Bovie Movie

A thesp-turned-crook gets a chance at career in movies as well as crime scene investigation in this offbeat action comedy with nods to Raymond Chandler. Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) is a struggling New York actor who high-tails it to Los Angeles. Once there, Lockhart winds up at the posh home of the aptly-named homosexual private eye Gay Perry (Val Kilmer) amid a lavish Hollywood party, hoping to score a life-changing role in a Hollywood feature. Harry becomes reacquainted with Harmony (Michelle Monaghan), a girl he had a major crush on in his small-town Indiana high school, who may be a bit more interested in him now than she was years ago. He takes both her and her girlfriend home with him, but - in a moment of drunken stupor - accidentally sleeps with the wrong woman. Meanwhile, when a series of female bodies turns up across L.A., Harry slowly breaks into detective work, mentored by Perry. The biggest twist? Black riffs Adaptation and other films by having Harry (via satirical narration) write the movie while he is living it. Harry assures the audience that unlike Lord of the Rings, this one won’t have seventeen endings. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang marks the first directorial credit for Shane Black, who created the Lethal Weapon franchise.

Two brothers follow separate paths to tragic results in this western from director James Crowley. Separated at a young age following a raid on Samuel Hancock’s (Willie Nelson) ranch by bandits, it’s thirteen long years before they once again cross paths. A wandering stranger who has developed a strong taste for morphine, The Morphanist (Brad Hunt) has become a ruthless hired gun with little remorse and no conscience. Following him on his bloody trail in hopes of finding redemption for his brother, The Journeyman (Daniel Lapaine) remains ever vigilant in his efforts as the addict moves closer to death with every move. As The Morphinist sets his sites on the payroll office of a mining company owned by the same man who raided ranch that the brothers lived on as children, he makes off with a tidy stash before one of his ill-fated accomplices sets out on a blood-soaked revenge spree.

The return of director Terrence Malick to feature filmmaking after a twenty year sabbatical, this World War II drama is an elegiac rumination on man’s destruction of nature and himself, based on James Jones’ semi-autobiographical novel, his follow-up to From Here to Eternity. James Caviezel stars as Private Witt, a deserter living in peace and harmony with the natives of a Pacific island paradise. Captured by the Navy, Witt is debriefed by a senior officer (Sean Penn) and returned to an active duty unit preparing for what will be the Battle of Guadalcanal. As Witt goes ashore in the company of his fellow soldiers, they meet diverse fates. Sergeant Keck (Woody Harrelson) is killed by an exploding grenade. Captain John Gaff (John Cusack) is an intelligent, sober leader facing the destruction of his command because his commanding officer Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte) is bucking for a general’s star. Sergeant McCron (John Savage) loses his mind. Private Bell (Ben Chaplin) gets a “Dear John” letter from his beloved wife. However, as the U.S. troops advance up grassy slopes toward entrenched Japanese positions, it is Witt’s voiced-over ruminations on life, death, and nature that are the real heart and soul of The Thin Red Line (1998). Adrien Brody appears as Private Fife, the major character of Jones’ novel and the author’s alter-ego, although Fife has been relegated to a minor supporting role by Malick’s filmed adaptation.

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.

A cop’s personal code of justice begins to change after a number of incidents lead his city to a tragic wave of violence in this police drama. Eldon Perry (Kurt Russell) is a veteran cop with the LAPD’s Special Investigations unit, a man who isn’t above bending the law if it means putting people behind bars who deserve the treatment. As Los Angeles waits on the verdict in the Rodney King police beating trial, Perry is presenting testimony to Assistant Chief of Police Arthur Holland (Ving Rhames), who is well aware of the corruption in the SIS unit and wants to stop it. Perry, however, twists some facts as he speaks in the defense of his new partner, Bobby Keough (Scott Speedman), who is being investigated for inappropriate use of deadly force. For lack of honest testimony, Keough is let off the hook, and soon he and Perry have a new case to investigate — a robbery at a liquor store than turned into a quadruple homicide. Perry and Keough quickly track down two likely suspects, Orchard (Kurupt) and Sidwell (Dash Mihok), but Perry is surprised when the head of SIS, Van Meter (Brendan Gleeson), tells him to let Orchard and Sidwell go, and instead points the finger at two ex-cons who should be taken off the street, even though they’re innocent of this crime. Perry follows Van Meter’s orders, despite Keough’s misgivings, but in the wake of the L.A. riots, Perry has a change of heart, and decides to start working with Holland against Van Meter’s corrupt methods. In the midst of it all, Perry is trying to hold together his troubled marriage to Sally (Lolita Davidovich), while Keough finds himself romancing a fellow officer, Beth (Michael Michele). Dark Blue was adapted from an original screenplay by noted crime novelist James Ellroy; originally set against the backdrop of the 1965 Watts riots, the story was later updated to 1992.

The mysterious and unexpected death of an iconic Hollywood star may be just the tip of an iceberg of scandal in this show biz drama based on a true story. George Reeves (played by Ben Affleck) was a journeyman actor who had played a small role in Gone With The Wind and appeared on screen with the likes of James Cagney, Rita Hayworth and Marlene Dietrich, but his career was not exactly booming when he was cast as comic book hero Superman in a 1951 B-movie, Superman and the Mole Men. A year later, the producers of the movie launched a syndicated Superman television series with Reeves returning as the Man of Steel. The show became a major hit, and Reeves was a star at last. However, on June 16, 1959, to the shock of many, Reeves was found dead of a gunshot wound. Police soon declared Reeves’ death a suicide and closed the case, but his mother (Lois Smith) refused to believe her son took his own life, and hired Louis Simo (Adrian Brody), a private detective, to find out the truth about her son’s passing. Simo found many Hollywood insiders did not care to cooperate as he researched the Reeves case, but his digging uncovered plenty of evidence suggesting the actor did not take his own life, and he also revealed one of Reeves’s deepest secrets — while he was engaged to marry a pretty young starlet, Leonore Lemmon (Robin Tunney), Reeves was also carrying on an affair with the beautiful Toni Mannix (Diane Lane), the wife of Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins), a powerful and ill-tempered executive at MGM. While the producers of Hollywoodland based their story on factual accounts of the investigation into the death of George Reeves, they were denied permission to use the Superman logo and the familiar introduction to the Adventures of Superman television show by the respective copyright holders.

The disappearance of a military leader and the death of four of his men leads two investigators to wade through a morass of deceptions and half-truths in search of the facts in this thriller. Sgt. Nathan West (Samuel L. Jackson) is the leader of an elite team of U.S. Army Special Forces operatives known as the Army Rangers; West is known as a highly effective officer, but one with a short temper and aggressive attitude who is not well liked by his soldiers. During a seemingly routine training exercise in Panama, a hurricane sweeps in, and four of West’s six men are dead, while West himself seems to have vanished. Eager to get the facts behind what happened, Col. Bill Styles (Tim Daly) assigns Capt. Julia Osborne (Connie Nielsen) to investigate. However, Osborne is having a hard time getting the two survivors to talk, so Styles brings in Tom Hardy (John Travolta), a former Army Ranger who served under West and became a first-class interrogator; Hardy later became a DEA agent, but left law enforcement after allegations of corruption. Hardy interviews Dunbar (Brian Van Holt), who claims that the four soldiers had been murdered, and West was killed in retaliation. Kendall (Giovanni Ribisi), the other survivor (whose father is a powerful officer) has a very different story of how the five men turned up dead, and it’s up to Hardy and Osborne to determine who is telling the truth — or if anyone is saying exactly what happened. Basic marked the first time John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson appeared in the same film together since their breakthrough roles in Pulp Fiction.

In October 1991, a dying tropical hurricane from Bermuda collided with a cold front from the Great Lakes, resulting in a “perfect storm” of previously unknown destructive impact that resulted in 100-foot waves; tragically, the crew of a fishing boat was lost in the midst of the fearsome storm. Based on the best-selling book by Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm tells the story of the ship’s brave and hard-working crew. Billy Tyne (George Clooney), captain of the Andrea Gail, hasn’t had much luck finding catch on his most recent trips to sea, and with money short, he and his crew — Bob Shatford (Mark Wahlberg), Dale Murphy (John C. Reilly), and David Sullivan (William Fichtner) set out again when they hear that the fish are running. Billy’s hunch proves correct, but when the ship’s refrigeration system goes haywire, they have to return to shore as quickly as possible before the fish spoil, sending them into the middle of the worst storm in history. The supporting cast includes Mary Elziabeth Mastrantonio, Diane Lane, Bob Gunton, and Karen Allen; Wolfgang Petersen, whose breakthrough film was the aquatic wartime drama Das Boot, directed.