Bovie Movie

Director Peter Weir’s first turn behind the camera since 1998’s critically acclaimed The Truman Show, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is based on two Napoleanic War-era adventure novels in author Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series, Master and Commander and The Far Side of the World. Russell Crowe stars as Captain Jack Aubrey, a high-seas adventurer who maintains a strong bond with ship-surgeon Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany). After conquering much of Europe already, Napoleon’s forces have set their sights on taking Britain, so Aubrey and the crew of his ship, the HMS Surprise, take to the Pacific to intercept any attacking ships from the French fleet. When Aubrey eyes a renegade French super-frigate, the Surprise pursues, leading to an adrenaline-charged chase through the distant reaches of the sea. Edward Woodall, James D’Arcy, and Lee Ingleby also star as members of the Surprise’s crew.

Billed as the first European 3-D CGI feature-length film, Kaena: The Prophecy revolves around a mammoth tree that rises 100 miles from the planet’s surface and provides shelter and sustenance for a variety of different races and species. Referred to as Axis, the tree has been losing its sap at a rate alarming enough to threaten the well-being of some of its inhabitants. Determined to get to the root of the disappearing sap is Kaena (Kirsten Dunst), a rambunctious teenager who leaves her village against the wishes of its elders. She encounters the mysterious Selenites along the way; led by an insidious queen (Anjelica Huston), the Selenites have resorted to enslaving another race in order to prevent the tree’s decline into death. Directed by Pascal Pinon and Chris Delaporte, Kaena: The Prophecy began filming in 1999 on a budget of 26 million dollars, and has been described as having merged elements from Shrek and Final Fantasy.

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.

Perhaps the most highly anticipated film of 2003, Kill Bill Vol. 1 marked the return of renowned filmmaker Quentin Tarantino after a six-year hiatus. Re-teaming the director with Uma Thurman for the first time since 1994’s Pulp Fiction, the film was originally the first half of what was to be a three-hour-plus movie before being split into two films. Thurman stars as The Bride, one-fifth of a team of assassins called DiVAS. When The Bride opts to leave the outfit for a life of marital bliss, it doesn’t sit well with her boss, Bill (David Carradine), so he has her former cohorts, played by Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, and Michael Madsen, show up at the nuptials, leaving behind a blood bath. Miraculously, The Bride survives a bullet to the head and, four years later, she sets out for revenge against her four assassins and their employer. The story is concluded in Kill Bill Vol. 2, released six months later.

Forget terrorists or hijackers — there’s a handful of deadly assassins aboard a jet liner and they don’t even have arms or legs in this airborne thriller. Neville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson) is an FBI agent handling what seems like a routine assignment — serving as bodyguard for Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips), a Hawaiian surfer dude who is flying to California to testify in a high-profile criminal trial after witnessing mobster Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson) murdering one of his underlings. However, Flynn’s job gets a lot more challenging when he discovers Kim’s associates don’t want Jones to talk, and have devised a unique way to ensure his silence. A cache of highly dangerous poisonous snakes has been hidden on board the jet, and is released using a timed mechanism once the flight is well underway. The snakes quickly attack several members of the flight crew and are eagerly eying the passengers when Flynn decides its time to get medieval on the reptiles. Also starring Rachel Blanchard, Benjamin McKenzie, and Mark Houghton, Snakes on a Plane was produced under the title of Pacific Air Flight 121, but in several interviews Samuel L. Jackson expressed his enthusiasm for the script’s original title, Snakes on a Plane, and the high-concept moniker quickly made the film’s title and theme a favorite with bloggers and on Internet fan sites all over the world.

A mismatched group of bored suburbanites longing to escape the stress of their daily lives and embrace the freedom of the open road finds that it takes more than polished chrome and leather jackets to truly experience the biker lifestyle in this revved-up road comedy starring John Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence, and William H. Macy. Upon trading the comfort of their couches for the thunderous rumble of two-wheeled street machines, these four adventurous riders cross paths with the notorious Del Fuegos — an authentic biker gang that doesn’t take kindly to the weekend warrior type.

The true story of the kids who created modern skateboard culture is recreated in this drama. In the early ’70s, skateboards were seen as a fad of the 1960s that had all but died out, but in a rough-and-tumble Venice, CA, community known as “Dogtown,” that was about to change. Tony Alva (Victor Rasuk), Stacy Peralta (John Robinson), and Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch) were three guys who liked to surf the rugged beaches around Venice and hung out at the Zephyr Surf Shop, a store run by Skip Engblom (Heath Ledger) that stocked gear for adventurous surfers and skateboarders. With the advent of new urethane wheels that connected with concrete in a way old metal and rubber wheels could not, Tony, Stacy, and Jay began exploring ways to translate radical surf style to skateboarding, and the guys invented a new way to state inside the smooth, round surfaces of empty pools, employing vertical moves and edge flips that added a new and dramatic spin to skating. It didn’t take long for word to spread about the wild new style of the Z-Boys, and they quickly became local celebrities, and later nationwide skating stars, though sudden fame took its toll on these young men. The true story of Lords of Dogtown was previously the basis of the acclaimed documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, directed by former Z-Boy Stacy Peralta, who like Tony Alva served as a consultant on this project.

Despite the use in this film of voices dubbed by greats of English theater, the casting of long-haired cats to play the roles of Romeo and Juliet seems somewhat perverse. Nonetheless, the lines are well read, and the movie contains some fine original musical compositions. Among the voices: Maggie Smith, Ben Kingsley, Vanessa Redgrave, and John Hurt.

A man is determined to find justice after the loss of a loved one, even though he is incapable of fully remembering the crime, in this offbeat thriller. Leonard (Guy Pearce) is a man who is struggling to put his life back together after the brutal rape and murder of his wife. But Leonard’s problems are different from those of most people in his situation; he was beaten severely by the same man who killed his wife. The most significant manifestation of Leonard’s injuries is that his short-term memory has been destroyed; he is incapable of retaining any new information, and must resort to copious note-taking and Polaroid photographs in order to keep track of what happens to him over the course of a day (he’s even tattooed himself with a few crucial bits of information he can’t get along without). Leonard retains awareness that his wife was brutally murdered, however, and he’s convinced that the culprit still walks the streets. Leonard is obsessed with the notion of taking revenge against the man who has ruined his life, and he sets out to find him, getting help from Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), who appears to be a sympathetic barmaid, and Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), who claims to be Leonard’s friend, even though Leonard senses that he cannot be trusted. Writer/director Christopher Nolan adapted Memento from a short story by his brother Jonathan Nolan.

In this terrifying thriller Sarah Mia Farrow, a woman recently blinded in a horseback-riding accident, returns to her Uncle’s home after a visit with her ex-lover. She has been living with him and his family while she slowly recovers from the accident and learns to deal with her blindness. Unknown to her, the entire family has been killed by an intruder. The suspense builds as Sarah unknowingly wanders through the house where the bodies of the family lay visible to all but Sarah. In a particularly frightening scene, Sarah takes a nap beside the body of her murdered niece. Awaking, and finding herself alone, Sarah slowly discovers the bodies, one by one, and realizes that her life may be in danger. Before she can leave, she is trapped in the remote farmhouse and must fight for her life when the killer returns. Mia Farrow is excellent as the increasingly desperate woman stalked by the killer who is identified to the audience only by his boots. The film is suspenseful and crisply directed by Richard Fleischer, moving to a frightening conclusion as Sarah tries to make her final escape, not knowing who she can trust.