Bovie Movie

Director Mark L. Lester modeled this police action drama on the Hong Kong style, guaranteeing plenty of over-the-top action sequences. Dolph Lundgren stars as police detective Chris Kenner, an American raised in Japan. He is given a new partner, Johnny Murata (Brandon Lee, making his Hollywood debut), a Japanese raised in America. The two are made for each other — Chris doesn’t appreciate American culture, while Johnny doesn’t much like Japanese culture. One thing they both enjoy are the martial arts, of which they are experts. The two are assigned to L.A.’s Little Tokyo, trying to nab the notorious Yoshida (Carey-Hiroyuki Tagawa), a drug manufacturer using a local brewery as his distribution center. Yoshida, a member of the Yakuza, has brought the residents of Little Tokyo to their knees. But Chris has personal reasons for wanting to get Yoshida — as a child he witnessed Yoshida murdering his parents. When Yoshida rapes and kidnaps Minako (Tia Carrere), a beautiful lounge singer, it’s the last straw and Chris and Johnny set out for Yoshida’s heavily guarded home for a big showdown.

Set amidst the controversy of the handover of the Panama Canal from Panama to America in late 1999, this espionage thriller follows seductive British spy Andrew Osnard (Pierce Brosnan), who has found himself recently banished to Panama. When Osnard stumbles into a tailor shop, he meets Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), a garrulous sort with an unmatched penchant for “fluence” — that is, fabricating wild tales with real-life details. Osnard threatens to expose his shady past, until Pendel agrees to provide him with information about the political situation in Panama. Pendel’s wife Louisa (Jamie Lee Curtis) tries to remain unscathed by her husband’s constant follies, which escalate and put him in the midst of international discord, while also threatening the shaky relationship between himself and Osnard, who cannot escape each other’s grasp. Based on John le Carr?’s popular 1996 novel, the film also features Catherine McCormack, David Hayman, and young Daniel Radcliffe, who completed this film before his starring role in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, released later in the year.

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.

Directed by Mike Newell, the fourth installment to the Harry Potter series finds Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) wondering why his legendary scar — the famous result of a death curse gone wrong — is aching in pain, and perhaps even causing mysterious visions. Before he can think too much about it, however, Harry boards the train to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he will attend his fourth year of magical education. Shortly after his reunion with his best friends, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson), Harry is introduced to yet another Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher: the grizzled Mad-Eye Moody (Brendan Gleeson), a former dark wizard catcher who agreed to take on the infamous “DADA” professorship as a personal favor to Headmaster Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). Of course, Harry’s wishes for an uneventful school year are almost immediately shattered when he is unexpectedly chosen, along with fellow student Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson), as Hogwarts’ representative in the Tri-Wizard Tournament, which awards whoever completes three magical tasks the most skillfully with a thousand-galleon purse and the admiration of the international wizard community. As difficult as it is to deal with his schoolwork, friendships, and the tournament at the same time (not to mention his feelings toward the ever unfathomable Professor Snape (Alan Rickman), Harry doesn’t realize that the most feared wizard in the world, Lord Voldemort, is anticipating the tournament, as well.

Eccentric inventor Wallace (voice of Peter Sallis) and his faithful if often perplexed dog Gromit are back in their first feature-length adventure from animator Nick Park. Wallace and Gromit have launched a new business venture just in time for a major gardening competition in their neighborhood of West Wallaby. “Anti-Pesto” is a humane pest-relocation service in which Wallace and Gromit capture rabbits and other critters who have been eating the produce from local gardens and give them new homes somewhere else. Business has been going well, and when the woman hosting the garden show, Lady Tottington (voice of Helena Bonham Carter), discovers a massive tribe of rabbits has been making a mess of her garden, she calls in Wallace and Gromit to move the bunnies elsewhere. Wallace is quite taken with Lady Tottington, but he’s not the only one — Victor Quartermaine (voice of Ralph Fiennes) is a slick but arrogant upper-class type who wants to win Lady Tottington’s hand (and fortune) and is convinced he can do a better job capturing the rabbits than Wallace. However, Wallace’s attempts to brainwash the rabbits away from veggies using his latest invention has disastrous results, and soon Wallace has to deal with a beastly bunny as well as a heavily-armed Quartermaine. Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit followed Park’s previous film with the duo, A Close Shave, by ten years, and was produced after Park broke through to mainstream success with the feature Chicken Run.

Two people develop an unusual relationship that bends the boundaries of time and place in this romantic fantasy. Kate Forster (Sandra Bullock) is a doctor who lives in a beautiful home by a lake. Forced to move elsewhere, she requests that any correspondence that arrives at the lake house be passed on to her new address. To her surprise, she soon receives a romantic note from Alex Burnham (Keanu Reeves), an architect who lives in the cottage she once called home. However, a look at the postmark on the letter reveals that he lived at the home two years before she did, and that somehow they’ve come in contact with one another through a space in time. A remake of Lee Hyun-seung’s acclaimed Korean romance Il Mare (aka Siworae), The Lake House was the first American production from Argentinean filmmaker Alejandro Agresti; the supporting cast includes Christopher Plummer, Dylan Walsh, and Lynn Collins.

Writer and director Sofia Coppola puts a new spin on the life and times of one of Europe’s most infamous monarchs in this lavish historical drama which fuses a contemporary sensibility with painstaking recreations of the look of the 18th century. Born to Austrian nobility, Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) is only 14 years old when she’s pledged to marry Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), the 15-year-old king of France, in an alliance that has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with love. Sent to France and literally stripped of her former life, Marie weds Louis, but to the consternation of the royal court, he seems either unwilling or unable to consummate the marriage while their advisors clamor for an heir to the throne. Young and more than a bit out of step with the new life that’s been thrust upon her, Marie gives herself over to the pleasures of life in Versailles, knowing and caring little of the political intrigue that surrounds her. In time, Marie’s trusted older brother, Joseph (Danny Huston), is brought in to coach Louis on the finer points of marital relations, and before long the couple is finally blessed with a child. However, as Marie tends to her children in the gilded cage of her palace and enjoys an affair with a Swedish nobleman, political power plays are throwing France into chaos, and the growing ranks of the poor rebel against the royals and their life of privilege. Also starring Rip Torn, Judy Davis, Steve Coogan, and Asia Argento, Marie Antoinette was given a controversial reception when it premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

A pedal-to-the-metal race car determined to prove his worth on the tracks discovers that life isn’t always about crossing the finish line first in Toy Story director John Lasseter’s mechanically minded tale of friendship and loyalty. Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson) may be just a rookie, but he’s convinced that he can realize his dream of zooming by the checkered flag if he can only make it to California in time to compete in the upcoming Piston Cup Championship. When Lightning takes a detour into the slow-moving, Route 66 town of Radiator Springs, however, it begins to appear as if his shot at the big time has effectively stalled out. Of course, Lightning’s exciting cross-country trek wasn’t all for naught, and after befriending such quirky Radiator Springs residents as Sally the Porsche (voice of Bonnie Hunt), Doc Hudson (voice of Paul Newman), and Mater the Tow Truck (voice of Larry the Cable Guy), the eager young racer learns that sometimes life is more about the voyage than the outcome of the race.

It wasn’t as well received at the box office as the pictures that preceded it or followed it, but Peter Hunt’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was the finest of the James Bond movies and also arguably the last truly great movie in the series. James Bond, portrayed here by George Lazenby (in his only performance in the role) has spent nearly two years trying to track down Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas), the head of SPECTRE. He has been taken off the case by his chief (Bernard Lee), an action the pushes him to the point of considering resigning from Her Majesty’s Secret Service, just as he opens a possible new avenue of attack on his quarry. Whilst in the field, Bond has chanced to cross paths with the Contessa Teresa Di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg), a beautiful but desperately unhappy woman, whom he rescues from one apparent suicide attempt and an embarrassing moment at a casino gaming table — the Contessa, who prefers to be called Tracy (”Teresa was a saint”), is the daughter of Marc Ange Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti), an industrial and construction magnate and also a crime boss, who is impressed with Bond personally as well as professionally, and would like to see him marry his daughter. Bond is, at first, unwilling to involve himself with a woman — any woman — on that level, but Draco’s underworld contacts give Bond a vital clue to Blofeld’s whereabouts that get him back on the case and hot on the man’s trail. Journeying incognito to Blofeld’s mountaintop retreat in the Swiss Alps, Bond finds the criminal mastermind posing as a would-be nobleman and also as a philanthropist, running a clinic devoted to the treatment and eradication of allergies. It’s all a front for a surprisingly sinister (and scientifically valid) plot for international blackmail that would make any previous Bond villain quake in fear. And in the process of staying alive long enough to have a chance of stopping Blofeld, Bond discovers the Tracy is truly like no woman he’s ever known before — one special enough that he finds himself willing to give up his life as a free-living, free-loving bachelor.

A pack of not-so-wild animals experience some serious culture shock when they move from the Big Apple to the Mighty Jungle in this computer-animated comedy. Alex (voice of Ben Stiller) is a lion who enjoys a charmed life as one of the leading attractions at a zoo in New York City’s Central Park. While Alex and his pals Marty the Zebra (voice of Chris Rock), Gloria the Hippo (voice of Jada Pinkett Smith), and Melman the Giraffe (voice of David Schwimmer) are happy with their lot in life, they occasionally have a certain curiosity about the outside world, and when the zoo’s penguins decide to make a break for it, Marty follows them into the city. Alex, Gloria, and Melman set out to find Marty before he gets into trouble, but they’re a bit too late, and soon the zookeepers have decided that the animals are restless and need to be returned to the wild. Soon the critters find themselves living on the coast of Madagascar, where they quickly discover they aren’t quite suited for living in the wild. Madagascar also features the voice talents of Cedric the Entertainer, Andy Richter, and Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G).