Bovie Movie

Rookie Los Angeles cop Nick Styles is at a Los Angeles street fair, where hit man Earl Talbot Blake pulls a double cross on some drug dealers, killing four men. Minutes later, Nick shoots Blake in the knee, and Blake is grabbed by Nick’s partner and best friend Larry Doyle. Nick becomes the focus of the media, thanks to an amateur cameraman’s footage of Nick disarming Blake. Over the next few years, Nick’s career takes off: he’s offered a job in the district attorney’s office, and his hip media style keeps him in the public eye. Nick marries a woman named Alice and they go on to have two daughters named Lisa and Monica. While Blake is in prison, he vows revenge on Nick. When Blake comes up for parole, he orchestrates a bloody escape — which includes faking his own death. Blake doesn’t want Nick dead. He just wants Nick to suffer in spades. He wants to ruin Nick’s life as completely as possible, and then have Nick sent to prison for murder so Nick will know how Blake feels. Blake begins his vendetta by killing city councilman U. B. Farris and planting evidence to make everyone think Nick and Farris are running an underage pornography ring. Blake then kidnaps Nick, forces him to take drugs and have sex with a prostitute, videotapes the whole thing, and then releases Nick. Nick tells everyone that it was Blake who kidnapped him, but everyone refuses to believe Nick because everyone thinks Blake is dead. That night, Blake breaks into Nick’s house, and makes a threatening videotape with Lisa, Monica, and an ax in it, but Blake didn’t actually do anything to Lisa and Monica. Nick is then suspended from the DA’s office, with everyone thinking that Nick is mentally ill because he keeps saying that Blake is still alive. Blake then begins the final phase of his vendetta — he kills Larry and frames Nick for it. Blake also links Nick to misappropriation of public funds, specifically, the funds he’s supposed to be raising for a children’s center in a building at the base of the Watts tower. Nick is forced to turn to his childhood friend, gang leader Odessa, for help in clearing his name and stopping Blake once and for all.

This time, the Man of Steel has his hands full with a trio of super-powered villains who escape from their Phantom Zone prison (remember the weird flying diamond-shaped mirror that scooped them up from the planet Krypton?) and land on Earth, where all three have powers to rival Superman’s own. How does it all come out? With a fabulous duel above the streets of Metropolis, and a startling plot twist that neatly ties in Superman’s explosive past. Arch-criminal Lex Luthor plays both ends gleefully against the middle in hopes of a modest reward: Australia.

Near the end of The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey, in his Oscar-winning performance as crippled con man Roger “Verbal” Kint, says, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” This may be the key line in this story; the farther along the movie goes, the more one realizes that not everything is quite what it seems, and what began as a conventional whodunit turns into something quite different. A massive explosion rips through a ship in a San Pedro, CA, harbor, leaving 27 men dead, the lone survivor horribly burned, and 91 million dollars’ worth of cocaine, believed to be on board, mysteriously missing. Police detective Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) soon brings in the only witness and key suspect, “Verbal” Kint. Kint’s nickname stems from his inability to keep his mouth shut, and he recounts the events that led to the disaster. Five days earlier, a truckload of gun parts was hijacked in Queens, NY, and five men were brought in as suspects: Kint, hot-headed hipster thief McManus (Stephen Baldwin), ill-tempered thug Hockney (Kevin Pollak), flashy wise guy Fenster (Benicio Del Toro), and Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), a cop gone bad now trying to go straight in the restaurant business. While in stir, someone suggests that they should pull a job together, and Kint hatches a plan for a simple and lucrative jewel heist. Despite Keaton’s misgivings, the five men pull off the robbery without a hitch and fly to Los Angeles to fence the loot. Their customer asks if they’d be interested in pulling a quick job while out West; the men agree, but the robbery goes horribly wrong and they soon find themselves visited by Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite), who represents a criminal mastermind named Keyser Soze. Soze’s violent reputation is so infamous that he’s said to have responded to a threat to murder his family by killing them himself, just to prove that he feared no one. When Kobayashi passes along a heist proposed by Soze that sounds like suicide, the men feel that they have little choice but to agree.

Red Dragon, the Thomas Harris novel that introduced serial killer Hannibal Lecter to the world, was adapted for the screen by Michael Mann as Manhunter. Ace criminal profiler Will Graham (William Petersen) is very good at his job because he has the ability to make himself think like the killers he tracks. Will has been in retirement since catching Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter (Brian Cox), as being inside that particular deranged mind caused Will to have a breakdown. Will’s boss Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina visits Will at his home, showing him pictures from a murder scene and asking for his help in catching a new killer they have dubbed “the Tooth Fairy” (Tom Noonan). In order to test his mental strength, Will visits Hannibal in his prison cell. Adding to the already substantial mental stress Will experiences when he returns to the job are nosy tabloid reporter Freddy Lounds (Stephen Lang), as well as Hannibal’s attempts at seeking revenge through the Tooth Fairy. After two additional films that featured Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal) became box-office blockbusters, Manhunter was re-made as Red Dragon starring Hopkins and Edward Norton as Will Graham.

This lucrative, elephantine-budgeted sci-fi opus paved the way for director Roland Emmerich’s mega-hit Independence Day (1996). The story commences in Giza, Egypt, circa 1928, where an archaeological expedition unearths an ancient ring with cryptic hieroglyphs. The film then moves to the present day, where Egyptologist Daniel Jackson (James Spader) is busily trying to convince a group of skeptics that the pyramids were not built by man, but by an extraterrestrial force. After the lecture, a military man approaches him and offers him a job translating the said ring; its inscriptions actually constitute a map to a massive stargate (or interstellar portal). The army sends over resident crackpot colonel Jack O’Neill (Kurt Russell) to travel through the stargate and see what’s on the other side; Jackson accompanies him, and the two men turn up in a desert planet on the other side of the universe, with three moons in its sky. The world in question is ruled by Ra (Jaye Davidson), a hermaphroditic Egyptian sun god, who oppresses hordes of slave workers. Jackson and O’Neill then join forces to help the said workers revolt against their oppressor.

Five friends go up to a cabin in the woods where they find unspeakable evil lurking in the forest. They find the Necronomicon and the taped translation of the text. Once the tape is played, the evil is released. One by one, the teens become deadly zombies. With only one remaining, it is up to him to survive the night and battle the evil dead.

The feature-film debut of multi-talented Clive Barker, this grim and surreal project is based on the writer-director’s own novella The Hell-Bound Heart. The film opens with a chilling prologue in which globe-trotting pervert Frank (Sean Chapman) — a connoisseur of sexual depravity seeking the ultimate sensual experience — purchases a small, intricate puzzle box from an unseen dealer in an unspecified country. Upon solving the puzzle, Frank opens the door to a hellish alternate universe and is promptly torn to ribbons by a network of hooks and chains; his strewn body parts are subsequently collected by the Cenobites — grotesque, S&M-clad denizens of hell. The story continues several years later, when Frank’s brother, Larry (Andrew Robinson), moves into Frank’s abandoned house with his daughter, Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), and his new wife, Julia (Clare Higgins). An accident causes some of Larry’s blood to spill on the attic floor, which somehow triggers Frank’s hideous resurrection. His body only half-composed, Frank seeks the tacit assistance of Julia — with whom he had once had a torrid sexual liaison — in restoring him to human form. Still secretly in love with Frank, Julia assists him by seducing men from the town and bringing them back to the house so her undead lover can drain their bodies of blood. Her increasingly furtive behavior arouses the suspicions of Kirsty, who had already moved to an apartment to get away from her despised stepmother. After following Julia and her next potential victim home, Kirsty comes face-to-face with the still incomplete Frank, narrowly escaping with her life…and with the puzzle box. After losing consciousness, Kirsty awakens in the hospital, where she manages to solve the box’s intricate mechanism and summon a trio of Cenobites — including their apparent leader (played by Doug Bradley and dubbed “Pinhead” on subsequent sequels) — who are prepared to claim her. In desperation, Kirsty offers them a bargain in which they agree to spare her soul if she leads them to Frank. Kirsty soon returns home to find Julia with her father… whose behavior has become disturbingly unnatural. Realizing that her father has become Frank’s next victim — and that her uncle is now walking around in his brother’s skin — Kirsty hands Frank over to the Cenobites, who have particularly evil plans for their old friend.

In this multiple Oscar-winning thriller, Jodie Foster stars as Clarice Starling, a top student at the FBI’s training academy whose shrewd analyses of serial killers lands her a special assignment: the FBI is investigating a vicious murderer nicknamed Buffalo Bill, who kills young women and then removes the skin from their bodies. Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into this case and that Starling, as an attractive young woman, may be just the bait to draw him out. Lecter does indeed know something of Buffalo Bill, but his information comes with a price: in exchange for telling what he knows, he wants to be housed in a more comfortable facility. More important, he wants to speak with Clarice about her past. He skillfully digs into her psyche, forcing her to reveal her innermost traumas and putting her in a position of vulnerability when she can least afford to be weak. The film mingles the horrors of criminal acts with the psychological horrors of Lecter’s slow-motion interrogation of Clarice and of her memories that emerge from it.

Director David Lynch crafted this hallucinogenic mystery-thriller that probes beneath the cheerful surface of suburban America to discover sadomasochistic violence, corruption, drug abuse, crime and perversion. Kyle Maclachlan stars as Jeffrey Beaumont, a square-jawed young man who returns to his picture-perfect small town when his father suffers a stroke. Walking through a field near his home, Jeff discovers a severed human ear, which he immediately brings to the police. Their disinterest sparks Jeff’s curiosity, and he is soon drawn into a dangerous drama that’s being played out by a lounge singer, Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) and the ether-addicted Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper). The sociopathic Booth has kidnapped Dorothy’s young son and is using the child as a bargaining chip to repeatedly beat, humiliate and rape Dorothy. Though he’s drawn to the virginal, wholesome Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), Jeff is also aroused by Dorothy and in trying to aid her, he discovers his dark side. As the film nears its conclusion, our hero learns that many more indivduals are tacitly involved with Frank, including a suave, lip-synching singer, Ben (Dean Stockwell), who is minding the kidnapped boy. Director Lynch explored many similar themes of the “disease” lying just under the surface of the small town, all-American fa?ade in his later television series Twin Peaks (1990-91).

Horror fantasist Clive Barker, director of the original Hellraiser, maintained creative control over this worthy sequel as Executive Producer, but was unable to occupy the director’s chair due to his involvement on other projects. His creative touch is still quite evident here, as the original film’s story is expanded in scope and intensity. The story picks up immediately after the events of the original, with the mentally-unbalanced Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) confined to a mental hospital after her experiences in the hellish domain of the grotesque Cenobites, which included the gruesome death of her father. Her case attracts the attention of hospital director Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham), whose marked interest in her story has more than a little to do with his research into the occult. The chief focus of this extracurricular activity seems centered on his impressive collection of puzzle boxes, many of which are versions of the Lament Configuration — the device which opens the gateway to the Cenobites’ dimension. To further realize his diabolical obsession, Channard conducts grisly human sacrifices to resurrect the body of Kirsty’s evil stepmother Julia (Clare Higgins) — who has literally been through hell and back. He also recruits mute autistic patient Tiffany (Imogen Boorman), an expert at solving puzzles, to decipher the correct version of the box. Haunted by visions of her mutilated father suffering in hell, Kirsty joins Tiffany in hopes of rescuing him from the Cenobites’ dimension. Tiffany gains them access to the portal, and they make the nightmarish journey down the corridors of hell. Narrowly escaping the diabolical Pinhead (Doug Bradley), they come face-to-face with Julia, who has already handed Dr. Channard over to the Cenobites to be transformed into a hideous new creation. First-time director Tony Randel acquits himself nicely, and seems to have a real flair for the surreal material; the script by longtime Barker collaborator Peter Atkins elaborates on elements only hinted at in its predecessor. It should follow that the slightly larger budget would allow ample room for this expansion, but the production values actually appear somewhat slimmer. What the film lacks in refined style it makes up for in utter dementia, particularly in its depiction of graphic bloodletting — numerous scenes were trimmed or deleted altogether in order to obtain an ‘R’ from the MPAA.