Bovie Movie

This remake of Force Majeure (aka Uncontrollable Circumstances), a 1989 film with Alan Bates and Kristin Scott Thomas, recalls the prison plight depicted in Midnight Express (1978). Rambling around Asia, getting high and just having a good time, are three young men — Sheriff (Vince Vaughn), Lewis (Joaquin Phoenix), and Tony (David Conrad). Sheriff and Tony say goodbye to Lewis, a conscientious Greenpeace activist and nature-lover who stays on to rescue endangered Borneo orangutans. Two years later, Tony is an architect about to marry, and Sheriff has a job driving a limo around New York City. When Beth (Anne Heche) steps into Sheriff’s limo, she tells him that she’s a lawyer working to save Lewis. He learns that Lewis was arrested by Malaysian authorities, tried as a drug dealer, convicted, and sentenced to death. Sheriff’s actions of trashing a borrowed bicycle and casually disposing of 100 grams of hash make him responsible for Lewis’s predicament, but does he feel guilty enough to get involved? The execution is only eight days away, but it will not happen if Tony and/or Sheriff return to also serve time — three years each if both come back, but six years if only one returns. Investigating this story is reporter M.J. Major (Jada Pinkett Smith), who views the situation as an important international news story. Tony readily agrees to go back and save Lewis — but only if Sheriff also returns with him. Sheriff initially declines, prompting the desperate Beth to find ways to convince him to go. Complicating matters, Sheriff and Beth begin to find they are attracted to each other. Eventually, all fly to Malaysia during the final 24 hours before the execution. Director Joseph Ruben filmed in Hong Kong, Macao, and Thailand, with Malaysian prison interiors shot in Philadelphia.

Completed in mid-1930, Scarface, based on Armitage Trail’s novel of the same name, might have been the first of the great talkie gangster flicks, but it was held up for release until after that honor was jointly usurped by Little Caesar and Public Enemy. Paul Muni stars as prohibition-era mobster Tony Camonte, a character obviously patterned on Al Capone (whose nickname was “Scarface”). The homicidal Camonte ruthlessly wrests control of the bootlegging racket from his boss, Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins), and claims Lovo’s mistress, Poppy (Karen Morley), in the bargain. But while Poppy satisfies him sexually, Tony has a soft spot in his heart only for his sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak). The film’s finale is one of the longest and bloodiest of the 1930s, maintaining suspense and concern for the characters involved even though Muni has deliberately done nothing to make Tony likeable to audience. The grimness of Scarface is leavened by a few choice moments of black humor. Forced to leave a stage production of Rain in order to commit a murder, Tony returns to his theater seat and anxiously asks his buddies how the play came out. Some of the film’s funniest moments belong to Vince Barnett as the mentally deficient, illiterate gangster secretary, who at one juncture gets so mad at a caller on the phone that he shoots the receiver. Scarface features a famous “‘X’ Marks The Spot” logo, inspired by news photos of gangland murders: whenever a character is killed, the letter “X” appears on screen in one form or another. Example: When a rival gangster (played by Boris Karloff) is killed at a bowling alley, the camera cuts to his bowling ball knocking down all the pins — a strike, denoted, of course, by an “X.” Producer Howard R. Hughes couldn’t release Scarface until he toned down some of the violence, reshot certain scenes to avoid libel suits, added the subtitle “The Shame of the Nation” to the opening credits, and shoehorned in new scenes showing upright Italian-Americans banding together to wipe out gangsterism. After its first run, Scarface was completely withdrawn from distribution on Hughes’ orders; the film would not be seen again on a widespread basis until it was reissued by Universal in 1979, shorn of 8 of its original 99 minutes.

Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor), a young man with few prospects and fewer ambitions, lives in economically depressed Edinburgh. Like most of his friends, Renton is a heroin addict who loves the drug’s blissful nothingness; financing his habit also provides excitement and challenges that his life otherwise lacks. Renton’s two best friends are also junkies: Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), a snappy dresser obsessed with James Bond, and Spud (Ewan Bremner), a guileless nerd who suggests Pee Wee Herman’s debauched cousin. Renton and his pals also hang out with Begbie (Robert Carlyle), a borderline psychotic who loathes junkies even though he drinks like a fish. After one too many brushes with the law, Renton kicks heroin and moves to London, where he finds a job, a flat, and something close to peace of mind. However, Sick Boy, Begbie, and Spud all arrive at his doorstep on the trail of a big score, leading Renton back into drugs and crime.

Producer Joel Silver, director Tony Scott, and screenwriters Shane Black and Greg Hicks team up for this gridiron-set action thriller. Bruce Willis stars as Joe Hallenbeck, who was once a top-of-the-line Secret Service agent but has since become an alcoholic, flea-bag detective. While performing the chores of a two-bit shamus, he discovers his wife Sarah (Chelsea Field) is having an affair with his best friend. Joe is hired to protect Cory (Halle Berry), a stripper who has been getting death threats; Joe begins to sober up when Cory is blown to smithereens. Cory’s boyfriend, Jimmy Dix (Damon Wayans), was at one time a NFL football quarterback, but was thrown out of the game for gambling and addiction to Demerol. Smelling something fishy, Joe and Jimmy begin to investigate further and discover layers of corruption in professional football circles, leading up to Sheldon Marcone (Noble Willingham), a corrupt team owner who wants to pay off legislators to legalize gambling on pro football games.

The time is the 1950s: seedy Brooklyn private eye Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) is hired by shady Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) to locate a pop singer who reneged on a debt. Harry ventures into Harlem, the first step of a Heart of Darkness-inspired odyssey. Each time Harry makes contact with someone who might know the singer’s whereabouts, he or she is killed in a horrible, ritualistic fashion; a Satanic cult seems to be at the bottom of all the carnage. Harry solves the mystery, all right. He just didn’t know that he had the answer all along — even before Louis entered his office. Also available in the “unrated” video version, Angel Heart is best known as the film that nearly got an X-rating due to a no-holds-barred sex scene involving Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet.