Bovie Movie

The final film of stars Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe is an elegy for the death of the Old West from writer Arthur Miller and director John Huston. Gable stars as Gay Langland, an aging hand traveling the byways and working at rodeos with his two comrades, Guido (Eli Wallach) and young Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift). The three men come up with a plan to corral some misfit mustangs and sell them for dog food, but Gay’s new girlfriend Roslyn Taber (Marilyn Monroe), a high-minded ex-stripper who has just divorced her husband Ray (Kevin McCarthy) in Reno, is appalled by the plan. Although both Guido and Perce are also in love with Roslyn, she stands by Gay, sure that in the end he will do the right thing, even as he and his pals begin their planned roundup.

Jane Austen’s perennially popular story of the game of love among the British upper classes returns to the screen in this polished film adaptation. The Bennetts (Brenda Blethyn and Donald Sutherland) are the parents of five daughters near the close of the 18th century. Comfortable within their means but well short of rich, Mr. and Mrs. Bennett are looking for suitable husbands for their girls, and they are encouraged to learn that an eligible young bachelor from a wealthy family, Charles Bingley (Simon Woods), has moved into a nearby estate. Eager to see if a match can be made, the Bennetts bring their daughters Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) and Jane (Rosamund Pike) to a ball thrown by their new neighbor to see if sparks will fly. Jane seems to like Charles, and he appears to feel the same, but Elizabeth takes an immediate dislike to Darcy (Matthew MacFadyen), Charles’ egocentric best friend. While Elizabeth is infatuated with military man Lt. Wickham (Rupert Friend) and finds herself courted by William Collins (Tom Hollander), a well-meaning but drab man of the cloth, fate causes Elizabeth and Darcy to frequently cross paths, and while they don’t care for one another, they can’t stop thinking about each other, either. Pride & Prejudice also stars Jena Malone, Judi Dench, and Penelope Wilton.

Robert Altman directed this bittersweet ensemble piece about an eccentric and entangled group of family and friends living in the Deep South. Jewel Mae “Cookie” Orcutt (Patricia Neal) is the widowed matriarch of a small-town Mississippi family, which includes her nieces Camille (Glenn Close), a pretentious would-be artist staging an amateur production of Salome at a local church, and Cora Julianne Moore), her less than enthusiastic leading lady. Willis (Charles S. Dutton), the caretaker of Cookie’s rambling mansion, tries to persuade her sweet but aimless grand-niece, Emma (Liv Tyler), to move in with her, but she’s more interested in her on-again, off-again romance with local cop Jason (Chris O’Donnell). Typical of Altman’s work, Cookie’s Fortune weaves together a number of different plot lines with relaxed grace, and features an impressive cast, including Ned Beatty, Lyle Lovett, and Courtney B. Vance.

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).

Russian filmmaker Vadim Perelman makes his feature-film debut with the psychological drama House of Sand and Fog, based on the novel by Andre Dubus III. Ben Kingsley plays Massoud Amir Behrani, an Iranian immigrant living the United States. Even though he was a high-ranking official in Iran, he works several menial jobs in order to provide his wife, Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo), and his son, Esmail (Jonathan Ahdout), with an apartment in California. He buys a California bungalow, thinking he can fix it up, sell it again, and make enough money to send Esmail to college. However, the house is the legal property of former drug addict Kathy (Jennifer Connelly). After losing the house in an unfair legal dispute with the county, she is left with nowhere to go. Wanting her house back, she hires a lawyer (Frances Fisher) and befriends a police officer (Ron Eldard). Neither Kathy nor Behrani have broken the law, so they find themselves involved in a difficult moral dilemma.

A young man gets a crash course in the madness of war in this fact-based drama from director Sam Mendes. Anthony “Swoff” Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) decides to join the Marines, just like his father and his father before him, and signs on just in time to be sent to Iraq to fight in the Gulf War in 1991. After experiencing the rigors of boot camp, Swofford and his pal Troy (Peter Sarsgaard) are trained to be snipers, and under the leadership of Sgt. Sykes (Jamie Foxx) and Lt. Col. Kazinski (Chris Cooper), the two land in the middle of a desert where they’re up against an enemy they can’t always see under a blazing sun with hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. Swofford, Troy, and their fellow soldiers rely on the wits, their sense of humor, and their friendship of their brothers in arms to deal with a situation that doesn’t much resemble what they saw on television at home. Jarhead was based on the memoirs of the real-life Anthony Swofford, who did serve as a sniper in the 1991 Gulf War; the title comes from military slang for a Marine enlistee.

Directed by Charles Stone III, Mr. 3000 revolves around over-the-hill baseball star Stan Ross (Bernie Mac), who retired after making what he thought was his 3,000th base hit for the Milwaukee Brewers (i.e. the exact amount of hits it takes to qualify for the Hall of Fame). Though he shocked his teammates by quitting in the middle of the game, certain that his Hall of Fame position was in the bag, complications arise when he discovers that three of his hits during his ten-year career had been disqualified. Known as Mr. 3000, the 47-year-old, out-of-shape ball player returns to the game intending to stay only as long as it takes to get the hits he needs, but something unexpected happens along the way — he rediscovers his love for the game, and begins to serve as a mentor to one of the younger players. Mr. 3000 features Angela Bassett, Paul Sorvino, Michael Rispoli, and Evan Jones in supporting roles.

Adapted from the novel by Myla Goldberg, Bee Season tells the story of a family whose turmoil is brought to the surface by a young girl’s unexpected talent. Eleven-year-old Eliza (Flora Cross) is the invisible element of her family unit — her mother and father (played by Juliette Binoche and Richard Gere) are both consumed with work and busy avoiding their faltering marriage. Her brother, praised for musical genius, is wrapped up in his own adolescent life. Eliza ignites not only a spark that makes her visible but one that sets into motion a revolution in her family dynamic when she wins a spelling bee. Finding an emotional outlet in the power of words and in the spiritual mysticism that he sees at work in her unparalleled gift, Eliza’s father pours all of his energy into helping his daughter become spelling bee champion, further distancing himself from his wife and son. A religious studies professor, he sees the opportunity as not only a distraction from his life but as an answer to his own crisis of faith. His vicarious path to God, real or imagined, leads to an obsession with Eliza’s success and he begins teaching her secrets of the Kabbalah. Now preparing for the National Spelling Bee, and with her family spreading further and further into four separate directions, Eliza looks on as a new secret of her family’s hidden turmoil seems to be revealed with each new word she spells.