Joel Silver Movies

In this film, the mysterious Kira (Olivia Newton-John) appears to assist and inspire a young artist, Sonny Malone (Michael Beck). When she helps him meet up with the rich Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly), the two join up together to create an artistic and business success, an unique club called "Xanadu." ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Robert Louis Stevenson's novel is satirized in this comedy about a scientist (Mark Blankfield) who is hopelessly addicted to his latest invention, a strange white powder. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

The seventh cinema adaptation of the venerable stage farce Brewster's Millions stars Richard Pryor as Montgomery Brewster, a third-rate baseball player. Much to his amazement, Brewster discovers that he is related to deceased millionaire Rupert Horn (Hume Cronyn, who appears only in a videotaped "living will"). Even more amazing is the fact that Horn has left Brewster his entire $300 million fortune. The catch? Brewster must spend $30 million within 30 days, or he'll be left with nothing (in the earlier incarnations of Brewster's Millions, the hero was required to spend only a million, but this was, after all, the inflationary '80s). Aiding and abetting Brewster in his efforts to divest himself of his money are his catcher pal (John Candy) and an erstwhile lady friend (Lonette McKee), while his principal antagonist is a snotty attorney (Stephen Collins). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John Hughes's third directorial effort, Weird Science, follows in the tradition of his previous teen-centered films, Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith play the wannabe hipster Gary and his nebbish weak-willed best friend, Wyatt, a pair of high-school geeks who are hapless with members of the opposite sex. Using Wyatt's computer, they create what they believe is the ideal woman. A lightning storm brings that woman to life, and she takes the form of Kelly Le Brock. Lisa sets about building their self-confidence, but trouble begins brewing when Wyatt's cruel, military-minded older brother, Chet (Bill Paxton), begins to realize that something is not as it should be. Hughes would finish his cycle of high-school themed films with his next movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

LA cop Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson), whose wife has recently died, is a loose cannon with a seeming death wish. This makes him indispensable in collaring dangerous criminals, but a liability to any potential partners. Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover), a conservative family man who wants to stay alive for his upcoming 50th birthday, is partnered with Riggs. As Riggs gets to know Murtaugh and his family, he begins to mellow, though his insistence on using guerilla tactics to catch criminals is still (put mildly) above and beyond the call of duty. The main villain is The General (Mitchell Ryan), a drug dealer responsible for the death of the daughter of one of Murtaugh's oldest friends. The General is also in charge of a deadly, militia-like gang of smugglers. Adding fuel to the fire is The General's chief henchman, played with all stops out by Gary Busey. Moviegoers familiar only with the relatively tongue-in-cheek Lethal Weapon sequels may be amazed to find out how dangerous and unpredictable Riggs is in the first Lethal Weapon -- and how likely it seems that Murtaugh might not survive until fade-out time. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ex-football player Carl Weathers stars in this violent action film as Detroit policeman Jericho Jackson. The dedicated but brutal cop is plunged into nefarious doings concerning a crooked industrialist (Craig T. Nelson) and his drug-addicted girlfriend (pop-singer Vanity), breaking many people's bones before solving the case. Sharon Stone stands out in a cast of genre veterans including Nicholas Worth, Sonny Landham, and Robert Davi. Heavy on the sex and violence, this film harkens back to the glory days of 1970s blaxploitation, but is a bit too mean-spirited to be as much fun. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

It's Christmas time in L.A., and there's an employee party in progress on the 30th floor of the Nakatomi Corporation building. The revelry comes to a violent end when the partygoers are taken hostage by a group of terrorists headed by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), who plan to steal the 600 million dollars locked in Nakatomi's high-tech safe. In truth, Gruber and his henchmen are only pretending to be politically motivated to throw the authorities off track; also in truth, Gruber has no intention of allowing anyone to get out of the building alive. Meanwhile, New York cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) has come to L.A. to visit his estranged wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), who happens to be one of the hostages. Disregarding the orders of the authorities surrounding the building, McClane, who fears nothing (except heights), takes on the villains, armed with one handgun and plenty of chutzpah. Until Die Hard came along, Bruce Willis was merely that wisecracking guy on Moonlighting. After the film's profits started rolling in, Willis found himself one of the highest-paid and most sought-after leading men in Hollywood. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It isn't often that a popular TV series is inspired by a literary property that all but destroyed a particular industry, but such was the case with the weekly, half-hour horror anthology Tales From the Crypt. Most of the episodes depicted herein were based on stories originally published in the EC comic book series Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, and Shock Superstories in the 1950s. In these grim little morality plays, a number of nasty characters deservedly met grisly fates appropriate to their misdeeds. Examples included the compulsive neat freak who is cut up into little pieces and then tidily repackaged into carefully labeled mason jars, or the homicidal baseball player whose bloody body parts are used as bats, balls, and bases in a grim nocturnal ball game played by the vengeful teammates of his last victim. It was this sort of merry mayhem that brought down the wrath of professional do-gooders (such as the infamous Dr. Frederick Wertham) and their political co-conspirators, who demanded that the comic book industry immediately purge itself of all horror magazines -- and never mind these were among the best written and illustrated comics in the business.
At any rate, the old EC comics had become classics by the time Tales From the Crypt made its HBO debut on June 10, 1989. The series, like the comic books that inspired it, was hosted by the ghoulish "Cryptkeeper," seen here as a skeletal animatronic puppet whose voice was provided by actor John Kassir. Cracking delightfully gruesome jokes all the while, The Cryptkeeper introduced each episode, and showed up at the denouement to make a few additional creepy comments. In keeping with the standards set by the comics, the individual episodes dealt primarily with unpleasant people who were given their just desserts in an even more unpleasant fashion, usually with supernatural assistance. Several top filmmakers contributed their directorial talents to Tales from the Crypt, among them Robert Zemeckis, Walter Hill, Steven E. de Souza, John Frankenheimer, Elliot Silverstein, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Hanks. The casts were equally impressive, boasting the likes of Joe Pantoliano, Amanda Plummer, Kirk Douglas, Miguel Ferrer, Teri Hatcher, Harry Anderson, Teri Garr, Beau Bridges, Christopher Reeve, Mimi Rogers, Martin Sheen, Shelley Hack, Natasha Richardson, and Ewan McGregor. The seven seasons of Tales from the Crypt, totalling 93 episodes, aired first in uncut, uncensored form on HBO, then were rebroadcast with a few judicious trims and expurgations here and there by the Fox Network. The last first-run episode was telecast July 19, 1996. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Robert Zemeckis' "And All Through the House" is about a psychotic Santa Claus (Larry Drake) who has just escaped from an insane asylum and comes knocking at the door of a woman (Mary Ellen Trainor), who's fresh from killing her husband for greedy reasons. The episode is a remake of one of the segments of the 1972 Tales from the Crypt feature directed by Freddie Francis and starring Joan Collins. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

"Another basement, another elevator...how can the same thing happen to the same guy twice?" asks John McClane (Bruce Willis), in what is doubtless the key question of this film. A year after foiling the terrorist takeover of a high-rise office building in the first movie, McClane is waiting to pick up his wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), at Dulles International Airport just outside Washington, D.C., on Christmas Eve. Scheduled to arrive the same evening is Ramon Esperanza (Franco Nero), a South American political figure who is being brought to the United States to stand trial for his role in a drug-smuggling ring. However, a group of terrorists, led by renegade American military officer Col. Stuart (William Sadler), take control of the airport, scuttling radio transmissions and placing their own men in the control tower. Stuart and his men ensure that Esperanza's plane lands safely, and then demand that Stuart and his men be given a fully-fueled 747 and free passage wherever they choose to go. Otherwise, they will guide the many circling jets waiting for landing instructions into definite crash landings, killing the many passengers on board. Not willing to stand aside as terrorists once again threaten his wife's life, the wise-cracking McClane once again leaps into action to foil Stuart's plans and bring the passenger jets safely to the ground. William Atherton, John Amos, Dennis Franz, and John Leguizamo highlight the supporting cast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Michael Lehmann directed this post-modernist hash of To Catch a Thief and The Naked Gun starring Bruce Willis as Hudson Hawk, a cat burglar who wants to go straight, but the circumstances won't allow it. The story begins in a pre-credit sequence that takes place in the renaissance. Leonardo Da Vinci (Stefano Molinari) is rushing through his Mona Lisa painting to work on his latest invention -- a machine to turn lead into bronze. But Da Vinci makes a mistake and, instead of bronze, the machine turns the lead into gold. Realizing the danger of his invention if the contraption gets into the wrong hands, he hides three parts of the apparatus inside three of his other works. Four hundred years later, Hudson Hawk, the world's greatest cat burglar, is being released from jail after pulling a ten-year stretch. He wants to retire from the profession of cat burglary and drink some cappuccino, but two screwball billionaires -- Darwin and Minerva Mayflower (Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard) -- won't let him. Their nefarious plot is to steal the three Da Vinci works, restore Da Vinci's gold-making machine, and destroy the world's monetary system. They blackmail Hawks into working with them to steal the Da Vincis by threatening the life of Hawks's pal Tommy Five-Tone (Danny Aiello). Along with the power-mad billionaires, Hawks has to deal with the CIA, in the person of George Kaplan (James Coburn), breathing down his neck. He also has Vatican art restorer Anna Baragli (Andie MacDowell) falling for his smirk. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Ricochet, a suspenseful, exciting police thriller that loses its way at the end, is the story of a good cop whose life is destroyed by an obsessed psychotic criminal whom he sent to prison years before. Nick (Denzel Washington) is a successful happily married police officer with a distinguished record. He is drugged, kidnapped and framed by Blake (John Lithgow) who has never forgiven him for arresting him years before. Nick must redeem himself both to the police force, his family and the public who had come to love and respect him. Denzel Washington is excellent in his role of the good man in an impossible situation. John Lithgow, while always interesting, is completely over-the-top as the psychotic criminal, and the film looses plausibility during an extended and highly improbable and unbelievable final chase sequence around the Watts Towers. Despite these flaws, Ricochet is an exiting suspense film with a fine performance by Washington and worth watching despite its disappointing conclusion. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide