Bovie Movie

James Mangold’s Walk the Line tells the life story of country music legend Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix), focusing primarily on the long courtship he had with June Carter (Reese Witherspoon). The film is structured as an extended flashback opening with Cash readying to take the stage at his historic Folsom Prison Concert. The film touches on his childhood, relating a horrific early incident from his life and establishing the troubled relationship he would have with his father (Robert Patrick). Cash joins the military and leaves home. During his time in the armed services he begins writing songs and romances a hometown girl (Ginnifer Goodwin). After the end of his duty he settles down and attempts to begin a music career, but his wife has trouble adjusting to his dreams. Cash auditions for Sam Phillips (Dallas Roberts), signs to Sun Records, and soon finds himself on tour with a roster of young soon to be legends that includes Elvis Presley (Tyler Hilton) and Jerry Lee Lewis (Waylon Malloy Payne). On this tour he meets June Carter, the daughter of the famous Carter family, and they take a liking to each other although she refuses any serious advances from him. Cash gains world wide fame thanks in part to the inspiration he gets from June, but eventually his marriage crumbles and he develops a serious drug addiction. The film is based on Cash’s autobiographies. Phoenix and Witherspoon performed all of their own singing in the movie, just as Sissy Spacek and Beverly D’Angelo did in Coal Miner’s Daughter a quarter-century before.

When Woody Allen’s fans refer to his “earlier, funnier” pictures, they often cite his directorial debut as a shining example. Co-written by Allen and Mickey Rose, this side-splitting takeoff of crime documentaries stars Allen as Virgil Starkwell, a sweetly inept career criminal. The film’s most celebrated sequence involves Virgil’s inability to write coherent holdup notes (”I have a gub”), but others include Virgil’s losing battle with a recalcitrant coke machine and his misguided effort to emulate John Dillinger by carving a gun out of a bar of soap (his weapon disintegrates in a heavy rain). As was often the case in Allen’s early films, not all the gags work, but for the most part, Take the Money and Run is a delight, enhanced by the on-target supporting performances of Janet Margolin, Marcel Hillaire, and (uncredited) Louise Lasser, as well as the energetic musical score of Marvin Hamlisch.

The true story of prominent mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. is the subject of this biographical drama from director Ron Howard. Russell Crowe stars as the brilliant but arrogant and conceited professor Nash. The prof seems guaranteed a rosy future in the early ’50s after he marries beautiful student Alicia (Jennifer Connelly) and makes a remarkable advancement in the foundations of “game theory,” which carries him to the brink of international acclaim. Soon after, John is visited by Agent William Parcher (Ed Harris), from the CIA, who wants to recruit him for code-breaking activities. But evidence suggests that Nash’s perceptions of reality are cloudy at best; he is struggling to maintain his tenuous hold on sanity, and Alicia suspects a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Battling decades of illness with the loyal Alicia by his side, Nash is ultimately able to gain some control over his mental state, and eventually goes on to triumphantly win the Nobel Prize. Based loosely on the book of the same name by Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind (2001) co-stars Paul Bettany, Adam Goldberg, Anthony Rapp, Christopher Plummer, and Judd Hirsch.

Filmmaker Roman Polanski, who as a boy growing up in Poland watched while the Nazis devastated his country during World War II, directed this downbeat drama based on the true story of a privileged musician who spent five years struggling against the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is a gifted classical pianist born to a wealthy Jewish family in Poland. The Szpilmans have a large and comfortable flat in Warsaw which Wladyslaw shares with his mother and father (Maureen Lipman and Frank Finlay), his sisters Halina and Regina (Jessica Kate Meyer and Julia Rayner), and his brother, Henryk (Ed Stoppard). While Wladyslaw and his family are aware of the looming presence of German forces and Hitler’s designs on Poland, they’re convinced that the Nazis are a menace which will pass, and that England and France will step forward to aid Poland in the event of a real crisis. Wladyslaw’s na?vet? is shattered when a German bomb rips through a radio studio while he performs a recital for broadcast. During the early stages of the Nazi occupation, as a respected artist, he still imagines himself above the danger, using his pull to obtain employment papers for his father and landing a supposedly safe job playing piano in a restaurant. But as the German grip tightens upon Poland, Wladyslaw and his family are selected for deportation to a Nazi concentration camp. Refusing to face a certain death, Wladyslaw goes into hiding in a comfortable apartment provided by a friend. However, when his benefactor goes missing, Wladyslaw is left to fend for himself and he spends the next several years dashing from one abandoned home to another, desperate to avoid capture by German occupation troops. The Pianist was based on the memoir of the same name by the real-life Wladyslaw Szpilman; the book was first published in 1946 as Death of a City, but was banned by Polish Communist officials and went out of print until 1998, when a new edition was issued as The Pianist.

Anthony Minghella wrote and directed this award-winning adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s novel about a doomed and tragic romance set against the backdrop of World War II. In a field hospital in Italy, Hana (Juliette Binoche), a nurse from Canada, is caring for a pilot who was horribly burned in a plane wreck; he has no identification and cannot remember his name, so he’s known simply as “the English Patient,” thanks to his accent. When the hospital is forced to evacuate, Hana determines en route that the patient shouldn’t be moved far due to his fragile condition, so the two are left in a monastery to be picked up later. In time, Hana begins to piece together the patient’s story from the shards of his memories; he’s actually Count Laszlo Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), of Hungarian nobility and an explorer working with a group mapping uncharted territory in North Africa. An Englishman, Geoffrey Clifton (Colin Firth), soon joins Almasy’s team; travelling with him is his lovely and spirited wife, Katherine (Kristin Scott Thomas). Katherine and Laszlo soon fall in love, which leads Laszlo to betray his friend, his country and all that is dear to him. Meanwhile, Hana and the Patient are joined by Kip (Naveen Andrews), a Sikh with a gift for defusing mines, and Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), an intelligence agent who knows some of Laszlo’s most shameful secrets. The English Patient won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress (Juliette Binoche).

A turning point in 20th century war history is the focus of this fact-based account of the 1942-1943 battle of Stalingrad, in which the Germans were finally defeated by Russian influence — one of the bloodiest battles in World War II history. The film stars Jude Law as Vassili, a marksman from the Urals who is transported to Stalingrad in 1942, and a master German sniper, Major Koenig (Ed Harris). Koenig, an expert German sniper, is determined to eliminate his formidable opponent by any means necessary; meanwhile, Vassili has joined forces with Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), a young Russian political adversary, who is impressed by Vassili’s skills and raises his profile in the Soviet Union. Both Vassili and Danilov become involved with Tanya (Rachel Weisz), whose Jewish parents have been captured by the Germans and have forced her to take up with the men on a sniper expedition. Koenig and Vassili begin to develop traps for each other, until fate inevitably must bring the two sharpshooters together. This large-scale production, financed mostly by Teuton companies, also features Bob Hoskins as Nikita Krushchev and Ron Perlman as an aging Russian sniper.

The Last Emperor is the true story of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi, the last ruler of the Chinese Ching Dynasty. Told in flashback, the film covers the years 1908 to 1967. We first see the three-year-old Pu Yi being installed in the Forbidden City by ruthless, dying dowager Empress Tzu-Hsui (Lisa Lu). Though he’d prefer to lark about like other boys, the infant emperor is cossetted and cajoled into accepting the responsibilities and privileges of his office. In 1912, the young emperor (Tijer Tsou) forced to abdicate when China is declared a republic, is a prisoner in his own palace, “protected” from the outside world. Fascinated by the worldliness of his Scottish tutor (Peter O’Toole), Pu Yi plots an escape from his cocoon by means of marriage. He selects Manchu descendant Wan Jung (Joan Chen), who likewise is anxious to experience the 20th century rather than be locked into the past by tradition. Played as an adult by John Lone, Pu Yi puts into effect several social reforms, and also clears the palace of the corrupt eunuchs who’ve been shielding him from life. In 1924, an invading warlord expels the denizens of the Forbidden City, allowing Pu Yi to “westernize” himself by embracing popular music and the latest dances as a guest of the Japanese Concession in Tientsin. Six years later, his power all but gone, Pu Yi escapes to Manchuria, where he unwittingly becomes a political pawn for the now-militant Japanese government. Humiliating his faithful wife, Pu Yi falls into bad romantic company, carrying on affairs with a variety of parasitic females. During World War II, the Japanese force Pu Yi to sign a series of documents which endorse their despotic military activities. At war’s end, the emperor is taken prisoner by the Russians; while incarcerated, he is forced to fend for himself without servants at his beck and call for the first time. He is finally released in 1959 and displayed publicly as proof of the efficacy of Communist re-education. We last see him in 1967, the year of his death; now employed by the State as a gardener, Pu Yi makes one last visit to the Forbidden City…as a tourist. Bernardo Bertolucci’s first film after a six-year self-imposed exile, The Last Emperor was released in two separate versions: the 160-minute theatrical release, and a 4-hour TV miniseries. Lensed on location, the film won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Writer and director Woody Allen returns to the Manhattan of the past with this romantic comedy set in 1940, the era of fedora hats and gumshoe detectives. Allen stars as C.W. Briggs, an insurance investigator whose razor-sharp instincts have just led to the successful conclusion of another case, the recovery of a stolen Picasso. While he’s a valued employee, Briggs is under fire from efficiency expert Betty Ann Fitzgerald (Helen Hunt) for his antiquated attitudes and refusal to accept modern crime-solving techniques such as fingerprinting. C.W. claims he puts himself directly into the criminal mind, a skill that will do him no good when he and Betty Ann are hypnotized at a Rainbow Room gathering one night by the magician Volton (David Ogden Stiers). As a parlor trick to entertain their co-workers, Volton makes C.W. and Betty Ann believe they’re a couple that’s deeply in love. But the performer secretly keeps up the ruse after the party’s over, calling C.W. to whisper a magic code word and ordering the detective to rob wealthy homes with security systems that C.W. himself has designed. With no memory of his thieving activities, a frustrated C.W. can’t solve the high-profile jewel burglaries, while he and Betty Ann struggle with their odd new attraction for each other, made more complicated by the fact that Betty Ann is romantically involved with their boss (Dan Aykroyd).

In Robert Zemeckis’s trailblazing combination of animation and live-action, Hollywood’s 1940s cartoon stars are a subjugated minority, living in the ghettolike “Toontown” where their movements are sharply monitored by the human power establishment. The Toons are permitted to perform in a Cotton Club-style nightspot but are forbidden to patronize the joint. One of Toontown’s leading citizens, whacked-out Roger Rabbit, is framed for the murder of human nightclub owner Marvin Acme (Stubby Kaye). Private detective Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), whose prejudice against Toons stems from the time that his brother was killed by a falling cartoon piano, reluctantly agrees to clear Roger of the accusation. Most of the sociopolitical undertones of the original novel were weeded out out of the 1988 film version, with emphasis shifted to its basic “evil land developer” plotline –and, more enjoyably, to a stream of eye-popping special effects. With the combined facilities of animator Richard Williams, Disney, Warner Bros., Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, and George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic, the film allows us to believe (at least for 90 minutes) that “toons” exist, and that they are capable of interacting with 3-dimensional human beings. Virtually every major cartoon character of the late 1940s shows up, with the exceptions of Felix the Cat and Popeye the Sailor, whose licensees couldn’t come to terms with the producers. Of the film’s newly minted Toons, the most memorable is Roger Rabbit’s curvaceous bride Jessica (voiced, uncredited, by Kathleen Turner). The human element is well-represented by Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd, and Joanna Cassidy; also watch for action-film producer Joel Silver as Roger Rabbit’s Tex Avery-style director.

A U.S. Army war correspondent is drawn into a deadly mystery in post-war Berlin as he seeks out his wartime mistress in this adaptation of author Joseph Kanon’s best-selling novel. The war is over, and Jake Geismar (George Clooney) is an American journalist assigned the task of covering the peace in Berlin — but he was once lovers with a mysterious woman named Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett). Lena is a lady with many secrets to hide, however, and now that the fighting has ceased, she has every intention of burying her sins and escaping her dark past. As Jake searches for Lena in war-torn Berlin with the assistance of American Army motor pool driver Tully (Tobey Maguire), the complex web of deceit woven by the desperate woman soon leads all three into the black market, which could prove either the ticket to Lena’s ultimate escape or the downfall of both her and her pursuers. Filmed entirely in the style of such Hollywood classics as Casablanca, The Good German was shot by director Steven Soderbergh (under the pseudonym Peter Andrews) using 1940s era lenses, sound-recording techniques, and a decidedly less-mobile camera.