Bovie Movie

John Dahl’s mob comedy You Kill Me stars Ben Kingsley as Frank Falenczyk, an alcoholic mob hitman who is ordered into AA by his boss (Philip Baker Hall). In order to clean up, he goes to San Francisco and successfully starts tw12-stepping with the help of his sponsor (Luke Wilson). Eventually Frank gets a job at a mortuary, where he falls in love with Laurel (T?a Leoni). Soon his new existence is threatened when people from his old life start showing up.

After the Oscar-winning The English Patient, writer/director Anthony Minghella attempted another tricky literary adaptation with The Talented Mr. Ripley, which features heartthrob Matt Damon cast against type as a psychopathic bisexual murderer. Tom Ripley (Damon) is a bright and charismatic sociopath who makes his way in mid-’50s New York City as a men’s room attendant and sometimes pianist, though his real skill is in impersonating other people, forging handwriting, and running second-rate scams. After being mistaken for a Princeton student, Tom meets the shipping tycoon father of Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), who has traveled to the coast of Italy, where he’s living a carefree life with his father’s money and his beautiful girlfriend, Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow). Dickie’s father will pay Ripley 1,000 dollars plus his expenses if he can persuade Dickie to return to America. As Ripley and Dickie become friends, Tom finds himself both attracted to Dickie and envious of his life of pleasure. In time, he decides that he would rather be Dickie Greenleaf than Tom Ripley, so rather than go back to his life of poverty, Ripley impulsively murders Dickie and assumes his identity. The Talented Mr. Ripley was based on the first of a series of novels featuring Tom Ripley written by Patricia Highsmith; the story was previously filmed in 1960 as Purple Noon, with Alain Delon as Ripley.

“For God’s sake, GET OUT!” was the ad campaign for the 1979 shocker The Amityville Horror. The film was based on the allegedly true story of the luckless Lutz family, who move lock, stock, and barrel into a new home, only to find that it is possessed by the demonic spirits of its previous owners. Variations of the Seven Deadly Plagues emanate from virtually every household fixture, while other forms of otherworldly mischief are suffered by the Lutz children. Enter kindly Father Delaney (Rod Steiger), who does his utmost to exorcise the house. The Amityville Horror was frequently greeted with laughs from its first-run audiences, especially after it was discovered that the “actual” events depicted in the film (based on a book by Jay Anson) were complete fabrications.

A chance meeting between two middle-aged men leads one into a life of crime in this offbeat comedy. Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear) is an American businessman whose life has been going through a sour patch after he and his wife, Carolyn (Hope Davis), lost their young son. During a business trip to Mexico City, Danny strikes up a conversation in a hotel bar with fellow out-of-towner Julian Noble (Pierce Brosnan), and while Julian’s loud and brassy manner initially puts Danny off, in time the two become friends, and Julian feels comfortable enough with Danny to tell him what he does for a living. It seems Julian is a hired killer working under the auspices of underworld kingpins Lovell (Dylan Baker) and Mr. Randy (Philip Baker Hall), and Julian tries to persuade Danny to help him with his latest assignment. Danny refuses, but a few months later a distraught Julian appears unannounced on Danny’s doorstep. It seems Julian has blown his two most recent assignments due to a variety of psychosomatic illnesses, and now Lovell and Mr. Randy want him dead. Julian has also done something to put Danny in his debt, and the previously non-criminal businessman is forced to help his friend stage a hit, with Julian’s presence in his home upsetting the precarious balance of Danny and Carolyn’s marriage.

Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson followed his critical and commercial breakthrough Boogie Nights with this wildly ambitious story of lives intertwining on a single day in California’s San Fernando Valley. Earl Partridge (Jason Robards), a successful producer of television game shows, left his wife when she contracted cancer to marry the younger and more beautiful Linda (Julianne Moore). Now, Earl has cancer himself, and Linda spends her day fetching medicines and trying to deal with the imminent death of her husband, whom she has only now come to love. Earl asks his nurse Phil (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to arrange a meeting with his estranged son, Frank Mackey (Tom Cruise), known for his self-help program “Seduce and Destroy,” in which he preaches the importance of male sexual prowess; he cared for his mother after Earl left her, and he has no desire to see his father again. Earl’s best-known show is hosted by Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall), who also learns that he is dying. Jimmy’s show pits bright adults against unusually smart kids; one of Jimmy’s child contestants, Stanley (Jeremy Blackman), arrives late for a taping after being left stranded by his father Rick (Michael Bowen), who is supported by his more successful son. Meanwhile, Donnie Smith (William H. Macy), who was a champ on Jimmy’s show as a child, is not having as much luck as an adult; he’s just lost his job and needs to pay for some expensive dental work. Jimmy wants to reconcile with his estranged and emotionally fragile daughter Claudia (Melora Walters), who despises him and who will become involved with well-meaning police officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly), who has been desperately lonely since his divorce three years ago. Magnolia reunites much of the cast and crew of Boogie Nights and features eight original songs by singer/songwriter Aimee Mann and a musical score by Jon Brion.

A determined California detective attempts to crack one of the most mysterious cases in modern crime as the tale of the fearsome Zodiac Killer comes to the screen in director Alexander Bulkley’s cinematic account of the crimes that rocked San Francisco’s Bay Area from December of 1968 to October of the following year. As the citizens of the small California town of Vallejo prepare for their holiday celebrations, the discovery that two teens have been viciously gunned down at a remote lover’s lane leaves the citizens of a once tight-knit community fearing for their lives. In the months that follow the brutal crimes, Vallejo police inspector Matt Parish devotes his entire existence to revealing the identity of the elusive killer and ensuring that no more innocent lives are taken. With pressure from both his superiors and the local press mounting, lack of sufficient evidence and increased tensions at home lead Inspector Parish down a series of frustrating dead-end roads. When the killer strikes yet again, this time shooting a young couple in a darkened parking lot, investigators are shocked to receive a phone call from a man confessing to the crime. A letter sent to the local newspapers by the confessed killer states that if it is not published, a dozen more people will die in the coming weekend. Even more curious, the letter contains a mysterious code that, if deciphered correctly, will supposedly reveal the true identity of the man behind these shocking crimes. Though a suspect is questioned following yet another killing, this time in broad daylight, the frustrated police department fails to make an arrest as the elusive killer continues to taunt both the police and the media with a series of menacing letters.

An unexpected transformation helps a workaholic attorney learn that there’s more to life than the courtroom in this remake of the 1959 Disney canine classic of the same name. Deputy District Attorney Dave Douglas (Tim Allen) takes his job in the halls of justice very seriously — so seriously in fact that his wife and family see considerably less of their frequently-absent husband and father than they would prefer. When a case involving an animal laboratory finds the distracted dad once again taking an extended leave of absence from his frustrated family, Douglas’ luck takes a turn for the worst after he is inadvertently infected by a top-secret genetic-mutation serum that transforms the two-legged lawyer into a four-legged sheepdog. Though his current situation has its drawbacks to be sure, the fly-on-the-wall perspective afforded to Douglas in his newfound state alerts the well-intending father and husband that all is not well on the home front. Moved by the unfulfilled needs of his neglected family and determined to become a better father if he can only shed his winter coat, Douglas’ unique new vantage point could offer just the motivation needed to bring the nefarious forces behind the serum to justice and win back his wife and kids once and for all.

Director Martin Brest, of Going in Style and Beverly Hills Cop fame, was in charge of Midnight Run. Robert De Niro stars as Jack Walsh, a hard-bitten bounty hunter offered $100,000 to bring in embezzler Jonathan Mardukas (Charles Grodin). Handcuffed to the wimpy Mardukas, Walsh assumes that the extradition trip from New York to Los Angeles will be an uneventful one. But the prisoner hasn’t told Walsh the whole story: the embezzler owes $15 million to a mobster (Dennis Farina), and he’s been targeted for assassination. It’s a toss-up as to what is the most entertaining aspect of Midnight Run: the slam-bang action and chase sequences or the verbal byplay between DeNiro and Grodin.

Set in a small fictional town in the U.S. during the 1930s, Lars von Trier’s Dogville was filmed in a studio with a minimal set and features narration by John Hurt. On the run from a group of gangsters, Grace (Nicole Kidman) arrives in the small mining town of Dogville. Town philosopher Tom Edison (Paul Bettany) takes her in and strikes a deal with her: She’ll work for the townsfolk in exchange for a safe place to hide; after two weeks the people will vote for her to either stay or go. Grace agrees to the terms and ends up meeting the locals, including the town doctor (Philip Baker Hall), shopkeeper (Lauren Bacall), and apple farmer (Stellan Skarsg?rd). Eventually, Grace’s standing in the town takes a downward shift as the search for her intensifies.