Bovie Movie

After parodying the blaxploitation films of the 1970s in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, Keenen Ivory Wayans takes aim at slasher films of the 1980s and 1990s in this raunchy satire, which was produced under the clumsy but inarguably appropriate title Scream If You Know What I Did Last Halloween. As you might expect, a group of teenagers — not-terribly-bright Buffy (Shannon Elizabeth), her best friend Brenda (Regina Hall), stoner Shorty (Marlon Wayans), fey football player Ray (Shawn Wayans), loudmouthed Greg (Lochlyn Munro), sexually overexcited Bobby (Jon Abrahams), and his prim girlfriend Cindy (Anna Faris) — are on the run from a maniacal killer who is looking for revenge after the kids accidentally kill a man following an auto accident. They also find themselves having to contend with intrusive reporter Gail Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri) and eccentric high school principal Squiggly (David L. Lander). Incidentally, the title Scary Movie is something of an inside joke: it was the working title for Scream, the movie that kick-started the mid-’90s slasher film revival.

Filmmaker Larry Clark reunites with Kids screenwriter Harmony Korine, with some additional directorial assistance from cinematographer Ed Lachman, for this look at a group of troubled teens and their guardians living in Southern California. Ken Park takes its name from the skate park where an ancillary character takes his own life in the film’s opening moments, and then proceeds to chronicle the somewhat-interrelated lives of his classmates. The audience is introduced to Tate (James Ransome), a young man living in relative misery with his board-game-playing grandparents. Also tormented by his living situation is Claude (Stephen Jasso), a quiet, shy teen constantly henpecked by his brutish father (Wade Andrew Williams). Meanwhile, the vapid Shawn (James Bullard) occasionally trades verbal spars with his mother, in between leaving the house for sex sessions with his girlfriend’s mom. Finally there is Peaches (Tiffany Limos), living alone with her devoutly religious father as she covertly experiments with her boyfriend (Mike Apaletegui). Though Ken Park played at such festivals as Toronto and Telluride in the fall of 2002, it would languish on the shelf for months and months afterward, as its explicit content made finding a U.S. distributor near-impossible.

A recently widowed eccentric with money to burn and no intentions of settling down enlists the aide of a showbiz professional to transform a run-down theater in Soho into London’s most innovative entertainment hot spot in director Stephen Frears’ cinematic account of the groundbreaking Windmill Theater. The year is 1937 and, despite having recently lost her husband, 69-year-old Laura Henderson (Judy Dench) remains as ambitious and vital as ever. Aghast at her friend Lady Conway’s (Thelma Barlow) suggestion that she take up a mundane hobby such as diamond collecting to pass the time, Mrs. Henderson instead shocks her well-to-do social circle by purchasing the ramshackle Windmill Theater in the heart of downtown Soho. Unafraid to take a risk in the venture, yet lacking the experience needed to run the theater, Mrs. Henderson brings in showbiz veteran Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins) to line up an opening act that will set the stage ablaze. When the ever-curious Mrs. Henderson’s intrusive spying begins to impede on Mr. Van Damm’s creative progress, the frustrated theater manager has her banished from rehearsals. Though Van Damm’s innovative idea to stage an unending stream of entertainment dubbed “Revudeville” proves a wild and profitable success, the Windmill begins to suffer when other local theaters quickly follow suit. Now faced with the prospect of seeing her once-lucrative endeavor fall by the wayside due to the unoriginality of the copycats who surround her, Mrs. Henderson decides to show audiences something they’ve never seen before by making the Windmill the first theater to feature nude female entertainers live on-stage.

They’ve kept television viewers laughing for nearly 20 years, and now the most popular animated family on the small screen makes the leap into theaters as Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bart, ad Maggie embark on their first-ever feature-length adventure. Directed by David Silverman and written by a whole host of Simpsons veterans including Matt Groening and James L. Brooks, The Simpsons Movie also features special guest appearances by Albert Brooks among others.

This thriller takes place in Blue Bay, Florida, where social-climbing guidance counselor Sam Lombardo (Matt Dillon) is indifferent to teen-socialite Kelly Van Ryan (Denise Richards), who retaliates by accusing him of rape, an accusation that leads to his suspension by the school and a rejection from the country club. He can’t afford a big attorney, so he hires shrewd Ken Bowden (Bill Murray), while Kelly’s mom, Sandra Van Ryan (Theresa Russell), Sam’s former lover, gets a platoon of top lawyers. Trailer-trash Suzie Toller (Neve Campbell) backs up Kelly’s claim and additional plot twists and turns develop. The seldom-seen Carrie Snodgrass (Diary of a Mad Housewife) has a supporting role in this film.

A late-career change of heart leads to a dangerous life on the run for two seasoned assassins whose complex relationship masks a dark past in director Lee Daniels’ pulpy film noir. When Mickey (Cuba Gooding Jr.) was just a child, his abusive father savagely murdered the young boy’s mother shortly before being gunned down by Rose (Helen Mirren), Mickey’s stepmother. Twenty years later, Mickey and Rose are not only working together as hired killers, but they have grown to become lovers as well. When Rose discovers she is dying of terminal cancer and becomes addicted to morphine, her conscience soon prompts her to reevaluate her murderous ways. Assigned the task of taking out Vickie (Vanessa Ferlito), the wife of local crime boss Clayton (Stephen Dorff), Mickey and Rose are unable to complete their mission upon discovering that Vickie is pregnant. With the tragedy of the past threatening to lock Mickey, Rose, and their reluctant charge into a tragic cycle of death and deceit, the reluctant killers attempt to make amends for their violent past by protecting Vickie’s unborn child and allowing Rose one last chance at redemption.

A portrait of a cold-blooded young gangster living and loathing in 1960s London, this drama features Malcolm McDowell in a major role in his first British picture in years. McDowell opens the film as the present day Gangster 55, who learns that an old associate, gangster Freddie Mays (David Thewlis), has just been released from prison after serving a 30-year sentence. The story then flashes back to 1968, when the young Gangster 55 (Paul Bettany) makes Mays’ acquaintance and subsequently wins his trust by dealing with his enemies from a rival gang. The relationship between the two men is threatened when Mays falls for Karen (Saffron Burrows), a no-nonsense dancer. When 55 learns that Lennie (Jamie Foreman), a rival gang leader, plans to ambush Mays and Karen one night, he pits the two gangs against one another so that he can emerge as Gangster No. 1. The film was directed by Paul McGuigan, who previously examined the crusty underbelly of British society with his screen adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s The Acid House (1998).

This is probably Peter Greenaway’s most famous (or infamous) film, which first shocked audiences at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and then on both sides of the Atlantic. A gang leader (Michael Gambon), accompanied by his wife (Helen Mirren) and his associates, entertains himself every night in a fancy French restaurant that he has recently bought. Having tired of her sadistic, boorish husband, the wife finds herself a lover (Alan Howard) and makes love to him in the restaurant’s coziest places with the silent permission of the cook (Richard Bohringer). Though less cerebral than Greenaway’s other films, featuring deadly passions reminiscent of Jacobean revenge tragedies of the early 17th century, the picture still offers the director’s usual ironic and paradoxical comments on the relations between eating and sex, love and death. The film is at once funny and horrific, and those who are not used to Greenaway’s peculiar style might be even disgusted or shocked; however, one might mention Sacha Vierny’s brilliant camerawork, Jean-Paul Gaultier’s gaudily stylized costumes, and Michael Nyman’s somber, pulsating music, which will haunt the viewer long after the film’s end.

Director Kevin MacDonald teams with screenwriter Jeremy Brock to adapt Giles Foden’s novel detailing the brutal reign of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin as seen through the eyes of his personal physician. James McAvoy stars as the doctor who slowly realizes that he is trapped in an inescapable nightmare, and Forest Whitaker assumes the role of the notorious despot.

“How did they make a movie out of Lolita?” teased the print ads of this Stanley Kubrick production. The answer: by adding three years to the title character’s age. The original Vladimir Nabokov novel caused no end of scandal by detailing the romance between a middle-aged intellectual and a 12-year-old nymphet. The affair is “cleansed” ever so slightly in the film by making Lolita a 15-year-old (portrayed by 16-year-old Sue Lyon). In adapting his novel to film, Nabokov downplayed the wicked satire and sensuality of the material, concentrating instead on the story’s farcical aspects. James Mason plays professor Humbert Humbert, who while waiting to begin a teaching post in the United States rents a room from blowzy Shelley Winters. Winters immediately falls for the worldly Humbert, but he only has eyes for his landlady’s nubile daughter Lolita. The professor goes so far as to marry Winters so that he can remain near to the object of his ardor. Turning up like a bad penny at every opportunity is smarmy TV writer Quilty (Peter Sellers), who seems inordinately interested in Humbert’s behavior. When Winters happens to read Humbert’s diary, she is so revolted by his lustful thoughts that she runs blindly into the street, where she is struck and killed by a car. Without telling Lolita that her mother is dead, Humbert packs her into the car and goes on a cross-country trip, dogged every inch of the way by a mysterious pursuer. Once she gets over the shock of her mother’s death, Lolita is agreeable to inaugurating an affair with her stepfather (this is handled very, very discreetly, despite the slavering critical assessments of 1962). But when the girl begins discovering boys her own age, she drifts away from Humbert. One day, she leaves without warning. This is humiliation enough for Humbert; but when he discovers who her secret lover really is, the results are fatal. We are prepared for the ending because the film has been framed as a flashback; what we are not prepared for is Stanley Kubrick’s adroit manipulation of our sympathies and expectations. An incredibly long film considering its subject matter, Lolita is never dull, nor does it ever stoop to the sensationalism prevalent in the film’s ad campaign.