Bovie Movie

Noted theater director Sam Mendes, who was responsible for the acclaimed 1998 revival of Cabaret and Nicole Kidman’s turn in The Blue Room, made his motion picture debut with this film about the dark side of an American family, and about the nature and price of beauty in a culture obsessed with outward appearances. Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham, a man in his mid-40s going through an intense midlife crisis; he’s grown cynical and is convinced that he has no reason to go on. Lester’s relationship with his wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) is not a warm one; while on the surface Carolyn strives to present the image that she’s in full control of her life, inside she feels empty and desperate. Their teenage daughter Jane (Thora Birch) is constantly depressed, lacking in self-esteem, and convinced that she’s unattractive. Her problems aren’t helped by her best friend Angela (Mena Suvari), an aspiring model who is quite beautiful and believes that that alone makes her a worthwhile person. Jane isn’t the only one who has noticed that Angela is attractive: Lester has fallen into uncontrollable lust for her, and she becomes part of his drastic plan to change his body and change his life. Meanwhile, next door, Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper) has spent a lifetime in the Marine Corps and can understand and tolerate no other way of life, which makes life difficult for his son Ricky (Wes Bentley), an aspiring filmmaker and part-time drug dealer who is obsessed with beauty, wherever and whatever it may be. American Beauty was also the screen debut for screenwriter Alan Ball.

A mute American working on a low-budget movie runs afoul of the Russian mafia in this internationally produced thriller. Billy (Marina Zudina), a special-effects makeup artist who is unable to speak, is in Moscow working on a cheapie slasher flick directed by Andy (Evan Richards), her sister’s boyfriend. Late one night, Billy returns to the set to pick up some equipment and stumbles on what appears to be the filming of an actual snuff film. Watching, unseen, as an “actress” (Olga Tolstetskaya) is bludgeoned to death before her very eyes, Billy flees the set, pursued by the snuff film’s crew. Eventually, she escapes and tells her story to her sister, Karen (Fay Ripley), and Andy. The film crew convinces the police that it was simply some special effects that Billy witnessed, then they start a deadly cat-and-mouse game with the hapless Americans. The intrigue soon leads Billy and her friends to “The Reaper” (Alec Guinness), the shadowy financier of an entire snuff-film underground. Director Anthony Waller’s screenplay for Mute Witness began as a tale of gangsters in 1930s Chicago, but he rewrote it to take advantage of Russia’s analogous present-day climate — and the country’s cheap sets and labor. Unexpected problems, from a diptheria epidemic to unexpected fines at the customs gate, nearly sank the production. The director convinced Guinness to appear in the film several years before principal photography began; the veteran thespian was paid nothing for his scenes, which were shot in a single morning in Germany.

It’s said that most American men think about sex once every two or three minutes, but this statistic would seriously underestimate the horniness of Jim (Jason Biggs), a high school senior in suburban Michigan. Jim is thoroughly obsessed with sex, a fact of which his parents become aware when they discover him performing the sin of Onan with a gym sock while watching scrambled pay-per-view porn. Jim’s buddies Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas), Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas), and Oz (Chris Klein) are no less anxious to relieve themselves of their virginity, so they all make a pledge: they will go to bed with a woman in the three weeks before senior prom or die trying. Kevin appears to have the advantage, since he already has a girlfriend, Vicky (Tara Reid), but before he ventures into the Final Frontier, Kevin is urged to consult “The Bible,” a hand-written how-to manual possessing erotic wisdom passed down through the ages. Oz is a good-looking jock who is actually a nice guy — which is part of the problem, since he has his heart set on a nice girl, Heather (Mena Suvari), who does not seem the type to leap into bed within 21 days. Finch has no immediate prospects, though Jessica (Natasha Lyonne) is in a position to know if those rumors about him are true. And Jim is a truly hopeless case — after his attempted seduction of beautiful Czech exchange student Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth) turns out to be a disaster, he ends up going to the prom with Michelle (Alyson Hannigan), an annoyingly chatty band geek who does, however, have a fascinating story about a flute. American Pie was the directorial debut of Paul Weitz, who, along with his brother Chris Weitz (who served as producer), previously wrote several screenplays, including Antz and Madeline (where they presumably worked all their wholesome ideas out of their system).

Animal rights activists free a group of infected chimpanzees to horrifying results in this speculative sci-fi horror effort from Trainspotting director Danny Boyle. Waking from a coma in a deserted London hospital 28 days later, bicycle courier Jim (Cillian Murphy) takes to the deserted city streets in a state of mystified confusion. Joining forces with another group of survivors following a terrifying encounter in a seemingly abandoned church, Jim soon learns the truth behind the deserted streets and the menacing creatures that lurk in the shadows. It’s soon revealed that the chimpanzees had been harboring a deadly virus that sends its victims into a furious, murderous rage, and in the days following the initial exposure, the entire population was nearly wiped out due to the resulting homicidal rampage. Is there still a glimmer of hope for humanity — or has the deadly “rage” virus found its way to foreign shores and infected the entire planet?

Based on the Alberto Moravia novel, Husbands and Lovers examines a modern couple’s untraditional open marriage.

A man looking for love gets more than he bargained for when he chooses his prospective wife on the internet in this dark comedy. The manager of a bank in a small British community (Ben Chaplin) decides that he’s in need of long-term companionship, and through an on-line marriage broker called From Russia With Love, he obtains a “mail order” bride (Nicole Kidman). While he’s more than pleased that his new fianc?e is so beautiful, she turns out to have a dangerous and mysterious side that he wasn’t counting on, and things become quite complicated when two of her cousins (Vincent Cassel and Mathieu Kassovitz) arrive from Russia and move into his tiny house in St. Albans. Though set in England, Birthday Girl was actually shot in Australia, which allowed leading lady Nicole Kidman to stay in touch with her then- husband, Tom Cruise, who was shooting Mission: Impossible II in Australia at the same time.

Sean Ellis later expanded this Academy Award-nominated comedy short to feature-length. Cashback stars Sean Biggerstaff as Ben, a young man who suffers a serious case of insomnia after he ends things with his girlfriend. He takes a job at an all-night grocery store, where he discovers that he can stop time. As he walks around the frozen store, he undresses women and practices his gift for art by sketching the women. He also passes the time with his co-workers, who are a quirky bunch.

After surviving a brutal car wreck, commercial director James Ballard finds himself slowly drawn to a mysterious subculture of people who have transformed automobile accidents into erotic events. Like the J.G. Ballard novel that inspired it, David Cronenberg’s study of the sexual dimension of man’s relationship to technology was a magnet for controversy, drawing a NC-17 rating and criticism from several sources, including studio owner Ted Turner, who attempted to prevent the film’s American release. But though some have leveled charges of pornography, James’ descent into this fetishistic underworld is approached with cold, scientific detachment. Characters like Vaughn, the charismatic group leader who stages recreations of celebrity car crashes, seem more like driven researchers than sexual renegades, which is undoubtedly part of the film’s point. This impression is reinforced by the pristine cinematography by Peter Suschitzsky, which proves particularly haunting during a crucial accident scene, and Howard Shore’s superb score. Far from exploitative, Crash in fact proves less transgressive than the original novel, but is still undoubtedly not for all tastes.

For fans who thought the stakes couldn’t be raised any higher and the bar couldn’t be lowered any further, the original cast and crew of the stunt comedy sensation that swept the globe return for another round of jaw-dropping feats that are guaranteed to have viewers wincing through their laughter. Jeff Tremaine directs, and Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Chris Pontius, Steve-O, Ryan Dunn, and Jason “Wee Man” Acuna return to the screen to endure more pain and humiliation than ever thought possible on the big screen.

New Yorkers get a crash course in the more dangerous aspects of moving to the country and buying a “handyman’s special” in this thriller from award-winning director Mike Figgis. Cooper and Leah Tilson (Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone) are a wealthy couple who have grown tired of the high stress of life in New York City and are looking to move to someplace with more breathing room. Upstate, they find a mansion in the village of Cold Creek which has fallen into disrepair after it was repossessed. Convinced the house has great possibilities, The Tilsons buy it, and with a little hard work Cooper, Leah, and their two children are soon living in their dream home. Unknown to The Tilsons, the house used to belong to a lifelong Cold Creek resident named Dale Massie (Stephen Dorff), a ne’er-do-well who ended up behind bars. After he’s released from prison, Massie makes it clear to the new owners that he wants his home back, and before long Cooper and Leah begin learning the disturbing truth about the history of the mansion — and that many Cold Creek residents don’t take kindly to new arrivals. Cold Creek Manor also stars Juliette Lewis and Christopher Plummer.