Bovie Movie

After years of wooing director John Huston via good reviews, film critic James Agee was given a chance to write the screenplay for a Huston picture. Adapted from a novel by C.S. Forester, The African Queen stars Humphrey Bogart in his Oscar-winning portrayal of Charlie Allnut, the slovenly, gin-swilling captain of a tramp steamer called the African Queen, which ships supplies to small East African villages during World War I. Katharine Hepburn plays Rose Sayer, the maiden-lady sister of a prim British missionary (Robert Morley). When invading Germans kill the missionary and level the village, Allnut offers to take Rose back to civilization. She can’t tolerate his drinking or bad manners; he isn’t crazy about her imperious, judgmental attitude. However it does not take long before their passionate dislike turns to love. Together the disparate duo work to ensure their survival on the treacherous waters and devise an ingenious way to destroy a German gunboat. The African Queen may well be the perfect adventure film, its roller-coaster storyline complemented by the chemistry between its stars. The profound difficulties inherent in filming on location in Africa have been superbly documented by several books, including one written by Katharine Hepburn. Screenwriter Peter Viertel (who worked, on an uncredited basis, on the script of this film - assisting with some of the dialogue) incorporated some of the African Queen anecdotes in his roman a clef about a Huston-like director/adventurer, White Hunter, Black Heart.

Despite the use in this film of voices dubbed by greats of English theater, the casting of long-haired cats to play the roles of Romeo and Juliet seems somewhat perverse. Nonetheless, the lines are well read, and the movie contains some fine original musical compositions. Among the voices: Maggie Smith, Ben Kingsley, Vanessa Redgrave, and John Hurt.

Two of the members of popular boy band ‘N Sync make their feature acting debuts with this light romantic comedy. Lance Bass stars as shy Kevin Gibbons, an advertising executive in Chicago who’s notoriously maladroit at dealing with the opposite sex. After a chance encounter with his dream girl (Emmanuelle Chriqui) aboard the El train, Kevin forgets to ask for her name and phone number and plasters the Windy City with posters seeking his lost love connection. Kevin’s quest to find the mystery girl soon attracts the attention of a newspaper reporter and he becomes a media darling, while his roommates Rod (Joey Fatone), Randy (James Bulliard), and Eric (Gregory Qaiyum) take full advantage of the amorous response by Chicago’s female population to their friend’s heartbroken search. On the Line (2001) co-stars Dave Foley and Jerry Stiller, along with singer Al Green as himself.

Though equally respected in their field, divorce lawyers Audrey Woods (Julianne Moore) and Daniel Rafferty (Pierce Brosnan) are opposites inside and out of the courtroom. Audrey is meticulous and by the book, while Daniel relies on personality and luck to get by. Despite the difference in methods, neither lawyer has lost a case, and neither plan on ending their streak after being respectively hired by Serena (Parker Posey) and Thorne (Michael Sheen), a celebrity power couple gone wrong. The divorce settlement hinges on a particularly spectacular Irish castle, which both parties would like to keep for themselves. Audrey and Daniel hurry to Ireland with depositions in their eyes, but a growing mutual attraction manages to squirm out from beneath, and, after being immersed in a romantic Irish festival, the rival lawyers wake up married. Reeling, potentially in love (to Audrey in particular’s dismay), and faced with the type of media explosion capable of leading to the end of their careers, the mismatched lawyers contemplate how to go about their clients’ divorce hearings as man and wife.

The youngest child of the family often has the most problems — so why should things be different for the Prince of Darkness and his offspring? Satan (Harvey Keitel) is considering retirement, and is pondering which of his sons should take over the family business — ambitious Adrian (Rhys Ifans), strapping Cassius (Tommy “Tiny” Lister Jr.), or Nicky (Adam Sandler), an accident-prone demon who prefers to stay in his room playing his favorite heavy metal tunes. When Satan decides to stay on for another 10,000 years, Adrian is outraged, and leaves Hell to go to New York, where he and Cassius attempt to round up enough souls to vote Satan out of power. Satan, understandably upset, sends Nicky to bring Adrian and Cassius back home, but Nicky finds life on Earth is more complicated than he expected. Things don’t get any easier when he develops a crush on Valerie (Patricia Arquette), a good-hearted mortal woman. Little Nicky also features Michael McKean as a city official trying to put Nicky behind bars, Kevin Nealon as Hell’s gatekeeper, Rodney Dangerfield as Satan’s father, Robert Smigel as the voice of Beefy — a talking dog who is Nicky’s guide on earth, Allen Covert as Todd — Nicky’s new roommate, and Peter Dante and Jonathan Loughran as a pair of metalheads who dig Satan. Jon Lovitz and Reese Witherspoon play cameo roles, and Regis Philbin and Ozzy Osbourne appear as themselves.

In preparing his romantic comedy Two For the Road, director Stanley Donen decided to utilize many of the cinematic techniques popularized by the French “nouvelle vague” filmmakers. Jump cutting back and forth in time with seeming abandon, Donen and scriptwriter Frederic Raphael chronicle the 12-year relationship between architect Wallace (Albert Finney) and his wife (Audrey Hepburn). While backpacking through Europe, student Finney falls for lovely music student Jacqueline Bisset, but later settles for Hepburn, another aspiring musician (this vignette served as the launching pad for the film-within-a-film in Francois Truffaut’s 1973 classic Day for Night). Once married, Finney and Hepburn go on a desultory honeymoon, travelling in the company of insufferable American tourists William Daniels and Eleanor Bron and their equally odious daughter Gabrielle Middleton. Later on, during yet another road trip, Finney is offered an irresistible job opportunity by Claude Dauphin, which ultimately distances Finney from his now-pregnant wife. Still remaining on the road, the film then details Finney and Hepburn’s separate infidelities. The film ends where it begins, with Finney and Hepburn taking still another road vacation, hoping to sew up their unraveling marriage. While critics did nip-ups over Stanley Donen’s “revolutionary” nonlinear story-telling techniques, audiences responded to the chemistry between Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney, not to mention the unforgettable musical score by Henry Mancini. Note: many TV prints of Two for the Road are edited for content, robbing the viewer of Finney and Hepburn’s delightful “Bitch/Bastard” closing endearments.

After a long career playing good guys, Sean Connery gets to have some fun playing a crook for a change in the romantic crime thriller Entrapment — and he even gets to break the law with the lovely Catherine Zeta-Jones. When a priceless Rembrandt painting is stolen from a New York skyscraper in a daring and technically sophisticated robbery, ace insurance investigator Virginia “Gin” Baker (Catherine Zeta-Jones) begins looking into the matter and is soon convinced it’s the work of master art thief Robert “Mac” MacDougal (Sean Connery). Gin thinks the best way to get the goods on Mac (and perhaps recover the painting) is to work her way inside his operation, so she locates him in London and, posing as a fellow art thief, offers to work as his partner. While Mac is smart enough to not accept an offer like that from just anyone, most thieves don’t look as good as Gin does in a leotard, and she soon proves an able assistant in a shakedown robbery where they pinch a rare Chinese mask from a British museum. After this success, Mac agrees to join forces with Gin for what is literally the heist of the millenium — as Midnight rolls around in Kuala Lumpur on December 31, 1999, the security computers in a major multinational banking facility will be breached for a split second as the computers roll over to a new program for Y2K. Is that long enough for Gin and Mac to nab $8 billion in bank transfers? Is 14 days long enough to prepare for a robbery of this scale? And will Mac and Gin’s professional relationship pave the way for some capers in the bedroom? In addition to playing the male lead, Sean Connery also co-produced this film; the supporting cast includes Ving Rhames and Maury Chaykin.

A serial dater afflicted with a lifelong curse of loneliness attempts to win the love of a clumsy-but-beautiful penguin expert in the one romantic comedy that proves true love never comes easy. As a ten year-old boy, Charlie (Dane Cook) broke the cardinal rule of spin-the-bottle by refusing to kiss a demented Goth girl. Crushed by the disheartening snub and determined to ensure that Charlie never finds true love, the vengeful brooder places a hex on the cowardly rule breaker that follows him well into his adult life. Flash forward twenty years and Charlie is a successful dentist who just can’t seem to maintain a stable relationship. Sure he’s had his fair share of one-night stands, but these days Charlie is just looking to find a nice girl he can settle down with. One day, while attending an ex-girlfriend’s wedding, Charlie realizes that every girl he has ever dated has proceeded to find true love with the very next man they met. When word gets out that Charlie is something of a lucky charm for women looking to tie the knot, every women within a 100 mile radius comes calling for a one night stand; and while taking a bevy of beauties to bed is fun for the time being, it doesn’t take long for Charlie to realize just how empty sex can be without true love. Upon meeting hard-to-get aquatic bird specialist Cam (Jessica Alba), Charlie begins to suspect that he has found the woman of his dreams. Cam is the kind of woman whom Charlie would be happy to grow old with, but what will come of their relationship if Charlie and Cam sleep together? Now, in order to ensure that Cam doesn’t end up with the next guy she meets, Charlie will finally attempt to break the curse that has plagued him since childhood. Perhaps with a little help from smooth talking ladies’ man and sympathetic best friend Stu (Dan Fogler), Charlie will finally be able to experience true happiness.

Bill Murray plays Phil, a TV weatherman working for a local station in Pennsylvania but convinced that national news stardom is in his grasp. Phil displays a charm and wit on camera that evaporates the moment the red light goes off; he is bitter, appallingly self-centered, and treats his co-workers with contempt, especially his producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) and cameraman Larry (Chris Elliot). On February 2, 1992, Phil, Rita, and Larry are sent on an assignment that Phil especially loathes: the annual Groundhog Day festivities in Punxsutawney, PA, where the citizens await the appearance of Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog who will supposedly determine the length of winter by his ability to see his own shadow. Phil is eager to beat a hasty retreat, but when a freak snowstorm strands him in Punxsutawney, he wakes up the next morning with the strangest sense of d?j? vu: he seems to be living the same day over again. The next morning it happens again, and then again. Soon, no matter what he does, he’s stuck in February 2, 1992; not imprisonment nor attempted suicide nor kidnapping the groundhog gets him out of the loop. But the more Phil relives the same day, the more he’s forced to look at other people’s lives, and something unusual happens: he begins to care about others. He starts to respect people, he tries to save the life of a homeless man, and he discovers that he’s falling in love with Rita and therefore wants to be someone that she could love in return.

Jane Austen’s perennially popular story of the game of love among the British upper classes returns to the screen in this polished film adaptation. The Bennetts (Brenda Blethyn and Donald Sutherland) are the parents of five daughters near the close of the 18th century. Comfortable within their means but well short of rich, Mr. and Mrs. Bennett are looking for suitable husbands for their girls, and they are encouraged to learn that an eligible young bachelor from a wealthy family, Charles Bingley (Simon Woods), has moved into a nearby estate. Eager to see if a match can be made, the Bennetts bring their daughters Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) and Jane (Rosamund Pike) to a ball thrown by their new neighbor to see if sparks will fly. Jane seems to like Charles, and he appears to feel the same, but Elizabeth takes an immediate dislike to Darcy (Matthew MacFadyen), Charles’ egocentric best friend. While Elizabeth is infatuated with military man Lt. Wickham (Rupert Friend) and finds herself courted by William Collins (Tom Hollander), a well-meaning but drab man of the cloth, fate causes Elizabeth and Darcy to frequently cross paths, and while they don’t care for one another, they can’t stop thinking about each other, either. Pride & Prejudice also stars Jena Malone, Judi Dench, and Penelope Wilton.