Bovie Movie

This diluted but visually arresting adaptation of the comic book Hellblazer stars Keanu Reeves as chain-smoking John Constantine, a cancer-ridden exorcist who’s condemned to save souls and take on all manner of vile demons on Earth. Rachel Weisz co-stars as a police detective who teams up with Constantine after her apparently deranged twin sister (also played by Weisz) takes a swan dive off a high ledge. Much muttering follows about portals between heaven and Earth, the struggle between good and evil, and there’s some silliness involving a relic that’s found in the Mexican desert wrapped in a Nazi flag. Ultimately, the script feels like little more than sticky tape holding together the visual effects, but they’re very impressive effects indeed, indicating that former pop-video director Francis Lawrence definitely has an eye, if not yet a lick of storytelling sense. And Tilda Swinton is utterly delicious as an androgynous angel. 

Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis play serial killers turned into folk heroes by media excesses in this striking movie that was criticised by original story author Quentin Tarantino after it was largely rewritten by director Oliver Stone and others. Ambitious, unrelenting and inventive, Stone’s controversial landmark film excites the intellect while bludgeoning the senses. It blends naturalistic violence with stylised visuals and commandeers every available cinematic trick, plus the TV sitcom format, to put across its searing message. Stone utilises a dazzling range of technique to underscore the media’s obsession with violent crime, and delivers one of the most arrestingly provocative additions to the debate since A Clockwork Orange. Love it or hate it, this all-out image assault is a unique if disturbing experience. 

More an intense portrait of doomed romance than a serial-killer thriller, writer/director Patty Jenkins’s brutal biopic of prostitute-turned-multiple murderer Aileen Wuornos burrows deep into the woman’s psyche with the help of an Oscar-winning turn from Charlize Theron. While her physical transformation may have caught the Academy’s eye, Theron’s performance goes beyond the weight-gain and dental prosthetics, finding both compassion and coldness in Wuornos’s descent into homicidal mania. Aileen’s first kill is in self-defence, escaping from a “client”, but the impulse soon escalates into murder as she fights both to survive and to protect her burgeoning relationship with the naive outcast lesbian Selby (a superbly understated Christina Ricci). In other hands, this could have become overwrought melodrama, but Jenkins skilfully mines the humanity within the sensationalism to come up with something that is both tender and chilling — and ultimately heartbreaking. 

This routine fish-out-of-water thriller from director Walter Hill offered Arnold Schwarzenegger one of his more interesting action roles before he became a superstar. Playing a stony, monosyllabic Soviet cop poses no real acting problems for the big man, and in James Belushi he has an agreeably foul-mouthed foil, as the pair team up to hunt for an escaped Russian drug dealer. Hill stages a series of entertainingly violent and increasingly silly set pieces, and there’s an eclectic support cast that includes Peter Boyle, Gina Gershon and Laurence Fishburne, when he was still calling himself Larry. 

In this slasher-influenced take on Ten Little Indians, a classy cast is stranded at a remote motel in the Nevada desert on the proverbial dark and stormy night (which of course means that the phone lines are down and contact with the outside world is impossible). Given that the place is suspiciously reminiscent of another roadside hostelry (proprietor: N Bates), it’s no surprise when they find themselves being picked off one by one in increasingly bloody ways. As the potential victims include indie favourites John Cusack and Ray Liotta, you hope that this is going to be more than a TV-movie-style murder mystery in which the guest turns are offed according to Hollywood rank, with the highest paid actor remaining. For the most part it is — the shocks are well staged, there are flashes of wit and the performances are sly without being too tongue-in-cheek. Unfortunately, director James Mangold can’t sustain the atmosphere in the face of increasingly outlandish plot twists and the final revelation is so wildly illogical it’s irritating. 

Director Roland Joffé (The Mission) and cult writer Larry Cohen (Phone Booth) have both done far better work than this psycho-thriller copycat of Saw, but still drum up a fair number of shocks. Supermodel Jennifer Tree (Elisha Cuthbert) wakes up in a customised cellar after being kidnapped by a serial killer. She’s not alone, though, as in an adjoining cell is the equally dazed Gary (Daniel Gillies). As the unseen maniac plays sadistic cat-and-mouse games with the duo, the full horror of the situation hits home when they fall in love. Despite a well-telegraphed twist and the gory action turning more conventional, the pace never flags and the increasing daftness fails to become an issue. Joffé’s interest clearly lies in society’s obsession with celebrity rather than the nuances of the genre, but Cohen’s precision script succeeds in keeping him on the terror track. 

When a Man Loves a Woman director Luis Mandoki brings his mawkish touch to the youngster-in-peril movie with this ruthless child-abduction tale. Initially, it bears all the hallmarks of a fantastic nail-biter, starting with a terrifying jolt as the six-year-old daughter of yuppie parents Stuart Townsend and Charlize Theron is snatched by husband-and-wife extortionists Kevin Bacon and Courtney Love. With the youngster shipped off to a dim-witted accomplice for 24 hours, the kidnappers “babysit” the adults separately to ensure they get their cash. At this point, the tension is practically palpable and is given an extra edge by Bacon’s superbly reptilian performance. Unfortunately, what begins as a tightknit suspense thriller soon descends into jaw-dropping stupidity — events become so far-fetched that it’s almost impossible not to laugh. Townsend and Love compound the disaster with unintentionally hammy turns that transform what could have been every parent’s nightmare into slapstick farce.