Archive for the ‘1980s Money Movies’ Category

A Fool and His Money

Thursday, March 19th, 2009
Sign up for Blockbuster, Get 50% off first month.

This movie is by far one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It’s not worth buying it, let alone renting it. Even the cover of this movie is bad. It shows Sandra Bullock in the foreground but she only plays a supporting role in the movie. It’s the man in the background (Jonathan Penner) who has the lead role. It makes me wonder if the cover was made this way just to sell the movie. Penner loses his job and starts his own business by making his own religion but it was done in poor taste. Even if you are a Sanra Bullock fan, there are far better movies than this one.

Cast

  • Sandra Bullock
  • Jonathan Penner
  • Gerald Orange
  • George Plimpton

Trading Places

Thursday, March 19th, 2009
Sign up for Blockbuster, Get 50% off first month.

Trading Places is an Academy Award-nominated 1983 comedy film starring Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis. It was directed by John Landis and written by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod. It was produced by Aaron Russo.

Production

Most of the movie was filmed on location in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Portions were set in New York City, at the World Trade Center and the New York Board of Trade exchange floor at 4 World Trade Center. Additionally, many of the interior office scenes of Duke and Duke were filmed within the historic rooms of the Park Avenue Armory.

The scene in which Winthorp is arraigned takes place in the New York City Police Department’s 45th Precinct Police Station located at 2877 Barkley Ave in the Bronx. The brass capped metal fencing in front of the big desk is still polished every week. Additionally, the room in which Winthorp is ordered to undress while the police list his valuables is the room where the Police Officers from the 45th Precinct attend roll call.

The final scene was filmed in Saint Croix, in the United States Virgin Islands.

Rating

The film was rated R by the MPAA, for brief nudity and profanity.

Cast

  • Dan Aykroyd as Louis Winthorpe III
  • Eddie Murphy as Billy Ray “William” Valentine
  • Ralph Bellamy as Randolph Duke
  • Don Ameche as Mortimer Duke
  • Denholm Elliott as Coleman
  • Jamie Lee Curtis as Ophelia
  • Kristin Holby as Penelope Witherspoon
  • Paul Gleason as Clarence Beeks
  • Alfred Drake as President of Exchange
  • Kelly Curtis as Muffy

Wall Street

Thursday, March 19th, 2009
Sign up for Blockbuster, Get 50% off first month.

Wall Street is a 1987 American film directed by Oliver Stone and features Charlie Sheen as a young stockbroker desperate to succeed and a wealthy but unscrupulous corporate raider (Michael Douglas) whom he idolizes.

Douglas won an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Daryl Hannah’s performance was not as well received and earned her a Razzie for Worst Supporting Actress. The film has come to be seen as the archetypal portrayal of 1980s excess, with Douglas advocating “greed, for lack of a better word, is good”.

Legacy

Wall Street enjoyed renewed interest in 1990 when the cover of Newsweek magazine asked, “Is Greed Dead?” after 1980s icons like Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky ran afoul of insider trading laws. Over the years, the film’s screenwriter Stanley Weiser has been approached by numerous people who told him, “The movie changed my life. Once I saw it I knew that I wanted to get into such and such business. I wanted to be like Gordon Gekko”. In addition, both Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas still have people come up to them and say that they became stockbrokers because of their respective characters in the film. In recent years, Stone was asked how the financial market depicted in Wall Street has changed and he replied, “The problems that existed in the 1980s market grew and grew into a much larger phenomenon. Enron is a fiction, in a sense, in the same way that Gordon Gekko’s buying and selling was a fiction … Kenny Lay–he’s the new Gordon Gekko”.