Bovie Movie

Depending on your disposition towards quirky American comedies, this is either a truly original gem or a complete folly. Fans of director Paul Thomas Anderson’s previous films Magnolia and Boogie Nights will be stunned — and as for fans of Adam Sandler, well, they won’t know what’s hit them. Sandler plays Barry Egan, the head of a bathroom novelties company who collects air-mile coupons in his spare time, is prone to uncontrollable rages and is mercilessly bullied by his seven sisters. In the first five minutes of the movie a car flips over outside his office, an old harmonium is abandoned and Emily Watson appears from nowhere and asks him to look after her car. Then things start to get really strange. Much has been made of lowbrow favourite Sandler teaming up with art house darling Anderson, but the curious combination works. Sandler’s antisocial persona is given a surprising, touching twist that makes the volatile Egan entirely plausible, if still off-kilter, and he handles the movie’s moments of slapstick and pathos with equal ease. It might take two viewings to make sense of this surreal, candid romance, and even then that might not help — but it doesn’t matter. This is a film you just experience — it’s illogical and beautiful, just like falling in love. 

This lengthy melodrama is kept vibrantly alive and out of the clutches of sickly sentimentality by a towering Oscar-winning performance from Al Pacino. He plays playing the blind ex-soldier who heads for New York to sample life’s luxuries over the Thanksgiving weekend. As his unworldly teenage escort, Chris O’Donnell is quietly impressive, but it’s Pacino’s picture, whether tangoing with Gabrielle Anwar, berating O’Donnell’s cowardly schoolmates or barking out his famous “hoo-ha” cough. It’s loosely based on Dino Risi’s 1974 Italian film of the same name. 

Director Anthony Minghella followed his award-winning The English Patient with this absorbing thriller, based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith. Matt Damon plays Ripley, a young opportunist who seeks out Dickie Greenleaf (Oscar-nominated Jude Law), an American playboy living it up in Europe. Ripley becomes friends with Dickie, but gradually comes to covet the carefree lifestyle he shares with his glamorous girlfriend (Gwyneth Paltrow). Minghella’s classy direction and the superior cast make this never less than compelling. 

In this remake of Michael Mann’s revered Manhunter (the first film version of Thomas Harris’s novel Red Dragon, which starred Brian Cox as Dr Lecter before Anthony Hopkins took over the role), ex-FBI agent Will Graham (Edward Norton) investigates a series of killings committed by Francis Dolarhyde (a tattooed Ralph Fiennes), known only as “The Tooth Fairy”. To get inside the killer’s head, Graham has to consult his arch-enemy — and the man he put behind bars — Dr Lecter. Closer to The Silence of the Lambs than Hannibal in tone and tension, this is a classier, less campy outing for the gourmet doctor, who is well matched in the psycho stakes by Fiennes’s dentally challenged killer. With this prequel/remake, the people behind the film series seem to have taken to the idea of cannibalism a bit too literally. A crass idea, maybe, but despite a more literal interpretation of the book than Mann’s version, it’s done with class by director Brett Ratner and The Silence of the Lambs screenwriter Ted Tally. 

Speed director Jan De Bont takes destruction to new levels in this daft but breathtaking salute to the daredevil meteorologists who chase the tornados that plague America’s Midwest. Here, Bill Paxton stars as a TV weatherman who is drawn back to his dangerous former profession as a storm chaser to help estranged wife Helen Hunt place a tornado-measuring invention in the eye of a storm. Don’t worry about the laboured storyline or the lack of chemistry between Paxton and Hunt; just sit back and gape at the wondrous effects that allow cars, houses and even the odd farm animal to be sent spiralling through the air. 

The problem with this film from Meet the Parents co-writer John Hamburg is that it doesn’t know what kind of comedy it wants to be. Predominantly, it’s an agreeable romantic comedy, derivative yet cute, with Ben Stiller playing an overly cautious risk assessor who falls for wild former school pal Jennifer Aniston after his new wife cheats on him during their honeymoon. Stiller and Aniston’s performances are reassuringly familiar, demonstrating a comfortable chemistry that’s enjoyable to watch. However, getting gentle amusement from the foibles of modern romance is evidently insufficient for Hamburg, who insists on throwing in incongruous gross-out humour that would make even the Farrelly Brothers wince. Such attempts to widen the movie’s appeal give it an entirely uneven tone, and turn the usually brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman into a nausea-inducing horror as Stiller’s vulgar best friend. Ultimately, it’s the characters’ pratfalls and behavioural idiosyncrasies that provide the loudest laughs, but more genuine bite, particularly dialogue-wise, could have worked wonders. 

Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights) sealed his growing reputation as one of Hollywood’s most ambitious and audacious film-makers with this dark, daring and dazzling take on Robert Altman’s Short Cuts. Boldly tossing storytelling conventions out the window, Anderson’s offbeat epic charts 24 hours in the weird and wonderful lives of a group of San Fernando Valley inhabitants. The cast is superb, with Tom Cruise’s supremely arrogant sex guru standing out. But Jason Robards, Julianne Moore, Melora Walters, John C Reilly and William H Macy are also brilliant in their one-of-a-kind roles. Although the running time is a little indulgent, the film’s increasingly frantic pace, manic camerawork and unpredictable scenarios command the attention, while the climactic foray into Twilight Zone territory will leave you gasping. 

While not in the same class as the Coen brothers’ previous film, Fargo, this goofy tribute to Raymond Chandler and film noir still comes gift-wrapped with enough good lines, ingenious plot twists and eccentric characters to satisfy their dedicated army of fans. There are, in fact, two Lebowskis: one is Jeff Bridges, who calls himself “the Dude”, an ageing hippy who becomes embroiled in the kidnapping of the other Lebowski’s wife, aided and abetted by tenpin bowling chum John Goodman. What follows is an insane labyrinth of plot and counterplot that encompasses the drug and porn underworlds, Busby Berkeley fantasies and bath time with a savage marmot. It’s a distinctive, crazy treat, decked out with a trademark film noir narration and marvellous performances from Bridges, the toothsome and taciturn Steve Buscemi and Coen regular Goodman, who based his Vietnam-veteran character on the bear-like writer/director John Milius.