Bovie Movie

In this international action thriller, Paul Racine (Christopher Lambert) is an American salesman with a computer firm who is in Japan on business. While spending an evening in a bar, he meets Kirina (Joan Chen), a beautiful but mysterious woman. Paul buys Kirina a drink, one thing leads to another, and he ends up spending the night with her. However, when Paul returns to her room to retrieve a set of keys he left behind, he discovers that Kirina is being murdered by Kinjo (John Lone), the master of a cult of bloodthirsty ninjas. Kinjo informs Karina that no one has ever seen his face and lived, so when Paul witnesses Kirina’s execution and the face Kinjo hides behind his mask, he’s a marked man. With the help of Takeda (Yoshio Harada), an experienced ninja fighter, Paul learns how to defend himself against his new adversaries as he plots a final showdown with the deadly Kinjo. The Hunted represented something of a reunion for John Lone and Joan Chen, who previously starred together in The Last Emperor.

Actor John Malkovich made his directorial debut with this tense political thriller, set in an unnamed Latin American nation and based on a novel by Nicholas Shakespeare. Agustin Rejas (Javier Bardem) is a former lawyer who became a police detective as a more direct way of dealing with crime and justice. Rejas has been assigned to investigate a group of terrorists who are determined to up-end the current government through any means necessary, from revolting pranks (such as leaving dead animals, painted with revolutionary rhetoric, around the capitol building) to bombings and assassinations. Rejas knows little about the terrorists, and no one on the force is certain of the identity or whereabouts of the group’s leader, who calls himself President Ezequiel. As Rejas learns more about Ezequiel and his group, they begin stepping up their actions, making his investigation all the more urgent. Meanwhile, Rejas is a man whose daughter is taking dance lessons from Yolanda (Laura Morante); as Rejas and Yolanda get to know one another, a romance begins to grow between them, but in time, Rejas begins to suspect that the woman he loves is working with the terrorists he’s been trying to ferret out.

Based on the 1969 short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long, by Brian Aldiss, this science fiction fantasy bears similarities to Pinocchio (1940) and originated as a long-gestating project of director Stanley Kubrick that passed to his friend Steven Spielberg after Kubrick’s death. Haley Joel Osment stars as David, a “mecha” or robot of the future, when the polar ice caps have melted and submerged many coastal cities, causing worldwide starvation and human dependence upon robotic assistance. The first mecha designed to experience love, David is the “son” of Henry (Sam Robards), an employee of the company that built the boy, and the grief-stricken Monica (Frances O’Connor). David is meant to replace the couple’s hopelessly comatose son, but when their natural child recovers, David is abandoned and sets out to become “a real boy” worthy of his mother’s affection. Along the way, David is mentored by a pleasure-providing mecha named Gigolo Joe (Jude Law) and a talking “super toy” bear named Teddy. His adventures take him to the Roman Circus-style “Flesh Fair,” where mechas are destroyed for the amusement of humans; Rouge City, where Gigolo Joe narrowly avoids capture by police; and finally a submerged New York City, where David’s creator, Professor Hobby (William Hurt) reveals the secrets of the boy’s creation. Brendan Gleeson and narrator Ben Kingsley co-star in A.I., which was adapted from Kubrick’s treatment by Spielberg, in his first crack at screenwriting since Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

The frequently recurring title characters, employed by writer and director Kevin Smith as supporting players in several of his films, are put to rest with this comedy that focuses on them exclusively. Jay (Jason Mews) and Silent Bob (Smith) are a pair of stoned New Jersey slackers who have long been used as the templates for a pair of popular comic book heroes, Bluntman and Chronic. When they learn that their alter egos are to be turned into a major motion picture without their consent or compensation, the pair sets off for Hollywood to sabotage the production. Along the way, they encounter an ape, a nun (Carrie Fisher), the cast of Scooby-Doo, a Charlie’s Angels-style band of sexy women who use them as stool pigeons in a diamond heist, and an unhinged wildlife ranger (Will Ferrell). They also meet up with some regulars from the Smith canon, including Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams), Brian O’Halloran as Dante Hicks, Jason Lee as Banky Edwards, Alanis Morissette as God, and actors Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in dual roles as themselves and two other familiar characters. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back co-stars numerous other recognizable performers in roles of various sizes, including Shannen Doherty, Jason Biggs, James Van Der Beek, Shannon Elizabeth, Tracy Morgan, Judd Nelson, Chris Rock, and George Carlin, among others.