Bovie Movie

In Paul Verhoeven’s wild sci-fi action movie Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a 21st-century construction worker who discovers that his entire memory of the past derives from a memory chip implanted in his brain. Schwarzenegger learns that he’s actually a secret agent who had become a threat to the government, so those in power planted the chip and invented a domestic lifestyle for him. Once he has realized his true identity, he travels to Mars to piece together the rest of his identity, as well as to find the man responsible for his implanted memory. Verhoeven has created a fast, furious action film with Total Recall, filled with impressive stunts and (literally) eye-popping visuals. Though the film bears only a passing resemblance to the Philip K. Dick short story it was based on (”We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”), the movie is an entertaining, if very violent, ride.

An old and forgotten game develops magical powers in this fantasy for the whole family. Twelve-year-old Walter Budwing (Josh Hutcherson) and his younger brother, Danny (Jonah Bobo), figure they’re going to be in for a boring time when their father (Tim Robbins), who was supposed to spend the day with them, is suddenly called away on business, and gives them strict orders not to leave the house. Walter, who doesn’t have much use for Danny, is motivated by boredom more than anything else when he agrees to play a board game Danny has found in the basement during a round of hide-and-seek. However, the boys quickly discover the space-themed game Zathura has some unusual qualities — a roll of the dice unexpectedly launches the Budwing home into outer space, and Walter and Danny are suddenly fending off menacing robots, angry aliens, and showers of interstellar debris outside the Earth’s atmosphere. As the boys try to figure out a way back home, they get some unexpected help from an earthling astronaut (Dax Shepard) who has also lost his way. Based on the book by children’s author Chris Van Allsburg — who also wrote The Polar Express and Jumanji — Zathura was directed by Jon Favreau, the actor-turned-filmmaker who enjoyed a breakthrough success with Elf.

Combining drama, comedy, and romance, Jerry Maguire was a critical and commercial success built on an original script by writer/director Cameron Crowe and an Oscar-nominated performance by Tom Cruise. Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) is an agent with a major sports management firm. He’s enthusiastic, successful, a great negotiator and people like him. But it begins to dawn on Jerry that there’s something wrong with what he’s doing, and not long after a troubling encounter with the son of an injured athlete he represents, Jerry has a serious crisis of conscience. In the midst of a sleepless night, Jerry writes a memo calling on himself and his colleagues to think more about the long-term welfare of the clients they represent and less about immediate profits. While everyone around him applauds the sentiment, Jerry’s superiors think his ideas are bad for business; Jerry is fired, and, rather than standing in solidarity with him, his “friends” in the firm scramble like sharks to claim Jerry’s clients. At the end of his last day, the only people willing to join Jerry as he strikes out on his own are staff accountant Dorothy (Renee Zellweger), a single mother secretly in love with him, and Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.), a football player whose pride and arrogance have gotten in the way of his reaching his potential. Jerry Maguire earned an Academy Award for Cuba Gooding Jr.’s performance as Tidwell and provided a breakthrough role for Renee Zellweger; it also made “Show me the money!” an unavoidable catchphrase for several months.

Bill Murray co-directed (along with Howard Franklin) this mixture of The Out-of-Towners and After Hours, concerning Grimm (Bill Murray), a frustrated city planner who is fed up with the corruption and venality of New York City. Getting together a couple of accomplices — Phyllis (Geena Davis), who admires Grimm for his audacity, and Loomis (Randy Quaid), a follower to Grimm’s leader since grade school — Grimm decides to rob a bank, pocket the money, get out of town and take off to tropical splendor. Dressing in a clown suit, Grimm devises a unique way to rob a bank — taking a group of hostages at the bank and inviting the police to surround the bank. Amazingly, although pursued by a police chief (Jason Robards), the trio manage to pull off the robbery. However, the problems really start when they try to get from the bank to the airport — which proves to be more difficult than the robbery.

Screen newcomer Joseph Cross portrays Augusten Burroughs in director Ryan Murphy’s film adaptation of author Burroughs’ best-selling personal memoir of the same name. A child of the 1970s whose alcoholic father Norman (Alec Baldwin) and delusional, unpublished poet mother Deidre (Annette Benning) serve as the dictionary definition of the word “dysfunctional,” Augusten is sent by his mother to live with her eccentric psychiatrist Dr. Finch (Brian Cox) when his disagreeable parents ultimately decide terminate their turbulent marriage. Suddenly thrust into an environment that is as unfamiliar as it is unpredictable, young Augusten forms a curious relationship with the doctor’s two whimsical daughters while learning to adapt and survive under even the most unusual of circumstances.

The work of international superstar Stephen Chow, Kung Fu Hustle is a humorous, special-effects-filled, action-packed martial arts epic set in early ’40s China. A bumbling thief named Sing (Stephen Chow) desires to be the toughest member of the dreaded gangster hit squad known as The Axe Gang, but to completely join the gang he has to commit murder. When Sing attempts to rob a crowded run-down apartment complex known as Pig Sty Alley, the locals begin to defend themselves with some high-flying kung fu skills, and a tiny war erupts between the local masters and the axe-wielding gang. After the gang busts the ancient kung fu king known as The Beast (Leung Siu Lung) out of jail, tensions reach a boiling point as Pig Sty Alley’s landlady (Yuen Qiu) leads an all-out attack against the gang and Sing discovers his true heroic fate. Kung Fu Hustle, which set box-office records across Asia during its December 2004 release, also stars Yuen Wah and Xing Yu, and features fight choreography by legendary masters of martial arts cinema Yuen Woo Ping and Sammo Hung.

John Waters does a quirky spin on ’50s nostalgia in Cry-Baby, his musical homage to Rebel Without a Cause and Romeo and Juliet. Set in Baltimore in 1954 at the birth of rock & roll, the film features Johnny Depp as Wade “Cry-Baby” Walker. Depp is pure charisma as a juvenile delinquent with a permanent tear slithering down his cheek, a reminder of his state-executed parents. In the depths of his despair appears goody-goody girl Allison (Amy Locane), who has a sexual crush on Cry-Baby. But Allison’s Pat Boone-like boyfriend, Baldwin (Stephen E. Miller), the leader of the squares, is dead set against Cry-Baby and the rest of the juvenile delinquents and leads a revolt against them. In the resultant riot, the juvenile delinquents are blamed for the chaos, and Cry-Baby finds himself dispatched to reform school.

Chevy Chase, star of National Lampoon’s Vacation and its sequel, is back as the paterfamilias of the Griswold family (including Beverly D’Angelo as his missus) to skewer the Yuletide season. Chevy mugs, trips, falls, mashes his fingers and stubs his toes as he prepares to invite numerous dysfunctional relatives to his household to celebrate Christmas. Amidst the more outrageous sight gags (including the electrocution of a cat as the Christmas tree is lit) the film betrays a sentimental streak, with old wounds healing and long-estranged relatives reuniting in the Griswold living room. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation was still capable of attracting an audience five years after its release: It was one of the top-rated seasonal TV specials of 1994, outrating even the first network telecast of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Purple Rain, the first starring film for Prince, is the story of an arrogant, young black singer, born and raised in Minneapolis, who reaches the pinnacle of stardom. The dramatic complications include “The Kid’s” (Prince) miserable home life, where he suffers the brutalities of his father (well played by Clarence Williams III) and the youth’s efforts to win the love of the beautiful Apollonia. Despite the misogynistic undercurrents in Purple Rain, the film’s biggest fans were young women. Gorgeously photographed by Donald Thorin, Purple Rain is essentially a glorified music video, highlighted by a catalogue of Prince’s hits, including I Would Die 4 U, When Doves Cry and Let’s Go Crazy; the score deservedly won an Academy Award and a Grammy.

A suburban home has become physically animated by a vengeful human soul looking to stir up trouble from beyond the grave, and it’s up to three adventurous kids from the neighborhood to do battle with the structural golem in this comically frightful tale, directed by Gil Kenan and featuring the voices of Steve Buscemi, Nick Cannon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Kevin James. DJ Harvard (voice of Mitchel Musso) lives directly across the street from a most unusual house. A malevolent entity that longs to feed on the energy of the living, the once peaceful house that looms ominously outside of DJ’s bedroom window would like nothing more than the chance to feast on the children of the neighborhood. As Halloween begins to draw near and the children of the neighborhood prepare for another long night of trick-or-treating, it appears as if it may be the house that is in for the biggest treat of all. Now, with the adults turning a deaf ear to DJ’s strange findings, it’s up to the brave young boy and his faithful friends Chowder (voice of Sam Lerner) and Jenny (Spencer Locke) to break through the barrier of the supernatural and defeat the powers of darkness before the house grows too powerful to fight.