Bovie Movie

Rapper and actor Ice Cube shows off his softer side in this family-friendly comedy. Nick Persons (Ice Cube) is a dealer in sports collectibles who has fallen for beautiful executive Suzanne Kingston (Nia Long). However, Nick discovers he has a bigger task than just winning her over — Suzanne is a divorced mother with two children, Lindsey (Aleisha Allen) and Kevin (Philip Daniel Bolden), and the kids don’t believe any man besides their father is fit for their mother to date. Even though Nick doesn’t care much for kids, he’s eager to win Lindsey and Kevin over to score points with Suzanne, and so when business commitments threaten to strand Suzanne in Vancouver without her children for New Year’s Eve, Nick volunteers to escort them. But when Nick is bumped from an airline flight due to a corkscrew in his pocket, he’s forced to drive the kids to Canada, and Lindsey and Kevin see this as a golden opportunity to make life very difficult for Nick. Ice Cube served as both star and producer for this project.

After squaring off in 1995 with competing movie biographies of frontier lawman Wyatt Earp, actors Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner co-star in this action crime caper as former cronies engaged in a series of double-crosses over some stolen loot. Michael Zane (Russell) and Thomas Murphy (Costner) are the leaders of a gang of ex-convict thieves using an Elvis Presley impersonator convention to pull off a daring heist in a Las Vegas casino. The gang also includes Gus (David Arquette), Hanson (Bokeem Woodbine), and Franklin (Christian Slater). Although they manage to retrieve the money, the crooks turn on each other in bloody fashion and Murphy (who believes he’s actually the illegitimate son of Elvis) makes off with the illegal funds. In hot pursuit are the police and Michael, who’s encumbered by his girlfriend Cybil (Courtney Cox-Arquette) and her young son Jesse James. Written and directed by music video creator Demian Lichtenstein, 3000 Miles to Graceland also stars Kevin Pollak, Ice-T, and Howie Long.

The most tempting of all sweets becomes the key weapon in a battle of sensual pleasure versus disciplined self-denial in this comedy. In 1959, a mysterious woman named Vianne (Juliette Binoche) moves with her young daughter into a small French village, where much of the community’s activities are dominated by the local Catholic church. A few days after settling into town, Vianne opens up a confectionery shop across the street from the house of worship — shortly after the beginning of Lent. While the townspeople are supposed to be abstaining from worldly pleasures, Vianne tempts them with unusual and delicious chocolate creations, using her expert touch to create just the right candy to break down each customer’s resistance. With every passing day, more and more of Vianne’s neighbors are succumbing to her sinfully delicious treats, but the Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina), the town’s mayor, is not the least bit amused; he is eager to see Vianne run out of town before she leads the town into a deeper level of temptation. Vianne, however, is not to be swayed, and with the help of another new arrival in town, a handsome Irish Gypsy named Roux (Johnny Depp), she plans a “Grand Festival of Chocolate,” to be held on Easter Sunday. Based on the novel by Joanne Harris, Chocolat features a distinguished supporting cast, including Judi Dench, Lena Olin, Carrie-Anne Moss, Peter Stormare, Hugh O’Conor, and Leslie Caron.

Promoted as a family musical by Paramount Pictures, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is more of a black comedy, perversely faithful to the spirit of Roald Dahl’s original book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Enigmatic candy manufacturer Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) stages a contest by hiding five golden tickets in five of his scrumptious candy bars. Whoever comes up with these tickets will win a free tour of the Wonka factory, as well as a lifetime supply of candy. Four of the five winning children are insufferable brats: the fifth is a likeable young lad named Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum), who takes the tour in the company of his equally amiable grandfather (Jack Albertson). In the course of the tour, Willy Wonka punishes the four nastier children in various diabolical methods — one kid is inflated and covered with blueberry dye, another ends up as a principal ingredient of the chocolate, and so on — because these kids have violated the ethics of Wonka’s factory. In the end, only Charlie and his grandfather are left. Ostensibly set in England, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was lensed in Germany (as revealed by the film’s final overhead shot).

Tom Jones director Tony Richardson might seem a curious choice to direct the contemporary western The Border, but he does his best to emulate Sam Peckinpah. Jack Nicholson stars as an El Paso border guard, saddled with avaricious wife Valerie Perrine. Hoping to stifle her nagging about money matters, Nicholson begins accepting payoffs to allow Mexican aliens to cross the border without interference. This leads to a relationship with a young Mexican mother Elpidia Carillo. Harvey Keitel and Warren Oates lend strong support to this atmospheric tale.

Suddenly is the name of the small town invaded by professional assassin Frank Sinatra and his henchmen. Taking a local family hostage, Sinatra sets up a vigil at the second-story window of the family’s home. From here, he intends to kill the President of the United States when the latter makes a whistle-stop visit. The film’s tension level is enough to induce goose pimples from first scene to last. Sinatra is outstanding as the disgruntled war vet who hopes to become a “somebody” by killing the president. The parallels between his character and Lee Harvey Oswald’s are too close for comfort, so much so that Suddenly was withdrawn from local TV packages for several years after the JFK assassination. Sinatra would claim in later years that he himself engineered the removal of Suddenly from general distribution, though in fact he’d lost whatever rights he’d held on the film when it lapsed into public domain. Be sure and miss the notorious colorized version of this black-and-white thriller, wherein Sinatra is transformed into Ol’ Brown Eyes.

Steven Spielberg followed Jaws (1975), his first major box-office success, with this epic science fiction adventure about a disparate group of people who attempt to contact alien intelligence. Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) is an electrical lineman who, while sent out on emergency repairs, witnesses an unidentified flying object, and even has a “sunburn” from its bright lights to prove it. Neary’s wife and children are at first skeptical, then concerned, and eventually fearful, as Roy refuses to accept a “logical” explanation for what he saw and is prepared to give up his job, his home, and his family to pursue the “truth” about UFOs. Neary’s obsession eventually puts him in contact with others who’ve had close encounters with alien spacecraft, including Jillian (Melinda Dillon), a single mother whose son disappeared during her UFO experience, and Claude Lacombe (celebrated French filmmaker Fran?ois Truffaut), a French researcher who believes that we can use a musical language to communicate with alien visitors. Lacombe’s theory is put to the test when a band of government researchers and underground UFO enthusiasts (including Neary) join for an exchange with alien visitors near Devil’s Tower, Wyoming. In 1980, a “Special Edition” was released. While its primary selling point was the addition of scenes inside the alien spaceship, Spielberg claimed that he also cleaned up some choppy editing in the second act.

Supernatural forces hover over the courtroom in this devilish drama adapted from the novel by Andrew Neiderman. Attorney Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves) doesn’t heed the Bible-based warnings of his mother (Judith Ivey), who views New York City as “the dwelling place of demons.” Instead, he leaves Gainesville, Florida, with his wife Mary Ann (Charlize Theron) to put his legalistic skills to the test at a leading Manhattan law firm run by John Milton (Al Pacino). It all goes smoothly — with Milton urging them to stay, putting Kevin on a $400-per-hour salary, and moving the couple into a luxurious apartment in his own building on Fifth Avenue — where Mary Ann falls under the influence of neighbor Jackie (Tamara Tunie). After Kevin defends a weird animal sacrificer (Delroy Lindo, uncredited), he moves up to an important case with an apparent murderer, real-estate tycoon Alexander Cullen (Craig T. Nelson). Ignored by Kevin, the troubled Mary Ann has some disturbing experiences, verging on the occult, while Kevin, at work, becomes attracted to redhead Christabella (Connie Neilsen). Dazzled by his entrance into paradise, Kevin doesn’t grasp who handed him this Big-Apple success. Could it be…Satan? The film features demonic creatures by Rick Baker. Cameos (Senator Alfonse D’Amato, Don King, others) add to the ambiance of ambition and power in the canyons of Manhattan.

In this hit ’80s hybrid of the horror movie and the teen flick, a single mom and her two sons become involved with a pack of vampires when they move into an offbeat Northern California town. Lucy (Dianne Wiest) and her sons, Michael (Jason Patric) and Sam (Corey Haim), move to Santa Carla to live with Lucy’s lovable but curmudgeonly father (Barnard Hughes). Lucy gets a job from video store-owner Max (Edward Herrmann), then begins dating him, while Sam hangs out with Edward and Alan Frog (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander), a pair of vampire-obsessed comic-shop clerks. Soon Michael falls in with some actual vampires after becoming enamored of one of their victims: Star (Jami Gertz), a gypsy-like vixen who is trying to hold onto her humanity even though vampire leader David (Kiefer Sutherland) wants to play Peter Pan to her Wendy. When Michael visits the cavernous hangout of David and his cronies and unwittingly drinks from a wine bottle full of vampiric blood, he becomes an unwilling member of the bloodsucker biker gang. Soon, it’s up to Sam and the Frog brothers to destroy David and his ilk without killing Michael and Star. Shot on location in the coastal California town of Santa Cruz and directed by Hollywood pro Joel Schumacher, The Lost Boys became a pop-culture phenomenon thanks to its attractive young stars, offbeat soundtrack, and hip, clever marketing campaign; the film’s tagline — “Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire.” — perfectly captured its knowing mixture of attitude and gore. The effects team who transformed Sutherland and company into snarling blood-suckers would go on to provide equally gruesome effects for Blade, another revisionist vampire flick, more than a decade later.

Prolific television director Gary Nelson made the Walt Disney live-action comedy Freaky Friday, based on the novel by Mary Rodgers. Barbara Harris stars as suburban housewife Ellen Andrews, the wife of Bill (John Astin) and the mother of Annabel (Jodie Foster) and Ben (Sparky Marcus). Ellen just can’t understand what’s going on with teenaged Annabel, who hangs around the house making snappy remarks, eating ice cream for breakfast, and calling her brother Apeface. They each make a separate wish to be in the other’s place, and they get their wish on Friday 13th. Ellen has to go through the day as a kid, playing on the field hockey team and dealing with typing class. Annabel has to deal with grown-up problems like getting appliances fixed and preparing a banquet. The whole silly story ends with a wacky car-chase/water skiing/hang-gliding conclusion in keeping with other Disney movies of the day. Freaky Friday was remade twice with the same title, and spawned a whole subgenre of body-switching movies in the 1980s.