Bovie Movie

This spoof of the Airport series of disaster movies relies on ridiculous sight gags, groan-inducing dialogue, and deadpan acting — a comedy style that would be imitated for the next 20 years. Airplane! pulls out all the clich?s as alcoholic pilot Ted Striker (Robert Hays), who’s developed a fear of flying due to wartime trauma, boards a jumbo jet in an attempt to woo back his stewardess girlfriend (Julie Hagerty). Food poisoning decimates the passengers and crew, leaving it up to Striker to land the plane, with the help of a glue-sniffing air traffic controller (Lloyd Bridges) and Striker’s vengeful former captain (Robert Stack), who must both talk him down. Along the way, we meet a clutch of stock disaster movie passengers like the guitar-strumming nun, a sick little girl, a frightened old lady, and two African-American travelers whose “jive” has to be subtitled. Leslie Nielsen portrays the plane’s doctor, launching a new phase of the actor’s career that carried him through the next two decades in several similarly comedic roles. The trio of directors Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, and David Zucker responsible for the film would eventually go on to solo careers, but not before making Top Secret! and Ruthless People.

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.

A variation on the “buddy-cop” hybridized genre, 48 HRS. greatly bolstered the career of Nick Nolte and made comedian Eddie Murphy a bonafide box-office sensation. When a pair of reckless cop-killers break out of prison, grizzled detective Jack Cates (Nolte) is left no alternative but to spring fast-talking hustler Reggie Hammond (Murphy) from the penitentiary in order to find the criminals. The catch: the pair only have 48 hours to complete their assignment before Hammond must return to prison. Naturally, the two despise each other and even engage in fisticuffs, but eventually the danger facing them proves a strong enough common bond for them to play on the same team, and even achieve a little mutual admiration.

A chance run-in with an old college roommate becomes the catalyst for healing in writer/director Mike Binder’s tale of friendship and understanding in post-9/11 New York. When the Twin Towers went down on that fateful morning in 2001, Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler) lost everything that he had to live for. Five years have passed since Charlie lost his family, and now the once-successful and sociable man has become a withdrawn shadow of his former self. When fate brings Charlie and his former college roommate Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle) together once again on a Manhattan street corner, Alan is shocked to see just how far his old friend has fallen. Though on the surface it would appear that Alan has it all, the pressures of his family and career have been weighing heavily on the successful dentist and loving father’s shoulders as of late. At that pivotal moment when Charlie and Alan both needed a trusted friend to help them work through the seemingly insurmountable challenges they face in life, the restorative power of a rekindled friendship provides just the lifeline needed to move forward into the future with hope and optimism. Jada Pinkett Smith, Liv Tyler, Saffron Burrows, and Donald Sutherland co-star.

In this thriller, Rob Lowe is a prison inmate who hears more than he was meant to when the convict in the next cell is murdered. The inmate discovers that the murder is just one of a series of killings meant to thin out the inmate population, with the guards working in collusion with members of a victims’ rights group seeking their own brand of justice against criminals who escape the death penalty. Proximity also stars James Coburn, Fred Ward, and Jonathan Banks; it was the first feature from Zinc Pictures, a company formed by noted producer Joel Silver to produce quality low-budget films.