Bovie Movie

After surviving a brutal car wreck, commercial director James Ballard finds himself slowly drawn to a mysterious subculture of people who have transformed automobile accidents into erotic events. Like the J.G. Ballard novel that inspired it, David Cronenberg’s study of the sexual dimension of man’s relationship to technology was a magnet for controversy, drawing a NC-17 rating and criticism from several sources, including studio owner Ted Turner, who attempted to prevent the film’s American release. But though some have leveled charges of pornography, James’ descent into this fetishistic underworld is approached with cold, scientific detachment. Characters like Vaughn, the charismatic group leader who stages recreations of celebrity car crashes, seem more like driven researchers than sexual renegades, which is undoubtedly part of the film’s point. This impression is reinforced by the pristine cinematography by Peter Suschitzsky, which proves particularly haunting during a crucial accident scene, and Howard Shore’s superb score. Far from exploitative, Crash in fact proves less transgressive than the original novel, but is still undoubtedly not for all tastes.

A nanny reveals ways of making children behave that are much more effective than a time-out in this fantasy comedy based on the “Nurse Matilda” books for children by Christianna Brand. Near the dawn of the twentieth century, Mr. Brown (Colin Firth) is a widower who must tend to his business as an undertaker while looking after his brood of seven children. Brown’s offspring are a singularly ill-mannered lot who have managed to drive away 17 different nannies when their father arranges for one Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson) to help out with the children. McPhee is an strange looking woman with a large nose, protruding teeth, and pock-marked skin, but it isn’t long before the kids realize she has magical powers and isn’t afraid to use them to help keep them in line. While the children aren’t taken with McPhee’s insistence on such things as saying “please” and listening to their elders, it becomes clear everyone has bigger things to worry about. Aunt Adelaide (Angela Lansbury) has insisted that if Mr. Brown cannot find a new wife within a month, she’ll take custody of one of the children and cut off Brown’s inheritance, and while Brown and the widow Mrs. Quickly (Celia Imrie) seem fond of one another, his ineptitude in courtship seems to insure he’ll never get her to the altar. But while the Brown Children realize Nanny McPhee is a formidable opponent, she can also be a valuable ally as they learn to make use of her talents by being better children; they also discover that as they behave better, she begins to look less frightening. Emma Thompson, who played the title role in Nanny McPhee, also wrote the film’s screenplay.

In a futuristic Britain, a gang of teenagers go on the rampage every night, beating and raping helpless victims. After one of the boys quells an uprising in the gang, they knock him out and leave him for the police to find. He agrees to try “aversion therapy” to shorten his jail sentence. When he is eventually let out, he hates violence, but the rest of his gang members are still after him.

When a flying saucer reportedly lands in rural Iowa, The Old Man (who runs a secret branch of the CIA), decides to investigate. He goes in person, accompanied by agents Sam and Jarvis, as well as Dr Mary Sefton, a NASA specialist in alien biology. They find that aliens have indeed landed and are planning to use their mind-control powers to take over our planet.

When a motorcycle-riding stuntman offers his soul to Mephistopheles in order to save the life of the one he loves most, he is forced to play host to a powerful supernatural entity whose flaming skull visage strikes fear into the heart of his enemies in this feature-film version of the long-running comic series. By day, Johnny Blaze (actor and comic-book devotee Nicolas Cage) is one of the world’s best-known stuntmen, but when the sun goes down and he is in the presence of evil, the death-defying daredevil bursts into flames to become the indestructible, motorcycle-riding antihero known to the world as the Ghost Rider.

Secret Agent 007 must stop a megalomaniacal technology mogul from destroying Silicon Valley in this unexceptional entry in the James Bond series. Computer baron Max Zorin (Christopher Walken) is planning to trigger a major California earthquake in order to wipe out his competitors. Bond is assigned to stop him, but first he must do battle with Zorin’s statuesque partner in crime, May Day (Grace Jones). The expected high-wire confrontations ensue, as Bond battles the villains at international landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and takes the occasional break to romance an attractive geologist. Unfortunately, nothing fresh is brought to the familiar formula, and even the well-staged action sequences prove less than exciting. Indeed, this otherwise by-the-numbers production is most notable for the fact that it marked the final appearance of Roger Moore as the dashing Bond.

An aging antique dealer, Jesus Gris, happens upon an elegant mechanized scarab. When opened, it painfully stabs whomever is holding it, but the wound brings youthful vigor and a vampire’s need for blood. The device is relentlessly pursued by a dying tycoon, Dieter de la Guardia, whose nephew Angel, reluctant to see his uncle live a moment longer, must still do the old man’s bidding. Meanwhile, Gris’s desires endanger his own granddaughter, Aurora.

Writer/director Ernie Barbarash helms this prequel to the sci-fi thriller Cube, with events that unfold some time prior to those in first picture. Here, another group of prisoners navigate the treacherous confines of their futuristic trappings. Each step is potentially the last as the deadly last traps hidden in the sparse rooms find the numbers of the unwilling prisoners quickly thinning. Only when they can figure out the mysteries of their constantly changing prison will the surviving inmates have any hope for escape, and even then there is no guarantee of freedom — much less survival. As the cube workers who monitor the prisoners progress bear witness to their increasingly grim bid for survival, a sudden sting of remorse finds one of the employees empathizing with the victims and plotting to assist them in their unlikely escape.

Tim Burton directs the fantasy drama Big Fish, based on the book Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Southern writer/illustrator Daniel Wallace. Billy Crudup plays William Bloom, a young man who never really knew his dying father, Edward (Albert Finney) outside of the tall tales he told about growing up, making his way, and meeting his mother (played as a young woman by Alison Lohman and in older age by Jessica Lange). During Edward’s last days, William and his wife Josephine (Marion Cotillard) hold bedside vigil as the old man recollects elaborate memories of his youth (in which he is played by Ewan McGregor). Still doubting the the legends and folklore, William makes a journey to meet a mysterious woman (Helena Bonham Carter) from whom Edward had bought property. Steve Buscemi and Danny De Vito also star.