Steven Poster Movies

Touted upon its release as the finale of the Rocky saga, this fifth entry in the long-running series of sports dramas reunites star Sylvester Stallone with John G. Avildsen, director of the Oscar-winning original. Stallone is Rocky Balboa, suffering from career-ending brain damage as a result of his punishing bout with Ivan Drago at the finale of the previous film. Upon their return to Philadelphia, Rocky and his wife, Adrian (Talia Shire), discover they are broke, their fortune squandered by an incompetent accountant. Forced to move back to their working-class neighborhood, Rocky finds that his only asset is the run-down gym willed to him by Mickey (Burgess Meredith, who appears in new flashback sequences). Resisting big money offered to him by Don King-like boxing promoter George Washington Duke (Richard Gant), Rocky becomes a trainer and finds a talented comer in Tommy Gunn (real-life boxer Tommy Morrison, nephew of John Wayne). Rocky's son (played by Stallone's real-life son Sage Stallone) feels neglected by his father, who lavishes attention on his protégé, but Tommy ultimately turns his back on his mentor to sign a more lucrative deal with Duke, leading to a street-fight showdown. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Paul Reubens's followup to the box-office hit Pee-Wee's Big Adventure is just as outrageous and cartoonish, though not as good. This time, child-man Pee-Wee runs a colorful farm, chock full of talking animals and outsized produce. On the morning after a tornado of Wizard of Oz dimensions, Pee-Wee awakens to discover that a travelling circus has been deposited in his back yard. Befriended by circus owner Kris Kristofferson, Pee-Wee takes an acrobatic job, hoping to impress lovely trapeze artist Valeria Golino--thereby incurring the jealous rage of his hometown sweetie Penelope Ann Miller. When the circus is faced with bankruptcy, Pee-Wee comes up with a brilliant idea: why not stage a three-ring spectacular celebrating the wonders of agriculture? A partial takeoff of such earlier sawdust-trail flicks as Martin and Lewis' Three Ring Circus and Disney's Toby Tyler, Big Top Pee-Wee is generally entertaining, but goes off in too many directions at once, leaving a lot of loose plot ends and underdeveloped characters. Also, Pee-Wee's overactive libido (at least in this film!) is not all that suitable for his younger fans. Even so, there are plenty of hilarious set-pieces. Big Top Pee-Wee was produced and cowritten by Paul Reubens. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This glitzy miniseries based on the Judith Krantz novel is a wicked soap opera about sex, power, and betrayal. Valerie Bertinelli stars as Maxi, whose mother (Francesca Annis) marries her father's hated brother Cutter (Perry King) after his death. Cutter had sworn to destroy everything his late brother valued and proceeds to run his publishing empire into the ground. Maxi, who has already been through three husbands by age 29, turns over a new leaf by gathering her family and making a commitment to save the business, which she does by becoming the editor of a successful fashion magazine. Maxi lives in the Trump Tower, whose famed real-life owner appears as himself. It has some unintentionally campy moments, but King is quite good as the villainous Cutter, and fans of this sort of high-gloss '80s melodrama will want to put it on their lists. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

When prodigal son Billy Turner (Judd Nelson) returns to his Florida home town, he's caught in a brawl and thrown in jail. He tells the guards to call his father, the mayor, who will have him released; however, he soon discovers his father has been killed. After Turner finally gets out of jail, he starts to hunt down his father's murderer, with the eventual help of Annie Rayford (Ally Sheedy) and her brother Joey (David Caruso). Their nemesis is the nasty crime boss Perry Kerch (Scott Wilson) and his henchmen, though the slow-witted police chief (Paul Winfield) is not much help, either. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This three-hour TV movie stars Sophia Loren as New Yorker Marianna Miraldo. Hurt and angered by her son's cocaine addiction, Marianna discovers that a close friend also has ties with the drug scene. After several of her imprisoned friend's associates try to contact him through her, the DEA persuades Marianna to aid them in an undercover operation headed by cop Bobby Jay (Billy Dee Williams). Despite the "don't get involved" admonitions of her husband (Hector Elizondo), Marianna agrees to cooperate with the DEA, if only for the sake of her son. This fact-based film, which first aired September 24, 1986, concludes with the feds closing in on a $3.5 billion cocaine ring. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Abby (Lori Loughlin) and her brother, Loren (Shannon Presby), seem to have it all: good looks, lots of friends, and a great relationship with their loving mom and their heroic, discipline-minded military dad. When their folks are killed in a car crash, however, the siblings must move to small-town Florida to live with their sweet but cash-impaired Uncle Charlie (Ed Jones) and Aunt Fay (Lucy Martin), who own a gas station and a struggling, bargain-bin amusement park. For Abby and Loren, life in the Sunshine State proves to be a mixture of hard work, new faces, and harassment at the hands of drug-dealing, skirt-chasing local scion Dutra (James Spader) and his gang of trailer-park psychopaths. Dutra places a bet with the wiry, reptilian Gideon (John Philbin) about which of the young villains will be able to bed Abby first, leading to a series of increasingly vile sexual come-ons. Abby, however, has other romantic ideas involving a kindly boy named Mark (Eric Stoltz). Between bouts of defending his sister's honor, Loren finds a similarly wholesome romance with pretty, blond Karen (Paige Lyn Price). With the help of these new friends, Loren and Abby make some headway in the local social hierarchy, but their skirmishes with Dutra and his minions escalate, climaxing with attempted rape, kidnapping, and bumper-car violence on the night of a high-school dance. Director Sean S. Cunningham also directed the original Friday the 13th. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Director Lynne Littman has created an effective, understated portrayal of the cost of a nuclear war in human terms, in a film as far removed from the fake hyperbole of action and disaster movies as the natural world is from cartoons. Set in the small California town of Hamlin, the Wetherly family and their everyday concerns open the story. The trivia that fills their secure, ordinary existence disappears when a TV show is interrupted with the announcement that nuclear bombs have exploded in the major cities on the East Coast, and then the entire scene is erased in an increasingly white, blank movie screen -- meant to show that nuclear blasts have been detonated in California as well. Over 1000 people die in the first month from radiation sickness, but the mother in the Wetherly family (Jane Alexander) displays great inner strength as she cares for orphaned children the family has taken under its wing and goes on sustaining those that remain in her own family. At one point, she quietly conveys to her daughter the happiness of intimacy between two adults, knowing her daughter will not live to experience adult love. As these individuals and the children cope with day-to-day existence, there is never any intrusion of overt horrors, the focus remains on the individuals and the way in which they adjust to the inevitable. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Originally made for television and adapted from a novel by Mary Higgins Clark, the story focuses on an attorney (Lauren Hutton) who has witnessed a murder. She is unable to convince anyone of the truth, though a young doctor (Ben Murphy) wants to believe her. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

Sun-worshiping Californians are disappearing by the droves at a popular beach hangout, and a pair of extremely gruff detectives (John Saxon and Burt Young) grumble their way through the case until the real culprit is discovered... it seems a giant burrowing sand-monster with a taste for well-tanned human flesh has set up house beneath the surface and has been partaking of beach bums and bunnies, sucking them down to a nasty (but mostly unseen) death. The creature is kept completely concealed until the final minutes, but its triumphant arrival reveals the real reason the filmmakers kept it hidden so long: the dreaded beast looks like a giant artichoke! The potential for campy fun in this premise is defeated by a completely straight, plodding detective story, but at least Saxon and Young turned in enjoyably cranky performances before picking up their checks. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, the screenwriters behind the highly successful Alien, turned their attention to earthbound terrors with this creepy horror tale. Dead and Buried focuses on Dan Gillis (James Farentino), a man who has recently returned to his hometown of Potter's Bluff to be its sheriff. His job becomes difficult when a series of strangers who visit Potter's Bluff begin dying in violent and mysterious ways. To make matters worse, his wife, Janet (Melody Anderson), has begun to act strangely, taking an odd interest in voodoo and acting like she might be having an affair. As the murder victims pile up, Gillis discovers that all his troubles have an occult origin that has to do with the town's elderly mortician, Dobbs (Jack Albertson, in his final feature film role). Gillis gets to the bottom of the mystery, only to discover that the truth is much worse than he imagined. Despite effective direction and solid acting, Dead and Buried got lost in the shuffle of the early '80s horror boom and failed to click with the movie-going public. However, it later gained an audience via home video and cable and remains a minor cult favorite today thanks to its singular blend of creepy atmosphere and gruesome shocks. ~ Donald Guarisco, All Movie Guide

In this adventure, set in old New Orleans, a dashing man disguises himself with a mask and cape so that he can get revenge on those that murdered his family. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

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 François 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. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide