Bovie Movie

Anthony Minghella wrote and directed this award-winning adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s novel about a doomed and tragic romance set against the backdrop of World War II. In a field hospital in Italy, Hana (Juliette Binoche), a nurse from Canada, is caring for a pilot who was horribly burned in a plane wreck; he has no identification and cannot remember his name, so he’s known simply as “the English Patient,” thanks to his accent. When the hospital is forced to evacuate, Hana determines en route that the patient shouldn’t be moved far due to his fragile condition, so the two are left in a monastery to be picked up later. In time, Hana begins to piece together the patient’s story from the shards of his memories; he’s actually Count Laszlo Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), of Hungarian nobility and an explorer working with a group mapping uncharted territory in North Africa. An Englishman, Geoffrey Clifton (Colin Firth), soon joins Almasy’s team; travelling with him is his lovely and spirited wife, Katherine (Kristin Scott Thomas). Katherine and Laszlo soon fall in love, which leads Laszlo to betray his friend, his country and all that is dear to him. Meanwhile, Hana and the Patient are joined by Kip (Naveen Andrews), a Sikh with a gift for defusing mines, and Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), an intelligence agent who knows some of Laszlo’s most shameful secrets. The English Patient won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress (Juliette Binoche).

David Lynch wades through dark waters in his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s cult science fiction novel. In condensing Herbert’s rambling and complex book by eliminating characters and compacting events, Lynch succeeds in rendering the story incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with the novel and making the film look like a sketchy greatest hits collection of the book for Herbert fans. The story takes place in the year 10,191. The universe is governed through a system of feudal rule, presided over by Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (Jos? Ferrer), who appears to take his marching orders from something that resembles a talking vagina. In the kingdom are two rival houses — the House of Atreides and the House of Harkonnen. Each house is trying to gain dominion over the universe, but that dominion can only be gained by the house that controls the Spice, a special substance that permits the folding of time. The Spice is only available on the desert world of Arrakis, or Dune. Shaddam, tired of the feuding between the two houses, permits the Atreides to take over the Spice production on Dune, while secretly working with the Harkonnens to launch a sneak attack on the Atreides and destroy them. The leader of the Atreides is Duke Leto (J?rgen Prochnow), who rules with the help of his concubine Jessica (Francesca Annis) and son Paul (Kyle MacLachlan). The rival Harkonnens are headed by the pus-oozing degenerate Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillan, in a thoroughly through-the-roof performance) and his two unsavory nephews, Rabban (Paul L. Smith) and Feyd (Sting). When his father is murdered by the Harkonnens, Paul escapes to Dune, where he is greeted by the Fremen (the desert dwellers on Dune who prepare the Spice) as the messiah foretold in Fremen legend. Paul assumes the mantle of messiah and leads the Fremen in a revolt that topples the balance of power in the universe.

Adapted from the popular Sega arcade video game of the same name, director Uwe Boll’s action horror effort finds a group of partying teens stranded on an island and doing battle with a new breed of unusually mobile zombies. Looking for a place to party away spring break, college students Cynthia (Sonya Salomaa), Greg (Will Sanderson), and Karma (Enuka Okuma) hear rumors of a rave on a remote island in the Seattle area. Rushing to catch the party boat, the teens pick up friends Simon (Tyron Leitso) and Alicia (Ona Grauer), but discover upon arrival at the dock that the boat has set sail without them. Offering a few dollars to a local captain to hitch a ride to the island, the teens reach their destination only to find it eerily silent with no party in sight. Things go from bad to worse when the group is attacked by a mysterious creature, and they are forced to seek refuge in an old dark house on the island shore. Subsequently running into a few familiar faces and learning to their horror that the rave had been overrun by a horde of terrifying zombies, the group must now make one final bid for survival over the course of a long, blood-soaked night.

Famed poet Gu Cheng travels from his native China to the beautiful shores of New Zealand, searching for beauty and innocence. What he finds, however, is a twisted tumult of human emotion when he is loved by two different women. What began as a search for renewed life ends in murder and jealousy in this film based on a true story.

A violent, effects-heavy science fiction adventure, Judge Dredd depicts a nightmarish future in which overcrowded cities are terrorized by brutal gun battles and policed by “Judges,” law officers who act as judge, jury, and executioner. Sylvester Stallone stars as Judge Dredd, a punishing enforcer with an unswerving dedication to law and order. Little does Dredd know that a nasty villain (Armand Assante) and a corrupt Judge (Jurgen Prochnow) are plotting to take over the city and plan to frame Dredd for murder in order to prevent him from interfering. Dredd winds up in prison, but he fights back with the help of Judge Hershey (Diane Lane), his partner and romantic interest, and Fergie (Rob Schneider), his friend and comic relief, developing a plan to clear his name and stop the bad guys.

Detroit cop Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) has seemingly smoothed out his differences with his Beverly Hills superior Bogomil (Ronny Cox), but there’s trouble ahead for both men, not to mention two other holdovers from the first Cop film, officers Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Taggart (John Ashton). The “untouchable” heavy this time out is masterminding a series of violent robberies, committed by leather-freak hoods Dean Stockwell and Brigitte Nielsen. Unaccumstomed to this nastiness, Bogomil entreats street-smart Foley to help find the miscreants. But mean-spirited chief of police Lutz (Allen Garfield) will brook no interference from outsiders-especially the profanely insouciant Mr. Foley.

Two guys used to drinking beer for fun suddenly become fierce competitors in a sort of Lager Olympics in this over-the-top comedy. Todd Wolfhouse (Erik Stolhanske) and his brother Jan (Paul Soter) are from a German-American family but have never visited the Old Country until their grandfather dies and they fly to Germany to scatter his ashes. Todd and Jan arrive during the annual Oktoberfest celebration and accidentally discover a secret competition, “Beerfest,” in which the world’s leading beer guzzlers determine who can handle the most brew during several days of heated drinking games. Todd and Jan are no slouches when it comes to downing suds and offer to compete, but the German branch of the family, the Von Wolfhausens, scoff at their desire to enter the contest and inform them no mere American could hope to carry away the Beerfest honors. Determined to prove Yanks can swill beer and embarrass themselves just as well as anyone, Todd and Jan bring their most skilled drinking buddies to Germany to defend America’s honor on the field of drunken battle and show their German relatives that the family’s talent didn’t vanish when they crossed the pond. Beerfest was written and directed by Jay Chandrasekhar of the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, and several other Broken Lizard members pop up in the film’s cast, as do Will Forte, Mo’nique, Cloris Leachman, and J?rgen Prochnow.

Music video and TV commercials director Antoine Fuqua made his feature directorial debut with this action thriller starring Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun-Fat. Chinese immigrant John Lee (Yun-Fat) has a violent past as a professional killer. It brings him only remorse, but it makes him the ideal assassin. In exchange for his family’s safety, Lee is forced to take a job with a powerful underworld figure, Asian crime kingpin Terence Wei (Kenneth Tsang), who wants Lee to settle a deadly vendetta against police detective Stan Zedlov (Michael Rooker) by killing Zedlov’s seven-year-old son. At the last minute, with the boy in his sights, Lee chooses to face Wei’s vengeance rather than go through with the killing. In addition to making Lee a target, the decision also endangers his mother and sister back in Shanghai. Planning a return to China, he visits document forger Meg Coburn (Mira Sorvino) to get a phony passport, but they are interrupted by Wei’s army of killers, and a lengthy chase and gun battle is set in motion.

Director Fuqua stressed to his team that the aim was to design a “Taxi Driver for the 1990s,” with production beginning February 10, 1997 in downtown Los Angeles, and the first shoot at the historic Mayan Theater, refurbished into the trendy nightclub for the film’s stylish opening scene with hundreds of extras carousing while Lee guns down Romero (Carlos Leon) at close range. The eight-story, nearly condemned Giant Penny building in the heart of L.A. served as locations for a police station interior, a hotel room, and Meg Coburn’s office, and a chaotic gunfight was filmed amid the spray, brushes, and hoses of Joe’s Car Wash in LA. The art department transformed one area into a Chinatown-like streetscape of damp, narrow alleys, and blinking red neon lights, site of a night filming where Yun-Fat shot off 546 rounds with two guns, one in each hand, while the repetitive action left his hands blistered and shaking. More gunplay was at a video arcade replicated at the original Lawry’s center just north of downtown L.A., and Lee’s tranquil Buddhist temple was fashioned under this same roof. In addition to physical training, Mira Sorvino, who had never handled a gun prior to this film, took weapons training to prepare for her role. Sorvino majored in Asian studies at Harvard, speaks Mandarin, and lived for eight months (1988-89) in Beijing, where she studied Chinese, taught English, and saw Chinese films, including Hong Kong action films. She felt The Replacement Killers brought her a step closer to her goal of making a film in Mandarin and working with a Chinese director.

In this action drama, Harrison Ford plays James Marshall, a onetime combat hero in the Vietnam War who is now President of the United States. While visiting the former Soviet Union, Marshall gives a speech in which he supports a get-tough attitude against both terrorists and a right-wing general and war criminal from Kazakhstan imprisoned in Moscow, earning him few friends in the Eastern Bloc. While flying back to the United States aboard Air Force One, Marshall and his staff discover that one of the journalists returning with them is actually Ivan Korshunov (Gary Oldman), a Kazakhstani terrorist, who hijacks the plane with three associates and holds the president hostage — with his wife and daughter on board. Marshall must use his strength and intelligence to keep the terrorists at bay and devise a plan to allow his family to escape to safety, while on the ground the vice-president (Glenn Close), the secretary of defense (Dean Stockwell), and the attorney general (Philip Baker Hall) grapple over what to do and how much control to take in this crisis. Slam-bang action sequences and plot twists fly fast and furious in this nail-biter from director Wolfgang Petersen, who previously generated suspense under water (rather than in the air) with Das Boot.