August 2004 Movies

A love story set in an eerily possible near-future, where cities are heavily controlled and only accessible through checkpoints. People cannot travel unless they have papelles, a special travel insurance. Outside of the cities, the desert has taken over and shanty towns are jammed with non-citizens—people without papelles whose lives are severely restricted. William is a family man who works as an insurance investigator. When his company sends him to another city to solve a case of fake papelles, he meets a woman named Maria. Although he knows she's been creating the forgeries, he falls completely in love with her. He hides her crime and they have a wild, passionate affair that can only last as long as his papelles: twenty-four hours. Back home, William is obsessed by the memory of Maria. He tries to see her, but is refused the necessary papers to travel. Desperate, he uses one of the fake papelles he kept from his investigation. He eventually tracks her down, only to discover she has been accused of Code 46 violation.

Max has lived a mundane life as a cab driver for twelve years. The faces have come and gone from his rear-view mirror: people and places he's long since forgotten—until tonight. Vincent is a contract killer. When an off-shore narco-trafficking cartel learns that they're about to be indicted by a federal grand jury, they mount an operation to identify and kill the key witness, and the last stage is tonight. It is on this very night that Vincent has arrived—and five bodies are supposed to fall. Circumstances cause Vincent to hijack Max' taxicab, and Max becomes collateral—an expendable person who's in the wrong place at the wrong time. Through the night, Vincent forces Max to drive him to each assigned destination. And as the L.A.P.D. and F.B.I. race to intercept them, Max and Vincent's survival become dependent on each other, in ways neither would have imagined.

When her boyfriend leaves town on a trip, television producer Stacy raids his Palm Pilot and interviews all of his past girlfriends. The prying leads to public humiliation, though, when Stacy's friend puts all the prying on live television.

Andre Stander was a smooth-talking jailbreaker, thrill addict and master of disguise. He was also a high-ranking officer in South Africa's Apartheid-era police force who became an outlaw hero when he launched a second career as a bank robber. Stander's sensationalized activities won him celebrity status by the time of his first arrest for twenty-six robberies. After he daringly escapes from prison and forms the Stander gang with fellow escapees Allan Heyl and Patrick Lee McCall, the three men set off to crumble the status quo and capitalize on the chaos.

Mia, now ready to assume her role as princess of Genovia, has moved into the Royal Palace with her beautiful, wise grandmother Queen Clarisse. However, she soon learns her days as a princess are numbered—Mia's got to lose the tiara and immediately take the crown herself. As if getting ready to rule wasn't enough, the stakes for Mia have never been higher—with Genovian law stating that princesses must be married before being crowned, Mia's in for a parade of suitors who'd all like to be her king.

In their small New England college town, Jack Linden and Hank Evans are the best of friends. Fellow instructors at the university where Jack teaches literature and Hank, writing, the two enjoy the camaraderie of men who have shared similiar circumstances. Their bond however is put to the test and their lives are upended when the love-lives of the two men and their wives, Edith and Terry, become tangled.

Yugi, a smaller than average high school student, and an easy target for bullies, is given an ancient Egyptian riddle called the Millennium Puzzle by his grandfather, a local game shop manager. Yugi pieces the puzzle together and unexpectedly becomes the powerful Game King. Now when Yugi gets into sticky situations, the Game King takes over and protects Yugi and his friends.

Based on a true story, the tale of a cement truck driver named Danny, whose long awaited vacation is cancelled thanks to his scheming girlfriend, Trudy. Danny escapes his grim life in suburban Australia and blasts into the skies in a chair tied with helium balloons. A mighty thunderstorm blows him clean off the map, and spits him out far away over the lush green town of Clarence. In this new town, he rockets into the world of Glenda, the town's only parking cop. While the media back home becomes obsessed with the story of his disappearance, Danny gets to reinvent himself in this new town, and in his great adventure, he discovers a true soulmate in Glenda. Fate catches up with him eventually, as Danny's true identity is revealed and Trudy—now a tabloid celebrity--comes to the idyllic town to claim Danny and drag him back to Sydney. Danny, however, is a changed man; he's discovered what it means to be happy and has found a new self-worth. Saying farewell to Trudy, Danny makes a dynamic re-entry to the town of Clarence—determined to win Glenda back again and embrace his newfound zest for life.

This is a sex comedy about memory loss, as office worker Graham (Eduardo Noriega) has recently suffered a complete memory loss from a martial arts-related accident, which means that every time he has sex with Irene, one of the secretaries, he forgets about it an hour later, so every time is the first time...

If you picked some of the all-time great albums in American rock, soul, and jazz, chances are one name might be found on the back of almost every one: Tom Dowd—the secret behind five decades of brilliant music, an unsung hero, producer and recording pioneer. From the perfection of live mixing to the introduction of eight-track recording, the mythology of exactly how much impact Dowd has had is still up for grabs. His diverse and genuine love of work is remembered in part through intimate interviews with several musical icons and personal friends.

An expressionist work comprised of surreal action involving: a hockey rink that houses a forgotten wax museum, where ghosts of dead lovers stroll; and a beauty salon where a demented doctor, wearing a corset, performs abortions.

A billionaire finances an expedition to the Antarctic to uncover a pyramid long-since buried. However, when the team of scientists arrives, they come to realize that the frozen continent is the battle field for two alien races—and now they are caught in the middle. No matter who wins, we lose.

Father Lankester Merrin thinks that he has glimpsed the face of Evil. In the years following World War II, Merrin is relentlessly haunted by memories of the unspeakable brutality perpetrated against the innocent people of his parish. In the wake of all he has seen, both his faith in his fellow man and his faith in the Almighty have deserted him. He can no longer honestly call himself a man of God. Merrin has traveled far from his native Holland in a desperate attempt to escape the horrors that he witnessed there. While drifting through Cairo, he is approached by a collector of rare antiquities to join a British archeological excavation in the remote Turkana region of Kenya. They have unearthed a Christian Byzantine church in inexplicably pristine condition—as if it had been buried on the day it was completed. The collector wants Merrin, an Oxford-educated archeologist, to find an ancient relic hidden within the church before the British discover it. But beneath the church, something much older sleeps, waiting to be awoken. Madness descends upon the local villagers and the contingent of British soldiers who've been sent to guard the excavation. Merrin watches helplessly as the atrocities of war are repeated against another innocent village—atrocities he had prayed never to see again. The blood of innocents flows freely on the East African plain, and the horror has only just begun. In the place where Evil was born, Merrin will finally see its true face.

Based on a true story, a thriller about an American couple, Daniel and Susan, who are on an island holiday. Upon arrival at their hotel, it becomes clear that Daniel and Susan's relationship is under strain from their workaholic lifestyles, and they need a vacation even more than they realized. The next morning, the loving and rested couple, certified scuba divers, board a local dive boat for an underwater tour of the reef. The boat is crowded with other vacationers, and due to a series of innocent miscommunications and a distracted crew, the couple is, after only 40 minutes or so underwater, accidentally left behind. What follows is the story of their ordeal: cold, alone and miles from land, the couple is adrift in shark-infested waters. What follows is a reminder to us about how much 'fun' it is to be frightened by our most primal fears—namely what we think may linger just below the surface.

A group of young geniuses are drawn together by a mysterious advertisement, then suspiciously abandoned on an island, where they scramble to sort out their collective fate.

When Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) returns to his hometown in New Jersey for the first time in 10 years to attend his mother's funeral, he is reconnected with the world he left behind, and meets a girl, Samantha (Natalie Portman), who may change his life forever. Having recently stopped taking the powerful antidepressants he had been prescribed for years, Largeman's journey of self-discovery prompted by his return causes him to have a more healthy rediscovery of himself, which includes confronting his psychologist father (Ian Holm) and helping Samantha through her own psychological issues.

Three young guys go into the Oregon wilderness in search of a lost treasure. They take a canoe upriver, and everything that can go wrong does. Hunted by two backwoods dope farmers, they encounter death-defying rapids, tree-hugging hippie chicks and a crazy old mountain man.

Set in Gulfport, Mississippi (where the new Benji was found), this movie follows the adventures of a loveable mutt named Benji, who enters into an unwanted partnership with a shaggy dog (named "Shaggy"), as the pair struggles to save Benji's mother from a greedy backyard breeder.

When the shy Sam confides in his protective older sibling, Rocky about the overweight bully in school named George, Rocky hatches a plot to exact their revenge on his brother's tormentor.

"Goldfish Memory" is a light-hearted look at the dangers and delights of dating in contemporary Dublin. When Clara sees her boyfriend Tom kissing Isolde, it sets off a chain reaction of romances and heartbreaks until the entire cycle has turned full circle, each character trying to solve the pressing question of what is the perfect relationship! Some favour marriage, others a week-at-a-time arrangement. The only thing they can all agree on is that love is the one thing we can't live without.

When Dallas FBI Agent Thomas Mackelway violates serial killer Raymond Starkey's civil rights during an unorthodox arrest, Starkey goes free and Mackelway is demoted to a remote branch of the agency in Albuquerque. His first day on the job, Mackelway investigates the murder of a traveling salesman Harold Speck, which turns out to be the first of three seemingly random killings. Or perhaps they are not random at all; the last to die is Mackelway's nemesis, Raymond Starkey. The assignment consumes him. His past mistakes haunt him. His head throbs constantly as he tries to find the link between the victims that will lead him to their killer. The case becomes increasingly gruesome and patently personal. This does not go unnoticed by his unflappable partner Fran Kulok, who knows of Mackelway's past and the demons that afflict him. Like Mackelway, she becomes drawn into the labyrinth of chilling clues, all of which point to the enigmatic Benjamin O'Ryan. O'Ryan clearly has a connection to the murders, a connection he flaunts; quite possibly, he may also harbor a sinister link to Mackelway.

The adventure continues with a new generation of talking toddlers. This time, the baby geniuses find themselves at the center of a nefarious scheme led by powerful media mogul Bill Biscane (Jon Voight). Joining the babies in their battle against evil is a legendary baby named Kahuna (Leo, Myles and Gerry Fitzgerald). Part ultra-cool spy, part superhero, Kahuna joins babies Archie (Michael and Max Iles), Finkleman (Jordan and Jared Scheideman), Alex (Joshua and Maxwell Lockhart) and Rosita (Keana and Maia Bastidas) in a race against time to stop the villainous Biscane from using his state-of-the-art satellite system to control the minds of the world's population.

A scientific expedition is assembled by a powerful pharmaceutical company to search for a rare black orchid in the deep recesses of the jungles of Borneo. Their hope is that the orchid can be used to unlock the secrets of youth and immortality. What they soon discover is that the orchid is already being used by a denizen host of giant snakes to augment their strength, size and vitality—not to mention their appetites.

A tale about the soon-to-be First Emperor of China who is on the brink of conquering a war-torn land during the violent dawn of the Qin dynasty over two thousand years ago. Three opponents are determined to assassinate the King, and one loyal subject stands in their way.