Bovie Movie

This film is based on an innovative short film made for MTV about a guy living in a horrible downtown apartment filled with scores of mischievous, smart-alecky roaches. The story chronicles the adventures of Joe (Jerry O’Connell), a hapless rube from the rural Midwest who journeys to the wilds of New York City. Mugged repeatedly on his arrival, his luck seems to turn when he finds an affordable apartment in a very dubious neighborhood. Unfortunately, his landlord (Don Ho) is more interested in evicting or, if need be, murdering his tenants, so that the building can be turned into a (highly profitable) penitentiary. Joe finds the allies he needs in his apartment’s cockroaches, who sing and dance their way into his heart. This film should be of interest for fans of 1930s musicals; it makes reference to Busby Berkeley’s elaborate dance phantasmagorias and the odd water ballets of Esther Williams. Many of the scenes utilized real roaches who were “choreographed” via tiny filament harnesses and other devices. Animal rights activists will be pleased to note that no roaches were intentionally harmed during filming.

Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson star as a quartet of Manhattan-based “paranormal investigators”. When their government grants run out, the former three go into business as The Ghostbusters, later hiring Hudson on. Armed with electronic paraphernalia, the team is spectacularly successful, ridding The Big Apple of dozens of ghoulies, ghosties and long-legged beasties. Tight-lipped bureaucrat William Atherton regards the Ghostbusters as a bunch of charlatans, but is forced to eat his words when New York is besieged by an army of unfriendly spirits, conjured up by a long-dead Babylonian demon and “channelled” through beautiful cellist Sigourney Weaver and nerdish Rick Moranis. The climax is a glorious sendup of every Godzilla movie ever made-and we daresay it cost more than a year’s worth of Japanese monster flicks combined. Who’d ever dream that the chubby, cheery Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man would turn out to be the most malevolent threat ever faced by New York City? When the script for Ghostbusters was forged by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, John Belushi was slated to play the Bill Murray role; Belushi’s death in 1982 not only necessitated the hiring of Murray, but also an extensive rewrite. The most expensive comedy made up to 1984, Ghostbusters made money hand over fist, spawning not only a 1989 sequel but also two animated TV series (one of them partially based on an earlier live-action TV weekly, titled The Ghost Busters.

The first effort from director Wes Anderson since his critically beloved The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou finds the filmmaker re-teaming with a number of familiar faces, including Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, and Seymour Cassel. Murray plays Steve Zissou, an eccentric and renowned oceanographer who has decided to seek out and enact mortal revenge on a shark that ate one of the men on his team. Along for the ride is Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), a young man who has joined Zissou’s crew after showing up claiming to be the seaman’s long-lost son and Zissou’s co-producer (and estranged wife), Eleanor Angelica Huston. As the expedition ensues, the two bond and Plimpton falls for a female journalist (Cate Blanchett) who is writing a piece on Zissou. The crew meets a host of obstacles on their journey, including pirates, kidnapping, and bankruptcy. Adding a flair of whimsy to the film’s aesthetic, the sea creatures and underwater scenes in the film have been created using stop-motion animation under the direction of Henry Selick, the man behind The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. The ensemble cast also includes Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Noah Taylor, and Bud Cort.

The Witches of Eastwick, a memorable comedy with a dark edge, is based upon a novel by John Updike. On Thursday nights three female friends — Alex (Cher), Sukie (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Jane (Susan Sarandon) — meet to chug martinis, learn Chinese aphrodisiac cooking and lament the scarcity of eligible men. As they sit around, they fantasize about and describe their idea of the ideal male. Arriving in town the following day is Satan, disguised as mysterious stranger Darrell Van Horn (Jack Nicholson). One by one, Van Horne seduces each of the women. Then, strange things begin to happen. When the town matriarch Felicia (Veronica Cartwright) publicly denounces Van Horne, she sustains a nasty compound fracture. When she forces her editor husband to publish a story about Van Horne’s sexual antics, Darrell gets his revenge with revoltingly large amounts of cherries. The women now see that they may be in danger and begin to plot their escape.