Bovie Movie

Leftist filmmaker Ken Loach directs this grim drama about the plight of seemingly invisible office cleaners in contemporary L.A. who often earn as little as $6 a day without benefits. The film opens as Maya (Pilar Padilla), a young Mexican lass, is reuniting with her older sister Rosa (Elpidia Carrilio) in L.A. after a harrowing cross-border journey. Rosa sets her sister up first with a job as a barmaid, which Maya soon quits after getting repeatedly groped — and then as a janitor. When her boss demands one month’s salary as “commission,” Maya happens upon Sam Shapiro (Adrien Brody), a muckraking lawyer and union agitator. This film, which was screened in competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, is remarkable for its prescience — it was shown a month after a massive janitor’s strike ground L.A.’s business community to a halt.

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.

Tom Jones director Tony Richardson might seem a curious choice to direct the contemporary western The Border, but he does his best to emulate Sam Peckinpah. Jack Nicholson stars as an El Paso border guard, saddled with avaricious wife Valerie Perrine. Hoping to stifle her nagging about money matters, Nicholson begins accepting payoffs to allow Mexican aliens to cross the border without interference. This leads to a relationship with a young Mexican mother Elpidia Carillo. Harvey Keitel and Warren Oates lend strong support to this atmospheric tale.

Director Budd Boetticher wrote the story upon which this comic Western was based. Clint Eastwood stars as Hogan, a tough cowboy who rescues a woman, Sara (Shirley Maclaine) as she’s about to be attacked by a trio of rapists. Surprised to learn that his new traveling companion is a nun, Hogan agrees to escort her to a camp occupied by anti-French revolutionaries. It turns out that neither of this pair is what they claim to be: Hogan is to scout out a French military garrison for a future attack, while Sara is actually a prostitute masquerading as a nun. After Hogan spies Sara smoking cigars and drinking whiskey, he begins to figure out she’s not a bride of Christ, and the two team up with the Juaristas to destroy the French fortifications.

Thrown out of the house by his wife Eva (Trudie Styler), Gene (Gregg Henry) finds an inventive way to get revenge. Traveling out to the desert, Gene purchases a deadly mamba snake and sets it loose in their apartment, locking his wife in with the creature. A lethal game of hide-and-seek ensues as Gene watches the action from a cleverly configured monitoring system.

Veteran screen star Tommy Lee Jones makes his directorial debut with the fractured tale of murder and injustice on the U.S.-Mexico border scripted by Amores perros and 21 Grams screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga. Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) is a fresh-faced Border Patrol officer in Cibolo County, Texas whose dedication to his new job leaves his lonely wife Lou Ann (January Jones) with little to do but spend her days at the local diner, where she strikes up a friendship with waitress Rachel (Melissa Leo). Despite her own status as a married woman, Rachel is unfulfilled in her marriage and is intimately involved with both rugged rancher Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) and local Sherrif Belmont (Dwight Yoakam). Soon after Pete hires Mexican illegal Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cesar Cedillo) as a ranch hand, the growing bond between the pair is suddenly shattered when, in a moment of panic on a routine patrol, Mike hastily guns down the innocent Melquaides. When an enraged Pete learns that Mike had unceremoniously buried the illegal immigrant in an unmarked desert grave and local authorities opt to overlook the case, he kidnaps the crooked lawman and sets out to ensure that justice is served with or without the involvement of the local police force.

A group of wanna-be filmmakers and actors concocts a scheme to make a movie with a major star without having to pay him in this comedy. Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin) has struggled for years to make it in Hollywood with no real success; he’s convinced that he has to make his big break soon or it will be too late. Bobby has a script, and he has a cast, including an ingenue straight off the bus from Ohio (Heather Graham), a one-time regional stage star who fondly recalls her brief moment of glory (Christine Baranski), and a hunky aspiring matinee idol (Kohl Sudduth). He also has a young associate named Dave (Jamie Kennedy), who has a low-level job at a movie studio as a gofer — which means that he has keys to every part of the lot and can “borrow” whatever they need. All they need is a star, but without any money, how do they get one? Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) is a leading action star, and he is obviously beyond Bowfinger’s budget. But Bobby has an idea: what if he tricked Kit into appearing in the film without his knowing it? Steve Martin also wrote the film’s screenplay, and former Muppets performer Frank Oz directs.

Marking the directorial debut of Sergio Arau, son of Like Water for Chocolate director Alfonso Arau, A Day Without a Mexican ponders the potentially catastrophic results that would occur if California-based Mexicans, who make up over a third of the state’s population, were to suddenly disappear. The mockumentary postulates that the lack of Latino gardeners, nannies, cooks, policeman, maids, teachers, farm workers, construction crews, entertainers, athletes, and the world’s largest growing consumer market would create a social, political, and economic disaster, leaving the concept of the “California Dream” in shambles. A Day Without a Mexican proved controversial even before its release: promotional billboards reading “On May 14th, there will be no Mexicans in California” caused a stir with immigrant rights groups, who believed the sign was a statement against the Latino community. The film stars Yareli Arizmendi, John Getz, Maureen Flannigan, and Muse Watson.