Bovie Movie

Writer and director John Carpenter returns to the mixture of science fiction and horror that made The Thing (1982) a success. Natasha Henstridge stars as Lt. Melanie Ballard of the Martian Police Force, a member of a law enforcement team two centuries in the future, dispatched to the remote colony of Shining Canyon. There, the most notorious criminal on Mars, James “Desolation” Williams (Ice Cube), awaits transport to a more secure jail. Besides Ballard, the other cops include the rookie Bashira (Clea Duvall), hotshot and fast talker Jericho (Jason Statham), tough veteran and squad leader Helena (Pam Grier), and reliable soldier Descanso (Liam Waite). Once Ballard and her companions arrive in Shining Canyon, however, they discover that it’s a literal ghost town. It seems that an archaeologist team led by Professor Whitlock (Joanna Cassidy) has uncovered an ancient relic at a nearby dig site, unleashing the vengeful spirits of the planet’s long-ago warrior inhabitants, which have now possessed the bodies of the human invaders and set about trying to destroy them. After her team is decimated by the Martian specters, Ballard is forced to turn for help to the one person she can’t really trust: Williams. Ghosts of Mars screenwriter Larry Sulkis broke into the film business as producer of the satirical commercials in Carpenter’s They Live (1988).

An outlaw finds his life becoming all the more dangerous when he turns against a gang of criminals in this action drama. Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is a former Special Forces officer who lives on the French Mediterranean and has a lucrative second career as a underworld courier for hire. Martin will deliver anything anywhere, but he has three iron-clad rules - once the plan is in motion it cannot be changed, neither he nor his customers are to ever use their real names, and under no circumstances will he open the package. Martin is hired to make a delivery to a wealthy but unscrupulous American known as Wall Street (Matt Schulze), but after taking possession of the package he realizes that whatever is inside happens to be alive. Breaking his own rule, Martin opens the bag to discover a beautiful Asian woman, Lai (Shu Qi), who is bound and gagged. Lai briefly escapes, but Martin captures her, and delivers her to Wall Street as promised. However, after being given a parcel to deliver by Wall Street, Martin finds out what Wall Street is up to - in partnership with Lai’s father Mr. Kwai (Ric Young), Wall Street is part of a scheme to smuggle Asian illegal aliens into France. Martin’s conscience gets the better of him, and he sets out to rescue Lai and put Wall Street and Mr. Kwai out of business; however, as if this wasn’t enough of a challenge, Martin discovers a French detective, Tarconi (Francois Berleand) has gotten wind of his illegal business. The Transporter was the first English-language feature for Hong Kong-based director Corey Yuen, who along with directing a number of HK action flicks designed fight choreography for several American films.

Driver and muscle for hire Frank Martin returns in this sequel to the 2002 box-office hit. Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is a former special-forces officer who will transport anything anywhere for a price, and his latest assignment is acting as chauffeur for Jack Billings (Hunter Clary), the young son of politician Jefferson Billings (Matthew Modine), who has garnered no small amount of controversy for his aggressive efforts to stamp out the trade in illegal drugs. One day, Frank is to take Jack to the doctor for a checkup while his mother, Audrey (Amber Valletta), sets up a birthday party for the tyke. However, Jack’s doctor is not who he appears to be — he’s actually Dimitri (Jason Flemyng), a Russian agent well versed in viruses who works with criminal kingpin Gianni (Alessandro Gassman). After a long and hard-fought chase with Frank, the bad guys get ahold of little Jack and hold him for ransom. The parents comply with their monetary demands and soon have their son back at home — but little do they know that the boy has secretly been injected with a deadly and easily spread virus, which the terrorists hope to spread to the boy’s powerful father and other politicians whom Jefferson will soon be addressing at a public event. When Frank learns what has happened to young Jack, he sets out to find the culprits — and the antidote that will save the boy and all others who have been exposed to the virus from dying a painful death — though his foes have stacked the deck so that it looks as if Frank has been complicit in the crime.

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 one-time freelance hitman who was just attempting to turn his life around is forced to keep his heart pumping when his vengeful former employers inject him with a lethal poison that will permanently stop his ticker if his pulse sinks beneath an active rate in a non-stop urban action extravaganza starring Jason Statham and Amy Smart. Chev Chelios (Statham) was one of the most skilled assassins in the West Coast crime syndicate. When he hung up his guns in the middle of a job to run off with his new girlfriend Eve (Smart), however, the man who was once the hunter now becomes the hunted. Awakened from his slumber by a telephone call informing him of his precarious situation, Chelios soon discovers that the only way to save Eve from certain death at the hands of his nemesis is to stay two steps ahead of his killers, keep his heart-rate high enough to stay alive, and blast through the streets of Los Angeles in search of an antidote.

The classic Burt Reynolds football-behind-bars flick The Longest Yard crosses the pond and gets an appropriate British accent in the process in this rough-and-tumble mixture of sports and action-comedy. Danny Mehan (Vinnie Jones) was one of the biggest stars in British football (what Americans call soccer), until he was caught rigging a game during a championship tournament. In the wake of this scandal, Danny’s career takes a nosedive and his life spins out of control, until he finally ends up in prison for three years on an assault and battery conviction. Danny discovers there are a number of football fans behind bars who still hate him for fixing the game, but Danny has one powerful fan in this prison. The warden (David Hemmings) is a devoted football supporter with a taste for gambling; he’s been trying to assemble a semi-pro team comprised of the prison’s guards, but Danny is just smart enough to know this would seal his fate with his fellow prisoners. Instead, he offers to put together a team of inmates, who can play practice games against the guards. A new inmate, Sykes (John Forgeham), gets wind of Danny’s idea and arranges an exhibition match between Danny’s new team and the guards, though Sykes’ motivation is more than just good fun. A powerful bookie, Sykes lost a fortune on the game Danny threw, and expects betting to be heavy for this game. If Danny and his men win, Sykes could make back the fortune he lost, but if the guards come out ahead, Danny’s goose is cooked. Can Danny turn a gang of losers, misfits, and violent psychopaths — including muscle-bound lunatic Monk (Jason Statham), creepy but loyal Billy the Limpit (Danny Dyer), tough guy Massive (Vas Blackwood), pyromaniac Nitro (Robbie Gee), and enthusiastic but out-of-shape Raj (Omid Djalili) — into a proper team with a fighting chance of winning? Mean Machine was produced by Matthew Vaughn, who was also behind Guy Ritchie’s tough-but-stylish crime comedies Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Star Vinnie Jones, by the way, enjoyed a career as a professional footballer in Great Britain before turning to acting.

Guy Ritchie’s sophomore follow-up to his 1998 sleeper hit Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch revisits the previous film’s territory of London’s crime-ridden underbelly, and does so with the same brand of humor and stylish direction that made Ritchie’s first effort a surprise success. With a labyrinthine plot that is ostensibly oriented around a missing diamond, Snatch introduces viewers to three groups of characters intent on retrieving the elusive stone, which has been stolen from an Antwerp jeweler. In the first group are friends and business partners Turkish (Jason Statham, who also supplies the film’s voice-over narration) and Tommy (Stephen Graham), who join up with Mickey (Brad Pitt), an Irish gypsy and boxer. Turkish and Tommy make arrangements with Mickey to take a fall in a match engineered by lunatic gang leader Brick Top (Alan Ford). In another corner resides equally loony Russian gangster Boris the Blade (Rade Sherbedgia), who has asked Jewish gangster Franky Four Fingers (Benicio Del Toro) to place a bet on the match for him. Boris is also scheming to have Sol (Lennie James), the owner of a pawn shop, rob the place with a couple of dim associates. Meanwhile, Avi (Dennis Farina), freshly arrived in London from New York, hires Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones) to find Franky when he goes missing; it seems that it was none other than Franky who was supposed to be transporting the purloined diamond to New York.

In this made-for-TV actioner, a stray bullet forced a secret service agent into a wheelchair and early retirement. Much of the story centers on his attempts to adjust to his new life. The rest chronicles his revenge against the gangster that destroyed his life.

A thin thread of electronic data may be the only thing that can save a women and her family in this thriller. Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) is a biology teacher who is kidnapped by Ethan (Jason Statham), a vicious criminal who has threatened to murder her husband and son if he doesn’t get what he wants. Ethan destroys the only working telephone in the cabin where she’s held, but Jessica manages to put enough of the pieces together to send out a call that’s picked up by Ryan (Chris Evans), a college student, on his cellular phone. Jessica manages to convince Ryan of the gravity of her situation, but she has no idea of where she’s being held, leaving his cell phone as the only link to her whereabouts — and his batteries are starting to wear out. Cellular was scripted by Larry Cohen, the exploitation film auteur who enjoyed a major comeback with his script for another telephone-based story, Phone Booth.