Liz Ross Movies

In this exciting sci-fi thriller, a newly designed and extremely expensive android with plenty of strength but neither emotions nor a conscience busts out of a secret government lab and ends up in the hands of terrorists who commandeer the top story of a hospital and hold the daughter of the President hostage. Desperate to stop the mercenaries before they kill, the government must thaw out the frozen form of the criminal who designed the hospital. But they end up thawing out a former football hero instead, who pretends to be the architect. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Behind the black cowl, Gotham City superhero Batman is really millionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton), who turned to crimefighting after his parents were brutally murdered before his eyes. The only person to share Wayne's secret is faithful butler Alfred (Michael Gough). The principal villain in Batman is The Joker (Jack Nicholson) who'd been mob torpedo Jack Napier before he was horribly disfigured in a vat of acid. The Joker's plan to destroy Batman and gain control of Gotham City is manifold. First he distributes a line of booby-trapped cosmetics, then he goes on a destruction spree in the Gotham Art Museum while the music of Prince blasts away in the background, and finally he orchestrates an all-out campaign to win the hearts and minds of the Gothamites, hoping to turn them against the Cowled One. Meanwhile, reporter Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) becomes the love of Batman's life-which of course plays right into the Joker's hands. Photographed by Roger Pratt, designed by Anton Furst, and scored by Tim Burton's favorite composer Danny Elfman, Batman was a monstrous box-office hit, making $100 million in the first ten days of release--$82,800,000 in North America alone. Incidentally, Billy Dee Williams' comparatively small role as DA Harvey Dent was originally designed to set up the sequel, wherein Dent was to convert into master criminal Two-Face; but by the time the producers got around to that character in 1995's Batman Forever, Two-Face was played by Tommy Lee Jones. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Police Chief Rawlings (Chuck Conners) defends the town of Kokomo, Indiana from an invasion of Libyan terrorists in this grade "B" action feature. The villains attack a nuclear power plant and hold a high-school class hostage. Rawlings' negotiations are comically taken from Dog Day Afternoon as he tries to diffuse the volatile situation, and he trains the high-school students in guerilla warfare to battle the invaders. A thrilling car chase is one of the highlights of the film. Conners, the former pro baseball player-turned-actor, once again dons his Brooklyn Dodger jacket for this picture. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This WW II musical is set in Australia and chronicles the exploits of a nightclub singer and the young Marine who loves her. She works in a Quonset hut turned into a saloon and helps stage shows for battle-weary troops returning from the South Seas. After one performance she holds a small party in her apartment and there meets the Marine sergeant who has just sailed in from Guadalcanal. Although she is married and awaiting the return of her husband, who is also at war, he decides to pursue her. Later she learns that her husband has been killed. Soon after, the Marine confesses that he can no longer handle the violence and has gone AWOL. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Following his successful foray into swashbuckler comedy with The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, director Richard Lester made what has proved to be one of the few quality films from the disaster craze that dominated filmmaking in the mid-'70s. Juggernaut is the pseudonym of a madman (Freddie Jones) who plants several steel drums aboard a luxury liner and calls the company's officials once the boat has put out to sea, demanding a large sum of money in exchange for instructions on how to defuse bombs inside the drums. Anthony Hopkins plays one of the company officials whose wife and children are aboard the ship, Omar Sharif is the ship's captain, Shirley Knight is a passenger who is also his mistress, and Richard Harris and David Hemmings are two members of the bomb disposal team, which is helicoptered onto the ship to defuse the explosives. As in many of Lester's best works, humor pops up in unexpected places; particularly memorable are Harris as the weary but wisecracking top dog among the explosives experts and Lester regular Roy Kinnear as a bumbling entertainment director desperately trying to distract the apprehensive passengers. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide