Bovie Movie

The Eisner Award-winning comic series Sin City comes to life in this live-action feature adaptation from director Robert Rodriguez and creator Frank Miller. Interweaving multiple storylines from the series’ history, this violent crime noir paints the picture of the ultimate town without pity through the eyes of its roughest characters. There’s the street thug Marv (Mickey Rourke), whose desperate quest to find the killer of a prostitute named Goldie (Jaime King) will lead him to the foulest edges of town. Inhabiting many of those areas is Dwight (Clive Owen), a photographer in league with the sordid ladies of Sin City, headed by Gail (Rosario Dawson), who opens up a mess of trouble after tangling with a corrupt cop by the name of Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro). Finally, there’s Hartigan (Bruce Willis), an ex-cop with a heart problem who’s hell-bent on protecting a stripper named Nancy (Jessica Alba). Featuring a who’s who supporting cast that includes Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Devon Aoki, and Nick Stahl, Sin City promises to be one of the most direct translations from page to screen of a comic series, with shots and dialogue adapted straight from the original comic’s panels. Rodriguez quit the Director’s Guild when they refused to let Frank Miller co-direct the film, a deal hashed out after the two collaborators developed and shot the opening scene utilizing a green-screen process to harness the stark, black-and-white look of the books as a litmus test for the rest of the production. Quentin Tarantino was brought in and reportedly paid one dollar to direct an extended scene between Del Toro and Owen that amounts to one issue of The Big Fat Kill miniseries.

Former X-Files writer James Wong makes his sophomore feature as a director at the helm of this science fiction thriller that’s reminiscent of Timecop (1994). In the near future, a technology called “quantum tunneling” allows human beings to travel between parallel universes. The abuse of this ability by criminal elements has led to the formation of the Multi-Verse Authorities or “MVA,” an agency of quantum traveling cops who apprehend violators of inter-dimensional laws. The MVA faces its greatest crisis when a former agent named Gabriel Yulaw (Jet Li) goes renegade, traveling between one universe and the next, murdering his own parallel selves and gaining enormous power with each slaying. It is believed that when Yulaw has become “the one,” the only version of himself to exist, he will be omnipotent, but the final Gabriel Yulaw exists in our plane of existence (the “magna universe”) and is also becoming stronger, though he doesn’t understand why. Hot on the evil Yulaw’s trail are his former partner Harry Roedecker (Delroy Lindo) and Harry’s new colleague Evan Funsch (Jason Statham). Created with Wong’s longtime writing and producing partner Glen Morgan, The One (2001) co-stars Carla Gugino.

A former high-school hockey star handicapped in a tragic car accident becomes an unlikely ally to a crack team of determined bank robbers in this thriller starring Jeff Daniels and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. When his promising career on the ice is suddenly cut short, former athlete Chris Pratt (Gordon-Levitt) goes to work as a janitor in a local bank. Cleaning floors soon gives way to criminal enterprise when the onetime puck-slinger is recruited to help clean out the very bank that employs him. Screenwriter Scott Frank (Out of Sight and Minority Report) makes his directorial debut, working from his own original screenplay.

The new night watchman at New York’s Museum of Natural History finds that the job comes with more responsibility than he ever dreamed in this wild fantasy comedy directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Mickey Rooney, and Dick Van Dyke. Larry Daley (Stiller) is a kind-hearted dreamer who always knew that he was destined for greatness, he just never quite knew how. None of his ideas or inventions has panned out, so with a heavy heart, he takes a regular job as a lowly graveyard-shift security guard at the Museum of Natural History in order to provide a more stable life for himself and his ten-year-old son. His first night on the job, however, he finds that guardianship of the museum is far from stable — at nightfall, an Egyptian spell brings the artifacts and wax figures to life! With Attila the Hun charging to war through the hallways, the diorama miniatures embroiled in a deadly feud, and a two-ton Tyrannosaurus Rex nagging to play fetch, Larry has half a mind to turn tail and run. On top of cleaning up after two million years of historical chaos every night, he also has to make sure that not a single museum piece leaves the building — from the bratty Capuchin monkey in the African exhibit, to the life-sized Neanderthal in the prehistoric display — because if morning light falls on an escaped artifact, it will turn to dust. Larry turns to a wax replica of President Roosevelt (Williams) for a little advice on keeping things in tact, but Teddy seems to think that a man of Larry’s greatness needs little help. Larry isn’t sure if the former commander in chief is right; this is hardly what he signed up for, but he can’t pass up the chance to care for a museum where history really does come to life.

The first American theatrically released 3-D movie from a major studio since 1991’s Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over is the third entry in three years in Robert Rodriguez’s family-oriented action-adventure series. Along with the four members of the Cortez family, played by Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa Vega, and Daryl Sabara, most of the characters from the first two films have returned, including Fegan Floop (Alan Cumming), Romero (Steve Buscemi), Machete (Danny Trejo), Dinky Winks (Bill Paxton), and Donnagon (Mike Judge). This time around, Carmen (Vega) is kidnapped by the evil Toymaker (Sylvester Stallone) and imprisoned inside a virtual-reality game. It’s then up to Juni (Sabara) to venture into the game and save his sister from the villain’s clutches. The film’s three-dimensional segments take place inside the game. Also starring Salma Hayek, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over is actually the first of two 2003 films directed by Rodriguez that complete a trilogy, the other being Once Upon a Time in Mexico, the third installment in the El Mariachi saga.