LA Confidential (1997) is set in LA in the 1950s, when the cops were as corrupt as the gangsters and the local crime boss had just been sent down for tax evasion. The cosy set-up falls apart when drunken cops beat up prisoners in the cell block with a news photographer nearby, and end up on the front page of the local paper. Ed, a pushy young cop wearing glasses, decides to tell the truth about what happened and gets promoted to detective lieutenant. The worst offender becomes the fall guy and his partner, Jack Vincennes, does a deal to get into Homicide.
The fall guy is killed in a massacre in the Nite Owl diner. Captain Smith takes charge and three black punks are busted. Ed is vastly unpopular, Jack is taking pay-offs for stories from Hush Hush magazine and narcotics cop Bud White is chasing a big stash of heroin and having an affair with a hooker who looks like the film star Veronica Lake. Jack keeps digging into the massacre and finds a body. Ed also becomes eager to crack the case properly.
Jack & Ed go to Parchett, the man behind the hookers, for answers. Captain Smith kills Jack when he gets too close to the truth then Smith [Irish and obviously a crook] gives himself away to Ed. Smith gets blackmail photos from the Hush Hush guy, then kills him. Bud & Ed have a brawl, then they team up to strong-arm the DA, who spills his guts.
They find Parchett dead; Smith is tidying up loose ends. Smith plugs Bud during a major shoot-out and Ed shoots him in the back. Ed tells the truth in the interrogation room about the rottenness in the LAPD and Captain Smith's takeover of organized crime, the blackmail of city officials and the murder of police officers. But he tells the right story in public to give LAPD a dead hero. And finally, Bud gets his girl.
Lake Placid (2000) is an extremely silly 'creature feature'. A diver was attacked by 'something' in the lake and his mate hauled just the top half of him into their boat. A female dinosaur expert was sent to Maine, where she identified a tooth extracted from the body-half as reptilian. She insisted on visiting the lake; city girl in the woods and not too happy about it. A nutty expert arrived and said they were looking for a crocodile. "Yeah, right!" was the general response.
The lady took lots of unscheduled plunges into the lake, a deputy had his head bitten off the, surprise! Everyone witnessed a bear being chomped by a 30-foot crocodile! And it turned out that it was a Pacific crocodile which had found its way to America's east coast somehow, and a nutty old lady had been feeding it cows.
The croc expert decided he had to catch the creature, which involved dangling a cow into the lake from a chopper as bait. More by accident than design, the croc ended up trapped in the wreckage of the chopper, and the sheriff got to use his BIG GUN to blow away the croc's unsuspected mate. At the end, the croc headed off to be exhibited on a low-loader and the dotty old lady, now on her own again, resumed feeding a gang of infant crocs.
Lake Placid 2 (2007) [21:00, Syfy] Two guys in a boat on the lake. Chomp! Chomp! One guy and some bits in a boat. Not something the locals want to hear. Ella, the wildlife lady, dives in and finds the missing head. Mad Sadie gets a tug but she won't talk unless it's about her missing sister, who had a history with crocodiles. Three backpackers go in the lake. Chomp! Sadie feeds a tourist to the monster. Chomp! A monster croc eats the sheriff's boat.
A rich yob turns up to kill the croc. Emma wants to trap it but she gets the deputy eaten. The rich yob mounts a harpoon on his boat. The sheriff's son finds the monster's larder and some eggs. The stoopid yob flies into the path of a harpoon fired by his African bearer and crashes, but Emma writes off the croc. The bearer sacks his ungrateful boss.
Natch, there's another big croc. It eats the African bearer. Mad Sadie sez there are 3 crocs. Chomp! The sheriff blasts one of the crocs. Crazy Sadie tries to feed Kerry to the last crock. Chomp! No Sadie. Emma kills the last of the crocs. No, there are 4 of them. Kaboom! Just eggs after that.
Lake Placid 3 (2010) Creatures in the lake eat 2 visitors. The sheriff assures the son of the nutty old lady that everything is now okay. Meanwhile, Connor, the son's kid, is feeding the lake crocodiles with every scrap of meat in the freezer. Dad keeps losing tagged elks in the forest; but that's mainly to a lady poacher. The kid is caught in the local supermarket stealing a TON of meat.
Dad finds just the head of his latest tagged elk. Everything is gone when he gets the sheriff to the crime scene. The kid gets his babysitter chewed by a croc and her dog eaten. A monster croc gets another camper. Crocs are heading for the cabin as Dad and the sheriff are checking the lake with a fish finder.
The lady poacher takes some good ol' boys into the danger zone, and Brett, a nutter who wants to spy on his girlfriend. Crocs upset the boat. The stoopid sheriff blows up his boat. Our hero and his wife demonstrate their total uselessness and the babysitter is chomped to death this time.
The hunting party gets one monster; another gets them. A third gets the sheriff. The lady hunter, shot by Brett, makes it to the cabin. Lots more displays of unbelieveable stoopidity. The gang break their way into the supermarket, getting the owner killed. The gang steal his truck and promptly crash it. Then they blow up the petrol station and the last croc. Dad later tells a party of students that the Maine River Croc is extinct. [Not is there's a 4th episode. Ed.]
Lakeview Terrace (2008, Samuel L. Jackson) Chris (white) and his wife (black) move into an L.A. suburb next to a noisy old cop (black), who has 2 kids and who is a control-freak bigot. He resents having mixed race neighbours and starts a campaign of sabotage against them. The local cops are totally useless. Chris' father-in-law (black) is another bigot, who is appalled by the thought of Chris and his daughter having a family.
The cop bashes his daughter for daring to associate with Chris's wife on top of slashing the tyres on Chris's car and cutting down trees at their border. One of the cop's CIs does a home invasion and attacks the wife, so the cop guns him down.
Chris gets nowhere with trying to prove that the cop is harassing him and he eventually gets into the battle with the cop after the cop locks his wife in a car. The local cops arrive but Chris is the only one with a gun in sight. So he winds up the black bigot, who shoots Chris in the shoulder and the local cops fill the black bigot with lead. Problem solved.
Land Of The Lost (2009) A lost astronaut is chomped by a dinosaur! A global warming swindler has spent $50M and he wants more for providing trans-dimensional energy to solve the energy crisis. Three years later, he's selling a tachyon amplifier for travelling sideways in time . . to the kids at the school where he's working. Then he meets Holly, who's found crystals that radiate pure tachyon energy.
Holly, Dr. Marshall and trailer-trash Will end up in a desert containing a Viking ship with a light aircraft crashed onto it. They meet some murderous primitives. Holly speaks their language. Chaka tells her he's a prince. Natch, a T. Rex with a huge brain chases them. A weird alien with huge eyes summons them to ward of another alien with world-domination plans. They need to find the lost tachyon amplifier to get home.
Marshall keeps screwing up and he's swallowed by the T. Rex. But he acts as a laxative and the unconstipated dinosaur becomes quite friendly. Marshall and Holly get back to the dimension they came from but Will choses to stay behind when he finds that the females of Chaka's tribe are human and non-hairy.
The Land That Time Forgot (2009) is an Edgar Rice Burroughs story with big debts to Sir A. Conan Doyle's The Lost World and Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island.
A group of people on a boat with a bum engine ended up on an uncharted island after a storm. A bloke was grabbed by a pterodactyl in the first 10 minutes and a Chompasaurus started chasing people on the ground. The 4 survivors of the landing party met Jackson, a pilot, and an old bloke called Conrad. They had arrived on the island after entering the Devil's Triangle, and they hadn't aged.
The crew of a U-boat was also left over from World War II, and they had Karen, who hadn't come ashore, prisoner with the Zodiac dinghy. Joe & Conrad fled in the Zodiac, leaving the rest scrapping with one another and the T-Rex. There was oil on the island, so all the survivors had to do was kill the T-Rex and distill off enough diesel to fuel the U-boat. The guys got themselves chased by the T-Rex, the sub fired off a torpedo like a missile, but we never saw what happened to it (brilliant editing), and one of the blokes was bitten in half while feeding a grenade to the dinosaur.
The gang was busy refloating the U-boat when another T-Rex showed up. But Karen's husband blew up the diesel still and the dinosaur. He woke up to find Karen had stayed behind but the sub had gone. So they were stuck on the island and reduced to sending out messages in bottles.
Lara Croft, Grave Robber: The Cradle of Life (2003) The lady thief goes looking for Alexander the Great's best treasure, rival grave robbers crash in on her gang after an earthquake starts collapsing an underwater repository, and Lara is rescued by Captain Nemo after losing The Orb, which is a clue to locating Pandora's Box, which contains the ultimate plague. A bad guy, who deals in bioweapons, is after the Box.
Lara goes to China with Terry, a reviled mercenary, to find a ganga bandits. Mucho shooting and they just miss their bad guy in Shanghai. So they head for Hong Kong for more shooting and a base jump into the harbour. Our heroes have to do a bit of prancing around the set of King Solomon's Mines in search of the Cradle of Life.
Lara & Co. are captured by the bad guy. The expedition runs into giant monsters like the killer apes in Congo. The bad guy finds Pandora's Box floating in the mucky puddle of life, which dissolves everything, including bad guys. Terry gets a bullet as a "Thanks for all your help, old chum!" The grave robber then returns the Box to the puddle and goes off to wreak havoc elsewhere.
The Last Boy Scout (1991) Bruce Willis plays Joe, ex-Secret Service turned private eye, who gets to protect a stripper. Mike, who's screwing Mrs. Joe, gives him the job and gets blown up in his car. Joe hooks up with Jimmy, the former quarterback of the LA Stallions. Joe has to get away from a hit-man while Jimmy strolls off with the client. She's gunned down and Joe & Jimmy take out the hit squad, which doesn't please the local cops.
Jimmy's place is trashed by bad guys looking for the dead stripper's blackmail evidence. Joe's car stereo eats a compromising cassette and 2 wise guys get blown up with the rest of the evidence. Jimmy gets to meet Mrs. Joe and an appalling daughter. Jimmy's old coach is trying to bribe some senators into making gambling legal. The last one is holding out for $6M. So the coach plans to frame Joe for the senator's murder.
The senator's bodyguard gets a bomb instead of the cash. Joe's daughter is grabbed. Everyone heads for the LA Colosseum for the pay-off. The coach's assassin doesn't manage to fall through the blades of a helicopter and the coach gets the bomb instead of his money back. At the end, Joe & Jimmy become partners.
Last Man Standing (1996) This is a remake of A Fistful of Dollars set in Texas in the Prohibition era with Bruce Willis as the man with no name. 'John Smith', a gun for hire on his way to Mexico, stops at Jericho, 50 miles from the border, to make a few bucks in a town taken over by 2 gangs of bootleggers. The Doyle mob wrecks his car for looking at Doyle's girl. The sheriff tells Smith to get a gun because he's on his own.
Smith shoots up the car wreckers and gets himself hired by Strasi, Doyle's rival. Doyle's booze shipment is ambushed and his men are massacred by turncoat Mexicans. Doyle tries to outbid Strasi for Smith's services. Smith fires Strasi and goes round causing trouble.
Hickey, Doyle's killer, goes to Mexico to get payback for the hijack and to kidnap Giorgio, Strasi's nephew. The head Ranger for the area drops in for a drink and tells Smith to get rid of one of the gangs in Jericho then split. Surprise! When Doyle tries to sell Giorgio for $100,000 and the trucks, he finds that Strasi has kidnapped his girl for an exchange.
Smith signs on with Doyle then he knocks off the lady's bodyguards and sends her to Mexico. Hickey works out what he did so Doyle is bashed to bits but he escapes. Strasi and his gang are wiped out. Joe from the hotel is tortured for Smith's whereabouts. The sheriff gives Smith a couple of guns to let him free Joe.
Smith calls out Doyle & Hickey. Joe shoots Doyle and Smith takes out the others. Then he heads for Mexico and a doctor.
The Last Sentinel (2007) A society in melt-down; the cyborg police are wiping out the human race. Lots of shooting and explosions. Sgt. Tallis, the last survivor of his squad and the last of 700 electronically enhanced super-soldiers, rescues a blonde woman after a cyborg ambush wiped out her companions. The computer in his rifle tells him she might be part of a resistance movement, which he can join.
The woman's militia is hoping to destroy the drones' control centre. Tallis and the woman go among the drones, blowing things up. Tallis gives the woman some training over his computer's objections. Back among the drones to get a control disk. Tallis needs some repair afterwards.
The drones nearly get the woman but she feeds them a suicide vest. Tallis goes after the drones again. Two humans in the control centre tell him that they worship the drones, there are lots like them and the drones are in charge. Tallis shoots them and blows up the control centre. That stops the black drones but not the Type II red ones.
Tallis has to cut out his enhanced left eye to prevent the red drones from tracking him. He gets rid of them one by one, settling the hash of the last of them in hand-to-hand combat. The woman shows up again when the coast was clear and she and Tallis head off to join her resistance group.
The Last Stand (2013, Arnold Schwarzenberger) Ancient Arnie is Sheriff Ray, who has two male twits and a Sarah as his deputies. He sets them on a couple of dodgy truckers, who are part of a crew which kills an ancient farmer. The Feds move a big cartel boss, Cortez, at night. Surprise! His gang liberates him and runs rings round the Feds and kills a lot of them. A lady Fed is taken prisoner.
Sheriff Ray's deputies are shot up at the farm and Jerry is done in. Cortez crashes through a half-assed road block in a stolen super-car. The head Fed phones Sheriff Ray to tell him that a bad guy plans to cross to Mexico in his territory but he's so partronizing that Ray hangs up on him.
Sarah's ex-boyfriend is let out of gaol and deputized. So is a guy with a huge collection of weapons. The head Fed realizes that Cortez has a mole; his alleged prisoner. A posse of bad guys rolls into town but Sheriff Ray and his deputies shoot them all to pieces. Luckily, there's a high-performance car left for Ray to chase Cortez when the BG zooms through town.
Ray and Cortez wreck a cornfield and their cars. Cortez reaches a bridge to Mexico, which his crew build over a canyon, only to find Ray there ahead of him, all set to beat him up and bust him.
The Last Starfighter (1984) Trailer trash Alex got the highest score at a video game and found it was a scam by a character called Centauri to shanghai gunners for a war in outer space. Alex decided he didn't want to be involved but when he got home, he found that he'd been replaced by a beta-unit lookalike robot. Then nasty aliens arrived to kill him.
Alex decided to join the battle after all and he left the beta-unit to handle further assassins and Maggie, his girlfriend. Alex learnt that it was himself as turret-gunner and Grig, a pilot, all alone in their small fighter against an armada of invaders. The beta took one for the team on Earth. Alex zapped lotz of invaders in space. He and Grig zapped the command ship.
Alex was invited to help rebuild the starfighter legion. Centari was there to cash in, not dead, as Alex had been led to believe. Alex was allowed to go back to the trailer park in a spaceship to collect Mags, who went with him after a big show of reluctance.
The Last Winter (2006) This is supposed to be a horror film but it fails completely to be horrible! Ed Pollard crashes into a small base camp in Alaska, eager to push his company's drilling operations deeper into the wilderness. He collides with environmentalist James. It's supposed to be winter but the frozen tundra is melting and the company can't build an ice road, so Ed decides to bring the drilling rig in on rollers.
Abby, the boss of the camp, upsets Ed by having a relationship with James. Maxwell, James' nephew, goes crazy, takes a stroll in the nude at night trying to photograph some airy-fairy threat to the camp and ends up frozen to death. Did he have cabin fever? Is hydrogen sulphide leaking out of the tundra or is there some terrible supernatural threat released by global warming? Who know?
The equipment keeps going wrong. One of the guys dies of a gushing nose-bleed. A plane arrives and crashes onto the buildings for no apparent reason; other than to leave the survivors without heat or power. James suggests taking the last snomobile to Fort Crow. Ed insists on going further to the ice road builders; who aren't there when they arrived.
The snomobile won't work, so they have to hike 9 miles toward Fort Crow and Ed, the dummox, falls through the ice! The misfits back at the camp get crazier and fewer. At the end, Abby comes to in a hospital, which is deserted apart from the guy hanging from a light fitting, and there's a huge puddle outside. If you're looking for a film to give a miss to, this is it!
The Lathe of Heaven (2002) is a based on a science fiction story by Ursula le Guin. It concerns George, a bloke whose dreams can change the world. The sinister Dr. Haber, a psychiatrist treating George after he stole drugs to stop himself dreaming, hijacks the dreaming process for his own benefit. But when George starts resisting him, things don't go too well for the good doctor!
Lavalantula (2015) Colton West, a washed-up 90s action film hero, gets the push from his action film when he objects to it becoming a bug movie. A swarm of earthquakes has been rocking southern California. Colton is in trouble with his agent, his wife, Olivia, and his teenage son, Wyatt. He's stuck in a traffic jam when a volcano goes off right in front of him and freaking big spiders crawl out of the lava and start spewing lava themselves!
Dora gets her face burnt off whilst on the phone to Olivia. Colton steals a tour bus to go after his son. The tourists think his spider talks is movie BS. Until their bus is attacked. L.A.'s street superheroes are incinerated. The city is put under martial law and evaculated. A professor at the tar pits tells Colton how to end the spider menace.
The soldiers evacuating Olivia are wiped out so she heads back to the city in their truck. Jordan, a friend of Wyatt's who was bitten by a spider, suddenly produces millions of little ones. Wyatt manages to phone his dad for help. Olivia catches up with Colton and she crashes the truck into a spider to save Wyatt.
Colton goes to his special effects guy to smoke the spider queen out of her nest. It's as big as a space shuttle! Colton dresses up in his Rocket Man outfit to obliterate it and save the day. [see 2 Lava 2 Lantula for the sequel]
Lava Storm (2008) The teenage kids of a couple on the verge of breaking up find 2 friends dead while messing about in an old mine. The parents, emergency workers, spot 3 simultaneous forest fires, then their kids ring them with their news. Ground water starts boiling and ash drops out of the sky. Grandpa thinks someone's dropped the Bomb.
Mom & Dad realize they're dealing with a volcano. Grandpa take the kids down to his death-trap of a nuclear bunker, from which they have to be rescued. On the surface, lava starts flowing and it's snowing volcanic ash. Grandpa's home goes up in smoke and the emergency base is a wreck when the family reaches it.
Mom wants to go and hide in the mine. Dad wants to blow up a dam to quench the volcano. The kids just want to be stroppy. Mom, Grandpa & Daughter go down the mine and up to the Cavern; higher than the flood. Dad & Son take out the dam with an avalanche gun (like that's going to happen). And then we're invited to believe they saved the entire planet and the film is based on something that could really happen.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) has the look and feel of a contemporary Batman film set in Victorian times. In 1899, a tank breaks into the British Museum and a German airship factory is attacked. A month or so later, Mr. Reed of Her Majesty's Government tracks down Alan Quartermain in Kenya. The Empire needs him to lead a league of unique men to prevent a world war. An attack by armour-plated assassins with automatic weapons makes up Quartermain's mind.
He meets 'M', the head of the league, and Captain Nemo in grey, wet London. The Phantom is behind the attacks. He's advertising his weapons and he plans to attack a secret conference in Vienna. The Invisible Man, Mrs. Mina Harker and Dorian Gray join up, and an attack by the Phantom ruins Gray's home while trying to recruit the League people to his cause.
Gray turns out to be invulnerable and Mrs. Harker is a vampire. Special Agent Sawyer of the US Secret Service also joins up. Nautilus takes the gang to Paris to capture Mr. Hyde in the Rue Morgue. The Phantom has a spy in Nautilus and someone steals a flask of Dr. Jekyll's potion.
The Phantom starts blowing up the Venice but one of Nemo's missiles stops the rot. Gray is the spy! And M is the Phantom! M's bombs almost destroy Nautilus, triggered by a rant on a gramophone record, but Mr. Hyde saves the sub, which heads to Mongolia, where the Phantom has his weapons plant and he's building submarines.
M turns out to be Professor Moriarty. The League raids his stronghold. Mrs. Harker shows Gray his portrait to finish him off. One of the Phantom's men drinks about a gallon of Dr. Jekyll's potion and becomes a super-Hyde. The stronghold is destroyed and just about everyone is kilt, including Quartermain. So Sawyer gets to shoot the Phantom.
Left Behind (2014) I awarded Nicholas Cage a Golden Gobbler Award for a major turkey in Knowing (2009) [q.v.] I hereby take it back in favour of this epic, which takes every biscuit in the box.
God decides to kill just about everyone on the planet for no apparent reason, leaving those who aren't culled to struggle. Like Chloe, whose pilot dad dashed off to fly a plane instead of spending some time to her and whose mother croaks.
Dad (Mr. Cage) spends the whole film faffing about in his plane, at the mercy of nutters with guns and near misses and running out of fuel. At the end, he needs Cloe's help to get the plane onto the ground and feed his surviving passengers into what God has left of their world.
Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009) A village was put under a curse by the lesbian vampire Carmilla and all its girls turned into vamps at 18. 500 years later, Jimmy was dumped by Julie for the umpteenth time and he and his broke buddy Fletch, who'd been fired from his job as a clown for punching a kid, went on a hiking holiday in Norfolk. They ended up at Cragwash with 4 girls, who were studying the Carmilla legend.
3 of the girls were turned by the local vamps. Julie turned up and she became a vamp, too. But she was slain messily. The mad vicar, whose daughter was about to reach 18, joined in and he reckoned that Jimmy could end the curse. Fletch had to climb into a grave to get a sword with a metal cock for a handle.
Queen Carmilla gave the vicar a hard time. But Jimmy zapped her with the sword and the world was saved. Then Jimmy, his new blond girlfriend with specs and Fletch decided that they should pursue a career as killers of lesbian vampires wherever they were to be found.
Lethal Weapon (1987) Homicide detective Roger Murtaugh is black and approaching retirement age. He's given a Detective Martin Riggs as a partner. Riggs is suicidal and crazy after his wife's death in a car crash 3 years before. They start off investigating the suicide of the daughter of a guy who served with Murtaugh in Vietnam and then got rich, and uncover heroin smuggling by a retired army general and a ruthless sidekick, who gets to beat the crap out of the detectives until they combine forces to blow him away.
Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) The film seeks to persuade the audience that all white South Efricans are scumbag drug dealers and racialists. The Sarf Efricans keep tying to kill the cops, who are saddled with annoying whistleblower called Leo. Big bit of destruction: a California house built on the side of a hill pulled down the slope by Riggs in his truck. And as Sarf Efricans owned it, no worries, mate.
Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) This one plays the rogue cop card. A cop at the end of his career decides he'd be better off raiding the police lock-up for weapons, cop-killer ammo and drugs than going quietly into retirement; something Murtaugh is days away from doing. Leo gets another run out with the cops. Lots of crazy driving as in a Fast & Furious film. Big bit of destruction: right at the end, some sort of large complex of wooden buildings under construction goes up in flames; the bits that aren't shot to pieces and wrecked with a bulldozer.
Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) is definitely a sequel too far. The film begins with a massive explosion as an attention-getter. A modern Ned Kelly in armour sprays things with a flame thrower for no apparent reason, he goes up in flames and a petrol tanker practically goes into orbit. Riggs and Murtagh are about to become a father and a grandfather respectively, and they are both promoted to captain as the police force's insurance company won't stand for the destruction which they cause as sergeants.
The bad guys are Chinese snakehead people-smugglers and the leader of the snakeheads has a hilarious haircut. Our heroes set fire to a freighter, which runs aground with its cargo of slaves. Then nothing much happens for an hour or so. There is a whole bunch of aimless yakking, particularly by Leo, the former federal witness/accountant, the Chinese bad guys are a bunch of kung fu-ing, characterless zombies and the end is dull.
The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004) features Noah Wyle (Dr. Carter from ER) and Bob Newhart. Wyle plays a perpetutal student, who is in his 30s and has 22 degrees. His professor kicks him out into the big, bad world and he gets a job at a weird library, which keeps fabulous treasures in a high-security basement. He is now their guardian.
The Serpent Brotherhood steals the library's third of the Spear of Destiny – whoever owns it becomes the greatest conqueror in the world, so it was broken into 3 pieces. Wyle heads off to the Amazon in search of another bit of the spear, teamed up with Nicole, a real Action Woman, who chucks him off a plane. They have fun with a collapsing bridge, do a Butch & Sundance leap off a cliff into a river and end up in a Mayan temple.
The bad guy turns out to be the previous librarian, who is supposed to be dead and about whom Nicole feels guilty because she failed to protect him. Off we go to the Himalayas for the spearhead, ending up in Shangri La. Next stop Mongolia, where Nicole and the spearhead disappear. So back to the university for a major punch up and the destruction of the bad guy.
The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines (2006) Flynn Carsen recovers a crystal skull and feels under-appreciated back at the library. His apartment is trashed and an amulet given to him by his father is missing. He's also robbed of a scroll, which arrived in the post.The scroll is a map with clues to King Solomon's Mines. His boss, Mr. Judson tells him that the Book of Solomon is hidden in the mines and it will give control over time and space.
Flynn goes after his stolen property and meets Prof. Emily Davenport, who has more degrees than Flynn. They are attacked after finding a bit of the map legend. Emily recognizes the language and they head for Kenya. The men who robbed Flynn are also on the trail to the mines.
Flynn and Emily come across a man who's buried up to his neck in sand. He becomes their guide. Jomo takes them to a fortune teller. Flynn finds the other piece of the map legend there, then the bad guys arrive. Uncle Jerry bustles Flynn & Co. onto a train. Emily cracks the code and they head for Mombasa. They find their way into caves and Flynn finds the Book.
The bad guys arrive. Uncle Jerry is exposed as the rotter who shot Flynn's dad. He reads the Book and conjurs up ghosts from a lava pit, into which Flynn eventually chucks the book. Jerry falls in after it and the cave collapses after our heroes have legged it. Emily continues her search for the Queen of Sheba and Flynn goes back ot the Library, where Judson tells him that he has achieved "great librarian" status.
The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice (2008) Feeling trapped between his job and a girlfriend who complains he's never there, Flynn goes mad at an auction, pays a million quid for a Ming vase then smashes it to recover the Philosopher's stone. He has to fight a rival to keep it. He throws a wobbly when given another job for the Library, which is about the same size as Warehouse 13, and gets some vacation time.
Kubichek, ex-KGB, reckons he's found Vlad Dracula's body, so all he needs is the Judas Chalice to revive him. Flynn goes to New Orleans for his holiday and meets the woman of his dreams; Simone is a vampire, who's a singer at a night club, and she and Flynn are chased by the Russians. The Chalice is made of Judas' 30 pieces of silver and Kubichek plans to rule Russia with an army of vampires.
Flynn & Simone, who's 403 years old, find the Chalice on Lafitte the pirate's ship in a swamp. Then the Russkies arrive. The supposed Dracula remains get some blood but nothing happens! Surprise! Laslow, the ancient professor, who turned Simone, is Vlad! But Vlad and the Russians both get it, Simone enjoys a last sunrise then it's back to the library for Flynn.
Licence To Kill (1989, Timothy Dalton) Felix Leiter (before he became a black guy) ducked out of his wedding for a job, and Bond came along to do some aerial fishing when the drug lord Sanchez tried to fly away. Then they parachuted in for the wedding. Natch, Sanchez bought an escape, he had Della Leiter killed and Felix got to swim with the sharks.
Bond took it all very personally. He homed in on the shark guy and his tank full of bugs and dope. Then he resigned from MI6 to continue with his revenge mission. He had to team up with a sassy but very capable young lady to get on with some mayhem. He ended up in Sanchez's back yard to get himself noticed.
Q joined in for a while. So did some Hong Kong narcotics people. And some stooge from MI6. The Sanchez gang blew up the latter 2 and rescued Bond from the Chinese agents. Bond sneaked away from the Sanchez retreat after pointing the owner at one of his own guys, who exploded messily. Bond returned to sow more seeds of doubt.
Bond took a tour of the drug operation and blew up the $32 million facility after he was rumbled. Then he went to play with the petrol tankers, which contained heroin dissolved in the fuel. Helped by his lady assistant in a crop-duster. Oh, dear! The Oriental customers won't be pleased about getting nothing for their millions after all 4 tankers went up in smoke!
Lightning: Fire In The Sky (2001) A town in an uproar about the construction of a new supermarket is threatened by a 100-year storm, the sheriff's teenage son reckons. Lightning blows up half the kid's school and he saves the daughter of the guy building the supermarket. The lady mayor, a self-promoting jerk, takes the credit for no loss of life.
Two storms are set to collide at Rutland. The guy at weather control in St. Louis doesn't want to know, the local guy's wife is about to give birth and the kid sounds the emergency alarm. The sheriff gets the pregnant couple to the hospital then the power goes off and the generator is shot because of the mayor's cuts.
St Louis weather control sends out a plane, which is blasted out of the sky. The guy building the supermarket provides a generator and tells the sheriff that the lady mayor is involved in a land scam. The kid and his dad shoot a rocket into the sky, blow up the local propane storage tanks and defuse the storm.
The town is saved, the supermarket guy decides to get out of the construction business and spend more time with his daughter and the mayor is busted for corruption.
Lightspeed (2006) is based on a Stan Lee comic strip and rips off the plot of the Six Million Dollar Man, and admits it by including Lee Majors in the cast as the head of the Ghost Squad. The Squad runs into Snakeman, a.k.a. Python, and his gang of thieves in a tower block, which Python blows up after escaping.
Jump to 4 years earlier, when Python was experimenting with snake DNA to repair burned skin, his funding was cut off, he trashed his lab, set it (and himself) on fire and his DNA machine turned him into Python.
Daniel of the Ghost Squad, a former friend whom Python blames for his loss of funding, is dragged from the wrecked building and rebuilt. Python sneaks into his hospital and gives him an overdose of radiation, which turns Dan into a guy who can set a new landspeed record on foot. Dan gets himself a fancy aerodynamic outfit and becomes Lightspeed.
Python goes after a piece of kit which can save the world from global warming; only he wants to turn it into a weapon. He collides with the Ghost Squad and Daniel, so he grabs Daniel's girlfriend. The boss of the Ghost Squad isn't bothered because he reckons that Beth is working for Python.
Python is just telling Daniel that he plans to barbeque Beth with the piece of kit when the Ghost Squad arrives. Shock, horro! Their boss is Python's mole. So the bad guys get what's coming to them, Python goes up in flames and Dan saves Beth.
Limitless (2011) A scruffy writer has a book contract but he's not writing it. His ex-brother-in-law gives him a sample of a drug, which lets him access 100% of his brain. It works. Eddie writes some of his book but he's back to normal the next day, when the pill wears off. So he goes to see Vernon, who's been beaten up. And dead when Eddie returns after collecting Vern's dry cleaning.
Eddie finds the hidden stash of pills and finishes his book in 4 days. A tablet a day and what he could do with his day was limitless. He could learn anything quickly and easily and all of his memories were organized and easily accessible.
Eddie decides he needs to make money. But he needs a big stake, which puts him in the clutches of a loan shark. The loan shark finds one of the pills when he beats Eddie up and takes it. He wants more. Eddie becomes rich but subject to blackouts. He gets involved in a mega-business deal but the loan shark buts in.
The loan shark invades Eddie's bunker and has to indulge in a spot of vampirism courtesy of the dead loan shark to recover his super powers. 12 months later, Eddie is Senator Morra. Is he owned by the guy who controls his drug supply? No, he's off the pills but still super.
Live And Let Die (1973, Roger Moore) A Jazz funeral in New Orleans; one dead spy. On San Monique island in the Caribbean, the natives were playing voodoo murder. M invaded 007's pad, looking for the Italian lady in bed with him, and sent him off to investigate 3 murders. The BGs were expecting him. Captain Claw bent Bond's plastic gun; he worked for Mr. Big, a mobster in cahoots with the PM of San Monique. So off there for some Voodoo crap.
Bond got a room with a snake and Rosie, the CIA local, and Voodoo crap. When Rosie the BG was dead, Bond turned to Solitaire, a fake psychic who was bamboozling the local BG with Tarot rubbish. The BGs were growing opium under netting on the island and the cops were on the payroll. Having discovered that, Bond thought it was all over with an hour to go.
Wrong! Bond got a trip to a crocodile farm, so he set fire to the heroin factory. Then off for some barmy boating, which really upset a red-neck sheriff. Then it was back to the voodoo crap. The poppies were blown up. So was the local BG. But there was still Captain Claw. He he was chucked out of a train window with extreme prejudice.
The Living Daylights (1987, Timothy Dalton) The 00s raid Gibraltar against the SAS. 2 are paint-balled right away. A killer in the group does for another. But JB sorts him out. Off to Bratislava to reel in a defector. JB upsets M with his methods. A guy from Terrorist Dairies invades the country retreat for defectors and Georgi is helicoptered away. Bond refuses to believe that General Pushkin was behind it.
JB finds out that the defection was bogus and larks about with a blonde lady and her cello. The car doesn't ski very well but the cello case makes a good sledge to get them to Austria. General Pushkin demands his $50M back from an arms dealer, who's in cahoots with Georgi, who assures the dealer that JB will be take out Pushkin.
Bond is sure that the blonde lady isn't a KGB sniper, she's Georgi's girlfriend. He stages Pushkin's murder. Then he's grabbed by Felix Leiter's CIA cuties (before Felix became black). The blonde gives Bond a Mickey Finn and turns him over to Georgi. He hands the pair of them over to the Russians in Afghanistan.
They escape with a Taliban opium smuggler. Georgi is using Pushkin's diamonds to buy opium worth half a billion bucks. Big attack on the airfield. Bold flies off with the blonde, the opium, a bomb and a Georgi stooge aboard; so cue an aerial battle. The blonde does her best to kill everyone else and nearly flies into a mountain. But Bond reaches Pakistan. Then it's off to play with the arms dealer. Enter Pushkin when it's all over.
Live Once Die Twice (2006) Evan, Nicole's husband, and George are killed by an exploding boat on a fishing trip. A bomb, the FBI says. Evan & George & Dugan were dealing in stolen platinum. Dugan tells Nicole she needs to find the money and disappear. Then he gets dead and Nicole is kidnapped by a Russian twat and told she has a week to cough up the cash or her family gets it.
Nicole gets a pal to lay a fake trail for the FBI whilst she goes to Detroit to follow up a clue left by Evan. The guy she was looking for died in a fire, the widow tells her. Surprise! Zoe is also married to Evan. She knows Mac, a bounty hunter, who takes them to Montreal. The Feds head there, too.
When Nicole catches up with Evan, he claims he's deep undercover, working for the State Department in a massive sting operation. He loses Mac and Zoe, gets his hands on $25M and heads for a marina. Evan bamboozles both women and takes them on a boat ride.
Mac turns up shooting, he's killed and Zoe is shot in the back. Evan gets a spear through the chest. The lady Fed brings flowers to Zoe in the hospital. And the Russian scumbag drops in on Nicole to say hi and 'bye.
The Loch Ness Terror (2008) A kid sees his dad and an expedition wiped out by the Loch Ness monster in 1976. Cut to the States, where Sean, a bloke with dementia, reckons there's a Nessie in his local lake. James Murphy, whose dad was eaten by Nessie, now a cryptozoologist, turns up at the bait store of Josh, Sean's nephew. Josh's mom is the local sheriff and her deputy is Gen. Hammond of the SGC (in retirement).
Uncle Sean gets a picture of the monster; just before it eats the camera and most of him. Josh is plagued by Brody the jerk, who has claimed Zoe's attention. A bloke out fishing is chomped next. Murphy finds a huge underwater tunnel, though which the monster arrived from Scotland. The deputy's sister is chomped and bits of Uncle Sean's body are found. Josh tells his mom about a huge sonar target, which Murphy chased while on Josh's boat.
Brody & Zoe go to Pike Island with 2 other kids, who are chomped. A fisherman finds a dead baby Nessie. Mom busts Murphy when he blags the head but she has to believe his monster story. Josh goes looking for Zoe and ends up treed on the island with Brody & Zoe, surrounded by mini-monsters. But Josh is able to go for help.
Sheriff Mom has to recruit Murphy to a rescue mission. He gives the monster a headache while Mom fishes Josh out of the lake. The jerk is chomped by the babies, and so is the deputy. But Murphy has a big monster barbeque, and Josh gets Zoe & Murphy gets Mom.
Locusts (2005) Is another daft creature feature. A lady takes some grub to a huge tankful of locusts and they go for her. Dr. Peter, the former professor of Matty (now a big wheel with the US Dept. of Agriculture), has made pesticide-resistant locusts for the Dept. of Defense. They breed 10 times faster than normal locusts and live 3 times longer. Matty thinks he's crazy, so she fires Peter and orders the destruction of the locusts.
Of course, the US Army rescues some locusts and, of course, they lose some in Maryland and the rest in California. Dan, Matty's husband, feels like giving her the sack because she's never there. But she's pregnant. The locusts run wild in California, attacking people & animals as well as crops. They also attack the school bus, on which Peter's daughter is riding.
In the east, Pittsburgh is threatened. The airport won't listen to a warning from Peter and a cargo plane crashes after running into a cloud of locusts. The FBI takes Peter into custody. The US Army wants to use VX nerve gas to kill the locusts and maybe 10% of the population. Matty leaks the plan to CNN.
Dan suggests taking in the harvest early before the locusts can eat it and cause a world famine. Matty visits her farmer dad (Dr. B.J. from M*A*S*H). They turn a steel grain store into a giant electrical bug-zapper and Peter croaks from locust bites after getting fuel for the generator.
A lady from the Dept. of Energy uses the power grid to create 2 huge electric fences, which zap the locusts on both sides of the country so the army can't use its VX. And a year later, Matty has had the baby and she and Dan are still together.
Lone Wolf McQuade (1983) is all about a Texas Ranger who is a total scruffbag; but he gets the job done. And his boss, like Supt. Chander of Sun Hill (anyone remember his spell with The Bill?), hates him for it because he doesn't have the required image. There is a lot of "Who's he?" when McQuade is saddled with a young partner – who turns out to be Mr. Chakotay in Star Trek Voyager. We have a midget bad guy, who isn't the main threat, David Carradine as a kung fu gun runner, lots of people – and McQuade's wolf – getting wiped out, lots of shoot-outs, and lots of explosions along the way. A 3-star thriller.
The Long Kiss Goodnight got four stars and a triangle in the Daily Mail's Weekend magazine. It is described as a "shoot-'em-up action movie which is as breathlessly exciting as it is ridiculous". Well, we couldn't way we weren't warned about the ridiculous side, and the film is quite a hoot for most of the time. I'm not sure it deserved 4 stars, though. That many requires 'totally terrific' or 'real turkey' status, and this film is neither. But it was fun, I've got to give it that.
The Longest Yard (2005) is an excellent remake of The Mean Machine, a Burt Reynolds film, and he's in it along with a host of TV wrestlers including Khali, Goldberg and Steve Austin.
Paul Crewe, a quarterback who was chucked out of American football for match-fixing, strolls off with his girlfriend's car while drunk, wrecks a buncha cop cars and ends up in gaol. Where the head guard tells him, with ultraviolence, that he doesn't want to coach the governor's team.
Crewe tells the Gov. that the screws' team needs a tune-up game against a bunch of deadlegs ahead of a new season, and Crewe gets the job of assembling a team of cons. ESPN wants to show the match and the Gov. thinks it will do his political career some good.
The Gov. tries to sabotage the ego-tripping cons' practice and the guards' stooge kills one of the team's ringleaders. On match day, the guards return the kick off for a TD and things go south from there. The ref is bent but Crewe sorts him out.
The Gov. tells Crewe that if he doesn't throw the match, he'll be framed for the murder. The Gov. cheats on his deal so Crewe starts playing again. The cons score with a few seconds left on the clock. 35-34. Do they kick an extra point or do they go for 2 points and a win? Crewe scores off a trick play and the Gov. gets a Gatorade bath.
Looper (2012) Time travel will be invented in 30 years' time, when getting rid of murdered bodies will be impossible. So the banned technology will be used to send people back to the past, with a payment, to be killed and disposed of there by Loopers. Any Looper who is fired is sent back with a payment of gold bricks, which his younger self can used to pay for his next 30 years of life; after terminating his older self.
Another Looper tells Joey he let a victim go instead of killing him; the guy from the future started dropping to bitz! Then he was shot. Joe found himself confronted by his older self, who didn't have a bag over his head. Joe was too surprised to kill him and older Joe legged it. 30 years on, older Joe had killed the guys sent to bag and send him back to the past, and come back on his own terms.
Older Joe told Joe about the Rainmaker, who was killing Loopers. Old Joe planned to find him and kill him to save his girlfriend. Joe holed up at a farm, where there was a woman with a crazy, mixed-up kid with a TK talent. Old Joe was bagged by the local HBG's men but he shot the hired help to bitz and escaped. He wanted to kill the TK kid to prevent him from wrecking his life.
Old Joe shot the kid a bit; he unleashed a TK tornado and nearly killed his mom. Old Joe did kill her. Young Joe changed things by killing himself so that Mom and the kid survived and old Joe vanished. Because Young Joe was that crazy kid grown up.
The Losers (2010) A team on a covert operation in Bolivia calls off an air-strike because there are children in the target area. Max, their controller, won't listen, so they extract the children and put them on their chopper; which Max has shot out of the sky, believing the team is aboard. They have to get back to the States for revenge. Clay, the leader, is approached by a crazy woman, who starts a fight and sets fire to his hotel room.
She tells Clay that Max will be in Miami. Before that, Max visits Dubai to get a guy thrown off a building to frighten an Indian supplier of nukes. Max plans to sell them to terrorists. The team grabs an armoured van out of a convoy using a huge magnet on a stolen helicopter. No Max; just a hard disk with details of where his $400M is.
The supplier ups his price to $1B. Surprise! The crazy girl is a bad guy's daughter. Surprise, Rogue betrays the team because he wants his life back, not revenge, but they escape. Max makes the Indian arm a nuke so he can blow up L.A. then kills the Indian. The wheels come off his escape plan A. And plan B. But he escapes and L.A. isn't blown up.
Lost City Raiders (2008) is a daft enviro-movie. The Rising has left just 10% of Earth's land surface above water in 2048 but Mr. Kubiac takes his sons diving in the L.A. Basin to retrieve a book for a cardinal at the New Vatican. The cardinal thinks that finding The Sceptre is their only hope, but their enemies are also on its trail. Cue some Indiana Jones stuff to get hold of The Box; which contains an 800-year-old Templar dagger instead of The Sceptre.
Elsewhere, lady boffin Giovana (who dumped Jack Kubiac) is recruited by Russian bad guy Filomenov, who says he wants to undrown his real estate using The Sceptre. Everyone collides at Dresden. Pa Kubiak wrecks a catacomb and himself to get The Case. The cardinal thinks that a sceptre which Moses stole from Rameses II will stop The Rising. Jack Kubiac doesn't buy This Crap but his brother Thomas is willing to believe it.
The cardinal persuades them to carry on their father's work and they recruit a female Jonah as the engineer for their tramp steamer. The Russian, meanwhile, has sold his real estate and he plans to build floating cities. He gets hold of the Sceptre of Sopik, planning not to use it, and Jack has to save Giovanna from a watery grave.
The lads sink Filomenov with his ship but the traitor cardinal, who thinks drowning the world will speed The Second Coming, makes it to the tramp steamer. The Sceptre was made by ancient astronauts to raise and lower tectonic plates to control the sea level! The good guys find an ancient control room and initiate a planet-saving explosion. Jack gets to toss the crazy cardinal into a fiery pit. And vast amounts of water disappear into the interior of the Earth.
The Lost Future (2010) Everyone will be a sloth-hunting cave person in the future and mutants will roam the land, biting normals and turning them. Sean Bean, though, had binoculars to watch an attack on a village where the Elders had told everyone they were the last normals on the planet. Most of the people took refuge in a cave while Caleb, his sister and another bloke went to look for help.
Mr. Bean took them rafting and told them a tale of scientists bringing back dead species, like giant sloths, and releasing a plague. Caleb's father concocted a yellow powder which made people immune but a guy called Gegen stole it and holed up on a fortified island.
Caleb offered Gegen a deal; give his party yellow powder and he'll find out how it's made because he can read his father's notes. Illiterate Gegen turned him down but his daughter helped the infiltrators to get some yellow powder, which stopped Caleb's sister from "turning".
The trio from the village had become separated from Mr. Bean, and the other guy was killed as they headed back to the village with yellow powder. Mr. Bean and some Viking cavalry arrived to chase the beasts away. Gegen got an axe in the chest and Caleb felt driven to continue his father's work and save humanity.
The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon (2008) is a 'period piece' but nothing to do with the real Grand Canyon. Dr. Jordan takes an expedition into a cave system, they run into homicidal Aztecs then something horrible starts killing everyone. A month later, his daughter, Susan, shames other members of the archaeological dig into looking for her dad. Most of them end up stuck in quicksand but Dr. Thane (Dr. Jackson of Stargate SG-1) extracts them.
Dr. Thane finds the secret entrance to the canyon, where Aztecs are ripping the hearts out of survivors of Dr. Jordan's expedition. A Quetzalcoatl rips the rest of Dr. Wilson to bits. Dr. Jordan finds the rescue party, then he lets the Quetzalcoatl eat him to save the others, who keep doing the dirty on one another.
Dr. Thane does a conjuring trick with a heart from a storage jar to bamboozle the Aztecs and let the others escape. Dr. Jordan isn't dead; the Quetzalcoatl let him live. Dr. Thane wrecks the temple and kills the monster. He has to agree to become the Aztec's god if the others are to get out of the canyon. But he does a bit more conjuring to make them think he burnt himself alive.
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