Bovie Movie

In this psychological thriller, a needy young woman finds fulfillment by trying to literally become her successful roommate. Attractive Manhattanite Allison Jones (Bridget Fonda) has it all: a handsome beau, a rent-controlled apartment, and a promising career as a fashion designer. When boyfriend Sam (Steven Weber) proves unfaithful, Allison strikes out on her own but must use the classifieds to seek out a roommate in order to keep her spacious digs. In steps Hedra Carlson (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who’s timid and frumpy but puppy-dog sweet. The self-centered Allison finds Hedra’s eager friendship flattering, but soon she grows annoyed as Hedra begins emulating everything about her. After Allison gets back with Sam and asks Hedra to please vacate the premises, the pert beauty really gets to see her weird new roomie’s bad side — Hedra, it seems, is downright homicidal. Directed by Barbet Schroeder, who wowed Hollywood with Barfly and Reversal of Fortune. Single White Female was the second screenplay from future Opposite of Sex director Don Roos.

Director David Fincher followed the success of his dark and atmospheric crime thriller Seven (1995) with another exercise in stylish film noir, this time lifting the pallid atmosphere a notch to indulge in a fast-paced trip through the cinematic funhouse. Michael Douglas plays Nicholas Van Orton, a Scrooge-like San Francisco investment banker following in his father’s Scrooge-like footsteps. On Nicholas’s 48th birthday (the age at which his father committed suicide), his younger, free-spirited brother Conrad (Sean Penn) blows into town and gives Nicholas a special gift for “the man who has everything” — a ticket to CRS (Consumer Recreation Services), a company that constructs games custom-fit for each participant to provide, as CRS salesman Jim Feingold (James Rebhorn) cryptically puts it, “whatever is lacking.” Nicholas’s secure life begins a downhill slide as CRS masterminds a series of elaborate pranks, harmless at first, that quickly become malicious and life-threatening. Stripped of financial resources and convinced that he can trust no one, Nicholas begins to wonder if CRS is a front for a more covert operation, and if the game is in fact an attempt to steal his fortune and leave him for dead. Determined to fight back alone, Nicholas infiltrates CRS in order to “pull back the curtain and meet the wizard.

A clandestine love affair sends one man’s charmed life into a tailspin in this dark, disturbing drama written and directed by Woody Allen, his first film set and shot in Great Britain and one his few films sans any humor. Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) is an Irish tennis player with an impoverished background. Just accomplished enough to make his way onto the professional circuit, but not skilled enough to be a consistent winner, he now works as an instructor at a London tennis club. The wealthy Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), who is as impressed by Chris’s charm and good looks as he is by his game, takes a tennis lesson from the young man. Chris’s intelligence and wit also make a strong impression on Tom’s pretty sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), who soon falls for him. It isn’t long before Chris and Chloe are engaged to be married, a match that pleases both Tom and his father, Alec (Brian Cox), a successful businessman who believes Chris has a bright future in his firm. However, Chris also feels an overwhelming attraction to Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), a sexy blonde from the United States who is dating Tom. Though Nola initially puts up some resistance, Chris gently nudges her in the direction of an affair. Passion soon ignites between the two, and they have a one-time sexual encounter, even as Chris and Chloe plan their wedding. Nola resists, however, when Chris makes additional attempts to wheedle her into bed. Nola drops out of Chris’s life shortly before his wedding, but a chance meeting a few months later resurrects the relationship as Chris and Chloe try to start a family. Match Point received its world premiere in an enthusiastically received presentation at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

Decked out in powdered wig and pasty “dandy” makeup, Richard Chamberlain stars as legendary Venetian lover Giovanni Casanova (1725-1798) in this made-for-television biopic. The teleplay by George Macdonald Fraser (of “Flashman” fame) follows Casanova as his reputation for being catnip to women builds throughout the 18th century. His sexual exploits cost him several important social and professional posts, and eventually land him in a Venice prison on a morals charge. Casanova’s escape attempt provides a strong second act for this 3-hour effort, which also offers an amusing “con job” practiced by Casanova on a willing countess (Faye Dunaway). Frank Finlay co-stars as a nobleman who conducts a decades-long feud with our rakish hero. Filmed in Spain and Italy, Casanova debuted on March 1, 1987.

Five years after achieving commercial and critical success with his film Three Kings, director and screenwriter David O. Russell returns to the more idiosyncratic territory of his earlier work with this intelligent and offbeat comedy. Bernard and Vivian Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin) are a married couple who run an existential detective agency where they sift through the lives of their clients in order to discover the source of their angst. The Jaffes’ latest client is Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman), an environmental activist who has a very large rock and a great deal on his mind; their study of Albert’s problems lead Bernard and Vivian to Brad Stand (Jude Law), a public relations executive with a chain of successful variety stores, Huckabees. While publicly allying himself with Albert’s environmental initiatives, behind the scenes Brad is running roughshod over responsible land management with little care for the consequences. When Brad learns he’s being watched by the Jaffes, he hopes to co-opt them by hiring them himself; however, the plan has unexpected consequences when their questioning leads Brad’s girlfriend, well-scrubbed model Dawn (Naomi Watts), into reassessing her life and relationships. Meanwhile, Albert finds himself joining forces with Tommy (Mark Wahlberg), a firefighter and fellow environmentalist who has been having second thoughts about Bernard and Vivian’s ideas and methods after a long-term investigation and has since fallen under the spell of nihilist poet and philosopher Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert).

Directed by Spike Lee, She Hate Me follows John Henry “Jack” Armstrong (Anthony Mackie), who is fired from a posh job in biotechnology after informing the proper authorities of some sketchy business dealings from within the company. Unemployed and desperate for some quick cash, Jack accepts a strange offer — his ex-girlfriend Fatima (Kerry Washington) says she will pay him generously if he successfully impregnates her. Once word gets out among the lesbian community, Jack is inundated with requests, and is initially quite happy with his new direction in life. However, things — as they are wont to do — get complicated. There’s his former employer, who is actively trying to pin the blame for their wrongdoings on his shoulders, for one thing, and it isn’t long before the moral implications of his life as a sperm donor come to the forefront. The film co-stars John Turturro, Ellen Barkin, Woody Harrelson, Monica Bellucci, and Q-Tip.

Billy Wilder directs the lighthearted romantic comedy Sabrina, based on the play by Samuel A. Taylor. Sabrina Fairchild (Audrey Hepburn) is the simple, na?ve daughter of a chauffeur, Thomas Fairchild (John Williams). They live on an estate with the wealthy Oliver Larrabee (Walter Hampden) and his two sons: workaholic older brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart) and fun-loving younger brother David (William Holden). Sabrina adores the charming David, but he thinks of her as just a kid. Her father sends her away to Paris for chef school where she meets Baron St. Fontanel (Marcel Dalio), and she returns a worldly, sophisticated woman. David immediately falls for her, but he is already engaged to marry heiress Elizabeth Tyson (Martha Hyer). Sabrina wants to break up the wedding in order to finally catch the man of her dreams, while Linus fights to keep the marriage on in the interest of family business and Mr. Tyson’s (Francis X. Bushman) fortune. In order to keep Sabrina away from David, Linus pretends to court her himself. In doing so, they eventually realize their true feelings for each another.

After incorporating elements of comic book style and design into many of his films, director Sam Raimi helms this straight-ahead, big-budget comic book adaptation, which also marks acclaimed young actor Tobey Maguire’s first dip into live-action blockbuster filmmaking. Spider-Man follows the template of the original Stan Lee/Steve Ditko source material, with hero Peter Parker an orphaned, intellectual teen loner living in Queens with his aunt (Rosemary Harris) and uncle (Cliff Robertson), and dreaming of the girl next door, Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst). On a field trip to a Columbia University lab, Peter is bitten by a genetically altered spider and overnight he gains superhuman strength, agility, and perception. At first, Peter uses his powers for material gain, winning a wrestling match with a purportedly lucrative prize. But when Peter apathetically fails to stop a burglar from robbing the wrestling arena, a tragedy follows that compels him to devote his powers to fighting crime — as the superhero Spider-Man. When he’s not busy fighting crime in a spider suit, Peter moves into an apartment with his best friend, Harry (James Franco), and begins work as a photographer at the Daily Bugle. Meanwhile, his do-gooder alter ego finds a nemesis in the form of the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), a super-powered, megalomaniacal villain who happens to be the alter ego of Harry’s father, weapons-manufacturing mogul Norman Osborn. Spider-Man was written by the prolific blockbuster scribe David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Panic Room).

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.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Alfred Uhry, Driving Miss Daisy affectionately covers the twenty-five year relationship between a wealthy, strong-willed Southern matron (Jessica Tandy) and her equally indomitable Black chauffeur Hoke (Morgan Freeman). Both employer and employee are outsiders, Hoke because of the color of his skin, Miss Daisy because she is Jewish in a WASP-dominated society. At the same time, Hoke cannot fathom Miss Daisy’s cloistered inability to grasp the social changes which sweep the South in the 1960s. Nor can Miss Daisy understand why Hoke’s “people” are so indignant. It is only when Hoke is retired and Miss Daisy is confined to a home for the elderly that the two fully realize that they’ve been friends and kindred spirits all along. The supporting cast includes Esther Rolle as Miss Daisy’s housekeeper and Dan Aykroyd as Miss Daisy’s son Boolie (reportedly, playwright Uhry based the character upon himself). Driving Miss Daisy won Academy Awards for best picture, best actress (Jessica Tandy), best screenplay (Uhry) and best makeup (Manlio Rachetti).