Bovie Movie

The made-for-cable musical satire Reefer Madness is based on the award-winning play of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the notorious — and deliciously awful — 1936 anti-marijuana film originally titled Tell Your Children. A smarmy lecturer (Alan Cumming in the first of his three roles in the film) arrives in a typical small town of the late ’30s to warn the populace of the dangers of the “evil weed,” bringing along a lurid propaganda film to dramatize his message. In broad, unsubtle, and hilarious strokes, the movie-within-a-movie shows how even a squeaky-clean pair of highschoolers named Mary Lane (Kristen Bell) and Jimmy Harper (Christian Campbell) can become hopeless dope addicts by succumbing to the lure of marijuana. Reefer Madness is not only a savage skewering of the original black-and-white movie (some of the musical’s campiest lines are taken directly from the earlier script!), but also a devastating attack on what playwrights Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney consider to be the real reason that the 1936 movie was made: to frighten the public out of their wits in order to keep them under the thumb of an oppressive government. Thus, the musical manages to take a number of not-so-veiled swipes at xenophobia, racism, McCarthyism, the Bush Administration’s Homeland Security policy, and even the recent FCC clampdown on “offensive” TV fare (one of the film’s highlights is a garish nightclub number featuring Jesus Christ). The ebulliently staged songs include “The Stuff,” “Down at the Ol’ Five and Dime,” “Lonely Pew,” “Listen to Jesus Jimmy,” “Mary Jane/Mary Lane,” “The Brownie Song,” “Tell ‘Em the Truth,” and the title number. Officially titled Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical, this film first aired April 16, 2005, on the Showtime cable service.

A man with no memory struggles to make sense of the troubling details that are still stuck in his mind in this psychological thriller. Frank (Val Kilmer) wakes up in a small town in the New Mexico desert with a severe head wound and most of his memory wiped away. However, Frank is somehow convinced that someone is planning to assassinate the President of the United States, and that Chloe (Neve Campbell), the woman who is claiming to be his girlfriend, is some sort of imposter. When Frank learns that the president is indeed passing through town that day, he tries to warn Sheriff Kolb (Sam Shepard) that something sinister if afoot; as it happens, Kolb believes him, though he’s more than a bit busy dealing with a hard-fought election campaign against former Deputy Cash (Noble Willingham). Blind Horizon was screened at the 2004 South by Southwest Film Festival.

When Mona’s key won’t fit in her Yugo, she tries it in her son’s; when it works, she borrows his car. The brakes fail; she goes through the guard rail, into the river, and drowns. When police chief Rash learns that the brake lines were cut, he looks for a murderer. Suspect one: Mona’s dim son Jeff, whom she constantly denigrated. Suspect two: her husband Phil, whom she constantly belittled and who’s having an affair with Rona, a waitress with a secret of her own. Suspect three: Jeff’s landscape partner Bobby, who wants Jeff out, has yelled at Mona that he’d like to rip out her ovaries, and who is soon to be Rash’s son-in-law. Can Rash find the killer and keep Bobby out of jail?

STAB 3: RETURN TO WOODSBORO is currently in production, and a killer is on the loose cutting corners cast wise. The murders draw a reporter, ex-cop, and young woman to the set of the movie inspired by their life. They soon find out that they are dealing with a trilogy, and in a trilogy…anything can happen.

It has been two years since the tragic events at Woodsboro. Sidney Prescott and Randy Meeks are trying to get on with their lives, and are currently both students at Windsor College. Cotton Weary is out of prison, and is trying to cash in on his unfortunate incarceration. Gale Weathers has written a bestseller, “The Woodsboro Murders,” which has been turned into the film, “Stab,” starring Tori Spelling as Sidney. As the film’s play date approaches, the cycle of death begins anew. Dewey Riley immediately flies out of Woodsboro to try to protect Sidney, his “surrogate sister.” But in this sequel to the 1996 horror film, the number of suspects only goes down as the body count slowly goes up!

A teenage girl (Neve Campbell) becomes the target of a killer who has stalked and killed one of her classmates. A tabloid news reporter (Courtney Cox) is determined to uncover the truth, insisting that the man who raped and killed Campbell’s mother one year earlier is the same man who is terrorizing her now. Campbell’s boyfriend (Skeet Ulrich) becomes the prime suspect.

This thriller takes place in Blue Bay, Florida, where social-climbing guidance counselor Sam Lombardo (Matt Dillon) is indifferent to teen-socialite Kelly Van Ryan (Denise Richards), who retaliates by accusing him of rape, an accusation that leads to his suspension by the school and a rejection from the country club. He can’t afford a big attorney, so he hires shrewd Ken Bowden (Bill Murray), while Kelly’s mom, Sandra Van Ryan (Theresa Russell), Sam’s former lover, gets a platoon of top lawyers. Trailer-trash Suzie Toller (Neve Campbell) backs up Kelly’s claim and additional plot twists and turns develop. The seldom-seen Carrie Snodgrass (Diary of a Mad Housewife) has a supporting role in this film.

One hint about “Churchill: The Hollywood Years”: Ask around . . . no one’s seen it. Cooler heads probably managed to mothball this seeming direct-to-airline release. (I sat through it having run out of other on-demand options during a very long flight from Asia to NYC.) The premise in an interesting one, not a good one; Hollywood producers have made a Winston Churchill bio-pic with a young American GI (Christian Slater) in the lead for the benefit of the American audience. It’s hard to single out the writing, acting, or direction for criticism because the entire film seems to consist of (justified) outtakes from a movie that may have had some idea what it was doing in the comic space between “Airplane” and “The Player.” The film that finally makes it on to the seatback in front of you is jaw droppingly ill-conceived.

In this romantic comedy of mistaken identity, Oscar Novak (Matthew Perry) and Peter Steinberg (Oliver Platt) are a pair of struggling but talented Chicago architects given the chance of a lifetime: Charles Newman (Dylan McDermott), an extremely wealthy business tycoon, is considering hiring them to design a multi-million dollar cultural center. However, Oscar and Peter aren’t the only ones who’ve been asked to contribute ideas for the project; Decker and Strauss (John C. McGinley and Bob Balaban), two highly successful designers that Oscar and Peter used to work for, have also been approached by Newman, who thinks that a competition between the two teams would be good fun and good press. Oscar is determined to show his dedication to the job, so when Newman asks him to start keeping tabs on his girlfriend Amy (Neve Campbell), he’s happy to oblige. Oscar proves a sad excuse for a private eye, and finds himself falling in love with the woman that he’s supposed to trail. To complicate matters, Charles gave Oscar the assignment because he was sure that Oscar is gay, and he hasn’t been shy about telling people; soon Amy is convinced, along with most of Chicago. And while Oscar doesn’t want to upset Newman, he also doesn’t want to start living a lie, especially one that would keep him away from the woman he loves. So when Oscar is named Chicago’s Gay Professional of the Year, what’s a (straight) guy to do? Three to Tango features such familiar TV faces as Matthew Perry from Friends, Neve Campbell from Party of Five, and Dylan McDermott from The Practice.