Bovie Movie

Absolutely ludicrous from its hokey start to senseless finish, the only shock in this ersatz haunted house thriller is that Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) considered it worth directing. When city slickers Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone move to a dilapidated country mansion, they face redneck prejudice and sinister threats from former owner and ex-con Stephen Dorff, who wants to keep a dark family secret buried there. With every plot twist telegraphed well in advance, the best thing to do is sit back and stoically tick off each plodding spooky cliché as it appears. Complete with Dorff emanating badness from scene one and his trailer-trash girlfriend (Juliette Lewis) and her inscrutable sheriff sister (Dana Eskelson) refusing to believe the patently obvious, nothing makes sense in this technically proficient but bogus horror. More hilarious than creepy — Dorff infesting the house with poisonous snakes is embarrassingly overacted — think cold, creaky mannerisms instead. 

This true-story-based bittersweet drama follows Evelyn Ryan (Julianna Moore) who was a housewife and a devoted mother of 10. Her remarkable ingenuity and an uncommon wit had success at the jingle contests staged by corporations to promote their products. Evelyn had found the way to keep her family together, notwithstanding an alcoholic husband and the other difficult circumstances.

Disgraced Secret Service operative Michael Douglas races to foil an inside conspiracy to assassinate the US president in this slickly shot but soulless political thriller from SWAT director Clark Johnson. A tension-free hotch-potch of clichés, transparent twists and plain implausibilities, this acts as though the TV drama 24 never happened. Douglas seems past his prime as the respected veteran branded a traitorous mole following a colleague’s murder, although it’s the scandalous reason behind his failed lie-detector test — involving limp First Lady Kim Basinger — that strains credibility the most. Thank heavens, then, for Kiefer Sutherland’s top investigative agent whose bluntly confrontational approach and personal hostility to his one-time mentor Douglas add acid intensity to an otherwise routine plot. Aside from that, this In the Line of Fire-wannabe is detrimentally lacking in human emotion, with a surfeit of procedural details that just render events tediously uninvolving.