Bovie Movie

Director Alex Proyas (Dark City, The Crow) helmed this sci-fi thriller inspired by the stories in Isaac Asimov’s nine-story anthology of the same name. In the future presented in the film, humans have become exceedingly dependent on robots in their everyday lives. Robots have become more and more advanced, but each one is preprogrammed to always obey humans and to, under no circumstances, ever harm a human. So, when a scientist turns up dead and a humanoid robot is the main suspect, the world is left to wonder if they are as safe around their electronic servants as previously thought. Will Smith stars as Del Spooner, the robot-hating Chicago cop assigned to the murder investigation. Bridget Moynahan, Bruce Greenwood, James Cromwell, and Chi McBride also star.

Dan Brown’s controversial best-selling novel about a powerful secret that’s been kept under wraps for thousands of years comes to the screen in this suspense thriller from director Ron Howard. The stately silence of Paris’ Louvre museum is broken when one of the gallery’s leading curators is found dead on the grounds, with strange symbols carved into his body and left around the spot where he died. Hoping to learn the significance of the symbols, police bring in Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), a gifted cryptographer who is also the victim’s granddaughter. Needing help, Sophie calls on Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), a leading symbologist from the United States. As Sophie and Robert dig deeper into the case, they discover the victim’s involvement in the Priory of Sion, a secret society whose members have been privy to forbidden knowledge dating back to the birth of Christianity. In their search, Sophie and Robert happen upon evidence that could lead to the final resting place of the Holy Grail, while members of the priory and an underground Catholic society known as Opus Dei give chase, determined to prevent them from sharing their greatest secrets with the world. Also starring Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, and Alfred Molina, The Da Vinci Code was shot on location in France and the United Kingdom; the Louvre allowed the producers to film at the famous museum, but scenes taking place at Westminster Abbey had to filmed elsewhere when church officials declined permission.

When a pair of bright-but sociopathic teens conspires to commit the perfect murder, a troubled cop teams with her eager new partner to solve the case that left the community in fear and the police without a clue. High school ladies’ man Richard Haywood (Ryan Gosling) and outcast Justin Pendleton (Michael Pitt) have no motive to commit murder, but they soon conspire to choose a random victim and pin the crime on local pot dealer Ray (Chris Penn), under the guise that the police will never suspect them of such a brutal act. Determined Det. Cassie Merriweather (Sandra Bullock) is assigned to the case, and quickly becomes suspicious of the elusive teens despite the doubts expressed by her superiors and her lack of solid evidence. Soon entering into a dangerous test of wills with the increasingly desperate and dangerous teens, her investigation leads her down a disturbing path that will test her skills as a detective and her will to survive.

A family is touched by the shadows of hatred and violence in this Australian drama adapted from a short story by Raymond Carver. Stewart (Gabriel Byrne) and Claire (Laura Linney) are a married couple in their early 40’s; Stewart runs a gas station while Claire looks after their son Tom (Sean Rees-Wemyss). Tom has been grounded for the weekend after killing a small animal with his friend Caylin (Eva Lazzaro), and Claire keeps an eye on him while Stewart goes off on a fishing trip with his pals Carl (John Howard), Rocco (Stelios Yiakmis) and Billy (Simon Stone). After arriving at their favorite fishing spot, Stewart finds the naked body of a woman floating down the river; unknown to him, Gregory (Chris Haywood), an elderly man riddled with race hatred, killed Susan (Tatea Reilly), a young woman of Aboriginal heritage, and dumped her body in the water. Believing they wouldn’t be able to drive to town to report finding the body and get back to make camp before nightfall, Stewart decides to wait until morning to contact the police, and ties a line to the corpse so it won’t float away. The next morning, Stewart and his friends decide not to spoil their trip and spend the day fishing; they don’t contact the police until after they return home on Monday. Stewart’s callous actions cast an ugly light on himself, his friends and his family, and Claire finds herself implicated in the crime through Stewart’s poor judgment. Named for an Aborigine word for a valley, Jindabyne received its world premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

James Cox directs the sleazy Hollywood murder tale Wonderland, starring Val Kilmer as legendary porn star John Holmes. Using a non-linear plot structure, the film explores different perspectives of the quadruple homicide that occurred on July 1, 1981, in the Hollywood Hills. At the lowest point of his career and the height of his drug addiction, Holmes was implicated in the murders of the Wonderland gang: Ron Launius (Josh Lucas), Billy Deverell (Tim Blake Nelson), Barbara Richardson (Natasha Gregson Wagner), and Joy Miller (Janeane Garofalo). Launius’ wife, Susan (Christina Applegate), was the only survivor. Led by Detective Sam Nico (Ted Levine), the police investigation reveals a dark criminal underworld surrounding Holmes, his disapproving wife, Sharon (Lisa Kudrow), and his innocent teenage girlfriend, Dawn Schiller (Kate Bosworth). Eric Bogosian stars as notorious Hollywood nightclub owner Eddie Nash. Wonderland premiered at the 2003 Toronto Film Festival.

When a motorcycle-riding stuntman offers his soul to Mephistopheles in order to save the life of the one he loves most, he is forced to play host to a powerful supernatural entity whose flaming skull visage strikes fear into the heart of his enemies in this feature-film version of the long-running comic series. By day, Johnny Blaze (actor and comic-book devotee Nicolas Cage) is one of the world’s best-known stuntmen, but when the sun goes down and he is in the presence of evil, the death-defying daredevil bursts into flames to become the indestructible, motorcycle-riding antihero known to the world as the Ghost Rider.

Director David Fincher’s dark, stylish thriller ranks as one of the decade’s most influential box-office successes. Set in a hellish vision of a New York-like city, where it is always raining and the air crackles with impending death, the film concerns Det. William Somerset (Morgan Freeman), a homicide specialist just one week from a well-deserved retirement. Every minute of his 32 years on the job is evident in Somerset’s worn, exhausted face, and his soul aches with the pain that can only come from having seen and felt far too much. But Somerset’s retirement must wait for one last case, for which he is teamed with young hotshot David Mills (Brad Pitt), the fiery detective set to replace him at the end of the week. Mills has talked his reluctant wife, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), into moving to the big city so that he can tackle important cases, but his first and Somerset’s last are more than either man has bargained for. A diabolical serial killer is staging grisly murders, choosing victims representing the seven deadly sins. First, an obese man is forced to eat until his stomach ruptures to represent gluttony, then a wealthy defense lawyer is made to cut off a pound of his own flesh as penance for greed. Somerset initially refuses to take the case, realizing that there will be five more murders, ghastly sermons about lust, sloth, pride, wrath, and envy presented by a madman to a sinful world. Somerset is correct, and something within him cannot let the case go, forcing the weary detective to team with Mills and see the case to its almost unspeakably horrible conclusion. The moody photography is by Darius Khondji; the nauseatingly vivid special effects are by makeup artist Rob Bottin, best known for more fantasy-oriented work in films like The Howling (1981).

A hard-nosed star reporter learns who her real friends are — and gets in way over her head — investigating a murder in this twisty thriller. Perfect Stranger stars Halle Berry as Rowena, a prominent New York journalist who writes using a pseudonym to entrap some of the tri-state area’s most corrupt individuals, using a network of informants, acquaintances, and digital gadgets. When her latest expos? is buried at the behest of her paper’s corporate backers, she walks off the job and into a personal quagmire. Her childhood friend Grace (Nicki Aycox) is murdered when she threatens to reveal she’s been sleeping with married advertising mogul Harrison Hill (Bruce Wills). With the help of her loyal techie friend Miles (Giovanni Ribisi), she goes undercover — and online — to find the smoking gun that will indict Hill. But Rowena soon finds herself caught in a web of manipulation, deceit, and false truths.

Famed poet Gu Cheng travels from his native China to the beautiful shores of New Zealand, searching for beauty and innocence. What he finds, however, is a twisted tumult of human emotion when he is loved by two different women. What began as a search for renewed life ends in murder and jealousy in this film based on a true story.

The assassination of the most powerful leader in the free world is examined in this controversial mockumentary from British filmmaker Gabriel Range. On October 19, 2007, president George W. Bush is visiting Chicago when he impulsively stops to shake hands with supporters en route to a meeting, while a throng of protesters demonstrate nearby. Shots ring out, and Bush is fatally wounded. As America and its allies deal with the tragic loss of their leader, vice president Dick Cheney is sworn in as the new chief executive, and while he takes the reigns of the nation and pushes new and aggressive anti-terrorism legislation through Congress, the Federal Bureau of Investigation steps into action to track down the gunman. As Secret Service agents and law enforcement officers share their thoughts on how the murder of the president could have been avoided, and people around the globe discuss how Bush’s death has tipped the delicate balance of relations between the United States and the Middle East, a Syrian Muslim activist living in Chicago, Jamal Abu Zikri (Malik Bader), is charged with the murder of the president. While no “smoking gun” connects Zikri to the crime, a wealth of circumstantial evidence points to him as the gunman, and he’s tried, found guilty, and executed in short order. However, lingering questions persist as some wonder if the F.B.I. found the right man with the right motives. Created using a combination of newsreel footage, computer-generated images, and newly staged material, Death of a President (aka D.O.A.P.) received the International Critics Prize at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival, despite negative reaction from many American political commentators, many of whom were deeply offended by the film’s depiction of the assassination of Bush, the sitting U.S. president at the time of the picture’s production and release.