Bovie Movie

Director Gus Van Sant returned to the low-key style of his early independent efforts with this semi-improvised exploration of how violence makes its way into a typical American high school. Eric (Eric Deulen) and Alex (Alex Frost) are two close friends who are students in a well-to-do suburb of Portland, OR. Eric and Alex are at once ordinary and misfits; while they seem to be confined to the edges of the clique-oriented social strata of high school, little about their behavior draws attention to itself. Or at least not during a typical school day; on their own time, the two boys are fascinated by Nazi iconography, enjoy violent video games, tentatively explore homoerotic desires, and coolly begin to make plans for an armed ambush of the school, drawing up working diagrams of the lunch room during study hall and buying rifles over the Internet. Drawing an expected degree of controversy, Elephant had its world premiere when it was screened in competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, where it won both Best Director for Van Sant and the Golden Palm award.

Perhaps the most highly anticipated film of 2003, Kill Bill Vol. 1 marked the return of renowned filmmaker Quentin Tarantino after a six-year hiatus. Re-teaming the director with Uma Thurman for the first time since 1994’s Pulp Fiction, the film was originally the first half of what was to be a three-hour-plus movie before being split into two films. Thurman stars as The Bride, one-fifth of a team of assassins called DiVAS. When The Bride opts to leave the outfit for a life of marital bliss, it doesn’t sit well with her boss, Bill (David Carradine), so he has her former cohorts, played by Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, and Michael Madsen, show up at the nuptials, leaving behind a blood bath. Miraculously, The Bride survives a bullet to the head and, four years later, she sets out for revenge against her four assassins and their employer. The story is concluded in Kill Bill Vol. 2, released six months later.

Quentin Tarantino’s sprawling homage to action films of both the East and the West reaches its conclusion in this continuation of 2003’s ultra-violent Kill Bill Vol. 1. Having dispatched several of her arch-enemies in the first film, The Bride (Uma Thurman) continues in Kill Bill Vol. 2 on her deadly pursuit of her former partners in the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, who, in a furious assault, attempted to murder her and her unborn child on her wedding day. As The Bride faces off against allies-turned-nemeses Budd (Michael Madsen) and Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), she flashes back to the day of her deadly wedding, and we learn of how she was recruited to join the DiVAS, her training under unforgiving martial arts master Pai Mei (Liu Chia-hui), and her relationship with Squad leader Bill (David Carradine), which changed from love to violent hatred. Originally planned as a single film, Kill Bill grew into an epic-scale two-part project totaling more than four hours in length; as with the first film, Kill Bill Vol. 2 includes appearances by genre-film icons Sonny Chiba, Michael Parks, Larry Bishop, and Sid Haig; Wu-Tang Clan producer and turntablist RZA and filmmaker and composer Robert Rodriguez both contributed to the musical score.

A smuggler is killed by a man he thought was his friend and comes back to tell the story in this sci-fi tinged action drama. John Anderson Wade (Rutger Hauer) is a black marketeer who gets on the wrong side of Merrick (Mark Dacascos), his partner in crime. A disagreement with Merrick turns deadly, and Wade ends up murdered. However, scientists from the Russian government perform experiments on Wade’s body that bring him back from the dead; Wade teams up with female kickboxer Marina (Yvonne Scio). and they set out to find Merrick and exact revenge for his brief career as a dead person. Redline has also been released under the titles Deathline and Armageddon.

This high-octane semi-sequel to Sam Raimi’s cult hit The Evil Dead has nearly eclipsed its predecessor’s reputation thanks to an endless barrage of hyperkinetic camera acrobatics, rapid-fire editing and “splatstick” gore effects … not to mention a truly goofy performance by Bruce Campbell. Nearly the entire storyline of the previous film has been re-shot and presented in a drastically condensed form within the first few minutes: rock-jawed but clueless “hero” Ash (Campbell) now visits the mountain cabin only with girlfriend Linda (played here by Denise Bixler). Upon arrival at the cabin, Ash discovers the Sumerian Book of the Dead, the ritual dagger and a reel-to-reel tape containing the professor’s translations of the book’s hieroglyphics. The incantations summon an unseen, growling spirit from within the woods, which bursts into the cabin and takes possession of Linda’s soul. Ash is forced to decapitate her with a shovel, after which he buries her in the forest. At first dawn, Ash tries to make his escape, but is promptly set upon by the spirits, given a solid thrashing and nearly possessed himself, saved only by the arrival of sunlight. Cut off from the outside world, Ash is forced to hole up in the cabin and wait for the next demonic onslaught — which arrives sooner than expected, led by Linda’s rotting corpse. After being bitten by Linda’s chatty decapitated head, Ash’s hand becomes independent of his body and begins pummeling him repeatedly. The story then jumps to a local airport, where the professor’s daughter Annie (Sarah Berry) and her partner Ed Getley (Richard Domeier) have just arrived with the missing pages to the Necronomicon. They employ a cranky pair of local rednecks, Jake (Dan Hicks) and Bobbie Joe (Kassie Wesley), as guides to lead them through the dense woods to the cabin … where, at that very moment, Ash is removing his belligerent hand with a chainsaw, creating yet another ambulatory foe. Driven to the brink of insanity, Ash fires blindly at a noise outside, unaware that the new arrivals are Annie and company. Bobbie Joe is injured by the gunshot, which incurs the wrath of Jake, who knocks Ash senseless and locks him in the fruit cellar. Believing her father was murdered by Ash, Annie plays the rest of the professor’s recording to learn the truth, and discovers her possessed mother was buried in the same cellar — and not exactly resting in peace. This touches off a string of unbelievably gruesome (and hysterically funny) events, including Henrietta’s transformation into a stop-motion creature (reminiscent of a Ray Harryhausen creation), Ed’s sudden metamorphosis into a toothy, levitating ghoul, and Ash’s climactic confrontation with the forest demon itself. The obvious glee with which Raimi and company present this cavalcade of slime-drenched monstrosities and Three Stooges pratfalls makes it impossible to take seriously as a horror film, but Evil Dead 2 is nevertheless essential viewing among connoisseurs of truly demented cinema. The film’s sardonic coda opened the way for a slightly less successful sequel, Army of Darkness.

The war against the forces of darkness becomes a family affair in this cinematic prequel to the popular video game Bloodrayne. In 16th century Europe, Lord Kagan (Ben Kingsley) is an evil ruler who holds more power than any man alive, but he still dreams of having more, and when he’s told of three magic talismans who, when united, will give him intense supernatural strength and the gift of immortality, he will stop at nothing to attain them. However, three warriors who have learned how to battle the forces of darkness — Vladimir (Michael Madsen), Katarin (Michelle Rodriguez), and Sebastian (Matt Davis) — have formed the Brimstone Society, with the goal of stripping Kagan of his power and restoring justice to their land. They can’t accomplish this on their own, though, so they enlist the aid of Rayne (Kristanna Loken), a half-human, half-vampire who can approach Kagan’s sinister gifts while having a desire to do good. However, Rayne is torn about signing on with the Brimstone Society, and for a good reason — Kagan is her father. Scripted by actress, screenwriter, and video-game enthusiast Guinevere Turner, BloodRayne also stars Geraldine Chaplin, Udo Kier, Billy Zane, Michael Par?, and Meat Loaf Aday.

The second and third novels in author Anne Rice’s popular book series The Vampire Chronicles provide the inspiration for this horror sequel starring ill-fated actress and recording artist Aaliyah, who was killed in an airplane crash before the film’s release. Stuart Townsend is the vampire Lestat, who has awakened from a century-long slumber and turned his considerable energy to rock music. His vampirism identity mistaken for a gothic hard rock publicity stunt along the lines of Kiss or Marilyn Manson, he quickly becomes a pop music sensation. Lestat’s powerful music reaches the ear of the slumbering Akasha (Aaliyah), the millennia-old “queen of the vampires” who was the first immortal bloodsucker. Akasha is soon free and embarking on a quest to seize control of the world with Lestat at her side. In the meantime, Lestat becomes an object of fascination for Jesse Reeves (Marguerite Moreau), member of a secret order studying the supernatural called the Talamasca, and a band of ancient vampires come together in an effort to stop Akasha, even though her destruction could potentially cause their own deaths. Queen of the Damned co-stars Lena Olin and Vincent Perez.

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.