Showing posts with label 1987. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1987. Show all posts

Friday, February 22, 2013

Feelings, Jennifer Grey as France "Baby" Houseman from Dirty Dancing (1987)

I'm scared of everything! I'm scared of what I saw. I'm scared of what I did, of who I am. And most of all, I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life.... the way I feel when I'm with you!

- Jennifer Grey as France "Baby" Houseman from Dirty Dancing (1987)

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

RoboCop (1987)

RoboCop

Directed by: Paul Verhoeven
Starring: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen
Distributed by: Orion Pictures
Country: United States
Rating: MPAA: R (US), 15+ (KR)


RoboCop is a 1987 science fiction film directed by Paul Verhoeven. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, Michigan in the near future, RoboCop centers on a police officer who is brutally murdered and subsequently re-created as a super-human cyborg known as "RoboCop". In addition to being an action film, RoboCop includes larger themes regarding the media, gentrification, corruption, and human nature. It has spawned merchandise, two sequels, three television series, a television mini-series, video games and two comic book adaptations.

The film features Peter Weller, Dan O'Herlihy, Kurtwood Smith, Nancy Allen, Miguel Ferrer and Ronny Cox.


Synopsis

In a dystopian future, the city of Detroit, Michigan is on the verge of collapse due to financial ruin and unchecked crime. The city brings in the mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products, or OCP, to solve the problems. OCP promptly privatizes the police force. OCP makes plans to destroy "Old Detroit" to replace it with the utopia of "Delta City."

The OCP Chairman (Dan O'Herlihy) recognizes that the human law enforcement is insufficient to stop the crime spree and seeks other opportunities. Senior President Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) offers a "law enforcement 'droid," the ED-209, but when the demonstration kills one of the other executives, the President of OCP turns instead to the "RoboCop" program to create an augmented cyborg, led by junior executive Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer). Jones becomes bitterly jealous of Morton, as Bob Morton's accomplishment with Robocop allows him to move up on the ladder of success in the OCP ranks.

Veteran police officer Alexander James Murphy (Peter Weller) is transferred to a new precinct and partnered with Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen). On their first patrol, they chase down a team of criminals led by crime boss Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) to an abandoned steel mill outside town. Murphy and Lewis separate, and Boddicker's men capture Murphy, sadistically murdering him by shooting him many times with shotguns before running off. Murphy is pronounced dead at the hospital, but OCP takes his body and uses it to create the first RoboCop. RoboCop is guided by three law enforcement tenets written into his programming, called Directives: serve the public trust, protect the innocent and uphold the law.

He is able to single-handedly deal with much of the violent crime in the city, causing the rest of the police force to become worried they may be replaced. However, RoboCop still retains memories of his life as Murphy, including brief glimpses of his wife and son, and the action of spinning his gun before holstering it, a trick Murphy had done for his son. Lewis recognizes these elements from Murphy's mannerisms, and tries to learn more from RoboCop, but he remains silent on the issues. Because of Robocop's success, Morton is promoted to become one of OCP's Vice Presidents.

Morton's success and arrogance leads Jones to have Boddicker, secretly in his employ, kill the junior executive. An armed gas station holdup by one of Boddicker's men allows RoboCop to track down Boddicker to a cocaine bunker. RoboCop bursts into the facility and a shootout between him and the bandits ensues. RoboCop then apprehends Boddicker and forcefully makes him reveal his alliance with Dick Jones. RoboCop then visits Jones at his offices at OCP, showing him Boddicker's statement and prepares to arrest Jones. However, as RoboCop does so, a previously unknown and secret fourth Directive activates that prevents RoboCop from acting against any senior executive of OCP. Jones boasts to RoboCop about the Fourth Directive, which he added, and his role in Morton's murder, and then sends an ED-209 against RoboCop. RoboCop, handicapped by his neural network, engages the machine. The ED-209, though possessing impressive advanced technology proves incapable of descending a stairway. When Robocop gets outside, the police SWAT team is waiting for him with orders to destroy him, but Lewis, having followed RoboCop, saves him.

Lewis tends to RoboCop's injuries at the same steel mill where Murphy was killed, and discovers that there is still some of Murphy present despite the cyborg augmentation. Meanwhile, the police launch their long-threatened strike, sending the city into chaos. Jones arranges for Boddicker and his men to be released from prison and funds them with new cars and Cobra Assault Cannons capable of puncturing RoboCop's heavy armor. Boddicker's team converges on the steel mill using a tracking device provided by OCP. RoboCop and Lewis defend themselves and kill the whole gang, though Lewis is severely wounded.

RoboCop returns to OCP headquarters and uses one of the Assault Cannons to destroy the ED-209 guarding the building. Arriving in the middle of an executive board meeting with the president, Jones, and other executives, RoboCop plays back Jones's confession to Morton's murder and explains his inability to arrest OCP employees. Jones quickly grabs a gun and takes the president hostage and begins making demands. The president, in response to being taken hostage and enlightened by RoboCop's explanation of the Fourth Directive, fires Jones, invalidating his protection under it. After thanking the president, RoboCop promptly shoots Jones, who then falls out of the window to his death. As the board room recovers from the crisis, the president commends RoboCop for his skill and asks for his name, to which he replies, "Murphy".


Thursday, September 1, 2005

AFI #057 Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko from Wall Street (1987)

Gordon Gekko: Teldar Paper, Mr. Cromwell, Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can't figure it out. One thing I do know is that our paper company lost 110 million dollars last year, and I'll bet that half of that was spent in all the paperwork going back and forth between all these vice presidents. The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated. In the last seven deals that I've been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you. I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

- Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko from Wall Street (1987)

The bolded line is ranked #57 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema.

Friday, December 11, 1987

Wall Street (1987)

Wall Street (1987)

Directed byOliver Stone
Produced byEdward R. Pressman
Written byOliver Stone, Stanley Weiser
StarringMichael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Daryl Hannah, Martin Sheen, Sean Young, John C. McGinley, Hal Holbrook, Terrance Stamp
Music byStewart Copeland
CinematographyRobert Richardson
Editing byClaire Simpson
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release date(s)December 11, 1987
Running time126 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$15,000,000
Gross revenue$43,848,100
Followed byWall Street: Money Never Sleeps


Wall Street is a 1987 American drama film released by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Oliver Stone and stars Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen and Daryl Hannah. The screenplay was written by Stanley Weiser and Stone. The film tells the story of Bud Fox (Sheen), a young stockbroker desperate to succeed and becomes involved with his hero, Gordon Gekko (Douglas), a wealthy, unscrupulous corporate raider.

Stone made the film as a tribute to his father, Lou Stone, a stockbroker during the Great Depression. The character of Gekko is said to be a composite of several people, including Owen Morrisey, Dennis Levine, Ivan Boesky, Carl Icahn, Asher Edelman, Michael Ovitz, Michael Milken, and Stone himself. Originally, the studio wanted Warren Beatty to play Gekko but he was not interested and Stone wanted Richard Gere but the actor passed. Stone went with Douglas even though he had been advised by others in Hollywood not to cast him.

The film was well-received among major film critics including Roger Ebert and The New York Times. Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the film has come to be seen as the archetypal portrayal of 1980s excess, with Douglas's character advocating that "greed, for lack of a better word, is good". It has also proven influential in inspiring people to work on Wall Street with Sheen, Douglas and Stone commenting over the years how people still approach them and say that they became stockbrokers because of their respective characters in the film.

Stone and Douglas have reunited for a sequel titled Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which will be released on September 24, 2010.


Plot

In 1985, Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), a junior stockbroker at Jackson Steinem & Co., is desperate to get to the top. He wants to become involved with his hero, the corporate raider Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), a ruthless and legendary Wall Street player whose values could not conflict more with those of Bud's father Carl (Martin Sheen), a blue-collar airline maintenance foreman. Bud visits Gekko on his birthday and, granted a brief interview, pitches him stocks but Gekko is unimpressed. Realizing that Gekko may not do business with him, a desperate Bud provides him with some inside information about Bluestar Airlines, which Bud had learned in a casual conversation the day before from his father. Gekko tells him he will think about it. A dejected Bud returns to his office where Gekko places an order for Bluestar stock, becoming one of Bud's clients.

Gekko gives Bud some capital to manage, but the shares that Bud selects – by honest research – lose money. Instead Gekko takes Bud under his wing, but compels him to unearth new information by any means necessary, including unethical and illegal means. One of his first assignments is to spy on British corporate raider Sir Lawrence Wildman (Terence Stamp) and discern the Brit's next move. Through Bud's spying, Gekko makes big money and Wildman is forced to buy Gekko's shares off him to complete his control of a steel company

Bud becomes wealthy, enjoying Gekko's promised perks, including a penthouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side and a trophy blonde, interior decorator Darien (Daryl Hannah). Still employed by Jackson Steinem, Bud is promoted as a result of the large commission fees which he is bringing in from Gekko's trading, and is given a corner office with a view. He continues to maximize insider information and use friends as straw buyers to get rich.

Bud pitches a new idea to Gekko, to buy Bluestar Airlines and expand the company, with Bud as president, using savings achieved by union concessions. Bud persuades his father, Carl, who dislikes Gekko, to get union support for the plan and push for the deal. Things change when Bud learns that Gekko, in fact, plans to sell off Bluestar's assets, leaving Carl and the entire Bluestar staff unemployed. Although this would leave Bud very rich, he is angered by Gekko's deceit, and racked with the guilt of being an accessory to Bluestar's destruction. Bud chooses his father over his mentor and resolves to disrupt Gekko's plans. He angrily breaks up with Darien, who refuses to plot against Gekko, a former lover and the architect of her career.

Bud creates a plan to manipulate Bluestar's stock value downwards. Gekko, realizing that his stock is plummeting, finally dumps his remaining interest in the company, only to learn on the evening news that the shares have been picked up at a lower price by Sir Lawrence Wildman, who will become the airline's new majority shareholder. Gekko realizes that Bud engineered the entire scheme. Bud triumphantly goes back to work at Jackson Steinem & Co. the following day, where he is confronted by the police and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Bud is placed under arrest, handcuffed, and led out of the office in tears.

Sometime later, Bud confronts Gekko in Central Park. Gekko berates him for his role with Bluestar. He then viciously assaults Bud, but not before mentioning several of their illegal business transactions. Following the confrontation, it is revealed that he was wearing a wire to record his encounter with Gekko. He turns the wire tapes over to the federal authorities, who suggest that his sentence will be lightened in exchange for his help. Later on, Bud's parents drive him to the courthouse and Carl tells him he did right in saving the airline, but he'll most likely go to jail. The film ends with Bud going up the steps of the courthouse.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_(1987_film)


American films | English-language films | 1987 films | 1980s drama films | American business films | American drama films | Films directed by Oliver Stone | Films featuring a Best Actor Academy Award winning performance | Films featuring a Best Drama Actor Golden Globe winning performance | Films set in New York City | Trading films | 20th Century Fox films