Bovie Movie

In the final episode of the Star Wars saga, Han Solo (Harrison Ford) emerges intact from the carbonite casing in which he’d been sealed in The Empire Strikes Back. The bad news is that Solo, together with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), is prisoner to the grotesque Jabba the Hutt. But with the help of the charismatic Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), our heroes and our heroine manage to escape. The next task is to rid the galaxy of Darth Vader (body by David Prowse, voice by James Earl Jones) and the Emperor (Ian McDiarmid), now in command of a new, under-construction Death Star. On the forest moon Endor, the good guys enlist the help of a feisty bunch of bear-like creatures called the Ewoks in their battle against the Empire.

After creating an international sensation with the visually dazzling and intellectually challenging sci-fi blockbuster The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers returned with the first of two projected sequels that pick up where the first film left off. Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) have been summoned by Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) to join him on a voyage to Zion, the last outpost of free human beings on Earth. Neo and Trinity’s work together has been complicated by the fact the two are involved in a serious romantic relationship. Upon their arrival in Zion, Morpheus locks horns with rival Commander Lock (Harry J. Lennix) and encounters his old flame Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith). Meanwhile, Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) has returned with some surprises for Neo, most notably the ability to replicate himself as many times as he pleases. Neo makes his way to The Oracle (Gloria Foster), who informs him that if he wishes to save humankind, he must unlock “The Source,” which means having to release The Key Maker (Randall Duk Kim) from the clutches of Merovingian (Lambert Wilson). While Merovingian refuses to cooperate, his wife, Persephone (Monica Bellucci), angry at her husband’s dalliances with other women, offers to help, but only in exchange for a taste of Neo’s affections. With The Keymaker in tow, Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus are chased by Merovingian’s henchmen: a pair of deadly albino twins (Neil Rayment and Adrian Rayment). Filmed primarily in Australia and California (the extended chase scene was shot on a stretch of highway build specifically for the production outside of San Francisco), The Matrix Reloaded was produced in tandem with the third film in the series, The Matrix Revolutions.

A band of renegades on the run in outer space get in more hot water than they anticipated in this sci-fi action-adventure adapted from the television series Firefly. In the 26th century, the galaxy has been colonized by a military force known as the Alliance, but its leadership has not gone unquestioned. The Alliance was once challenged by a league of rebels known as the Independents, but the Alliance emerged victorious after a brutal civil war, with the surviving Independents scattering around the galaxy. Also wandering the edges of the galaxy are the Reavers, who have won few allies due to their violent behavior and habit of ripping apart their enemies and eating them before they’re dead. Capt. Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), who fought as an Independent in the galactic war, is the head of Serenity, a rogue frieghter ship whose crew includes Mal’s first mate, Zoe (Gina Torres), who fought alongside him in the war, her husband, hotshot pilot Wash (Alan Tudyk), sunny but dependable mechanic Kaylee (Jewel Staite), and hard-nosed gunman Jayne (Adam Baldwin). The crew of Serenity wander the galaxy, taking on whatever work they can get, from criminal activities like smuggling and stealing to legitimately offering transport to travelers. Passengers aboard Serenity include professional “companion” Inara (Morena Baccarin) and holy man Shepherd Book (Ron Glass), but the real trouble aboard the ship comes with the arrival of Simon (Sean Maher) and his teenage sister, River Tam (Summer Glau). In time, the crew discovers that River has remarkable psychic powers and was being held captive by Alliance forces until Simon came to her rescue. Now the Alliance is hot on the heels of Serenity and its passengers, with The Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a sinister Alliance tracker, leading the chase. Serenity was written and directed by Joss Whedon (in his directorial debut), creator of Firefly, which only lasted 11 weeks on the air but gained a powerful cult following who rallied to get the show released on DVD after its cancellation, leading to impressive home-video sales and and an eventual motion picture deal. A couple of months prior to Serenity’s theatrical release, reruns of Firefly were picked up by the Sci-Fi channel, adding even more fans to its cult following.

At the end of Highlander, Juan Ramirez (Sean Connery) died and Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) was rendered mortal. “Highlander 2: The Quickening begins in 1999 when Connor solves the problem of an ever-depleting ozone layer on the earth by devising a giant shield around the entire planet. The earth is saved, except for the fact that it is now a continual 99 degrees, and the earth is plunged into 24 hours of darkness. 40 years later, Connor is an elderly man with liver spots, heading out for the opera. Then there is a flashback of Connor recalling his halcyon days on the planet Zeist hundreds of years earlier. Back on Zeist, Connor and Ramirez led a futile coup against the ruling dictator, Katana (Michael Ironside), that caused them to be banished to Earth. Back in the future, Katana sends a pair of wacky goons to kill Connor. When Connor lops off their heads, he is now young again…and immortal. Just the right time to meet the attractive scientist Louise Marcus (Virginia Madsen), who has discovered that the shield around the earth is no longer needed since the ozone layer has repaired itself. But, unfortunately, the shield is in the clutches of an evil cartel who wants to control the earth’s resources. Connor and Louise team up to battle the cartel while Katana sends out more emissaries to get Connor. Ramirez, although supposedly dead, also makes an appearance in the 21st century — garbed in full Scottish regalia.

Perhaps the most highly anticipated film of 2003, Kill Bill Vol. 1 marked the return of renowned filmmaker Quentin Tarantino after a six-year hiatus. Re-teaming the director with Uma Thurman for the first time since 1994’s Pulp Fiction, the film was originally the first half of what was to be a three-hour-plus movie before being split into two films. Thurman stars as The Bride, one-fifth of a team of assassins called DiVAS. When The Bride opts to leave the outfit for a life of marital bliss, it doesn’t sit well with her boss, Bill (David Carradine), so he has her former cohorts, played by Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, and Michael Madsen, show up at the nuptials, leaving behind a blood bath. Miraculously, The Bride survives a bullet to the head and, four years later, she sets out for revenge against her four assassins and their employer. The story is concluded in Kill Bill Vol. 2, released six months later.

Driver and muscle for hire Frank Martin returns in this sequel to the 2002 box-office hit. Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is a former special-forces officer who will transport anything anywhere for a price, and his latest assignment is acting as chauffeur for Jack Billings (Hunter Clary), the young son of politician Jefferson Billings (Matthew Modine), who has garnered no small amount of controversy for his aggressive efforts to stamp out the trade in illegal drugs. One day, Frank is to take Jack to the doctor for a checkup while his mother, Audrey (Amber Valletta), sets up a birthday party for the tyke. However, Jack’s doctor is not who he appears to be — he’s actually Dimitri (Jason Flemyng), a Russian agent well versed in viruses who works with criminal kingpin Gianni (Alessandro Gassman). After a long and hard-fought chase with Frank, the bad guys get ahold of little Jack and hold him for ransom. The parents comply with their monetary demands and soon have their son back at home — but little do they know that the boy has secretly been injected with a deadly and easily spread virus, which the terrorists hope to spread to the boy’s powerful father and other politicians whom Jefferson will soon be addressing at a public event. When Frank learns what has happened to young Jack, he sets out to find the culprits — and the antidote that will save the boy and all others who have been exposed to the virus from dying a painful death — though his foes have stacked the deck so that it looks as if Frank has been complicit in the crime.

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.

Quentin Tarantino’s sprawling homage to action films of both the East and the West reaches its conclusion in this continuation of 2003’s ultra-violent Kill Bill Vol. 1. Having dispatched several of her arch-enemies in the first film, The Bride (Uma Thurman) continues in Kill Bill Vol. 2 on her deadly pursuit of her former partners in the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, who, in a furious assault, attempted to murder her and her unborn child on her wedding day. As The Bride faces off against allies-turned-nemeses Budd (Michael Madsen) and Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), she flashes back to the day of her deadly wedding, and we learn of how she was recruited to join the DiVAS, her training under unforgiving martial arts master Pai Mei (Liu Chia-hui), and her relationship with Squad leader Bill (David Carradine), which changed from love to violent hatred. Originally planned as a single film, Kill Bill grew into an epic-scale two-part project totaling more than four hours in length; as with the first film, Kill Bill Vol. 2 includes appearances by genre-film icons Sonny Chiba, Michael Parks, Larry Bishop, and Sid Haig; Wu-Tang Clan producer and turntablist RZA and filmmaker and composer Robert Rodriguez both contributed to the musical score.

Outrageously violent, time-twisting, and in love with language, Pulp Fiction was widely considered the most influential American movie of the 1990s. Director and co-screenwriter Quentin Tarantino synthesized such seemingly disparate traditions as the syncopated language of David Mamet; the serious violence of American gangster movies, crime movies, and films noirs mixed up with the wacky violence of cartoons, video games, and Japanese animation; and the fragmented story-telling structures of such experimental classics as Citizen Kane, Rashomon, and La jet?e. The Oscar-winning script by Tarantino and Roger Avary intertwines three stories, featuring Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta, in the role that single-handedly reignited his career, as hit men who have philosophical interchanges on such topics as the French names for American fast food products; Bruce Willis as a boxer out of a 1940s B-movie; and such other stalwarts as Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Christopher Walken, Eric Stoltz, Ving Rhames, and Uma Thurman, whose dance sequence with Travolta proved an instant classic.

Based on J.G. Ballard’s autobiographical novel, Empire of the Sun stars Christian Bale as a spoiled young British boy, living with his wealthy family in pre-World War II Shanghai. During the Japanese invasion, Bale is separated from his parents. With the help of soldier-of-fortune John Malkovich, Bale learns to survive without a retinue of servants at his beck and call. By the time Malkovich and Bale are tossed into a Japanese prison camp, the boy has picked up enough street-smarts and developed enough intestinal fortitude to regard his imprisonment as an exciting adventure. The story ends during the 1945 liberation: on the verge of manhood, the 13-year-old Bale will never again be the pampered, privileged brat whom we met in the early scenes.