Bovie Movie

David Rabe’s popular play of Hollywood immorality and decadence is brought to the big screen by director Anthony Drazan and an all-star cast that includes Sean Penn, Robin Wright-Penn, Kevin Spacey, Meg Ryan, Chazz Palminteri, Garry Shandling, and Anna Paquin. The film is set in the Hollywood Hills and tells the story of Eddie (Penn) a drinking-smoking-snorting-womanizing casting director and his philandering partner-roommate Mickey (Spacey). Along with their buddies Artie and Phil, they sit around and pontificate about the meaning of life — that is, the meaning of their lives, of which there is very little. Eddie is in love with Darlene (real-life wife Wright Penn), but she is also seeing the married Mickey. When Artie brings Eddie and Mickey a “care package” in the shape of a pretty, disillusioned hitchhiker named Donna (Paquin), they take turns throwing her around until, yet again, their own empty pathetic lives preoccupy their paranoid minds. As people and relationships deteriorate everywhere, the guys try to pick Phil by giving him the gift of a washed-up exotic dancer, Bonnie (Ryan). Of course she ends up just more abused than ever as she and the rest of the gang hit rock bottom.

Charles S. Dutton’s feature-length directorial debut Against the Ropes is based on the real-life story of Jackie Kallen, a Jewish woman from Detroit who became a successful boxing manager. Played by Meg Ryan, Kallen works her way up in the world of boxing by believing in the fighting skills of Luther Shaw (Omar Epps). Director Dutton appears as veteran trainer Felix Reynolds, whom Kallen encourages to come out of retirement.

An American woman discovers that Paris truly is the city of love — though not in the manner she expected — in this romantic comedy. Kate (Meg Ryan) is desperately afraid of flying, so when her fianc?e Charlie (Timothy Hutton) flies to Paris on business, she must stay behind. Kate has been having second thoughts about her impending marriage, but that changes when Charlie calls her to say that the engagement is off — he’s met a beautiful French woman named Juliette (Susan Anbeh), and he’s fallen in love. Determined to win Charlie back, Kate confronts her fears and hops on board the next flight to Paris, where she finds herself seated next to Luc Teyssier (Kevin Kline), a French thief who stashes some valuable jewelry in her baggage hoping to avoid capture. While Luc simply wants to get his jewels back, he pretends to be willing to help Kate find Charlie and win him back in order to keep her luggage out of harm’s way, but to his surprise (as well as Kate’s), the two become infatuated as they make their way through the City of Lights. Leading lady Meg Ryan also served as co-producer for this film.

Devil-may-care navy pilot Pete Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is sent to Miramar Naval Air Station for advanced training. Here he vies with Tom Kasansky (Val Kilmer) for the coveted “Top Gun” award. When not so occupied, Mitchell carries on a romance with civilian consultant Charlotte Blackwood (Kelly McGillis). Shaken up by the death of a friend, Mitchell loses the Top Gun honor to Kasansky. Worried that he may have lost his nerve, Mitchell is given a chance to redeem himself during a tense international crisis involving a crippled US vessel and a flock of predatory enemy planes. The story wasn’t new in 1986, but Top Gun scored with audiences on the strength of its visuals, especially the vertigo-inducing aerial sequences. The film made more money than any other film in 1986 and even spawned a 1989 takeoff, Hot Shots. An Academy Award went to the Giogio Moroder-Tom Whitlock song “Take My Breath Away.”

Sleepless in Seattle director Nora Ephron originally made a name for herself as the writer of romantic comedies such as Heartburn and When Harry Met Sally. She continues the genre with You’ve Got Mail, marking her second collaboration with actors Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. The story brings romance and courtship into the electronic age of the World Wide Web via e-mail and chat rooms. Joe Fox (Hanks) and Kathleen Kelly (Ryan) live and work blocks from each other on New York City’s Upper West Side. Their lives are practically intertwined. They both shop at the same place, frequent the same coffee shop, and even own competing bookstores on the same street. They also both have significant others of their own. Joe has the overly hyper book editor Patricia Eden (Parker Posey), while Kathleen lives with the scholarly newspaper columnist Frank Navasky (Greg Kinnear). Then they meet in a chat room. Though they keep their identities secret (they’re known only by screen names “NY152″ and “Shopgirl”), they tell each other everything about their lives, including their private feelings, which slowly turn into affection for each other. When Joe decides to open a new branch of his “Foxbooks” chain that risks putting Kathleen’s “Shop Around the Corner” out of business, the tension between them escalates. Surely her boutique business will be lost to the conglomerate with a built-in newsstand and coffee bar. When Joe sees Kathleen waiting for him in the restaurant where they agreed to meet up, he puts two and two together, but cannot face her, given their agreement not to reveal each others’ names and professions. How can he reveal himself to her now, knowing that he is the cause of her misery? Hopefully, love will conquer all.

Director Joe Dante infuses this science fiction comedy with the visual razzle-dazzle and manic, goofball performances typical of his cartoon-inspired sensibilities. Navy test pilot Lt. Tuck Pendleton (Dennis Quaid) has volunteered for a highly dangerous medical experiment. A submersible craft, with Tuck at the controls, is to be shrunk down to molecular size and inserted into the body of a living rabbit. If successful, the test could result in radical breakthroughs in surgical techniques, but some high-tech thieves attempt to steal Tuck and his ship while both are in miniature form. Enter Jack Putter (Martin Short), a mild-mannered, hypochondriac retail store clerk, a nerd who suddenly finds himself injected with Tuck and his tiny ship. Now poor Jack’s got to rise above his mundane existence to help an American hero get back to safety, while also trying to reunite Tuck with his beautiful estranged girlfriend Lydia (Meg Ryan). Innerspace (1987) won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

An angel must decide if love is more important than eternal peace in this Americanized adaptation of Wim Wenders’ modern classic Wings of Desire. Seth (Nicholas Cage) is an angel who hovers over the city of Los Angeles, listening to people’s thoughts, observing their lives, and guiding them to the next world when they die. While Seth and his fellow angels try to offer comfort to people as they can, they are discouraged from direct contact with humans and are usually invisible to them. While at a hospital, Seth sees Maggie (Meg Ryan), a dedicated heart surgeon who attempts to save the life of a patient Seth was to call upon. Maggie is distraught after the patient passes, and her agony touches something inside the reserved Seth; he finds himself falling in love with her, and he decides to make himself visible so he can communicate with her. As Maggie gets to know the strange visitor in black who has suddenly appeared in her life, she finds herself torn between her new feelings for Seth and her attachment to her fianc? Jordan (Colm Feore), a fellow doctor. Seth, on the other hand, has a serious choice to make — between immortality and giving it up in order to know both the pleasures and pains of being a human being. City of Angels also stars Dennis Franz as Messinger, a patient at the hospital who has some important advice for Seth. The film’s soundtrack featured two Top Ten hits, “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls and “Uninvited” by Alanis Morissette.