Bovie Movie

The true story of prominent mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. is the subject of this biographical drama from director Ron Howard. Russell Crowe stars as the brilliant but arrogant and conceited professor Nash. The prof seems guaranteed a rosy future in the early ’50s after he marries beautiful student Alicia (Jennifer Connelly) and makes a remarkable advancement in the foundations of “game theory,” which carries him to the brink of international acclaim. Soon after, John is visited by Agent William Parcher (Ed Harris), from the CIA, who wants to recruit him for code-breaking activities. But evidence suggests that Nash’s perceptions of reality are cloudy at best; he is struggling to maintain his tenuous hold on sanity, and Alicia suspects a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Battling decades of illness with the loyal Alicia by his side, Nash is ultimately able to gain some control over his mental state, and eventually goes on to triumphantly win the Nobel Prize. Based loosely on the book of the same name by Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind (2001) co-stars Paul Bettany, Adam Goldberg, Anthony Rapp, Christopher Plummer, and Judd Hirsch.

A turning point in 20th century war history is the focus of this fact-based account of the 1942-1943 battle of Stalingrad, in which the Germans were finally defeated by Russian influence — one of the bloodiest battles in World War II history. The film stars Jude Law as Vassili, a marksman from the Urals who is transported to Stalingrad in 1942, and a master German sniper, Major Koenig (Ed Harris). Koenig, an expert German sniper, is determined to eliminate his formidable opponent by any means necessary; meanwhile, Vassili has joined forces with Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), a young Russian political adversary, who is impressed by Vassili’s skills and raises his profile in the Soviet Union. Both Vassili and Danilov become involved with Tanya (Rachel Weisz), whose Jewish parents have been captured by the Germans and have forced her to take up with the men on a sniper expedition. Koenig and Vassili begin to develop traps for each other, until fate inevitably must bring the two sharpshooters together. This large-scale production, financed mostly by Teuton companies, also features Bob Hoskins as Nikita Krushchev and Ron Perlman as an aging Russian sniper.

The sophomore film from former music video and commercial director Michael Bay, this fast-paced action yarn featured rapid-fire editing, a cutting-edge rock soundtrack and liberal use of shots awash in a haze of burnished hues, all trademarks of producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. Nicolas Cage stars as Stanley Goodspeed, an FBI chemical weapons expert handed a unique assignment. Francis X. Hummel (Ed Harris), an insane Marine Corps general, has taken 81 tourists hostage on the abandoned island prison of Alcatraz. He and his men are threatening to bomb San Francisco with deadly gas unless $100 million is paid in war reparations to the families of servicemen killed in covert operations. Goodspeed is teamed with former British spy John Patrick Mason (Sean Connery), the only man ever to escape “The Rock,” as well as a Navy SEAL team. When their military escorts are ambushed, it’s up to odd couple Goodspeed and Mason to break into Alcatraz and stop Hummel. The Rock was the last film produced by Simpson, who died of a drug overdose before the film’s release. Solo, his partner Bruckheimer continued making the sort of glossy, frenetic films for which the duo was famed.

David Cronenberg directed this screen adaptation of a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke which explores how an act of heroism unexpectedly changes a man’s life. Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) lives a quiet life in a small Indiana town, running the local diner with his wife, Edie (Maria Bello), and raising their two children. But the quiet is shattered one day when a pair of criminals on the run from the police walk into his diner just before closing time. After they attack one of the customers and seem ready to kill several of the people inside, Tom jumps to the fore, grabbing a gun from one of the criminals and killing the invaders. Tom is immediately hailed as a hero by his employees and the community at large, but Tom seems less than comfortable with his new notoriety. One day, a man with severe facial scars, Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), sits down at the counter and begins addressing Tom as Joey, and begins asking him questions about the old days in Philadelphia. While Tom seems puzzled, Carl’s actions suggest that the quiet man pouring coffee at the diner may have a dark and violent past he isn’t eager to share with others — as well as some old scores that haven’t been settled.

The crew of an experimental, high-tech submersible is called into action to investigate a mysterious nuclear submarine crash. A series of strange encounters leads the crew to suspect the accident was caused by an extraterrestrial craft, and that they may be participating in an encounter with an alien species. However, in order to make contact, they must not only brave the abyss, an exceedingly deep underwater canyon, but also deal with the violent actions of one of their own crew members, an increasingly paranoid Navy SEAL officer. Approved by director James Cameron, The Abyss: Special Edition is an extended director’s cut of the 1989 underwater science fiction epic, reinstating nearly a half hour of footage removed from the original release under studio pressure. Much of the restored footage places the film’s events in a grander political context, as the crew’s mission becomes a factor in the dangerous escalation of nuclear tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The largest change involves the film’s ending, which provides further information on the aliens’ mission on Earth, bringing the film to closer to Cameron’s intention: a modern remake of Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still.

For his first film since 1998’s Twilight, acclaimed director Robert Benton helmed this tense drama written by Fatal Attraction co-scribe Nicholas Meyer and based on the novel of the same name by Philip Roth. Set in the late ’90s at the height of the Clinton sex-scandal, The Human Stain stars Anthony Hopkins as Coleman Silk, a respected professor at a New England college who suddenly finds his life unraveling after a comment he makes about some African-American students is misinterpreted as a racial slur. As the scandal heats up, Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), a writer researching a biography of Silk, begins to dig deeper and deeper into Silk’s life. Eventually, matters are made worse when an affair with a young married janitor named Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman) is exposed. But amid the controversy, Silk must struggle to keep his greatest secret, a secret he’s held for the majority of his life, from becoming public. Ed Harris, who previously worked with Benton in 1984’s Places in the Heart, also stars.