Bovie Movie

After years of wooing director John Huston via good reviews, film critic James Agee was given a chance to write the screenplay for a Huston picture. Adapted from a novel by C.S. Forester, The African Queen stars Humphrey Bogart in his Oscar-winning portrayal of Charlie Allnut, the slovenly, gin-swilling captain of a tramp steamer called the African Queen, which ships supplies to small East African villages during World War I. Katharine Hepburn plays Rose Sayer, the maiden-lady sister of a prim British missionary (Robert Morley). When invading Germans kill the missionary and level the village, Allnut offers to take Rose back to civilization. She can’t tolerate his drinking or bad manners; he isn’t crazy about her imperious, judgmental attitude. However it does not take long before their passionate dislike turns to love. Together the disparate duo work to ensure their survival on the treacherous waters and devise an ingenious way to destroy a German gunboat. The African Queen may well be the perfect adventure film, its roller-coaster storyline complemented by the chemistry between its stars. The profound difficulties inherent in filming on location in Africa have been superbly documented by several books, including one written by Katharine Hepburn. Screenwriter Peter Viertel (who worked, on an uncredited basis, on the script of this film - assisting with some of the dialogue) incorporated some of the African Queen anecdotes in his roman a clef about a Huston-like director/adventurer, White Hunter, Black Heart.

One of a cluster of late-1970s films about the Vietnam War, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now adapts the Joseph Conrad novella Heart of Darkness to depict the war as a descent into primal madness. Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen), already on the edge, is assigned to find and deal with AWOL Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), rumored to have set himself up in the Cambodian jungle as a local, lethal godhead. Along the way Willard encounters napalm and Wagner fan Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), draftees who prefer to surf and do drugs, a USO Playboy Bunny show turned into a riot by the raucous soldiers, and a jumpy photographer (Dennis Hopper) telling wild, reverent tales about Kurtz. By the time Willard sees the heads mounted on stakes near Kurtz’s compound, he knows Kurtz has gone over the deep end, but it is uncertain whether Willard himself now agrees with Kurtz’s insane dictum to “Drop the Bomb. Exterminate them all.” Coppola himself was not certain either, and he tried several different endings between the film’s early rough-cut screenings for the press, the Palme d’Or-winning “work-in-progress” shown at Cannes, and the final 35 mm U.S. release (also the ending on the video cassette). The chaotic production also experienced shut-downs when a typhoon destroyed the set and star Sheen suffered a heart attack; the budget ballooned and Coppola covered the overages himself. These production headaches, which Coppola characterized as being like the Vietnam War itself, have been superbly captured in the documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse. Despite the studio’s fears and mixed reviews of the film’s ending, Apocalypse Now became a substantial hit and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Duvall’s psychotic Kilgore, and Best Screenplay. It won Oscars for sound and for Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography. This hallucinatory, Wagnerian project has produced admirers and detractors of equal ardor; it resembles no other film ever made, and its nightmarish aura and polarized reception aptly reflect the tensions and confusions of the Vietnam era.

The sole survivor of a Viking “dragon” vessel shipwrecked on Eastern shores of the New World fifteen years ago provides the only hope for the a Native American tribe faced with certain destruction by Norse berserkers in director Marcus Nispel’s (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) dark action adventure. Reared by the Wampanoag Tribe following a failed attempt by the Vikings to raid coastal villages for slaves, a ten year-old shipwreck survivor is nicknamed “Ghost” by his adoptive tribe due to his pale complexion and blond hair. Legend says that death and destruction will follow the boy wherever he travels, yet the peaceful people of the Wampanoag Tribe selflessly take the frightened child in as if he is one of their own. Over the course of the following decade, the adopted young Norseman eventually grows into a strong warrior (Karl Urban) determined to prove his worth to the people he calls family. When the rampaging Vikings return to the New World to rain destruction down on the Native Americans and to claim the fertile land of the peaceful people, Ghost finds himself in the precarious position of having to stop his own people from destroying his village and ruthlessly slaughtering the woman he loves (Moon Bloodgood). Now, as Ghost’s true destiny is revealed by the powerful shaman known as the Pathfinder (Russell Means), the fearless warrior sets out to stage a savage one-man war on the marauding Vikings and become the savior once prophesized to defend the Wampanoag people in their darkest hour.