Bovie Movie

Siblings attempting to flee religious persecution in Europe near the close of the 15th century find themselves torn apart by greed and jealousy in this historical drama. Isabel (Katherine Borowitz), Clara (Tara Fitzgerald), and Victoria (Hannah Taylor-Gordon) are three sisters from a family of Portuguese Jews who have been forced to fend for themselves after their wealthy parents died while trying to escape the wrath of the Spanish Inquisition. Isabel has appointed herself head of the household, acting as teenaged Victoria’s guardian and giving Clara little say in the family’s affairs. The sisters have relocated to Italy while trying to arrange a passage to Istanbul, where greater tolerance is shown to Jews; in Venice, they are allowed to live outside the city’s dilapidated Jewish ghetto only as long at they attend Catholic services on a regular basis. Clara makes the acquaintance of Paolo (John Turturro), a charming British expatriate, and is quite taken with him until he proposes a marriage between his son and Victoria, leaving her to wonder if he wants to get his hands on the family fortune. Isabel, meanwhile, puts her siblings in jeopardy by attempting to steal the trade secrets of a leading Venetian glass blower and sell them to a group of Turks, a risky matter that could literally cost Isabel her life.

By the time Sergio Leone made this film, Italians had already produced about 20 films ironically labelled “spaghetti westerns.” Leone approached the genre with great love and humor. Although the plot was admittedly borrowed from Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961), Leone managed to create a work of his own that would serve as a model for many films to come. Clint Eastwood plays a cynical gunfighter who comes to a small border town and offers his services to two rivaling gangs. Neither gang is aware of his double play, and each thinks it is using him, but the stranger will outwit them both. The picture was the first installment in a cycle commonly known as the “Dollars” trilogy. Later, United Artists, who distributed it in the U.S., coined another term for it: the “Man With No Name” trilogy. While not as impressive as its follow-ups For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), A Fistful of Dollars contains all of Leone’s eventual trademarks: taciturn characters, precise framing, extreme close-ups, and the haunting music of Ennio Morricone. Not released in the U.S. until 1967 due to copyright problems, the film was decisive in both Clint Eastwood’s career and the recognition of the Italian western.

Writer-director Vincente Aranda adapted his sweeping historical saga Tirante el Blanco (AKA The White Knight, 2006) from the bestselling European novel by Joanot Martorell. Casper Zafer (La Femme Musketeer) plays the titular soldier, Tirante. Ordered by the Emperor of Byzantium to free Constantinople from the autocratic rule of the Turks, Tirante and his men - who exude the strength and great fighting spirit of the Almogavars - succeed triumphantly - virtually sweeping the Turks aside, and ignoring the fact that the number of warriors in the opposition far exceeds their own count. In the process, Tirante also succeeds in deflowering the illustrious virgin Carmesina, heiress to the empire. The only lingering problem is that Tirante doesn’t hail from noble stock.

Francois Girard directed this drama tracing the history of a musical instrument through five countries and three centuries. In 1681, to keep the spirit of his wife alive, an Italian paints the violin with a red varnish made from her blood. It is later found in the Austrian Alps when a prodigy gives a performance in the court of Vienna in 1792. Taken by gypsies, the instrument is acquired by a Dionysian composer. After a journey by boat to China in 1966, it is hidden during the Cultural Revolution. In contemporary Canada, it is spotted at an auction house by a violin expert (Samuel L. Jackson) who becomes obsessed with it. Scripted by Girard and Don McKellar. Filmed on a $10 million budget in Montreal, China, Italy, Austria, and Oxford.

Geena Davis stars in this adventure saga as the most swashbuckling female pirate to ever lay waste to the seven seas. Morgan Adams (Davis) is the daughter of a pirate who has followed in her father’s footsteps. When he dies, he passes along his ship, a crew of bandits, and one third of a treasure map (which happens to be tattooed on his skull). Morgan is eager to search out the rest of the map and retrieve the riches, but the fragment she holds is in Latin. Morgan then buys a well-educated slave, William Shaw (Matthew Modine), who can read the ancient language and already has a taste for the criminal life. However, Morgan and William are not long into their search when they discover that someone else is following the same trail for the rest of the treasure map: Dawg Brown (Frank Langella), Morgan’s uncle and as black-hearted a scurvy dog as ever boarded a ship. As Morgan and Dawg battle each other over the fragments of the map, a British journalist (Maury Chaykin) covers their feud for the penny press. William Shaw was originally to have been played by Michael Douglas, who dropped out in the early stages of this troubled production.

Based on the Alberto Moravia novel, Husbands and Lovers examines a modern couple’s untraditional open marriage.

In this parody of James Bond movies, a dullard of a spy novelist finds himself the subject of an English sociology student’s term papers. She travels to his Paris apartment to do her research and their relationship is interspliced with episodes from the writer’s newest book that features his popular hero Bob St. Clair, master spy and anithesis to the writer, and his lovely assistant Tatiana, (who is of course, the lookalike of the lovely student). The spy’s nemesis is in reality, his pushy publisher.

Leftist filmmaker Ken Loach directs this grim drama about the plight of seemingly invisible office cleaners in contemporary L.A. who often earn as little as $6 a day without benefits. The film opens as Maya (Pilar Padilla), a young Mexican lass, is reuniting with her older sister Rosa (Elpidia Carrilio) in L.A. after a harrowing cross-border journey. Rosa sets her sister up first with a job as a barmaid, which Maya soon quits after getting repeatedly groped — and then as a janitor. When her boss demands one month’s salary as “commission,” Maya happens upon Sam Shapiro (Adrien Brody), a muckraking lawyer and union agitator. This film, which was screened in competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, is remarkable for its prescience — it was shown a month after a massive janitor’s strike ground L.A.’s business community to a halt.

The Last Emperor is the true story of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi, the last ruler of the Chinese Ching Dynasty. Told in flashback, the film covers the years 1908 to 1967. We first see the three-year-old Pu Yi being installed in the Forbidden City by ruthless, dying dowager Empress Tzu-Hsui (Lisa Lu). Though he’d prefer to lark about like other boys, the infant emperor is cossetted and cajoled into accepting the responsibilities and privileges of his office. In 1912, the young emperor (Tijer Tsou) forced to abdicate when China is declared a republic, is a prisoner in his own palace, “protected” from the outside world. Fascinated by the worldliness of his Scottish tutor (Peter O’Toole), Pu Yi plots an escape from his cocoon by means of marriage. He selects Manchu descendant Wan Jung (Joan Chen), who likewise is anxious to experience the 20th century rather than be locked into the past by tradition. Played as an adult by John Lone, Pu Yi puts into effect several social reforms, and also clears the palace of the corrupt eunuchs who’ve been shielding him from life. In 1924, an invading warlord expels the denizens of the Forbidden City, allowing Pu Yi to “westernize” himself by embracing popular music and the latest dances as a guest of the Japanese Concession in Tientsin. Six years later, his power all but gone, Pu Yi escapes to Manchuria, where he unwittingly becomes a political pawn for the now-militant Japanese government. Humiliating his faithful wife, Pu Yi falls into bad romantic company, carrying on affairs with a variety of parasitic females. During World War II, the Japanese force Pu Yi to sign a series of documents which endorse their despotic military activities. At war’s end, the emperor is taken prisoner by the Russians; while incarcerated, he is forced to fend for himself without servants at his beck and call for the first time. He is finally released in 1959 and displayed publicly as proof of the efficacy of Communist re-education. We last see him in 1967, the year of his death; now employed by the State as a gardener, Pu Yi makes one last visit to the Forbidden City…as a tourist. Bernardo Bertolucci’s first film after a six-year self-imposed exile, The Last Emperor was released in two separate versions: the 160-minute theatrical release, and a 4-hour TV miniseries. Lensed on location, the film won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Clive Donner directs Oliver Twist, the 1982 made-for-TV version of the classic Dickens novel. Richard Charles plays Oliver Twist, an orphan boy who gets kicked out of his juvenile workhouse when he asks for some more food. He is sent to work as an apprentice, but he quickly escapes and joins a group of other orphaned boys. They spend the day pickpocketing and commiting petty street crime in order to survive and bring home earnings to their leader, Fagin (George C. Scott). Eventually, Oliver picks the pocket of the wealthy Mr. Brownlow (Michael Hordern), who takes him in as his ward. However, the evil Bill Sikes (Tim Curry) kidnaps him back to continue working with the other pickpockets. The barmaid Nancy (herie Lunghi) helps Oliver escape, but she ultimately suffers the concequences of her actions.