Bovie Movie

In this romantic drama, Kevin Costner stars as a strong, silent and sensitive boat builder living in North Carolina, who’s tracked down by newspaper researcher Robin Wright Penn after she finds a heart-rending love letter to his late wife in a bottle on the seashore. Her hard-nosed reporter’s edge soon softens as she decides to learn more about the man and his solitary life. Although the inevitable happens — with a twist! — the beauty of director Luis Mandoki’s intelligent tear-jerker (adapted by Gerald DiPego from Nicholas Sparks’s bestseller) is how all the emotions ring true. A richly rewarding tribute to the human spirit, this is irresistibly warm-hearted stuff, with an absolutely brilliant scene-stealing performance from Paul Newman as Costner’s grizzled father. 

More Capra-Coen than Capra-corn, this is a throwback to the good old days of the screwball comedy. When Joel and Ethan Coen pay tribute to a period or a style of film-making, however, they never slavishly re-create, but always manage to impart some of their own unique vision. In The Hudsucker Proxy they marry the Art Deco designs of the 1930s with the go-get-’em attitudes of the 1950s to fashion a parable that might just have something to say about America in the 1990s. And, if they miss the odd trick in saluting the good old days of Frank Capra and that harder-bitten director of screwball comedy Howard Hawks, it has to be said that a Coen misfire easily outguns the best work of many of their contemporaries. Mocking the “anything is possible” ethos of the Truman era, it has a classic “little man against the system” scenario, with Tim Robbins wonderfully ingenuous as the mail-room nobody who hits gold when he invents the Hula-Hoop. In attempting to portray the kind of heartless villains associated with Edward Arnold and Eugene Pallette, Paul Newman mistakes excessive for comic, unlike Jennifer Jason Leigh, whose impression of Rosalind Russell doing a Katharine Hepburn is a hoot. Special mention, too, for cinematographer Roger Deakins and the art department (led by Dennis Gassner) because, for all its strengths as a comedy, this is also a visual triumph. 

Butch and Sundance are the two leaders of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. Butch is all ideas, Sundance is all action and skill. The west is becoming civilized and when Butch and Sundance rob a train once too often, a special posse begins trailing them no matter where they run. Over rock, through towns, across rivers, the group is always just behind them. When they finally escape through sheer luck, Butch has another idea, “Let’s go to Bolivia”. Based on the exploits of the historical characters.

After a near unprecedented string of critical and box-office smash hits, beginning with Toy Story in 1995, animation studio Pixar produced its first disappointment with Cars. In a bizarre and slightly creepy world where all the characters are motor vehicles, red racer Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) is a preening, hot-shot track star who, on the way to a big meet in LA, becomes stranded in the small town of Radiator Springs off Route 66. There, the residents, including a cute female Porsche (Bonnie Hunt) and a wise old-timer with a secret past (Paul Newman), teach McQueen a few lessons about the value of taking things slow and enjoying life. The middle act is too sedate and the jokes are below par. But, on the plus side, the racing sequences are mini-masterpieces of editing and the animation is consistently impressive. And if you’re watching the UK release version of the film, you’ll recognise Harv’s dulcet tones — yes, it’s Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson.