Shelley Pogoda Movies

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

This spoof of the 1930s and '40s crime stories ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime as it tells the story of Johnny Dangerously (Byron Thames as the young Johnny, Michael Keaton as the older), a devoted son to his ailing mother (Maureen Stapleton), so ill that she needs money for several operations. Johnny has nowhere to turn, and because gangsters tend to flourish in his neighborhood he goes to work for Dundee, a benevolent godfather-gangster type, in order to cover his mother's medical bills. Johnny hides his association with Dundee from his younger brother Tommy (Griffin Dunne) and goes so far as to pay for Tommy's law school fees -- supporting him until Tommy joins the staff of the local (and corrupt) district attorney's office for Burr (Danny DeVito). When Johnny starts working for Dundee, he clashes with the evil Vermin (Joe Piscopo) right from the beginning, but things only get worse. After Dundee decides to retire, Johnny ascends to the helm, and it does not look like Vermin is going to take that sitting down. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide