (Maria Bello) and Allison Jimeno (Maggie Gyllenhaal) — clung to the desperate hope that their husbands would survive and be found. As the McLoughlin and Jimeno families waited for word on the fate of the two men, they watched as a city and a nation came together with strength and compassion in the face of a tragedy. World Trade Center was based on the true story of John McLoughlin and William J. Jimeno, both of whom cooperated with producers in the making of this film. Producer Debra Hill died during production - hence the posthumous credit.

The third of John Woo’s American-made feature films, Face/Off stars John Travolta as Sean Archer, an FBI agent obsessed with capturing Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage), a criminal genius who years before killed Archer’s son while trying to assassinate the agent. Archer’s single-minded pursuit of Troy has caused serious harm to his marriage, but Archer thinks the light may have appeared at the end of the tunnel when a seriously wounded Troy is captured in a bloody shootout. However, it turns out that Troy has planted a time bomb, with a biological payload that could destroy the entire city of Los Angeles — and Troy isn’t about to say where it is. The only other person who knows the bomb’s location is Troy’s brother, Pollux (Alessandro Nivola), who is no more helpful than Castor. FBI scientists hatch a plan: they have developed an experimental surgery which would allow them to graft Troy’s face temporarily on Archer’s head and allow him to question Pollux as if he were his brother. But after Archer has taken Troy’s face, Troy regains consciousness and forces the doctors to give him Archer’s face. Now the criminal mastermind has the FBI at his disposal, and the lawman is underground with few places to turn. Along with Woo’s usual elaborately choreographed action scenes, Face/Off features a number of notable supporting performances, including Joan Allen as Archer’s wife, Colm Feore and C.C.H. Pounder as FBI scientists, and Gina Gershon as Troy’s loyal but long-suffering girlfriend.

A man with the ability to see the future and change the outcome of events before they occur is forced to choose between saving himself and saving the world in this supernatural thriller starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Lee Tamahori (Die Another Day, The Edge). Cris Johnson (Cage) is a Las Vegas magician who possesses the unique ability to witness the events of the immediate future moments before they happen. As a child Cris was subjected to a series of cruel experiments by government scientists and doctors, but a change of name and a new identity allowed the tortured psychic to elude detection and start a new life away from the prying eyes of his former captors. Though his clairvoyant vision only extends a few minutes into the future, it has still allowed Cris to eke out a living as a low-rent Las Vegas magician while earning a little extra cash at the blackjack tables. Up to this point in his life Cris has never used his power for anything substantial, but when he experiences a vision of Los Angeles being incinerated in a nuclear holocaust, the small-time magician realizes that he could hold the key to saving millions of lives. But as low as he has tried to lie in recent years, Cris has never completely escaped detection by the government. Now, as terrorists prepare to unleash the ultimate horror on an unsuspecting city, FBI counter terror agent Callie Ferris (Julianne Moore) sets out to capture Cris and convince him to use his exceptional gift to prevent the nuclear nightmare from becoming a terrifying reality. Jessica Biel, Peter Falk, and Thomas Kretschmann co-star in the film, which is based on a short story by acclaimed sci-fi author Philip K. Dick.

The sophomore film from former music video and commercial director Michael Bay, this fast-paced action yarn featured rapid-fire editing, a cutting-edge rock soundtrack and liberal use of shots awash in a haze of burnished hues, all trademarks of producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. Nicolas Cage stars as Stanley Goodspeed, an FBI chemical weapons expert handed a unique assignment. Francis X. Hummel (Ed Harris), an insane Marine Corps general, has taken 81 tourists hostage on the abandoned island prison of Alcatraz. He and his men are threatening to bomb San Francisco with deadly gas unless $100 million is paid in war reparations to the families of servicemen killed in covert operations. Goodspeed is teamed with former British spy John Patrick Mason (Sean Connery), the only man ever to escape “The Rock,” as well as a Navy SEAL team. When their military escorts are ambushed, it’s up to odd couple Goodspeed and Mason to break into Alcatraz and stop Hummel. The Rock was the last film produced by Simpson, who died of a drug overdose before the film’s release. Solo, his partner Bruckheimer continued making the sort of glossy, frenetic films for which the duo was famed.

In this action thriller, a master car thief has his skills pushed to the limit. Randall “Memphis” Raines (Nicolas Cage) can steal practically any car that crosses his path. While he has done well in his life of crime, he knows that there’s a short future in theft, and he wants to get out of the business. But his retirement plans are interrupted when his younger brother Kip (Giovanni Ribisi) gets in trouble with a dangerous crime boss. To get his brother out of harm’s way, Randall agrees to a profitable but risky scheme to steal 50 luxury cars in one night, with the help of several other car thieves, including Sara “Sway” Wayland (Angelina Jolie). A rival group of thieves is trying to pull the same stunt at the same time, and detectives Castlebeck (Delroy Lindo) and Drycoff (Timothy Olyphant) are trying to shut down both operations. Also starring Robert Duvall as Otto Halliwell, and Scott Caan as Tumbler, Gone in Sixty Seconds is a remake of the 1974 low-budget action hit of the same name, best remembered for a 40-minute chase scene in which 90 cars were destroyed.

A man sets out to steal a lost fortune in order to save it in this adventure drama from producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) is an archeologist who is from the eighth generation of a family who has shared an unusual quest. As Gates-family legend has it, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin hid a massive cache of gold during the waning days of the Revolutionary War and left clues as to its whereabouts in the original drafts of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. With no firm proof that it actually exists, Gates sets out to crack the code that will lead him to the fortune, which, as a member of the Gates clan, he is sworn to protect from wrongdoers. National Treasure also features Sean Bean, Harvey Keitel, Justin Bartha, and Jon Voight.

When a motorcycle-riding stuntman offers his soul to Mephistopheles in order to save the life of the one he loves most, he is forced to play host to a powerful supernatural entity whose flaming skull visage strikes fear into the heart of his enemies in this feature-film version of the long-running comic series. By day, Johnny Blaze (actor and comic-book devotee Nicolas Cage) is one of the world’s best-known stuntmen, but when the sun goes down and he is in the presence of evil, the death-defying daredevil bursts into flames to become the indestructible, motorcycle-riding antihero known to the world as the Ghost Rider.

John Dahl directed and co-wrote (along with his brother Rick Dahl) this quirky and energetic film noir that, after a well-received screening at the Toronto Film Festival, was consigned to oblivion before resurfacing on cable television. When the owner of a San Francisco movie theater, who was a big fan of the film, arranged for a theatrical release, the film clicked and toured the country as an art house hit. The film concerns eternal loser Michael (Nicolas Cage), down to his last five dollars and looking for work. He finds himself at a bar in the town of Red Rock. The bartender, Wayne (J.T. Walsh) eyes him suspiciously and asks him, “You must be Lyle, from Dallas.” Michael, eager to earn some cash, agrees. It seems Wayne has a job for Michael, but what Michael doesn’t realize until too late is that the job is to kill Wayne’s wife for $10,000. Michael heads out to Wayne’s farm with the cash to warn Wayne’s wife, Suzanne (Lara Flynn Boyle). Suzanne responds by offering to double Michael’s fee if he will kill her husband instead. Michael takes the money and tries to leave town, but when a thunderstorm comes up, he runs over a man who was trying to flag him down. The sheriff arrives on the scene to attend to matters — who turns out to be Wayne. Wayne proceeds to drive Michael out of town for an execution, but Michael manages to elude him. Flagging down a driver on the road who is driving back into Red Rock, they return to the bar, where the driver offers to buy Michael a drink. As Michael accepts the offer of a drink, he realizes that he is drinking with the real “Lyle from Dallas” (Dennis Hopper) who is awaiting Wayne’s return.

Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern play a pair of lovers on the run in David Lynch’s surrealist road movie Wild at Heart. Cage’s Sailor Ripley is a violent ex-convict with an Elvis Presley fixation who falls in love with Dern’s Lula Pace Fortune, the daughter of a rich, but mentally unstable, Southern belle named Marietta (Diane Ladd, Dern’s real-life mother). Just after Sailor is released from prison, where he was jailed for brutally killing one of Marietta’s thugs, he and Lula take off on a wild cross-country trip, pursued by his parole officer, her mother, criminals, bounty hunters, and detectives. Along the way, Sailor and Lula have a lot of sex, share their pasts, share their respective obsessions for Elvis and The Wizard of Oz, and meet a lot of bizarre characters, including a seedy ex-marine (Willem Dafoe) who persuades Sailor to participate in a bank robbery.

Louis de Bernières’ best-selling novel of love during wartime is brought to the screen in this story that blends comedy, action, and romance. In 1940, war rages throughout Europe, but the fighting has yet to arrive on the Greek island of Cephallonia, where life continues to follow its own slow, deliberate path until word arrives that Italian troops have invaded neighboring Albania. A wave of anti-Axis patriotism sweeps the island, and Mandras (Christian Bale), a local fisherman, is one of a handful of men who volunteer for the army, leaving behind his aging mother (Irene Papas) and the woman he loves, Pelagia (Penélope Cruz), the daughter of the island’s physician, Dr. Iannis (John Hurt). The timing of Mandras and his compatriots proves less than fortuitous, as Italian troops invade Greece in their absence, but the remaining leaders of the island issue an ultimatum — the people of Cephallonia will surrender, but only to a ranking German officer. Since none of the available German officers can speak a word of Greek, an Italian soldier fluent in the language, Capt. Antonio Corelli (Nicholas Cage), is sent in to serve as translator. Corelli stays on with the Greek occupation forces, and he soon finds himself falling in love with beautiful Pelagia, who believes that Mandras was killed in the fighting in Albania. But as romance slowly blooms between the Italian soldier and the Greek girl, Mandras and a handful of surviving soldiers have joined a guerilla resistance faction, and they join up with Allied forces in a bid to retake Greece; soon, Pelagia must choose between the two men she loves, as the Greeks battle both the Italian occupation troops and German soldiers who have been sent in to replace them. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was directed by John Madden; the project originally began shooting with Roger Michell, but Michell was forced to resign from the film after he suffered a heart attack.