Bovie Movie

An old and forgotten game develops magical powers in this fantasy for the whole family. Twelve-year-old Walter Budwing (Josh Hutcherson) and his younger brother, Danny (Jonah Bobo), figure they’re going to be in for a boring time when their father (Tim Robbins), who was supposed to spend the day with them, is suddenly called away on business, and gives them strict orders not to leave the house. Walter, who doesn’t have much use for Danny, is motivated by boredom more than anything else when he agrees to play a board game Danny has found in the basement during a round of hide-and-seek. However, the boys quickly discover the space-themed game Zathura has some unusual qualities — a roll of the dice unexpectedly launches the Budwing home into outer space, and Walter and Danny are suddenly fending off menacing robots, angry aliens, and showers of interstellar debris outside the Earth’s atmosphere. As the boys try to figure out a way back home, they get some unexpected help from an earthling astronaut (Dax Shepard) who has also lost his way. Based on the book by children’s author Chris Van Allsburg — who also wrote The Polar Express and Jumanji — Zathura was directed by Jon Favreau, the actor-turned-filmmaker who enjoyed a breakthrough success with Elf.

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 big lie told in fun has deadly consequences in this horror story. A group of students at an exclusive private school decide to have some fun by creating an urban legend and seeing how far it will spread. When a woman is murdered not far from the school’s campus, the students create an elaborate mythology about a serial killer known as “the Wolf,” whose motives and methods would make him a likely culprit for the recent crime. However, when other people begin dying at the hands of “the Wolf,” the students are forced to admit to their lie in hopes of stopping the killings. But will anyone believe them? And how does the real-life killer know so much about the backstory of “the Wolf”? Cry_Wolf stars Julian Morris, Lindy Booth, Jon Bon Jovi, and Gary Cole.

Robert Redford directed this adaptation of a novel by Steven Pressfield that uses golf as a metaphor for one man’s spiritual and philosophical journeys. Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon) was a gifted amateur golfer from Savannah, GA, until traumatic experiences during World War I shattered his confidence and sent him into a spiral of alcoholism. In 1931, Adele Invergordon (Charlize Theron), a beautiful heiress who once loved Junuh, inherits a spectacular but financially ailing golf course after the suicide of her father. To attract customers, she proposed a high-stakes match between the two most famous golfers of the day, Bobby Jones (Joel Gretsch) and Walter Hagen (Bruce McGill). Local businessmen sponsoring the match insist that a local golfer be added to the card, and Junuh is drafted for the position, but it soon becomes obvious that his game is just a shadow of its former glory. When things seem hopeless, a mysterious gentleman named Bagger Vance (Will Smith) volunteers to serve as Junuh’s caddy and coach, using a mixture of ancient wisdom and past-life knowledge to help Junah “remember” the swing he’s lost. Jack Lemmon narrates the story, and J. Michael Moncrief plays Lemmon’s character as a boy.

Jumanji is a visually elaborate fantasy about an enchanted board game that opens a magical portal to a jungle universe. Two young children, Judy (Kirsten Dunst) and Peter (Bradley Pierce), discover the game in an abandoned home and suddenly are greeted by Alan (Robin Williams), an adult who has spent his life trapped inside the game since playing it at age 12. Alan’s only hope for freedom involves finishing the game, but this proves rather dangerous, as Judy, Peter, and Alan find themselves running for their lives from huge rhinoceroses, evil monkeys, vicious lions, and other terrifying jungle beasts. Director Joe Johnston, whose special-effects background previously came to good use in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, used groundbreaking computer imagery to simulate the thrills.