Bovie Movie

The Last Emperor is the true story of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi, the last ruler of the Chinese Ching Dynasty. Told in flashback, the film covers the years 1908 to 1967. We first see the three-year-old Pu Yi being installed in the Forbidden City by ruthless, dying dowager Empress Tzu-Hsui (Lisa Lu). Though he’d prefer to lark about like other boys, the infant emperor is cossetted and cajoled into accepting the responsibilities and privileges of his office. In 1912, the young emperor (Tijer Tsou) forced to abdicate when China is declared a republic, is a prisoner in his own palace, “protected” from the outside world. Fascinated by the worldliness of his Scottish tutor (Peter O’Toole), Pu Yi plots an escape from his cocoon by means of marriage. He selects Manchu descendant Wan Jung (Joan Chen), who likewise is anxious to experience the 20th century rather than be locked into the past by tradition. Played as an adult by John Lone, Pu Yi puts into effect several social reforms, and also clears the palace of the corrupt eunuchs who’ve been shielding him from life. In 1924, an invading warlord expels the denizens of the Forbidden City, allowing Pu Yi to “westernize” himself by embracing popular music and the latest dances as a guest of the Japanese Concession in Tientsin. Six years later, his power all but gone, Pu Yi escapes to Manchuria, where he unwittingly becomes a political pawn for the now-militant Japanese government. Humiliating his faithful wife, Pu Yi falls into bad romantic company, carrying on affairs with a variety of parasitic females. During World War II, the Japanese force Pu Yi to sign a series of documents which endorse their despotic military activities. At war’s end, the emperor is taken prisoner by the Russians; while incarcerated, he is forced to fend for himself without servants at his beck and call for the first time. He is finally released in 1959 and displayed publicly as proof of the efficacy of Communist re-education. We last see him in 1967, the year of his death; now employed by the State as a gardener, Pu Yi makes one last visit to the Forbidden City…as a tourist. Bernardo Bertolucci’s first film after a six-year self-imposed exile, The Last Emperor was released in two separate versions: the 160-minute theatrical release, and a 4-hour TV miniseries. Lensed on location, the film won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

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.

The cynical son of an upper-class New York family bedeviled by booze, pills and mental illness strikes out on his own in this caustic, darkly comic drama. Igby Slocomb (Kieran Culkin) and his older brother, Oliver (Ryan Phillippe), are are in the process of killing their mother, Mimi (Susan Sarandon). Flashbacks delineate Igby’s troubled childhood: Speed-freak Mimi and her depressed husband, Jason (Bill Pullman), snipe at each other endlessly until Jason attempts suicide before Igby’s very eyes and takes up residence in a mental hospital. Igby grows into a rebellious youth, gets kicked out of several boarding schools and ends up in a hellish military academy. After one failed escape attempt, he heads to New York City and hides out in the apartment of Rachel (Amanda Peet), the heroin-addled mistress of his godfather, D.H. (Jeff Goldblum). Oliver locates the young scoundrel and informs him that Mimi is suffering from cancer. Unperturbed, Igby continues his slacker existence — and his romance with Sookie (Claire Danes), a hipper-than-thou undergraduate who finds herself torn between Igby and Oliver. As Igby gets drawn further into the mind games and hypocrisy of the adult world, his already jaded outlook grows even darker. He takes to dealing smack and hanging out with a cross-dressing performance “artist” (Jared Harris). Ultimately, though, Mimi’s impending death draws him back into the family fold for unexpected revelations and realizations. Written and directed by first-time filmmaker Burr Steers, Igby Goes Down features Rory Culkin, Kieran’s brother, as the young Igby.

The tragic aftermath of human carelessness travels around the world in this multi-narrative drama from filmmaker Alejandro Gonz?lez I??rritu. Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett) are a couple from the United States who have traveled to Morocco in Northern Africa on a vacation after the death of one of their children has sent Susan into a deep depression. Richard and Susan’s other two children have been left in the care of Amelia (Adriana Barraza), their housekeeper. Amelia is originally from Mexico, and her oldest son is getting married in Tijuana. Unable to find someone who can watch the kids, or to obtain permission to take the day off, Amelia takes the children with her as she travels across the border for the celebration. Around the same time, in Morocco a poor farmer buys a hunting rifle, and he gives it to his sons to scare off the predatory animals that have been thinning out their goat herd. The boys decide to test the weapon’s range by shooting at a bus far away; the shot hits Susan in the shoulder, and soon she’s bleeding severely, while police are convinced the attack is the work of terrorists. In Japan, Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) is a teenage deaf-mute whose mother recently committed suicide. This despairing, confused girl experiences such rage and frustration that she causes her volleyball team to lose a match, and later yanks her underwear off and begins exposing herself to boys in a crowded restaurant. Chieko’s father then struggles to reach past the emotional distance which separates him and his daughter. Babel earned Alejandro Gonz?lez I??rritu the prize for Best Director at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

Following the death of her drug-addicted mother, a whimsical young girl follows her chemically dependent father to a remote prairie house to discover a wondrous world of magical fireflies and nocturnal bog men in this hallucinatory childhood fantasy from visionary filmmaker Terry Gilliam. Noah (Jeff Bridges) is a burnt-out rock star whose post-superstar voyage to obscurity is hastened by a serious drug addiction that is also shared with his wild-eyed wife (Jennifer Tilly). When the Noah’s increasingly erratic wife suffers a fatal overdose, the faded rock star opts to escape the painful reality by retreating to a ramshackle remote home with his young daughter, Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland). Left to her own devices as her father stumbles about the grasslands in a drug-induced haze, Jeliza-Rose soon ventures into her own fantasy land before making the acquaintance of mentally challenged youth Dickens (Brendan Fletcher). As the two become fast friends and Jeliza-Rose joins the swimsuit-clad Dickens in defeating the menacing shark that traverses the nearby railways, the pair are watched over by Dickens’ black-clad sister, Dell (Janet McTeer), who acts as Dickens’ guardian and whose overly enthusiastic interest in the art of taxidermy borders on obsessive.

Satan’s son has arrived on Earth and He’s not about to let human parents get in the way. When his wife Katherine’s (Lee Remick) pregnancy ends in a stillbirth in a Rome hospital, U.S. diplomat Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) substitutes another baby, whose mother died. Little Damien (Harvey Stephens) thrives, but, at his fifth birthday party, his nanny mysteriously dies; Father Brennan (Patrick G. Troughton) also expires after warning Thorn that he has adopted Lucifer’s son. While sinister new nanny Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw) assiduously protects Damien, Thorn’s fears escalate when photographer Jennings (David Warner) shows him pictures from Damien’s party with marks suggesting how the nanny and Brennan would die. Thorn seeks out Bugenhagen (Leo McKern), an exorcist who confirms Damien’s identity and tells Thorn that the only solution is to kill his adopted son. As the bodies pile up, Thorn tries to do his duty, but trust the law to get in the way of saving the world from future Armageddon.

The second chapter in the “Bourne Trilogy,” based on Robert Ludlum’s best-selling espionage novels, reaches the screen in this sequel to the 2002 thriller The Bourne Identity. Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) has abandoned his life as a CIA assassin and has been traveling beneath the agency’s radar, eventually reconnecting with Marie Kreutz (Franka Potente), the woman he loves. But Bourne is haunted by vivid dreams and troubling memories of his days as a killer, and he’s not certain how much really happened and how much is a product of his imagination. When Bourne is led out of hiding by circumstances beyond his control, he must reconcile his past and present as he struggles to keep Marie out of harm’s way and foil an international incident with dangerous consequences. The Bourne Supremacy also features Joan Allen as one of Bourne’s superiors, while Julia Stiles and Brian Cox reprise their roles as intelligence agents from the first film.

Bobby Long (John Travolta) is a washed up former literature professor with a voracious drinking habit. He lives in a rundown house in New Orleans with Lawson Pines (Gabriel Macht of The Recruit), his former star pupil, also an alcoholic. Lawson is allegedly writing a novel about Bobby. Their depressive little corner of the world is disrupted when Lorraine, the beloved eccentric singer who owns their house, dies. Her teenage daughter, Pursy (Scarlett Johansson), who hasn’t seen her mother in years, arrives in town too late for the funeral, and crashes at the house. Afraid of being thrown out on the street, Bobby convinces Lawson to tell Pursy that the house has been left to all three of them. Pursy, having little else to do, decides to move in, and starts cleaning up the place, making it her own. Lawson is involved with Georgianna (Deborah Kara Unger), who works at the local bar, but he quickly develops a crush on the comely Pursy. The cantankerous Bobby seems determined to drive the girl away. As Pursy settles into the diverse little community, all of Lorraine’s old friends tell her how much she looks like her mother, and she begins to uncover some startling truths about her family history. A Love Song for Bobby Long is based on the novel Off Magazine Street, by Ronald Everett Capps. It was adapted for the screen and directed by Shainee Gabel, who co-directed the documentary Anthem.

When the notoriously evil Chucky doll and his lover gave birth, they had no idea that their spawn would grow up to be a peace-loving kind of guy; however, that’s exactly what Glen turns out to be: a gentle soul who is horrified at what he has been told about his family. After hearing the news of a film being made about his parents’ murderous legacy, Glen sets off for Hollywood, where he promptly brings Chucky and Tiffany back to life. Far from diving into doting fatherhood, Chucky is seriously disappointed in his son’s lack of inherent evil and tries his best to impart his vast knowledge of all things malevolent before Glen becomes some sort of do-gooder. Elsewhere, Tiffany finds that she will be played by Jennifer Tilly in their movie and doesn’t hesitate to let her son in on their family’s most cherished tradition — killing sprees. Directed by Don Mancini, Seed of Chucky features Brad Dourif returning as the voice of Chucky, while Tilly plays both herself and Tiffany. The offspring of the evil pair, Glen, is voiced by Lord of the Rings star Billy Boyd. Cult film director John Waters also makes an appearance, as does hip-hop artist Redman.

Based on the novel of the same name by Maori writer Witi Ihimaera, Whale Rider is a unique family drama directed Niki Caro. On the eastern coast of New Zealand, the Whangara people believe their ancestor Paikea was saved from drowning by riding home on the back of a whale. The tribal group has since granted leadership positions to the first-born males, believing them to be descendants of Paikea. This tradition is challenged when a young mother dies in childbirth along with her newborn male son. His twin sister manages to survive and the father (Cliff Curtis) runs off, overwhelmed with grief. The little girl, Pai (Keisha Castle-Hughes), is brought up by stubborn grandfather Koro (Rawiri Paratene) and gentle grandmother Nanny (Vicky Haughton). Koro, the chief of their tribe, is disappointed because Pai’s twin brother was supposed to be the next leader. Trying to find the proper successor, he attempts to organize a leadership group amongst the local boys while Pai enlists the help of her has-been uncle Rawiri (Grant Roa) to teach herself the art of chiefdom. She appears to possess a natural leadership ability and adventurous spirit that draws her to the proliferation of her faltering tribe. Whale Rider premiered at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival and won the World Cinema Audience Award.