Bovie Movie

Israeli-born director Isaac H. Eaton spins this thriller about a Mephistophelean writer luring an impressionable young man into L.A.’s seamy underside. Stuart Chappell (Peter Weller) persuades gas station attendant Michael Holloway (Balthazar Getty) to abandon the straight and narrow and accompany him on a prowl of increasingly kinky haunts — including stripclubs, S&M dungeons, fight clubs, and Russian roulette joints. This film was screened at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival.

Outrageously violent, time-twisting, and in love with language, Pulp Fiction was widely considered the most influential American movie of the 1990s. Director and co-screenwriter Quentin Tarantino synthesized such seemingly disparate traditions as the syncopated language of David Mamet; the serious violence of American gangster movies, crime movies, and films noirs mixed up with the wacky violence of cartoons, video games, and Japanese animation; and the fragmented story-telling structures of such experimental classics as Citizen Kane, Rashomon, and La jet?e. The Oscar-winning script by Tarantino and Roger Avary intertwines three stories, featuring Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta, in the role that single-handedly reignited his career, as hit men who have philosophical interchanges on such topics as the French names for American fast food products; Bruce Willis as a boxer out of a 1940s B-movie; and such other stalwarts as Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Christopher Walken, Eric Stoltz, Ving Rhames, and Uma Thurman, whose dance sequence with Travolta proved an instant classic.

Hyperactive mayhem results when a mild-manned banker discovers an ancient mask that transforms him into a zany prankster with superhuman powers in this special-effects-intensive comedy. The wildly improvisational Jim Carrey plays Stanley Ipkiss, a decent-hearted but socially awkward guy who one night finds a strange mask. Carrey’s trademark energy reveals itself after Stanley puts on the mask and the banker transforms into The Mask, a green-skinned, zoot-suited fireball. The rubber-faced Mask possesses the courage to do the wild, fun things that Stanley fears, including romancing Tina Carlyle (Cameron Diaz). In addition to Carrey’s physical talents, the film makes effective use of digital visual effects that bestow the Mask with superhuman speed, insane flexibility, and popping eyes out of a Tex Avery cartoon. The larger narrative, involving the efforts of Tina’s gangster boyfriend to destroy Stanley and use the mask’s powers for evil, prove less interesting than the anarchic comic set pieces, including a particularly memorable dance number to “Cuban Pete.” The film delivered enough laughs to become a surprise hit and, along with the same year’s Dumb and Dumber, establish Carrey’s status as a comedy superstar.