Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. (abbreviated MGM or M-G-M, also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or simply Metro) is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs.
Once the largest, most glamorous, and most revered film studio, MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California. It is one of the oldest mini-major film studios and a former major film studio.
In 1971, it was announced that MGM would merge with 20th Century Fox, a plan which never came into fruition. Over the next thirty-nine years, the studio was bought and sold at various points in its history until, on November 3, 2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. MGM emerged from bankruptcy on December 20, 2010, at which time the executives of Spyglass Entertainment, Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, became co-Chairmen and co-CEOs of the holding company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Caroline (Tomei) is a young woman working as a waitress who is always unlucky in love. Adam (Slater) is a shy busboy who saves Caroline when two men try to rape her on her way home one night. She then gets to know him. They become close, but she finds out his past, and the attackers come after Adam for revenge. They end up stabbing him. While Adam is recovering in the hospital, Caroline discovers that he has a heart defect, though he claims he has a baboon heart. On his birthday she surprises him by taking him to a hockey game. Before they leave, he shows her a surprise gift he left her to be opened when they return. At the hockey game, Adam catches a stray hockey puck that is shot into the crowd. On the way home, he falls asleep and dies at the age of 27. After the funeral, Caroline opens the gift he left her. It is a box of albums with a handwritten note from Adam declaring his love for Caroline.
Jefferson Reed (Robert Townsend) is a mild mannered school teacher in Washington D.C. His neighborhood is terrorized by a local gang called The Golden Lords led by Simon Caine (Roy Fegan) and allied with drug lord Anthony Byers (Frank Gorshin). One night, Jeff steps in to rescue a woman from the gang only to end up running from them himself. Hiding in a garbage dumpster, he manages to escape. As he climbs out, he is struck down by a glowing green meteorite. His spine is crushed and he receives severe burns. A small fragment of the meteor was left over and taken by a mute vagrant named Marvin (Bill Cosby). Reed awakens several days later in the hospital, but when his bandages are taken off, he is miraculously healed of all injuries.
Ned Ravine, who's both a police officer and a lawyer (who often defends the people he arrests), believes that he knows everything about women, and says that he'll throw away his badge if anyone ever proves him wrong. While on a stakeout, he encounters a seductive woman named Lola Cain; the next day, Lola shows up at his law office, saying that she needs him to look over some papers she's come across. Meanwhile, Max Shady, who was just released from prison after seven years, starts stalking Ned, planning to kill him for failing to successfully defend Max in court.
Turner and Quaid play Jane and Jefferson Blue, a wise-cracking couple of spies for an unnamed U.S. covert organization on maternity leave in New Orleans with their baby daughter whom they dote on, though they are unable to agree on whether her name should be Louise Jane or Jane Louise. With the baby's arrival, they have decided to move on to "Chapter Two" of their marriage, retiring from field assignment in an attempt to give their daughter a normal life. However, events continually conspire to draw them back into their old lives, including fruitless attacks by a frustrated mugger (played by Stanley Tucci) while being called back into service to combat a psychotic Czech arms dealer (played by Fiona Shaw).
Kate Moseley is a world-class figure skater representing the United States in the pairs event at the 1988 Winter Olympics. She has genuine talent, but years of being spoiled by her wealthy father Jack have made her all but impossible to work with.
Gabriel Caine (James Woods), a con man, is released from prison in Winfield, Georgia and immediately gets to work on his next scam. Caine and his partner, Fitz (Oliver Platt), travel to a small town not far from the prison: Diggstown, a city obsessed with boxing.
Divorced mom Tracy Cross raises her 12-year-old son, Christopher, in Key West in 1969 around the time of the Apollo 11 moon landing. A waitress, she becomes a stripper to support herself and Chris.The film includes a scene where fourteen-year-old actor David Arnott appears nude (though shot from behind).
The story follows two affairs, a generation apart. Nick (Kevin Anderson), a professor of architecture in upstate New York, comes to an Illinois town to be with his birth mother (Kim Novak) in the final days of her illness; he was adopted and has never met her before. On the first day, he runs into Paul (Bill Pullman), a college friend, whose construction company is demolishing an old, downtown department store where a murder-suicide happened 30 years before. The building is a beautiful cast-iron construction, so Nick wants to study it before the demolition. Paul introduces Nick to his wife, Jane (Pamela Gidley), a photographer who wants to portray the same building. Over the next four days, Nick and Jane's attraction grows, as Nick explores the old building, attends his mother's bedside, and unravels the truth that links both of them with the developing events in his and Jane's life.
Set in the Cuban community in Miami, the story revolves around the relationship between Nestor, a recently released political prisoner, his wife Isabel, who had fled Cuba after Nestor was imprisoned, and Sam, the fisherman who had rescued Isabel from almost certain death at sea.
Jack Gable (Candy) is the New York City-based lead writer and producer of the soap opera "Beyond Our Dreams". Consumed by his work, he harbors an unspoken attraction to Laura Claybourne (Samms), the selfish actress playing the lead character of Rachel Hedison.
The film is set in the then-future of 1996 in Los Angeles. Harley Davidson (Mickey Rourke) is in a motel in Texas when he hears about a dangerous new street drug named "Crystal Dream" on the radio. The significance of this street drug does not arise again until later in the film. Harley then meets a lifelong friend, a cowboy who is nicknamed The Marlboro Man (Don Johnson) and they later plan a bank robbery to help save their friend's bar from being foreclosed and replaced with a skyscraper. However, after they rob a bank's armored car, they discover the cargo they stole is the designer drug "Crystal Dream", not money. Chance Wilder (Tom Sizemore), who is a bank president involved in drug dealing, demands the return of the drugs. A series of increasingly deadly encounters ensue as heavily armed assassins (who work for the bank) hunt for Harley and Marlboro. Much of it was actually filmed in and around Tucson, Arizona and the "Boneyard" at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
Isabelle Eberhardt (Mathilda May) travels from North Africa to be with her father, who is dying in Geneva. Shortly after his death, the wife of Marquis de Mores summons Eberhardt to Paris. de Mores has disappeared in North Africa, and his wife wished to hire Eberhardt to track him down, as she is familiar with the region. Eberhardt settles in Algiers, though she quickly abandons the search for de Mores due to interference from the French authorities, and assumes that de Mores is dead. Eberhardt often journeys into the desert, and writes about her experiences there for her publisher Victor Barrucand (Claude Villers). She falls in love with Slimene (Tchéky Karyo), a French Foreign Legion soldier. Through Slimene, Eberhardt makes contact with the secretive Sufi brotherhood, the Qadiriyya.
While driving at night along the northern California coast, architect Dan Merrick (Tom Berenger) and wife Judith (Greta Scacchi) are involved in a violent car wreck. Dan suffers major injuries and significant brain trauma, resulting in psychogenic amnesia. After extensive plastic surgery, Dan returns home in Judith's care.
Famed novelist Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is the author of a successful series of Regency romance novels featuring a character named Misery Chastain. Wanting to focus on more serious stories, he writes a manuscript for the final Misery novel. While traveling from Silver Creek, Colorado to his home in New York City, he is caught in a blizzard and his car goes off the road, rendering him unconscious. Paul is rescued by a nurse named Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), who brings him to her remote home. When Paul regains consciousness he finds himself bedridden, with both his legs broken as well as a dislocated shoulder. Annie claims she is his "number one fan" and talks a lot about him and his novels. As a reward for saving him, Paul gives Annie his new manuscript which she saved from the wreckage. While feeding him, she is angered and spills soup on him but regains control and apologizes. She buys a copy of Paul's most recently published book, Misery's Child, giving glowing praise to Paul as she progresses through the book. However, when Annie discovers that Misery dies at the end of the book she flies into a rage, almost smashing a table on Paul's head. She reveals that she lied about calling his agent and the authorities; nobody knows where he is. Annie leaves and Paul tries to escape from his room, but she has locked the door.
Bartholomew "Barley" Scott Blair (Sean Connery), the head of a British publishing firm, is on a business trip to Moscow. He attends a writers' retreat near Peredelkino where he speaks of an inevitable New World Order and an end to tensions with the West. Attentively listening is a man called Dante (Goethe in the novel) (Klaus Maria Brandauer), who wants to be convinced that Barley means what he says. It transpires that Dante is in fact a renowned physicist who has secretly written a manuscript detailing the Soviet Union's nuclear missile capabilities.