Bovie Movie

Five years after achieving commercial and critical success with his film Three Kings, director and screenwriter David O. Russell returns to the more idiosyncratic territory of his earlier work with this intelligent and offbeat comedy. Bernard and Vivian Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin) are a married couple who run an existential detective agency where they sift through the lives of their clients in order to discover the source of their angst. The Jaffes’ latest client is Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman), an environmental activist who has a very large rock and a great deal on his mind; their study of Albert’s problems lead Bernard and Vivian to Brad Stand (Jude Law), a public relations executive with a chain of successful variety stores, Huckabees. While publicly allying himself with Albert’s environmental initiatives, behind the scenes Brad is running roughshod over responsible land management with little care for the consequences. When Brad learns he’s being watched by the Jaffes, he hopes to co-opt them by hiring them himself; however, the plan has unexpected consequences when their questioning leads Brad’s girlfriend, well-scrubbed model Dawn (Naomi Watts), into reassessing her life and relationships. Meanwhile, Albert finds himself joining forces with Tommy (Mark Wahlberg), a firefighter and fellow environmentalist who has been having second thoughts about Bernard and Vivian’s ideas and methods after a long-term investigation and has since fallen under the spell of nihilist poet and philosopher Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert).

A cop’s personal code of justice begins to change after a number of incidents lead his city to a tragic wave of violence in this police drama. Eldon Perry (Kurt Russell) is a veteran cop with the LAPD’s Special Investigations unit, a man who isn’t above bending the law if it means putting people behind bars who deserve the treatment. As Los Angeles waits on the verdict in the Rodney King police beating trial, Perry is presenting testimony to Assistant Chief of Police Arthur Holland (Ving Rhames), who is well aware of the corruption in the SIS unit and wants to stop it. Perry, however, twists some facts as he speaks in the defense of his new partner, Bobby Keough (Scott Speedman), who is being investigated for inappropriate use of deadly force. For lack of honest testimony, Keough is let off the hook, and soon he and Perry have a new case to investigate — a robbery at a liquor store than turned into a quadruple homicide. Perry and Keough quickly track down two likely suspects, Orchard (Kurupt) and Sidwell (Dash Mihok), but Perry is surprised when the head of SIS, Van Meter (Brendan Gleeson), tells him to let Orchard and Sidwell go, and instead points the finger at two ex-cons who should be taken off the street, even though they’re innocent of this crime. Perry follows Van Meter’s orders, despite Keough’s misgivings, but in the wake of the L.A. riots, Perry has a change of heart, and decides to start working with Holland against Van Meter’s corrupt methods. In the midst of it all, Perry is trying to hold together his troubled marriage to Sally (Lolita Davidovich), while Keough finds himself romancing a fellow officer, Beth (Michael Michele). Dark Blue was adapted from an original screenplay by noted crime novelist James Ellroy; originally set against the backdrop of the 1965 Watts riots, the story was later updated to 1992.

A workaholic architect, frustrated in his job but determined to make a better life for his family, is bestowed with a powerful universal remote that allows him more control over his life than he ever knew possible in director Frank Coraci’s high-concept fantasy comedy. On the surface, Michael Newman (Adam Sandler) seems to have it all, yet with all the demands forced upon him by his ungrateful boss (David Hasselhoff), Michael finds that setting aside time to spend with his loving wife, Donna (Kate Beckinsale), and two picture-perfect children, Ben (Joseph Castanon) and Samantha (Tatum McCann), has grown increasingly difficult. When a frustrating bout with the television remote leads the overworked husband and father to a nearby Bed, Bath & Beyond in search of a universal remote with the power to control all of his electronic devices, a curious peek into the back room leads Michael into the company of eccentric employee and talented inventor Morty (Christopher Walken). It seems that Morty has created a device that will not only allow Michael complete control over his television and stereo, but his entire life as well. As Michael discovers that the remarkable device has the power to muffle the barks of the family dog, zoom himself past an irritating quarrel with his wife, and even allow him to travel back and forth through time to different points in his life, the rush of being able to skip straight to the good parts in life soon leaves him feeling as if he’s missing out on the total experience. Only when Michael begins to realize that the he has lost control of his life and the remote is now programming him does he finally learn that life is as much about the moments he’d rather forget as it is the moments he will always remember.