Christmas Vacation (1989)
Chevy Chase, star of National Lampoon’s Vacation and its sequel, is back as the paterfamilias of the Griswold family (including Beverly D’Angelo as his missus) to skewer the Yuletide season. Chevy mugs, trips, falls, mashes his fingers and stubs his toes as he prepares to invite numerous dysfunctional relatives to his household to celebrate Christmas. Amidst the more outrageous sight gags (including the electrocution of a cat as the Christmas tree is lit) the film betrays a sentimental streak, with old wounds healing and long-estranged relatives reuniting in the Griswold living room. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation was still capable of attracting an audience five years after its release: It was one of the top-rated seasonal TV specials of 1994, outrating even the first network telecast of It’s a Wonderful Life.
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Los Angeles police sergeant Roger Murtaugh and his partner, Sergeant Martin Riggs, are working on yet another drug related case. Soon after finding 1 million dollars worth of South African krugerrand in a crashed red BMW after a chase, Riggs and Murtaugh are assigned to keep an eye on Leo Getz, who is scheduled to testify in a case. There are people who don’t want Leo to testify, and they are a group of drug smugglers led by Arjen Rudd, the minister of diplomatic affairs for the South African consulate. Rudd turns out to be the man that Riggs and Murtaugh are after in the drug case they were working on before Leo was placed in their protective custody, which doesn’t look very protective when Leo is kidnapped by Rudd’s right hand man Pieter Vorstedt. Riggs ends up falling for Rudd’s secretary Rika Van Den Haas, who doesn’t like Rudd. In a confrontation with Vorstedt, Riggs is told the true circumstances behind the death of his wife Vicky, who died in a car crash in 1984 the car crash was caused by Vorstedt, who was supposed to have killed Riggs. Minutes after Vorstedt tries to kill Riggs, Riggs finds Rika dead, and this sends Riggs over the edge.
Indiana Jones, famed adventurer and archaeologist acquires a diary that holds clues and a map with no names to find the mysterious Holy Grail- which was sent from his father, Dr. Henry Jones, in Italy. Upon hearing from a private collector, Walter Donavan, that the mission for the Holy Grail went astray with the disappearance of his father, Indiana Jones and museum curator Marcus Brody venture to Italy in search of Indy’s father. However, upon retrieving Dr. Henry Jones in Nazi territory, the rescue mission turns into a race to find the Holy Grail before the Nazis do- who plan to use it for complete world domination for their super-race. With the diary as a vital key and the map with no names as a guide, Indiana Jones once again finds himself in another death defying adventure of pure excitement.
The second part of the trilogy begins as Doc, Marty and Jennifer take the time-traveling DeLorean into the year 2015 to straighten out the future of the McFly family. But Biff Tannen steals the time machine and gives his younger self a book containing 50 years of sports statistics, which the young Biff uses to amass an enormous gambling fortune and transform idyllic Hill Valley into a living hell. To restore the present, Doc and Marty must return to the events of their previous adventure in 1955 and retrieve the book.