April 2005 Movies

Each year fans and glory-seekers flock to Mexico for an infamous off-road race covering 1,000 miles of unforgiving territory. "Dust to Glory" is the story of the Baja 1000-the madness and the mayhem.

This is the story of Lolita Cassard, a young woman of twenty years who has it in for the entire world because she doesn't look like the girls in glossy magazines, who doesn't look a thing like her young mother-in-law, and who would so much like to feel beautiful, at least in her father's eyes, if only her father's eyes could find her. But this is also the story of a man named Etienne Cassard, who doesn't see other people much at all because he's busy looking at himself, feeling older, a man who very likely wanted for love himself, who struggled long and hard to find his place in the world. This is the story of writer named Pierre Miller, who's lost faith, who doubts he'll ever meet with success, who meets with success and who meets Etienne Cassard. This is the story of a singing teacher, Sylvia Miller, who believes in her husband, at least in his talent, but who has doubts about her own and that of her pupil, Lolita—until she realizes she's the daughter of Etienne Cassard, the author she admires so much. This is the story of human beings who know exactly what they'd do if they were somebody else, but can't handle being themselves very well, who are very simply struggling to find out who they are.

"Sin City" stars Bruce Willis as Hartigan, a cop with a bum ticker and a vow to protect stripper Nancy (Jessica Alba); Mickey Rourke as Marv, the outcast misanthrope on a mission to avenge the death of his one true love, Goldie (Jaime King), and Clive Owen as Dwight, the clandestine love of Shelley (Brittany Murphy), who spends his nights defending Gail (Rosario Dawson) and her Old Towne girls (Devon Aoki and Alexis Bledel) from Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro), a dirty cop with a penchant for violence.

Master explorer Dirk Pitt (Matthew McConaughey) takes on the adventure of his life when he embarks on a treasure hunt through some of the most dangerous regions of West Africa. Searching for what locals call "The Ship of Death", a long lost Civil War battleship which protects a secret cargo, Pitt and his wisecracking sidekick (Steve Zahn) use their wits and clever heroics to help Doctor Eva Rojas (Penelope Cruz) when they realize the ship may be linked to mysterious deaths in the very same area.

"Eros" is an anthology of three short films on the subject of eroticism and love, from a trio of the world's most extraordinary directors, Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Wong Kar Wai's "The Hand" is the story of a young tailor's (Chang Chen) long-time unrequited love for a beautiful Hong Kong courtesan (Gong Li). Over many years, he lovingly crafts the clothes that she wears for other men. Over time, the seemingly unattainable fantasy woman loses everything, just as the tailor prospers in his career. Then the unexpected happens... Steven Soderbergh's "Equilibrium" is about a stressed-out 1950's advertising man (Robert Downey, Jr.) who has been suffering from a series of recurring erotic dreams. During his session with psychiatrist Dr. Pearl (Alan Arkin), he describes his dream of a woman who is familiar to him—but he can't recall who she is when he wakes up. Through the course of a very offbeat hour of therapy, we discover why that is. Michelangelo Antonioni's "The Dangerous Thread of Things" follows a fortyish married couple (Christopher Buchholz and Regina Nemni) that no longer have anything to say to one another. At an impasse, the man has a passionate one night stand with a free-spirited young girl (Luisa Ranieri), but this experience also fails to satisfy him. Later on, the wife and the girl meet....

A contemporary romantic comedy about a high school teacher who meets and falls in love with a successful businesswoman. Although their lives are vastly different, the relationship seems perfect until the baseball season begins and she has to compete with his first true love: the Boston Red Sox.

Sixteen years ago while being pursued by the law and high on drugs, Joe (Billy Bob Thornton) was responsible for a car accident that killed his young son and seriously injured his wife, Chrystal (Lisa Blount), breaking her neck. Returning to his hometown in the Ozarks of Arkansas after his time in prison for the accident, Joe is faced with the challenge of finally coming to terms with Chrystal, who is still plagued with pain, both physical and psychological.

"State Property 2: Philly Streets II" is the tale of three notorious gangsters, and their bloody battle for supremacy in the City of Brotherly Love. Beans, the imprisoned kingpin and hometown druglord, struggles to keep his renegade ABM Crime Syndicate on the map. He is driven and consumed by a festering hatred for his longtime rival... Dame, the Harlem-born hustler, is also the top dog in town. His Umbrella network is unmatched in cash-flow and manpower. With a long list of enemies seeking territory and revenge, the self-proclaimed "cake-aholic" is forced into a vicious war. Loco, the flashy Miami playboy, is about to be released from prison. His deep pockets and stellar reputation prove to be valuable tools in Loco's plot to takeover the streets of Philly... but he must first overcome the ghosts from a turbulent past. Alliances are formed and shattered, and lifelong friendships are put to the test as the various crews deal and duel to the death. Somewhere, buried deep within the ranks of one of these gangs, a ruthless criminal mastermind is conspiring to take them all down. The backstabbing, thievery and deception simmers, boils and ultimately spills into a gruesome finale—an old-fashioned shootout on the cold, unforgiving Philly streets.

An American artist living a bohemian existence in Paris, Tom Warshaw (David Duchovny) is trying to make sense of his troubled adult life by reflecting upon his extraordinary childhood...The year is 1973, and thirteen-year-old Greenwich Village native Tommy Warshaw (Anton Yelchin) is on the brink of becoming a man. While his bereaved single mother (Téa Leoni) continues to mourn the death of his father, Tommy escapes his own grief by causing trouble at school and making afternoon meat deliveries with his best friend Pappas (Robin Williams), a mentally challenged janitor. Following the romantic advice offered by Lady (Erykah Badu) - incarcerated in the infamous Greenwich Village Women's House of Detention for shadowy reasons—Tommy even experiences his first taste of love. Yet when an unexpected tragedy radically alters his world, Tommy must make a life-defining choice—one that will compel the adult Tom Warshaw, thirty years later, to confront his unfinished past.

The true story of Italian businessman Giorgio Perlasca, who passed himself off as the Spanish consul in an effort to save more than 5,000 Jews from the Nazi. Based on Perlasca's diaries and his book "The Banality of Goodness."

"Down and Derby" is a comedy about a small-town Pinewood Derby competition that transforms an average group of dads into an awkward bunch of competitors. The film exposes the desperate behavior of parents who compete with one another through their children—a social dynamic seen in everyday activities ranging from Little League to science fairs to pageantry. In the crazed world of derby fever, kids are lucky if they get to pick the paint color or attach a decal. Hilarity builds as dads teeter on the edge of insanity and resort to backstabbing, cover-ups and sabotage. They ignore wives, families and jobs with extreme consequences. Meanwhile, the kids scheme their revenge and vow never to be underestimated again. In the end, the story reaches comical and outrageous levels with a surprise twist that will have you on the edge of your seat!

On November 13, 1974, police received a frantic phone call that led them to a grisly crime scene at the DeFeo residence in Amityville, Long Island—an entire family had been slaughtered in their beds. In the days that followed, Ronald DeFeo confessed to methodically shooting his parents and four siblings while they slept. He claimed voices in the house drove him to commit the murders. One year later, George and Kathy Lutz and their children moved into the house thinking it would be their dream home. But shortly after settling in, bizarre and unexplainable events began to occur – nightmarish visions and haunting voices from an evil presence still lurking within the house. 28 days after moving in, the Lutzes abandoned the home, lucky to escape with their lives. Now, 30 years after the shocking real-life events that inspired one of the most popular horror stories of all time, return to the house that started it all: "The Amityville Horror".

A record of Chinese basketball star Yao Ming's first year playing in the NBA. Back home, Chinese fans are eager for their homeboy to honorably represent 1.2 billion of his countrymen. In the States, however, more than a few observers, cynically question whether the big guy can play the NBA version of the game.

A fable of innocence: thirteen-year-old Aviva Victor wants to be a 'mom'. She does all she can to make this happen, and comes very close to succeeding, but in the end her plan is thwarted by her sensible parents. So she runs away, still determined to get pregnant one way or another, but instead finds herself lost in another world, a less sensible one, perhaps, but one pregnant itself with all sorts of strange possibility. She takes a road trip from the suburbs of New Jersey, through Ohio to the plains of Kansas and back. Like so many trips, this one is round-trip, and it's hard to say in the end if she can ever be quite the same again, or if she can ever be anything but the same again.

Anthony Anderson stars as Malcolm King, a wealthy and arrogant businessman whose ex-wife to be has plans to take him for everything he's worth in their divorce settlement. Determined to avoid losing his fortune to her, Malcolm plans his own kidnapping with the help of his dim-witted mistress and her ex-con brother. Unfortunately for Malcolm, he is not the only one with a kidnapping plot.

The true story of a dying river town in Indiana, which in 1971 succeeded in becoming the host for the Gold Cup of hydroplane boat racing. Competing on the racing circuit requires deep-pocketed sponsorships and top-of-the-line technology and equipment. Jim McCormick, even though he's now a father with a family to support and has a steady job, has never abandoned his dream of piloting the community-owned Miss Madison to victory in the sport's biggest event. Alas, the economic struggles of this trade-diminished municipality have severely crimped its level of support. But faced with the opportunity to welcome the prestigious championship, McCormick wins, or more correctly hustles, the town's backing and, despite the misgivings of his wife and a sizable percentage of his neighbors, undertakes to race Miss Madison and compete with the big boys.

The escalating events begin when African-born U.N. translator Silvia Broome (Kidman) alleges that she has overheard a death threat against an African head of state, spoken in a rare dialect few people other than Silvia can understand. With the words "The Teacher will never leave this room alive," in an instant, Silvia's life is turned upside down as she becomes a hunted target of the killers. Placed under the protection of federal agent Tobin Keller (Penn), Silvia's world only grows more nightmarish. As Keller digs deeper into his eyewitness' past and her secretive world of global connections, the more suspicious he becomes that she herself might be involved in the conspiracy. With every step of the way, he finds more reasons to mistrust her.

"The Game of Their Lives" is the story of the American soccer team that stunned the heavily favored English team in the 1950 World Cup final, defeated the powerhouse by a 1-0 score. Wes Bentley will play Walter Bahr, the man who devised their on-field strategy.

Story revolves around the relationship between an American teen, portrayed by Boorem, who travels to China as part of a charitable org, and a Chinese counterpart who receives surgery to correct a facial deformity.

A couple in their 20's finds each other at the wrong time. Kal Penn will play a friend to Ashton Kutcher's character and partner in their Internet startup company.

"The Holy Girl", Martel intimately explores the burgeoning sexuality and religious fervor of two teenage girls, Amalia (María Alche) and her best friend, Josefina (Julieta Zylberberg). Artfully piecing together a mosaic of nuanced details, fragments of sounds, and small moments, Martel creates a potent and specific portrait of adolescent life. In the town of La Ciénaga, Amalia lives with her attractive, divorced mother, Helena (Mercedes Morán), and her uncle, Freddy (Alejandro Urdapilleta), in the crumbling, run-down Hotel Termas, which her family owns and runs. After choir rehearsals the girls gather in the parish church for further instruction in faith and vocation. What does God want from me? How do I discern between the temptation of the Devil and the calling of God? In between the teachings, the girls gossip and whisper secretively. The lives of the girls and their families intersect with those of a group of visiting orhinolaryngologists (ear, nose and throat specialists) staying at the hotel for a medical convention, including the married, middle-aged Dr. Jano (Carlos Belloso). One day, a crowd of people gather in the street to watch a man play an unusual, exotic instrument: a theremin. Amalia is in the crowd when a man standing behind her presses himself sexually against her. Later, in the hotel, she discovers that this man is Dr. Jano, one of the doctors attending the conference. Amalia finds herself drawn to the Doctor and for days she spies on him. Dr. Jano never notices her presence, but he does notice her mother, Helena. Helena greatly enjoys the attention from this man, but she has little hope as she knows he is married and has a family. Days afterward Amalia confides in Josefina what occurred in the street with Dr. Jano and of her secret mission: to save one man from sin. Dr. Jano becomes caught up in Amalia's web of good intentions and the respected doctor finds his world is on the brink of collapse when her adolescent obsession sets off a chain reaction of social catastrophe.

A young drifter enters strangers' houses - and lives - while owners are away. He spends a night or a day squatting in, repaying their unwitting hospitality by doing laundry or small repairs. His life changes when he runs into a beautiful woman in an affluent mansion who is ready to escape her unhappy, abusive marriage.

Based on the best-selling book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, a multidimensional study of one of the biggest business scandals in American history. The chronicle takes a look at one of the greatest corporate disasters in history, in which top executives from the 7th largest company in this country walked away with over one billion dollars, leaving investors and employees with nothing. The film features insider accounts and rare corporate audio and video tapes that reveal colossal personal excesses of the Enron hierarchy and the utter moral vacuum that posed as corporate philosophy. The human drama that unfolds within Enron's walls resembles a Greek tragedy and produces a domino effect that could shape the face of our economy and ethical code for years to come.

Earthman Arthur Dent is having a very bad day. His house is about to be bulldozed, he discovers that his best friend is an alien--and to top things off, Planet Earth is about to be demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Arthur's only chance for survival: hitch a ride on a passing spacecraft. For the novice space traveler, the greatest adventure in the universe begins when the world ends. Arthur sets out on a journey in which he finds that nothing is as it seems: he learns that a towel is just the most useful thing in the universe, finds the meaning of life, and discovers that everything he needs to know can be found in one book: "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

Set in Washington D.C., a man is recruited by the National Security Agency to become a XXX agent. The XXX name refers to a three-strikes rule the NSA employs to give criminals the option of joining the crime-fighting force or going to prison.