Bovie Movie

For his debut feature, John Hoffman wrote and directed this effects-heavy family film based on the story Dogs from Outer Space by Zeke Richardson. Produced by Jim Henson Productions, Good Boy! presents the idea that dogs are actually an intelligent alien species sent to earth thousands of years ago to spy on humans in preparation for a full-scale invasion and takeover. But when the spies stop reporting back to the home planet, Canid 3942 (voiced by Matthew Broderick) is sent to earth to investigate. Once there, Canid 3942 encounters Owen Baker (Liam Aiken), a young boy who runs a dog-walking service. Owen befriends the space-dog, renaming him Hubble. When it becomes obvious that the dogs of earth have forgotten their mission, Hubble enlists the help of Owen to get them all into shape before The Great Dane arrives to inspect. If they fail, all of earth’s dogs will be recalled to their home planet of Sirius. With Kevin Nealon and Molly Shannon as Owen’s parents, Good Boy! also features the voice talents of Brittany Murphy, Carl Reiner, Megan Mullally, and Donald Faison.

A man with no memory struggles to make sense of the troubling details that are still stuck in his mind in this psychological thriller. Frank (Val Kilmer) wakes up in a small town in the New Mexico desert with a severe head wound and most of his memory wiped away. However, Frank is somehow convinced that someone is planning to assassinate the President of the United States, and that Chloe (Neve Campbell), the woman who is claiming to be his girlfriend, is some sort of imposter. When Frank learns that the president is indeed passing through town that day, he tries to warn Sheriff Kolb (Sam Shepard) that something sinister if afoot; as it happens, Kolb believes him, though he’s more than a bit busy dealing with a hard-fought election campaign against former Deputy Cash (Noble Willingham). Blind Horizon was screened at the 2004 South by Southwest Film Festival.

Robert De Niro is Gil Renard, baseball fan from hell. Bobby Rayburn (Wesley Snipes) is the player he is nuts about. No sooner does the talented Rayburn sign a huge contract with the San Francisco Giants, than everything in his life goes horribly wrong. Not only does his field play deteriorate along with his batting average, but someone murders his chief team rival. It’s not revealing too much to say that Gil killed him, in the mistaken belief that he was doing Bobby a favor. When superfan Gil insinuates himself into Bobby’s everyday life, the situation grows much worse, because this fixated nut-case has some very strange ideas about family solidarity. Amusing highlights come from John Leguizamo as a ballplayer’s agent, and Ellen Barkin as a radio sports announcer.

A young woman discovers that her father’s special talent runs in the family in this direct-to-video sequel to the 1998 blockbuster (which, unlike the previous two films in the series, does not feature Eddie Murphy). Maya Dolittle (Kyla Pratt), the youngest daughter of veterinarian John Dolittle, makes the surprising discovery that, like her dad, she can understand what animals have to say, and speak with them in their own language. Unlike her father, Maya hasn’t found a suitable use for her talents, and as she finds an outlet for her unique language skills, she is sent away to Durango, a combination summer camp and dude ranch, where she strikes up a rapport with both the fellow campers and the livestock. When she learns that Durango is on the verge of going out of business due to money problems, Maya starts working with the camp’s horses and cattle, giving them a much needed pep talk as they’re entered in a local rodeo that could save Durango. Dr. Dolittle 3: The Daughter Is In also features Kristen Wilson, John Amos, and Walker Howard.

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.

A group of juvenile delinquents are forced to fight for their lives after being sent the forest for an exercise in teamwork and tracked by a crossbow-wielding madman with a pack of flesh-eating dogs. The Young Offenders Institution is the kind of place kids are sent when all hope is lost. In order to test their mettle in an environment where every decision counts, the powers that be at the Young Offenders Institution send their worst offenders into deep into the woods for a tough-love lesson in character-building. Suddenly surrounded by dense forestation, deadly rapids, and a jagged coastline that makes escape virtually impossible, the young criminals must band together after their group leaders are ruthlessly slaughtered. With time running out and their numbers quickly dwindling, these tough-talking teens must put their survival skills to the ultimate test and band together to take down a merciless predator who relishes in watching his victims suffer.

Cinderella was Walt Disney’s return to feature-length “story” cartoons after eight years of turning out episodic pastiches like Make Mine Music and Three Caballeros. A few understandable liberties are taken with the original Charles Perrault fairy tale (the wicked stepsisters, for example, do not have their eyes pecked out by crows!) Otherwise, the story remains the same: Cinderella, treated as a slavey by her selfish stepfamily, dreams of going to the Prince’s ball. She gets her wish courtesy of her Fairy Godmother, who does the pumpkin-into-coach bit, then delivers the requisite “be home by midnight” warning. Thoroughly enchanting the prince at the ball, our heroine hightails it at midnight, leaving a glass slipper behind. The Disney people do a terrific job building up suspense before the inevitable final romantic clinch. Not as momentous an animated achievement as, say, Snow White or Fantasia, Cinderella is a nonetheless delightful feature, enhanced immeasurably by the introduction of several “funny animal” characters (a Disney tradition that has held fast into the 1990s, as witness Pocahontas), and a host of a sprightly songs, including “Cinderelly,” “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” and — best of all — “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo.”

Chuck Jones’ animated version of the classic Dr. Seuss book How the Grinch Stole Christmas originally aired on television in 1966 and has since become a holiday family favorite. Voiced by Boris Karloff (who also narrates), the Grinch lives on top of a hill overlooking Whoville with his dog, Max. Each year at Christmas time, the Grinch’s hatred grows stronger toward those insufferably cheerful Whos down in Whoville. Content to exchange presents, eat large banquets, and sing songs in the town square, the Whos live in a blissful ignorance of the Grinch’s contempt. One year, he gets the idea to stop Christmas from coming by dressing up as Santa Claus. He cobbles together an outfit and makes his dog drag him around on a sleigh while sneaking into the Whos’ homes and stealing their presents, food, and decorations. After he has stolen every last thing, the Whos wake up on Christmas morning to sing in the town square, causing the Grinch to question the basis of his nefarious plan. Thurl Ravenscroft (the voice of kid cereal mascot Tony the Tiger) provides the vocals for the song “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.” This story was remade into a live-action movie in 2000 by director Ron Howard starring Jim Carrey as the Grinch.

From writer/director David Koepp (Stir of Echoes) comes this filmed adaptation of Stephen King’s novella Secret Window, Secret Garden, one of four stories in the collection Four Past Midnight. Johnny Depp stars as Mort Rainey, a recently divorced author who decides to take some time off at his cottage. Unfortunately for Rainey, John Shooter (John Turturro), an unbalanced wannabe writer, tracks him down, claiming that Rainey plagiarized his work. Also starring Maria Bello, Charles S. Dutton, and Timothy Hutton, Secret Window is the second story from Four Past Midnight to be adapted as a film, the first being 1995’s made-for-television The Langoliers.

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.