Mad Max (1978) stars an amazingly young EL Gibson (widescreen film hanging off a 4x3 TV). He's a cop in a disintegrating society where scumbags run riot and the crazy cops as as big a danger to the public as the scumbags. Max lives in a nice little house with a nice little family. When the cops help a fugitive scumbag to crash & burn, his pals decide to get Max and the rest of the crazy cops.
   Max quits his job after the super crazy Goose is torched by the bad guy bikers. Mrs. Max has a run-in with them, so that's it for the nice little family when the bad guys catch up with it. Max strolls off with the police force's super interceptor.
   Max goes after the Toe Cutter & his gang, who are wiped out along the way. The Toe Cutter comes off 2nd best in a head-on collision with a big truck. Then the guy who torched Goose gets the same treatment.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) is the 3rd in the series. Max has his rig hijacked and ends up getting himself into a fight to the death at Barter Town when he tries to get it back. The local boss lady (Tina Turner) wants to separate Master, the midget brain who supplies Barter Town with power, from Blaster, the hulking muscle of the pairing. So it's Thunderdome, "Two men enter, one man leaves".
   Blaster turns out to be a mental midget so Max refuses to kill him, which leaves him in a whole lot of trouble. "Bust a deal, face the wheel." Max is sent into the desert tied to a horse but he's rescued by a bunch of wacked out kids, who think he's Captain Walker, who's supposed to fly their cargo cult home in a wrecked airliner.
   A group of kids goes off into the desert and Max goes after them. They end up at Barter Town, rescue the midget Master, wreck the joint and escape on a train pursued by the boss lady's mob. Max runs in to the guy who stole his rig; he has a plane. Everyone else is flown to what's left of Melbourne but Max stays behind to clear a take-off path for the Wacky Races plane through the mob of minions, which amuses the boss lady no end.

Mad Money (2008) A lady working at the bank where they shred dirty old banknotes decided it would be a good idea to remove some cash and recycle it. She recruited 2 other ladies, but more and more people were drawn into the conspiracy, including one of the bank's security guys, the first lady's husband and the third lady's boyfriend.
   The boyfriend flashed too much cash, the Federal authorities did a long investigation then busted everyone. The bank's records said that no cash was missing from the system so the instigator lady bought a lawyer to insist that there was no case to answer.
   The government played dirty; it set the IRS on the gang. The deal was that they walked but empty-handed. But eight months later, the ladies had a reunion and the instigator revealed to her partners in crime, a huge stash of mad money in a cafe's concealed back room.

Magma: Volcanic Disaster (2006) Something happens to make the Earth's core expand. The pressure build-up sets off volcanoes all over the planet. A couple of scientists come up with the Exodus Theory to explain what's happening, but their enemy in the US government's scientific establishment rubbishes their theory for his own ends. There are 150 volcanoes in the United States, our hero warns, and the extinction of the human race is just a matter of months away.
   The old bloke who came up with the Exodus Theory commits suicide by volcano but his younger colleague persuades the US president to round up the world's nuclear-armed submarines and relieved the pressure relatively harmlessly by using nuclear explosions to set off volcanoes in deep ocean trenches.

Magellan (2017) SETI detected three droning pulses from within the solar system. They formed a perfect tonal major triad; a clearly artificial signal. They are coming from moons of Saturn and Neptune, and the KBO Eris. An astronaut was sent on a 10-year mission to investigate; in competition with the Chinese. Roger's wife was furious.
   Commander Nelson was decanted from stasis at Titan. He had a HAL called Ferdinand and a female AI on his lander with a female voice but called Neil! There were 229 urgent messages for him, and the news that the Chinese were having trouble and they were shooting straight for Neptune, ignoring Titan.
   Our hero went for a stroll in a lake of liquid methane to retrieve a metal sphere the size of a tennis ball; the alien transmitter. Then, the dope, he handled it with his bare hands! And got some mental images from it. Then it was off Neptunewards with the Chinese trying to hack him.
   The Chinese had an accident; all 3 dead. Nelson did some inept rock climbing to retrieve the 2nd object and barely got back to the lander. There were strange things in the underground ocean on Triton; fish bigger than whales? Nelson was nearly locked out of the main ship by a Chinese hack after a sampling mission. "Open the pod-bay doors, Ferd!"
   Nelson told Ferd to ignore future updates and started playing with the 3 spheres when he got to Eris. He was hearing lots of radio chatter from all over the galaxy and had a "We are not alone!" moment. Ferd detected another signal in the Oort Cloud, 38 years away. Nelson ditched his long-suffering wife and dived back into stasis, not knowing if the ship would get there.
   NASA concluded that Nelson had gone nuts and tried to order him home. Fat chance. Roger had gone nuts.

Magnum Force (1973) Another outing for Dirty Harry and his black partner.The courts released a scumbag killer so a motorcycle cop stopped his car and blew him and his entourage away. Dirty Harry & his partner were on loan to the Stakeout Squad thanks to Lt. Briggs of Homicide. DH took his partner to the airport for a snack and joined in the operation to counter an attempted hi-jacking.
   DH met 4 killer rookie traffic cops at the shooting range. A killer cop shot up a mobster's swimming pool party while DH was visiting the wife of Charlie, a cop who plays Russian roulette. He returned to a supermarket stakeout for a shoot-up. A pimp murdered a hooker in a taxi so he was blown away in his pimpmobile. Lt. Briggs put DH & his partner back to work for Homicide.
   DH scored with his midget Oriental neighbour then Homicide started watching high-profile bad guys. One of them was zapped and Charlie was also killed just before DH told Briggs that he thought out-of-his-mind Charlie was the killer. DH lost to the rookie Davis in the annual police dept. shoot-out but he blagged a bullet as evidence.
   One of the rookies was killed when bad guys were tipped off that they were about to be busted by fake cops. The rookies told DH they're were just doing the job the courts fail to do. DH got a bomb in his mailbox. So did his partner. DH managed to disarm his bomb. Surprise! Lt. Briggs was the man behind the vigilantes. Then he tried to set up DH for killing the 3 surviving rookies. But DH let him drive off with the mailbox bomb active in his car.

Malibu Shark Attack (2009) An earthquake off the California coast released a swarm of goblin sharks, which are supposed to be extinct and which started snacking on divers. The quake also caused a tsunami, which wasn't very impressive but which flooded half of California. The life guards took refuge in their shack and some construction workers also stayed put.
   A girl doing community service started bleeding into the water and sharks tried to barge up through the floor of the shack. Barb wanted to keep the 'extinct' sharks alive but she was eaten. Then Nancy from the construction site and her boyfriend were chomped. The construction guys picked up the gang at the life guard's shack; then their engine ran out of petrol.
   There were more casualties when they struggled into the construction site and blundered around flooded buildings in the dark, but they found chainsaws to fight back, and come the morning, there was a modest load for the rescue helicopter left.

Mammoth (2006) Dr. Frank Abernathy finds a blue-glowing capsule in a frozen mammoth in his museum. He realizes he's missing the birthday of his daughter, Jack, but all electrical gadgets in the area stop working, including cars & phones, and a meteor crashes into the museum. It's a metal sphere, from which a fluid emerges and revives the mammoth, which writes off the museum's guard.
   People In Black (a man & a woman) of the NRO arrive to check out the sphere. Embarassingly UFO-obsessed Grandad lets Jack borrow his car to go to a teenage rave-up with her boyfriend. Meanwhile, 2 dozy cops find a body and stumble into a mountain of mammoth crap in the dark. Then they meet the mammoth, which stomps through the party.
   The PIB tell Dr. Frank that the meteor navigated to his museum, the Man in Black is killed by the mammoth and the Woman In Black tells Frank that if the mammoth isn't neutralized in 10 hours, the government will blast the town out of existence.
   The sheriff and a mad scientist show off a homicidal hand containing another of the blue capsules. Grandad falls about laughing when Frank tells him there's an alien-possessed mammoth on the loose and if they don't catch it, the government will kill them all.
   The mammoth gets Jack's boyfriend. It is lured to a factory where a dose of molten steel doesn't slow it down. The monster is penned, sort of, and Grandad arrives with a tanker of liquid nitrogen. He becomes the host for the alien before being frozen like the mamoth. The frozen mammoth is put back on display and Grandad ends up in a PIB deep freeze capacity until someone can figure out a way to revive him.
   The mammoth itself is in line for an award as the worst special effects creature of the 21st Century.

The Man (2005, Samuel L. Jackson) ATF Agent Vann's partner turned up as a speed bump on the highway after being the inside man on an arms robbery, so IA went after Vann, who had to come up with a success quickly. Andy (white, from Wisconsin), who sold dental equipment, was mistaken for Vann (black & tough) by the guy with the guns so Vann had to co-opt him into the operation.
   Andy ended up busted and in holding so Vann got him sprung as a criminal helping the police. The guy with the guns shot an alternative buyer. Vann went to his favourite property clerk for $500K on top of the 20 grand already blagged. The Wisconsin Kid gave it all to the bad guy and decided that he was calling the shots, which made him The Man.
   Vann & The Man had to stand in a fountain to show they weren't wired and Vann told Joey, the bad guy, that he wanted to be his inside man. The Man triumphed at his dental conference then IA grabbed him to wear a wire and get the goods on Vann.
   IA tailed Vann and Andy to a buying meeting, the bad guys were shot to bits, Vann was shot in the ass (having shot Andy there earlier) and The Man got out alive and unscathed, and on to a plane back to Wisconsin.

The Manchurian Candidate (2004 remake) starts with the 1991 Gulf War in Kuwait, so the connection to Manchuria is lost right away. The 'Lost Patrol' loses 2 men, fights its way out of a trap and Sgt. Raymond Shaw wins the Medal of Honour and goes on to become a Congressman. But captain, now major, Marco is having dreams about a different scenario, and so is a corporal with a dossier.
   Merryl Streep plays Shaw's appalling mom, who is pushing him forward as a vice-presidential candidate. Marco eventually gets to tell Shaw about the dreams, in which Shaw kills the dead members of the Lost Patrol. The Army tells Marco to drop it and go back on his medication. Meanwhile, Shaw has his brain implant renewed, Marco finds that he also has an implant (but loses it), and he concludes that Shaw has been brainwashed.
   Manchurian Global is behind it. The company employs South African Dr. Noyle, who developed the implants, and it's into supplying private armies to reduce the pressure on the US military. The plan is to get Shaw onto the president's ticket, get Marco to shoot the newly elected president and put Shaw, MG's creature, in the White House.
   Shock, horror! Mom is part of the mind-control conspiracy and she gets her son to kill Senator Jordan, who's a threat to the plan and the father of Jocelyn, whom mom evicted from Raymond's life 15 years before. Jocelyn is killed, too. Luckily, Marco does the right thing when he takes his shot.
   As a general rule, remakes are rubbish but this one works.

Maneater (2007) [22:00, Pick TV] A truck crashes and a tiger escapes, but it doesn't eat Roy, who wanders around in the woods and has a mom who's a religious nutter. Cue the Jaws plot: the sheriff wants to go public about the danger from the tiger and the mayor doesn't want to know because the town is about to have a festival.
   More and more people are eaten, including most of the sheriff's deputies and a gang of National Guardsmen. The truck and the remains of the driver are found; a black-market operation. A great white hunter, who was sleazed in India, arrives to see off the beast. The tiger gets Roy's mom while he's hanging out with Col. Jim Graham. And, of course, it's our hero the sheriff who sees off the beast, not the guy who knows how to do the job.

Manhunter (1986) Ace profiler Will Graham [a.k.a. Dr. Grisson of CSI:Las Vegas], who was put in hospital by Hannibal Lecter for physical and mental injuries, is recalled to work on the case of the Tooth Fairy, who has a lunar cycle, and there's about a couple of weeks left before he kills another family. Graham visits the mad psychiatrist Dr. Lecter (Brian Cox) to 'recover the mindset'.
   Lecter is corresponding with the Tooth Fairy using personal ads in newspapers and a book code. Graham is used as bait in a trap, which flops. A pushy reporter is grabbed by the mad killer. He's delivered to the National Tattler on fire! Lecter gives Graham's address to the TF and tells him to save himself by killing them all.
   Graham has to admit to his son that he's been in a psychiatric hospital. 6 days to the next killing. The killer takes a blind photographic technician to his weird home and she ends up in bed with him. A phone chat with Lecter helps to put Graham deeper into the killer's mind. He realizes that the sick freak has seen home movies shot by his victims.
   Meanwhile, the killer is writing off a work colleague and playing Iron Butterfly at the blind woman. Graham loads up his superkill teflon ammo when the killer is identified. His killing campaign comes unstuck right away but he does get to blow the killer away; after he's wasted a bunch of cops; and make him bleed out in a Red Dragon pose.

The Mangler (1994) is a film which seems curiously detached from the real world. It is difficult to place it in time – it seems to be set in the 1950s but some people have PCs – and the bad guys tend to look like villains out of a Batman film. There is a laundry containing an evil machine, which chomps people up and leaves a bloody, mangled mess at the far end. A cop and his weird brother-in-law (?) start investigating and the cop is fired.
   But he still goes ahead with a plan to exorcise the machine. Which is an excuse for blood and mayhem. And in the end, nothing has changed and the machine is still there, and people who are missing a finger (everyone has to make a little sacrifice) are still in charge. The film turns out to be based on a Stephen King story, which explains a lot.

Man Of Steel (2013) The idiots running Krypton have mined the core of the planet and it is about to collapse catastrophically. A scientist blasts his new-born son into space in a pointless attempt to keep the race alive after loading the Krypton codex into the baby; to the frustration of General Bozo, who is blasted off the planet in stasis after a coup fails. Krypton then explodes.
   On Earth, an oil rig is on fire and a super-strong member of the crew supports the helicopter platform until a rescue chopper can get away. Clark discovered his super powers as a child and his back story is revealed in bitz through the film.
   An alien spaceship is spat out of a glacier after 18,000 years. Clark saves Lois Lane, a reporter, when she goes snooping and she's attacked by a droid. Her editor won't print the story. Kal El meets a simulacrum of his father, Jor El, and gets some explanations.
   Lois goes on a Clark hunt. An alien spaceship parks in orbit. Must be General Bozo. "Surrender our guy or die," is his message. Bozo wants to turn Earth into another Krypton. The Jor El simulacrum joins in the resistance. Let's have some battle and destruction. Bozo starts the Kryptonforming process. Metropolis is zapped.
   One half of Bozo's machine gets to swallow a singularity. Bozo gets the hump. Then exterminated. Clark puts on a pair of specs and goes to work at the Daily Planet. Must have been a hell of a quick rebuilding job as the original was bashed to bitz with the rest of Metropolis.

The Man On The Ledge (2012) A bloke got a hotel room on the 21st floor then climbed out on the ledge outside after writing a note. He turned out to be an ex-cop doing 25 years in gaol after being fitted up, and who'd escaped at a funeral, but it took the dumb cops forever to find that out. Nick demanded the services of Det. Mercer, a female hostage negotiator. She had just crawled out of bed and work was the last thing on her mind.
   Nick claimed he was innocent of the robbery, for which he had been gaoled. Meanwhile, his younger brother and the brother's girlfriend were using his fun & games as a distraction as they tried to break in to the vault of the bloke who had swindled Lloyds of London out of $40 million from the fake diamond robbery, for which Nick had been gaoled.
   Mercer went out on the ledge when dirty cops tried to hijack her job. The rock wasn't in the vault so the burglars took the HBG prisoner to make him cough it up. A dirty cop tried to kill Nick in full view of the people in the street. The burglars escaped and the dirty cops were rumbled. A dirty cop bagged the burglars. Then he had the Mercer arrested and turned Nick over to the HBG.
   They threatened to chuck the younger brother off the building to get the diamond back. One of the dirty cops got a conscience and the negotiator shot the other. Nick jumped off the building on to an air bag to grab the diamond off the HBG and get him busted.

The Man Who Sued God (2001) features Billy Connolly in Australia as a lawyer turned fisherman, whose boat is sunk in a storm. His insurance company called it an Act of God and refused to pay out, so he takes the company and the Church to court to prove that the insurance company is being unreasonable if not downright crooked. Apparently, this version of the film is edited to remove some of the effing and blinding.

Man Who Wouldn't Die, The (1995) stars Roger Moore as author Thomas Grace and Malcolm McDowell as Bernard Drake, a thief with delusions of being a descendant of royalty. Grace, a New York newspaper columnist, interviewed Drake after he tried to steal the sword of Edward I and he wrote a series of books featuring a 'Moriarty' character called Morrisey and an Inspector Fulbright.
   A female psychic contacts Grace and tells him someone is acting out the plot of the last of the books, in which both Morrisey and Inspector Fulbright are killed. Drake (surprise!) didn't die in a prison fire and he has been acting out the Morrisey part in earlier books, which is why Grace killed off his characters and ended the series.
   The police refuse to believe that Drake is still alive. Grace and the psychic follow his trail and find he's made a bomb. They think the target is Prince David but Drake wants to blow up the city's power supply and create a blackout as a cover for another try at the sword of Edward I, which was brought to the USA with Prince David.
   Drake carries out the robbery disguised as Grace! So the author is arrested clutching the sword. But the one he has proves to be a fake. Grace tracks down Drake to his lair and actually manages to outwit him. So Drake goes to gaol and Grace sets about restoring his shattered finances by writing another book about his adventure.

Marked For Death (1990) is another outing for our pal Stephen Seagal, who plays an undercover cop called John Hatcher. Hatcher loses his partner so, being a good Catholic, he takes his priest's advice and quits. Meanwhile, Jamaicans and Latinos dealers are in a turf war and the Voodoo-ists are busy.
   Hatcher and his pal, a school football coach, are in a club when the Yardies start shooting and the FBI barges in. Hatcher sees no point in doing anything – until the Yardies do a drive-by shooting on his sister's house and put his niece in the hospital. Hatcher and the coach gathered up a lot of weapons and go after the Jamaicans, who have marked his family for death.
   Head Jamaican 'Scarface' nearly takes Hatcher out, so he recruits a Jamaican undercover cop, as well as the coach, and follows Scarface to Jamaica with an impressive collection of weapons. Hatcher kills Scarface, only to discover that he's battling twins, so he has to do the job all over again! Lots of martial arts, bullets flying, car chasing and bad haircuts, not to mention abundant bad language. Not Shakespeare, but it was never intended to be.

Marked Man (1996, Roddy Piper) Frank's girlfriend is wiped out by a drunk driver. So he slugs the guy, kills him and gets 3 years in gaol. There, he runs into the wise guy Elkins, who is done in by 2 screws. Frank sees them do it and has to escape to stay alive. He kills one of the killers in a fight. Luckily, a little bit of a stream foils the dogs on his trail.
   The other killer guard gets his payoff from Vince, who bought the hit. Then he gets dead. Frank arrives in Albany, NY, which gives a lady Fed an excuse to join in the manhunt as he crossed a state line. Frank gets some cash back from his scrounger brother and goes after Elkins' partner.
   He visits Elkins' home for a scout around, and meets the wife. Then Agent Gallagher turns up. Frank gets a glimpse of Vince whilst running away. He finds out that Vince is blackmailing Elkins' widow and strolls off with a compromising videotape. Vince strolls off with the brother but Frank gets him back.
   The Feds drop in, having found that Vince is dirty. The bro is shot and Vince gets gut-stabbed. The step-daughter blows it for the widow, who obligingly shoots her mouth off with the Feds listening. So that's Frank off the hook.

Mars Attacks! (1996) is a cartoonish caper, which starts with a stampede of flaming cattle and a flying saucer in the sky. Flying saucers surround the Earth and we flip through a gammut of stars in various character roles with lots of snippets of excellent humour. The US president interrupts all TV programming to announce that visitors from Mars have arrived.
   A White House boffin thinks the Martians have more to fear from the primitive Earthers than we have to fear from the highly developed civilization on Mars. The Martians land in Nevada. "We come in peace," they say. Then the shooting starts! The Martians apologize for the misunderstanding and address Congress – and wipe out the inmates. So the President decides to go on TV and spout platitudes.
   A Martian fembot infiltrator nearly captures Mr. President. The Martians attack DC and zap all the tourist attractions. The casinos in Las Vegas get it next. Nukes are useless against them, the hawks in the US military discover. Then the Martians start taking out more of Earth's landmarks. But they do have a weakness; exposure to yodelling makes their brains explode! So the Earthers survive.

Martian Land (2015) If you're looking for an appalling example of cliché-ridden eco-claptrap, look no further than this "mockbuster" for The Martian (2015)
   The Earth fought back against the plague of humanity on its surface, we are told, and humans went to Mars in space shuttles and started to terraform it whilst living in domes. Now, Mars is fighting back with dust storms. Dr. Foster is brought from Earth; a trip lasting several months; to tackle a killer storm which has suddenly erupted (which doesn't add up).
   He's trying to make Earth habitable again but his daughter, Ellie, is stuck in a dome threatened by a storm and she needs to be rescued. The terraforming is supposed to have made Olympus Mons active again (yeah, right) and the storm is volcanic ash particles. And by the way, we're invited to believe that an overdue eruption of the Yellowstone super-volcano was somehow Man's fault.
   The volcano on Mars has to be killed and Ellie and her girfriend are needed for the job. Ellie knows better than her dad, the expert, of course. The current husband of Foster's ex-wife conveniently gets himself killed so the family can be reunited at the end and a military lady tries to screw everything up. How bleedin' prethetic can you get? [clue: the film industry can get way more prethetic than this] Natch, Foster's plan succeeds and Mars is saved and everyone is pals again.

Mask of the Ninja (2008) Detective Jack is in on a drug bust at a club. Elsewhere, Ninjas go after Mr. Takeo and his daughter, Mika, at their palatial home. Takeo doesn't make it and Miko calls her boyfriend, who's involved in the drug deal, and Jack calls on her. Takeo was the boss of a high-tech company, which is under assault by a hacker.
   Takeo's head of security and the hacker are taken out by the bad guys. Jack finds a massacre at Takeo Technology. He and Hirohito, Takeo's advisor, get into a rumble with ninjas. Hiro tells him there's been a feud between 2 Japanese clans for centuries. The bad guys are after a chip with weapon data, which Miko has (but she doesn't know it).
   Jack tracks down Miko. The ninjas massacre everyone at his police station. Miko realizes the chip is implanted in her. The bad guys grab Miko's step-mom then Miko. Shock, horror! Step-mom is a member of the bad guy clan! But the bad guys, and Hiro, end up hacked to bits.

The Mask of Zorro is like the Three Stooges with two of them missing. The original Zorro is shoved in gaol while the bad guy hops off to Spain for 20 years with his daughter because the bad guy has always fancied being married to Mrs. Zorro. After using the Count of Monte Cristo's method of getting out of gaol, Zorro trains up a young punk as his successor and manages to kill off a whole bunch of bad guys by the end of the film. Not really advertised as a comedy but that's what it is.

The Matrix (Part 1/3) (1999) has the well worn plot that everything we see around us isn't real. It's not 1999, it's 200 years later, the human race has lost a war with artificial intelligences and they're using the humans as power sources! A computer expert is woken up and told he's the Chosen One – well, by everyone but the Oracle. Men In Shades, the anti-virus programs of the AIs, pursue him and the other wide-awake humans – and they learn to ignore gravity as the reality they experience ain't real. We had to refill the TV with bullets at one point – after the 'hero' had asked for "lots of guns". And we ended up looking at a probably sequel.
   Would The Matrix seem any less unlikely the 2nd time around? No, the idea that machines are using humans as power sources is still silly. There are much more efficient ways of generating power so the whole thing becomes a cartoon with people instead of drawings, and lots of ultra-violence and shooting, with those who believe they're better than the other guy coming out best.

The Matrix: Reloaded (Part 2/3) (2003) Captain Morpheus wanted to consult the Oracle so that the Prophecy could be fulfilled. Everyone else though he should get on with defending Zion City against a coming attack by the machines. More leaping & slo-mo by the cartoon characters. Morpheus did some rabble-rousing for the people and Neo plugged in to visit the Oracle.
   She told him that he's The One and he needed to find the Key Maker. Neo had a battle with the unplugged ex-agent Smith, who could replicate himself endlessly. An extended battle with the Key Maker's keeper and mucho motorway madness when the guys got the Key Maker, who told them they have to cut off the power to a building and The One had to enter a particular room.
   Neo met the Architect, who made the Matrix. Neo was the 6th Anomaly and he had to choose between saving Trinity and the human race. So hard luck, human race! Neo told Morpheus that his famous Prophecy is a lie. And he ended up in a coma, waiting for the next episode.

The Matrix: Revolutions (Part 3/3) (2003) Neo is stuck between this world and the Matrix at the mercy of the Trainman, who works for the Frenchman, the Oracle reveals. Lots of shooting and slo-mo leaping about as Morpheus, Trinity and the Oracle's guide confront the Frenchman in his club. He wants the eyes of the Oracle in return for their saviour, Neo.
   The Oracle tells Neo she's trying to end the war, one way or another. Neo and Trinity head for the machine city to sort them out. They have to deal with a psychotic stowaway along the way. The machines break through into Zion City's dock, so cue a HUGE battle involving clumsy one-man tanks on the ground and machines with tentacles whizzing through the air.
   The machines are 2 hours from taking Zion City when Neo, blinded by the nutter, and Trinity reach the machine city. Trinity is killed. Morpheus uses an EM pulse to stop the machines; he also cripples Zion City's electronics. Neo and Agent Smith have a major punch-up in the rain. Smith converts Neo to a replica. Bad move. Suddenly, the war is over and there's a beautiful sunrise or sunset.
   "It doesn't make sense," one of the Zion City battlers complained in the dock. "Was it ever supposed to?" the audience replied.

Maverick (1994, Mel Gibson, Jodey Foster, James Garner, James Coburn) Brett Maverick runs into Annabelle, a thieving poker dealer on his way to a poker tournament and she keeps calling him Bert. He needs to collect $25,000 to enter, including calling in debts from various "friends".
   The TV Maverick, as Marshall Zane Cooper, joins the party. Bank robbers, a croaking stagecoach driver, renegades and Injuns (pals of Maverick's) provide diversions and there's a scumbag Mexican trying to make sure Brett doesn't reach the riverboat, on which the tournament will be held.
   Brett and Annabelle make it, and Marshall Cooper will be the enforcer, the Commodore announces. Is it a scam? Of course. Maverick wins, the Mexican is gunned down, and the Marshall, who was in cahoots with the Commodore, strolls off with the winnings. But he's Brett's father.

Maximum Risk (1996) Jean-Claude Van Damme (a.k.a. the Muscles from Brussels) is written off in the first few minutes of the film. Then he's alive and kicking at a funeral. The first incarnation was Mikhail, his twin brother, who was given up for adoption to a Russian Mafioso. The one still alive is Alain, a former French soldier. He decides to find out what sort of a bloke his brother was.
   The office of the lawyer who arranged the adoption is torched and Alain gets into a punch up with the firebug. Off to New York. Mikhail was in trouble for betraying his Mafia family. Alex, his girlfriend, hooks up with Alain and they are chased by both the Mafia and the firebug. Two FBI agents working with the Russian Mafia are worried about being exposed by Mikhail's documents.
   The Feds tell Alain the documents are in a bank in Nice. He realizes they are crooked. Dmitri, Mikhail's adoptive father, is killed by a rival, Ivan, who is working with the Feds. Alain goes to Nice with Alex as a prisoner of the FBI agents. He has a punch up with the firebug in the bank and pulls off a dramatic rescue of a cop friend, who is a prisoner of the Russian Mafia.
   Ivan has a fiery finish. Then it's off to save Alex from the Feds in a meat processing plant, where the one who plays 'Psycho Bobby' in The Pretender gets handy with a chainsaw before being written off.

Max Payne (2008) Max Payne heads for the bottom of a river. One week earlier: Max works in the archives. He's a former detective and his wife and child are unsolved homicide cases. No one is working the case and he hunts down scumbags himself. There's a blue drug making people freak out and Russians floating around.
   A hooker who attached herself to Max is found slashed to bits. She stole his wallet and his old partner catches the case. He spots a connection to Michelle Payne's murder but Alex is killed and Max ends up in hospital, battered. An IA cop questions him. Max picks up on Alex's clue.
   Natasha's sister takes Max to a guy freaked out on blue stuff. Owen wrecks a car when he falls out of a window. Tattoos are a connection to the company where Max's wife worked on a government contract to make soldiers more aggressive in combat; only it drove most of them insane.
   Max questions a guy at the company; the guy is murdered by a company goon and the goons shoot up the building. The IA cop is in with them. Max tells Natasha's sister then goes after the lab rats and their blue stuff. His old pal, B.B., is another BG and Michelle's killer.
   B.B. tries to give Max a permanent bath in a frozen river, but some blue stuff warms him up when he struggles out again. And then B.B. gets what's coming to him on the company helipad.

The Mechanic (2011) Mob boss goes for a swim, ambushed in the pool by an athletic hitman, who doesn't have much of a private life. His next job offer is his old mate Harry, who sent a team of 5 operatives to South Africa to be killed for a $20M pay-off. Harry has to go in 48 hours. Bishop, the Mechanic, meets Steve at the grave. Harry never thought much of his son, the estate is mortgaged to the hilt and Steve wants to be Bishop's apprentice.
   They run into a rival from another outfit. Steve make a real mess of the kill. The boss isn't happy about Bishop bringing Steve into the business. Next job; a junkie/glutton cult guy in Chicago. Steve bogs up again and it turns into a shooting match and running battle.
   Bishop spots one of the 5 "dead" men, who admits he killed the others and Harry was framed. He's soon dead. A crew visits Bishop's boat. Another goes after Steve. So Bishop goes after the boss. Steve finds out that Bishop killed his father.
   The boss admits that Harry's life brought in $50M. The boss's convoy is trimmed in crashes on the street and the boss ends up more bullet holes than boss. Steve puts Bishop in the middle of a gas station explosion and takes over his home and his car. Big mistake. Everything blows up, taking Steve with it. And, natch, Bishop ain't dead.

The Medallion (2003) is a Chinese fable starring Jackie Chan as Inspector Eddie Yang of the Hong Kong police (with Sammo Hung arranging the fights). There's a legend that a child will be able to unite the 2 halves of a medallion & make people immortal. So an English bad guy hires a gang to get the kid & the medallion. Watson of Interpol makes an ass of himself in Hong Kong and the kid ends up on a boat to Dublin, where Insp. Yang teams up with Nicole and the dozy Watson again.
   After a comedy chase and lots of leaping about, Yang and the kid end up in a container, which goes into the harbour. Yang saves the kid but drowns; only to be revived as an immortal with super powers by the kid. Which gives Watson a fright in the mortuary. Yang can jump to the top of tall buildings and survive being shot & stabbed.
   The kid is grabbed again and taken to Bad Guy Castle. The Head Bad Guy kills himself so that the kid can revive him as an immortal. But the kid has only one half of the medallion. Mrs. Watson proves to be more than a match for the bad guys who invade her home. Another huge chase and the HBG gets the rest of the medallion.
   Lots of kung fu-ing at the castle. Nicole ends up dead next. The HBG is beset by demons and swallowed by the medallion. The kid brings Nicole back to life then he disappears through a vortex into the next universe, Watson kindly explains to the viewers.

Medusa's Child got 2 stars and a kicking from the previewers, just like Omega Doom (see later). The plot is all about a mad scientist, who completes a cancelled US Government project in his barn and builds a Medusa weapon. The idea of this particular atomic bomb is that it releases a massive electromagnetic pulse when it goes off and zaps every electrical system and computer for thousands of miles around. You don't kill the enemy but you trash their lives and their means for waging war and making a living.
   So the mad scientist bluffs the bomb onto a cargo aircraft addressed to the Pentagon. But it gets activate in mid-air, not in the Pentagon, and that's when the fun starts. The President is operating by remote control from England, the FBI are paranoid and the military men are up to no good across the board. And our heroes on the plane are stuck right at the heart of the matter.

Meet The Spartans (2008) is a spoof of the film 300 – a totally merciless send-up, totally silly and even greater fun for anyone who has seen the target of the derision. Not to be missed!

Megafault (2009) A Gulf War veteran called Boomer sets off a mega-explosion and suddenly, there's a strolling earthquake rippling across the landscape and he falls into the chasm. A lady geologist digs him out. The alleged earthquake is more like a rodent fault line and it's going right across the USA. Luckily, the military has a weapon in space to freeze the ground water in unfriendly countries and wreck them with quakes which can't be blamed on Uncle Sam.
   The weapon fails to stop the rodent fault, so Boomer has to blow a bloody big hole in the ground to stop the rodent setting off the Jellystone National Park mega-volcano, getting himself killed in the process. The lady geologist survives, of course, for a tearful reunion with her family, who have been having an equally desperate time.

Magalodon (2018) Stoopid bloody Russians on a mission to tap into an undersea cable; their drilling releases and attracts a HUGE shark, which bites the sub in half. A shipload of heroic Yanks vaguely near Hawaii finds the sub and a hotshot lady, Cmdr. Lynch, is keen to go down to it in a submersible. The captain, a technical lady and a dogsbody are rescued before the shark swallows the submersible and the ship's captain has to cut the cable to it.
   An admiral on the ship is all for abandoning the submersible but the crew mutinies. All the grub on the ship is used to lure the shark to the surface. The submersible drives out of it. An attempt to fry the shark fails. It zooms off to Hawaii to snack on a boat then returns. The ship's bright ladies turn the submersible into a cherry bomb.
   The Russian captain is allowed to escape and frustrate the bomb plan. The shark attacks the ship. Lynch gets her first command when the captain decides to go on a suicide mission against the shark. Ooo-rah!
   The Russian tries to get in the way. The crew stands off in boats. Lynch comes back aboard. The admiral joins in. The Russian SOBs are killed and the admiral goes down with the ship and the shark.

Mega Piranha (2010) Special Agent Jason Fitch is sent to Venezuela to find out what happened to the US ambassador. He runs into the stroppy Col. Diaz and the lady biologist, whose UNESCO project created piranhas which double in size every 36 hours. Col. Diaz doesn't want to hear about killer fish getting the ambassador. He wants it to be a CIA plot.
   Col. Diaz tries to bomb the fish to death but just releases them into the Orinoco. By the time they reach a port down river, they're the size of small whales and able to fly out of the water and eat people whole and explode!
   A "passing" US warship bombards the fish at the mouth of the river but they just swim into the sea and take out the ship. Fitch steals a chopper to get to a secret US base, where his boss is planning to nuke the piranhas. Doesn't do any good and they sink the sub which fired the nuclear torpedo.
   With the fish 1 hour from Miami, the President says more nukes. But Fitch wants to take a bunch of divers to shoot the fish to make them attack one another. Exploding fish attack the Florida Keys and Col. Diaz shoots down a US helicopter! But Fitch takes out Diaz and finally finds a way to send the piranhas into a feeding frenzy to solve the problem.

Mega Python versus Gatoroid (2011) Female animal rights terrorists stole pythons from a collector and released them into the Florida everglades, where they grew to enormous size and started wiping out the 'gators; not to mention dogs and people. The lady park ranger's boyfriend was killed by a snake so she fed experimental drugs to alligators to make them grow.
   Unfortunately, snakes ate 'gator eggs and also grew even huger. The ranger wanted to hold a fund-raiser for her area of swamp so we were into the Jaws plot with Dr. Diego, a Red Indian herpetologist, wanting the area cleared. A giant alligator ate some of the animal rights terrorists and Dr. Diego blew up some 'gator eggs.
   The terrorist woman caused a riot at the fund-raising and the monsters joined in. Then the monsters attacked Miami. Just about everyone was eaten, including the terrorist leader and the lady ranger, but the monsters were eventually lured to a quarry, where Dr. Diego blew them up.

Mega Shark versus Crocasaurus (2010) An earthquake in a mine releases a freakin' huge croc while Lt. Terry of the US Navy is trying to control sharks with sound waves. The captain of his research ship doesn't want to believe that the megashark is still alive, but it attacks the ship and Terry is the sole survivor.
   An Aussie lady from the mine recruits great white hunter Nigel to see off the croc so the mine can be reopened. The croc chomps both of them but spits Nigel out when he gives it knockout drops. He's transporting the croc and its eggs on a tramp steamer when the shark attacks the boat.
   Special Agent Hutchinson recruits Lt. Terry and Nigel to the cause of slaying the shark, which has a taste for croc eggs. The US air force takes out some eggs with missles so the croc attacks Miami. But Terry uses a nuclear power station to give it an arc-flash. The plan becomes to blow up the shark and the croc in the Panama Canal.
   That doesn't work and the US Navy finds that there are croc eggs everywhere. And they're hatching! The shark eats a nuclear sub while the croc takes a trip to Hawaii. Terry decides to use his gadget to set off a volcano and take out the shark and the croc. But if there has to be another sequel, he probably didn't succeed.

Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus (2009) A US Navy chopper drops an active sonar device into Arctic waters, Emma (in a minisub) watches a pod of whales go crazy then the stupid pilot crashes into an iceberg and releases a huge, dark shape. A giant octopus takes out a Japanese megaplatform in the sea and the only survivor is kidnapped by the government.
   A whale turns up chewed to death on the California coast. Emma extracts a huge tooth from it. A HUGE shark leaps up into the air and chomps a plane!!! Emma gets the sack for stealing the minisub. Her Irish expert reckons the tooth belongs to a megadont, which has been extinct for millions of years. They join forces with a Japanese expert, who was consulted about the octopus.
   Emma is a Global Warming Swindler, who blames melting Arctic ice for the release of the shark and the octopus, who were frozen 18 million years before while locked in mortal combat. The shark takes out a US pocket battleship. The experts plan to trap the creatures in San Francisco and Tokio bays using pheromones as a lure.
   The shark eats a destroyer and the Golden Gate bridge. The US & Japanese navies fail to kill the monsters, so the next plan is to lure them into a fight. The shark takes out a shoal of US subs but the creatures finish the fight, and each other, off.

Mega Shark versus Kollosus (2015) It's over a year since the last megalodon and the world economy has yet to recovery. Russia is causing trouble everywhere with illegal mining operations to make red mercury, the ultimate power source. A 30-foot baby megalodon sinks a Russian ore ship, attracted by the exotic ores. A sub fails to take it out and the statue of Jesus at Rio de Janeiro is broken a lot.
   Ivan has some Soviet red mercury for sale and there's a freaking big machine in the bunker; Kollosus was made by the Soviets, powered by red mercury and abandoned as too dangerous. The US Navy has a conference and Dr. Alison says the shark is a product of parthenogenesis. "No sign of the Mega Shark," says a fighter pilot. Chomp!
   The Mega is eating up ships transporting food and growing at a hell of a rate. Food is the key to destroying it, says Dr. Bullock, Dr. Alison's full-of-himself rival. Dr. Alison gets the bum's rush but she's recruited by the boss of Dane Tech. He wants to capture and study the Mega. Kollosus is a doomsday machine and CIA agent King is on its case.
   The shark wins the battle of Gibraltar and Ms King ends up on the Dane ship. Dane lends her a fancy VTOL plane to go to Romania, where King meets the creator of Kollosus. He's shot by bandits. Dr. Alison tries to help the navy but the shark sinks another ship. Admiral Jackson takes the nuclear option. Dane stops the missles.
   The shark is trapped in an inlet King lures Kollosus there. Our heroes faff about in a Soviet undersea lab, which the shark attacks. Dane takes Dr. Alison, King and Co. prisoner and takes control of Kollosus to get some red mercury to take control of the shark. Dane tries to take over the world. Things don't work out too well and Kollosus stomps on him. Then it blows up and takes the shark with it. But another egg hatches out somewhere on the sea bed.

Mega Shark versus Mech Shark (2014) A tug is pulling an iceberg to Alexandria when it melts and releases a megalodon shark, which bats the tug with its tail and decapitates the Sphinx, then goes on a rampage which locks down the fishing industry. Meanwhile, at Pearl Harbour, Jack (Teal'c from SG-1) and Rosie are testing a shark-like submersible when they are put in charge of Mecha Shark, a new US Navy submersible, which resembles the megalodon. Dr. Emma warns the admiral that the Mega Shark is looking for a mate. Jack installs his Nero A.I. system on Mecha.
   Mega wrecks an oil rig and there could be an ecological disaster. Rosie caps the leak then she saves a plane from being attacked in the air by Mega! When she fires a torpedo at Mega, it misses and takes out a US warship. Rosie causes an underwater landslide, which traps Mecha, but Nero gets it gets free.
   Mecha picks a fight with an aircraft carrier, which loses. Rosie is rescued and Nero takes over Mecha. Mega heads for Sydney Harbour. Nero malfunctions and Mecha goes into amphibious mode, with safety protocols off, and starts to wreck downtown Sydney. Dr. Emma comes up with the bright idea of getting Mega to destroy Mecha. Fighter planes blast Mecha into the sea and when Mega bites it, that sets off a torpedo, which wipes out both sharks.

Mega Snake (2007) is a daft creature-feature starring Dr. Daniel Jackson of Stargate fame. Les and his brother watch their father being killed by a poisonous snake at a ceremony held by a bunch of weird Bible-bashers in 1986. In the present, Les's brother steals a small but mystical snake in a jar from an Injun. Of course, he breaks the jar, the snake eats the family kitten, all the hens and mom, and grows enormously.
   Beau, the dumb sheriff and a rival for Erin, Les's not-girlfriend, puts Les in gaol as a murder suspect. The snake eats a family of picknickers but as the County Fair is due, the mayor won't issue a warning and we're in to the plot of Jaws.
   When a sloughed skin turns up, the sheriff takes a posse on a snake hunt. Bad idea! Two good ol' boys find the dying sheriff and go on a snake hunt with a flame thrower. The Injun reckons someone has to get inside the mystical snake to kill it.
   The good ol' boys become snake food, the snake visits the county fair and bites a few heads off, then it swallers Erin. The Injun is injured, so Les lets the snake swaller him, too, kills the snake and rescues Erin. Then he has to marry her.

Meltdown: Days of Destruction (2006) A crazed Yank project director fires off a 10 magaton nuke at a big chunk of space rock, against boffin Nathan's advice, breaks up the rock and makes a chunk the size of Iceland bounce off the Earth's atmosphere, which knocks the Earth closer to the Sun.
   Temperatures shoot up, civilization goes to Hell and a party consisting of Nathan, his TV reporter sister, her cop boyfriend, the mother (whom he never married) of the cop's daughter, the daughter and her criminal boyfriend head north. Cars start exploding so they take to storm drains. There, they meet a crooked cop, who has Nathan kidnapped because one of his pals will be landing at a local airport to pick him up.
   The cop and his ladies sort out their relationships on the way to the airport, the plane crashes unseen and there's a big shoot-out. The bad guys are killed or slope off. And suddenly, it starts raining, which is a sign that the other planets have dragged Earth back into its proper orbit and the world has been saved.

Memento (2000) Leonard, an insurance investigator, suffered a brain injury when he was attacked after his wife was raped and left to die with a plastic bag on her head. He has no short-term memory. He can remember everything up to watching his wife die, but he is unable to build new memories so he carries annotated Polaroid pictures of people and places, and he has essential information tattooed on his body, as a substitute for his missing short-term memory.
   The film starts with Leonard killing the killer. Then it goes back in time in segments. The reverse investigation is intercut with Leonard's earlier insurance investigation of someone else with the same condition, which goes forward to its tragic outcome.
   Leonard's main interactions are with Teddy and Natalie. We get back to the murder of Leonard's wife after an hour and a half (including adverts). And surprise! Knowing what has gone before changes each episode, and knowing the beginning completely changes the ending.
   This is a film that requires the audience to pay attention but it works very well.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) is the tragic tale of Nick, a broker in San Francisco, who goes to a boring meeting with a hangover after meeting a blonde lady, falls asleep and ends up invisible after a secret government equipment blows up. A rogue CIA agent tries to capture him so Nick goes into hiding at a friend's holiday home and the blonde lady turns up! The CIA crashes the party, Nick gets away, the CIA agent catches up with him again and Nick tricks him into taking a high dive off a building under construction. Then Nick heads for Switzerland with his blonde lady as he can wear a ski mask all day there and conceal his invisibility.

Memory Run (1994) Andrel Fuller sees his parents murdered by storm troops. Jump forward 15 years and he's a high-tech burglar in a state run by the corrupt Life Corporation. Andre ends up framed for a murder by one of his gang. The LC police stick a probe in his head, edit his memories to create 'evidence' and find him guilty of Murder One.
   At LC's Medical Division, a stroppy patient called Celeste, the woman murdered in the burglary, has a metal pill, a goad, implanted in her brain as a control device. Celeste turns out to have Andre's brain implanted in her body by Dr. Monger. Celeste's bunkmate is killed by the guards, Dr. Monger brings her a goat removal kit but she has to use it herself. Then she escapes.
   LO wants Celeste dead. The bloke who killed her is amazed when she shows up, and even more amazed to hear that he's looking at Andre in a new body. An LO death squad arrives and Celeste gets to kneecap the killer while escaping. She is picked up by a terrorist group called the Union, which is headed by Gabriel, whose girlfriend is Dr. Weir of Stargate Atlantis.
   Lots & lots of shooting, and the girlfriend is written off. Celeste & Gabriel find Dr. Monger under house arrest. They learn that LO is planning to harvest young bodies then go into Phase Two of the plan, moving the brains of ancient LO executives to rejuvenate them. Monger is released, and he decides that Celeste is pregnant (having shagged Andre just before her death).
   Celeste, Gabriel & Monger infiltrate LO, where the chief executive's brain has been transplanted into Andre's body! He shoots Monger so Celeste blasts Andre's body to bits. In the closing shot, Andre as Celeste has had the baby which Andre fathered, and Gabriel is still around.

Men In Black (1997) stars Tommy Lee Jones & Will Smith and includes a couple of TV detectives – Monk and Vince the Nutter from Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Some guys running Mexicans across the border were busted, then the Men In Black turned up to pick a real alien out of the bunch! Mr. Jones retired his partner by wiping his memories of his service with the MIB and recruited Mr. Smith, a cop who did a good job of chasing down an alien without knowing what he was chasing.
   Meanwhile, redneck Vince the Nutter's body was taken over by another alien after it crashed its spaceship onto Vince's truck. At MIB HQ, Smith learned that Earth has become a safe haven for alien asylum seekers and all sorts of well known American personalities are really aliens in disguise.
   Vince had been taken over by an assassin bug. "Bugs thrive on carnage." This one was after a galaxy, which was so small that it could be hidden in an ornament on the collar of a cat called Orion. An alien battle cruiser turned up and threatened to destroy Earth in one galactic week (1 Earth hour) if the galaxy wasn't handed over.
   The aliens on Earth started to flee. Lots of chasing around and bug splatting as Jones & Smith went after the assassin bug, who had kidnapped a female pathologist. The bug was eventually exterminated, Earth was saved, Jones had his memory wiped, and Smith and the lady pathologist took over the MIB jobs at the end.

Men In Black 2 (2002) A small alien spaceship crashes on Earth; less than dog-size. The bug inside multiplies into a pseudo-female human. The MIB have to deal with Jeff, which eats subway trains. The lady bug is looking for The Light. J wipes the mind of a useless partner and ends up stuck with Frank, a talking dog. J decides not to flash a lady witness, Laura, who fancies him.
   The Light was ordered off the planet but Selena, the BG, thinks it's still on Earth; and life on the planet could be wiped out. J's ex-partner, K, now works for the Post Office after wiping his own memories. The PO is full of aliens! Selena puts MIB HQ into lockdown and recruits the scum of the universe from the cells.
   K has to follow clues planted in his mind. J stashes Laura. K hid The Light on Earth. Selena worms K. J zaps her a bit. The charm bracelet on Laura, the lady witness, is what everyone is after. Cue a race against time. Laura is The Light, K decides. So she zooms off into the void after Selena has been splatted.

Men In Black 3 (2012) Boris the Animal gets a lady visitor with a cake. A bug in the cake helps him to escape from his prison on the Moon, and not having air doesn't seem to bother him. K does a eulogy for Agent Z and his girlfriend, Agent O, takes over MIB HQ. Boris wants to go back in time and kill K before he shoots his arm off. J and K have a rumble in a restaurant. Boris tries to take out K.
   J discovers that what K was doing in 1969 is classified. K vanishes. There's a woman and a baby living in his apartment and J's partner is AA and no one at MIB HQ has heard of K. O tells him that K has been dead for 40 years; since July 16th 1969 and there has been a temporal fracture. Boris arrives to attack Earth. J decides to go back to July 15th 1969 to kill Boris before he can kill K.
   Back in 1969, where persons of color get a lot less slack, K tasers J and nearly erases him. But he believes J's story and they have incidents with Boris. Our heroes have to get the ArcNet onto the Apollo 11 launch vehicle to deploy it in space to protect the Earth. Boris shows up on the gantry, so lots of fun and games there.
   Boris loses his arm and he's fried in the rocket exhaust. The ArcNet is deployed. K blasts Boris to gloopy bitz. J sees his father killed and K adopting his younger self. Then back to the present . . .

Mercenary For Justice (2006, Steven Seagal) The CIA foments a revolution on an African island and a gang of mercenaries has to kidnap the French ambassador + family to escape when the French govt. sends in some tanks. The ambassador is blown to bits and John Seager, American war hero turned mercenary, falls out with Gresham, the CIA dirty tricks guy.
   South Africa is about to send a Greek arms dealer's son to the US. Seager turns down Mr. Chapel's extraction job so the family of his pal Jones, who was killed on the last job, is kidnapped to change his mind. Gresham brings in Maxine, another mercenary from the Africa job, to get info from Seager.
   Gresham gets the South Africans to protect a data vault. Then the assault on the gaol goes down. The arms dealer's son isn't there and the mercs are all wiped out. Seager & Maxine get into the vault and Chapel demands $100M ransom for the Jones family. The Greek arms dealer is busted as he's putting out at $500M hit on Chapel.
   Maxine frames Gresham for stealing $50M electronically, then one of their team extracts them from a building full of bodies. Then it's off to extract the Joneses from Chapel's clutches. And the dead Jones gets a military funeral at the end.

Mercury Rising (1998, Bruce Willis) Agent Art Jeffries was deep undercover at a bank robbery when the FBI bozos outside ignored his messages and dashed in and killed everyone. He was moved to a desk job. An autistic kid called Simon got a puzzle book and phoned the NSA. Two cryptographers had created an uncrackable code for talking to deep cover agents but they'd tested it in the puzzle book.
   Their boss sent an assassin to erase the household but the kid hid and Jeffries found him. Jeffries tried to put him into protection at a hospital but the killer turned up. A big chase and Jeffries killed the killer on a train.
   Art's FBI pal Tom told him that there was a warrant out for him. Art took the kid home and he phoned the Puzzle Line again. The cryptographers got in touch by email as all the phones were bugged. Their boss had both of them whacked but one left an incriminating letter.
   Jeffries bearded the NSA guy in his wine cellar and arranged for the kid to go into witness protection. But the NSA guy got in the way. Luckily, the FBI arrived for a shoot-out and the NSA bozo took a dive off the top of the building.

Merlin & the Book of Beasts (2009) Killer butterflies zap an assassin and kill a whole lot of people. There's trouble in Camelot and Galahad goes looking for Merlin with Lancelot, Tristan and King Arthur's daughter, Evelynn, to rid the land of the sorcerer and his army of enchanted beasts. Merlin says no at first but, despite his doddery condition, he joins in a battle to save the others from a golem.
   Merlin decides that the Arcadian has a bad book of spells, which was stolen from him, and leads the infiltrators into Camelot through tunnels. The bad guy is the son of Mordred and Morgan Le Fey, and he wants to create a new tribe by breeding with Evelynn. Merlin is no match for him and the Arcadian puts a drawing of Merlin in the book.
   Merlin fights back and the Arcadian kills him before escaping without the book. But the blood of the Pendragons and the Fountain of Life revive Merlin, and the gang survives a clash with Gorgons. Merlin tells Evelynn that the Arcadian is actually her half-brother. She retrieves Excalibur from the Lake of Destiny. The Arcadian captures everyone and subverts Evelynn for a while. The gang has to see off Medusa and Merlin uses the Book on the Arcadian. He gets Evelynn to slay the book with Excalibur, and Camelot is saved!

Merlin & the War of the Dragons (2008) Britain 420 AD, the Romans have left and Britain is full of petty kings beset by Saxon invaders. The Mage takes a royal child, who's also the son of a demon, for training when the king's druid wants the lad killed at birth. 20 years later, his fellow apprentice, Vendinger, tries to use Merlin to nick the Mage's book of spells. A water spirit repairs Merlin after he has a vision of his demon father.
   Vendinger sets himself up as a hero and offers the services of himself and his dragons to Hengist, the invader. The Picts are also causing trouble. King Vortigern's Druid still wants Merlin killed but the Mage sends him to fetch Excalibur when Merlin has a vision of a white dragon. Vendinger tries to steal the book of spells again and the Welsh get into a battle with the Saxons.
   Vendinger sends in the dragons while Merlin is getting a dragon-fighting spell from the good water spirit. He creates his own dragons to fight Vendinger's. Excalibur eats Vendinger, so that's it for the Saxons. Uther Pendragon becomes king but the bad water spirit revived Vendinger.

Metal Mayhem (2000) is an 'enjoyable romp' featuring Jackie Chan as an undercover cop. The FBI brings a crime-fighting robot to an exhibition in Hong Kong. The young Chinese designer of the machine reckones the robot was stolen from him and he hacks into its controls to cause havoc. Lots of shooting and explosions and people feng shoowey-ing one another acrobatically; quite a lot of laughs; a good way to spend an hour and a half in front of the box.

Metal Mayhem (2011) Two builder brothers going bust, Ethan & Jake, see a satellite crash and sell the bits to Earl, who's building a golem out of junk for the centenial of their town, Redeemer. Jake meets newly arrived Amanda, his childhood sweetheart, who is getting a divorce, and Claire, her daughter.
   The junk is contaminated with green gunk from outer space and it brings the golem to life! It stomps around killing people and making electrical equipment fail. Earl is one of the victims and the coroner says he was killed by extreme bacteria. Ethan also gets dead.
   Jake knocks a leg off the monster with his truck. It falls over and drops to bits; which reassemble into mini-monsters. Jake makes the satellite-outer-space-bug connection. The bugs eat metal, including the iron in human blood.
   The monster re-assembles. Jake blows it up and it takes the geniuses in the bar ages to realize that alcohol will kill the bacteria on the bits. The monster is put in a crusher but a contaminated bit escapes; but not for long.

Metal Tornado (2012) is another sciffy disaster film. A company plans to collect charged particles from eruptions on the Sun, convert them into a stream of magnetic energy, which is beamed to a ground station, where it is converted into clean, renewable electricity. Except that there's a flaw in the system and the guy who invented it kills himself trying to fix it.
   Two per cent of the downstream escapes and becomes a magnetic tornado, which attracts metal and writes off human beings who get in the way of flying cars, etc. Michael, the technical guy at Helios, wants to delay putting the system on the market. Jonathan, the boss, doesn't want to hear about problems.
   Another trial in France creates another metal-sucking tornado. Meanwhile, the tornado is following a vein of iron ore in the ground and Philadelphia is at the end of the line. Michael & Jonathan come up with a plan to hit the tornado with an EMP, which the Pentagon provides by firing a missle from a drone. Philadelphia is saved but the other tornado eats Paris (and not the one in Texas).

Meteor (1979) There have been lots of films like this recently, so this one provides a good chance to remember how they did it 20 years ago. A Mars probe is deflected to the asteroid belt to watch a comet pass through it – only the comet hits a large asteroid and shreds it. Some of the bits destroy the Mars probe and the crew, and other asteroid bits, including a civilization-killer, head for Earth.
   Sean Canary is hauled off an ocean-going yacht in a race to supervise using Hercules, a nuclear-armed satellite system which he designed, to zap the big rock. He quit NASA 5 years earlier when the US Air Force pointed his space-rock defence weapon at the Soviets. It becomes his job to make the Yanks admit they have Hercules while the Soviets have to admit the existence of their Peter the Great system, which is aimed at the USA.
   Then it is all a matter of co-ordinating the missile firings, which is done with ¾ of an hour of the film left. So cue some disasters from non-lethal rock fragments – an avalanche in Switzerland wiping out a town and a tsunami taking out Hong Kong. The Soviets launch their missiles with the Yanks due to launch 40 minutes later. Suddenly, Jodrell Bank spots a big chunk of rock heading for New York, under which the US missile-firing base is located. So the city wiped out and a muddy escape to the surface for Mr. Canary & the survivors. And they reach safety just as the big rock is blasted to bits.
   Also in the film: Karl Malden plays the NASA boss, who has to put the whole thing together; Natalie Wood does a fluent job of speaking Russian while Brian Keith, playing Mr. Canary's equivalent, struggles; Martin Landau is the demented Air Force officer in charge of the US missile battery.

Meteorites! (1998) is Jaws with space debris instead of people-eating fish. A second comet hits some rocky bits left over from an earlier comet and knocks them onto a collision course with Earth, and their strike area includes a small town with a crooked mayor, who needs a UFO festival to go ahead – like the town in Jaws. The mayor needs to raise $30,000 to pay off a loan but his plan to have his coin collection stolen goes horribly wrong. The 'hero' steers the townsfolk to an abandoned mine but a meteorite blocks the entrance.
   He blows the mine open again with left-over fireworks just before the main meteorite shower strikes. And everyone troops inside, not worrying about being entombed by another strike! Best bit of the film – a cynical punk from a tabloid paper standing right in the path of a fiery meteorite and nothing but a pair of smoking boots left after the impact. Clichés rule, OK!

Metro (1997) stars Eddie Murphy as a Roper, a hostage negotiator, and he manages not to crack wise tediously all the time. Situation number one is a junkie in a bank, whom Roper shot, but only to wound. He is saddled with an assistant and his lieutenant is killed by a diamond thief. Roper's next job is a siege at a jeweller's, where he gets an ear instead of a hostage from the bloke who killed the lieutenant. We have a chase through San Fransisco's Chinatown and fun on a runaway street car. And things get very personal. Of course, the bad guy escapes from custody and keeps on making Roper's life miserable right up to the big kaboom finish – on the day the firemen go on strike, too!

Miami Magma (2011) An oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico goes kaboom! No sign of the rig or an oil leak when rescue choppers arrive. A lady geology professor thinks there's an extinct volcano under Miami. But it turns out to be active again. The oil company finds lava erupting on the sea bed where the rig vanished and goes into cover-up mode.
   The professor's ex-husband turns up. Jacob, the oil company boss, is extracting oil from somewhere illegal and gets himself killed. The sea off Miami starts boiling and throws off a steam tsunami. Ray, who wanted to shut production down, is bribed with Jacob's cut to keep things going.
   The professor is convinced that the oil company has stolen her research to work out where to drill, which is true. Her sister gets the ex-husband killed on a snooping expedition. The prof. tries to hack Ray's laptop and he sets Butch on the problem.
   Rice, the traitor in the professor's camp, gets cold feet when he learns that the oil company has been extracting oil from under downtown Miami. As the city is covered with a blanket of ash, the prof. decides to divert the lava using liquid nitrogen with help from the US Army.
   Butch grabs Emily, the sister, to get Ray's files back. Ray and Butch don't survive a confrontation with the sisters. Rice does the decent thing and sacrifices himself. And a lot of Miami beachfront becomes a lava plain.

Miami Vice (2006) An Alonso calls Lt. Crockett to say a case is going bad. There's a coke deal going down? It becomes a shoot-up. An inter-agency operation has sprung a leak. Crockett & Tubbs have to plug it. Fake files on our heroes reach the BGs. They go to meet some scumbageros and pull the old 'mess with us and the grenade goes off' trick.
   A spot of air transport for a package. Someone tries to rip off the load. Crockett cosies up to the gangster moll. Each suspect organization is given a different delivery day to see which is leaking. The BGs take a prisoner but the team steams in for a rescue. Kaboom! The house blows up and she's in hospital, toasted and in a coma.
   The Big Day of the deal arrives. The lady BG becomes a pawn. The forces of light spot and shoot the BG sniper. Cue a shooting match. Splat, McGat! BGs ripped apart. Crockett lets his GF go at the end while Tubbs is in hospital with the lady in bed, who doesn't look in terribly bad shape despite the earlier hype.

Midnight In St. Petersburg (1995) has an elderly Harry Palmer (of Ipcress File fame) running a detective agency in Moscow. Someone has stolen some plutonium in St. Petersburg and his agency is paid $250K to recover it to prevent it from falling into the hands of terrorists or a rogue state.
   One of his employees is romancing Tatiana, the daughter of an official at the Hermitage gallery in St. Pete. She is kidnapped as part of a plot to extract paintings from the Hermitage, sell them to a crooked American art dealer and use the cash to buy the plutonium. Everything heads for a big shoot out at the old film studios and there's a happy ending for everyone but the bad guys.

Mighty Joe Young (1998) is a remake of the 1949 King Kong spin-off. Poachers kill the mothers of both Joe the gorilla and Jill, and 12 years later, Jill takes 2,000 lb Joe from Africa to the California Animal Conservancy. But the poachers see Joe on TV and one of them, whose finger and thumb Joe bit off, decides to get even. Joe breaks loose at a posh do at the CAC and goes after the bad guy and his sidekick.
   Joe is tranquillized and the American public wants him killed. Jill gets her allies to put Joe in his trailer truck but she finds herself in the cab with the 2 bad guys who killed her mom! Joe causes a trailer wreck in L.A. and breaks out to go climbing buildings. He hides from police choppers in the L.A. river channel and lurks around the HOLLYWOOD sign.
   Joe rampages at a fairground, the bad guys start a fire, Joe takes out the mom-killer then he rescues a kid from a ferris wheel and dies a hero's death. No, he's not dead and the grateful American public raises enough cash to send him back to Africa to live in the Joe Young Wildlife Park.

Mind Blown (2016) There's a kid with a killer scream in the middle of nowhere; no, it's Jennifer having a bad dream. She and four others are Project Mindblow; warfare using their minds and combined talents. There's a guy who's a TD out in the desert. The project links to Adam and zaps the town where he is with an R9.0 earthquake. 700 dead.
   "We'll figure it out," sez the colonel in charge of the project. Jennifer sneaks out and tracks down Adam. San Francisco is hit with a huge EQ. Jen tells Adam that he's a TK, talented like her and the rest of the gang. The general locks down the project and goes after Jen and Adam. They try to dodge a Strike Team but end up zapping them.
   The colonel calls the fugitives TK terrorists and ignores the general's order to keep the gadget switched off. Adam accidentally zaps LA whilst Jen is trying to help him control his talent. The kill squad catches up with our heroes. Hissy Rick kills Sarah so he is zapped and Hissy Clive is killed.
   The crazy colonel puts himself in the control chair to take out Washington. The general can't shut him down so it's up to Adam and Jen plus Reuben; not Reuben is zapped. The crazy colonel blows up the base, and himself. Adam and Jen save some of Washington. Hissy Rick kills Reuben so Jen fries him.

Mindhunter (2004) A killer is too smart for 2 FBI agents; but it's only Mr. Harris (Val Kilmer) running a test. He dumps a group of would-be profilers on an island for a final weekend trial. Someone murders a cat 'as a sign of something'. The Puppeteer gives the group a real body and kills the team leader with liquid nitrogen! The phones aren't working and the killer will strike again in 2 hours.
   The boat blows up and everyone is knocked out with drugged coffee and there's another body when they wake up. The Feds gang up on a cop, who's there as an observer. He says he's there to investigate Harris. Another death then a DNA test says Sara (the blonde out of Cold Case) is the killer. Of course, she isn't and the survivors go off to hide.
   Sara gets the drop on the cop but fails to kill him. The surviving Fed takes him out. Oops! He's the killer and he's a total wack job. But, luckily, the cop was wearing a bulletproof vest and Sarah can hold her breath for about 10 minutes under water, so the killer ends up a good bad guy.

Minority Report (2002) is based on a sci-fi story by Philip K. Dick. Tom Cruise plays Chief John Anderton of PCDC, the Washington Pre-Crime Division. The District has 3 remote viewers, who enable the police force to be on the spot to prevent murders, and there have been no murders in DC for the 6 years of the programme. The people are about to vote on the system and Director Burgess is eager to get them to vote the right way.
   Whitaker, a bozo from the Attorney General's office, provides a vehicle for showing off the pre-cogs. He reckons there's a human flaw in the system. Anderton finds there's a lot of data generated by the pre-cogs missing from the archive. Then a Leo Crow is identified as a potential murder victim and the prime suspect is – the Chief!
   The Chief goes on the run, so lots of fun with flying cops and a chase with the bozo in a car plant. The lady who 'invented' pre-crime tells Anderton that the 3 precogs occasionally disagree but the 'minority report' is always destroyed, even though the people involved in the pre-crime have an alternate future. Anderton realizes that the system isn't as foolproof as advertised.
   Anderton goes for the minority report in his case and concludes he'll have to get it out of the mind of Agatha, the senior pre-cog. He has his eyes replaced to evade the ubiquitious eye-scanners; which leads to lots more fun & games. He removes Agatha from the pre-cog centre but she tells him there's no minority report in his case. Then Anderton finds that Crow is the man who kidnapped his son 6 years earlier.
   Anderton tries to arrest Crow but Crow commits 'suicide by cop' because it's a set-up and he was promised that his family will be taken care of. The bozo tells Director Burgess that Anderton was set up, and Burgess shoots the bozo after he explains how someone got away with a murder. Anderton is busted for the murders of both Crow and Whitaker but his ex-wife learns the truth when the Director slips up.
   Burgess outwitted the system to kill Agatha's mother because she wanted her daughter back. The pre-cogs see Chief Anderton as a potential murder victim when he confronts Director Burgess but the Director chooses to shoot himself instead of the Chief. And as a result of the scandal, the pre-crime experiment is abandoned and all pre-criminals are released.

Mission Impossible, The Movie (1996) A routine mission in Prague turns out to be a trap and most of the IM team, and their suspect, are all taken out in the first 25 minutes. The operation was a mole hunt and the survivor (Tom Cruise) becomes the chief suspect. There is a spectacular flood when he blows up a restaurant's fish tank. Then Mrs. Phelps turns up alive.
   After a meeting with 'Max', Mr. Cruise puts together a team of renegades and invades the CIA's HQ at Langley, Virginia. Then Jim Phelps turns up in London! We learn that the TGV goes from London to France (I never knew that!), and some jabroni flies a helicopter through the Channel Tunnel(!), which has side-by-side tracks going in opposite directions (I never knew that, either).
   Needless to say, all the bad guys, including good old Jim Phelps and his missus, are zapped in the end – but Jim Phelps, how could you become a baddie? We are totally aghast by the time the closing credits arrived.

Mission Impossible II (2000) What does it have in common with the TV series? Well, it has the same name, and the original theme tune can be heard from time to time. But this is crude smash-mouth stunts with lots of guns and bangs and masks of people's faces plucked out of thin air. There's none of the subtlety and team work of the TV series and very little planning and setting up. And we had to refill the TV with bullets when it was all over.
   Ethan Hunt is after Chimera, a monster virus, which rogue agent Ambrose has. Part of the job involves recruiting Naia, a lady thief; not for her talents but because she was once shacked with Ambrose, who doesn't care if she's an IMF stooge. The boss of a pharmaceutical company wants to use Chimera to make money out of Bellerophon, his antidoe.
   Hunt tries to destroy the virus to leave Ambrose with a cure but no disease. Big battle, they collide over the last virus sample and Naia injects herself with it and makes herself worth $37 million! With 20 hours to live. Ambrose dumps her in Sydney. He plans to take over the pharmaceutical company and make BILLIONS. He fills Hunt full of lead but we know it's one of Ambrose's guys in a mask. Big chase to liven things up, and a punch-up. Ambrose loses and Maia gets the cure.

Mission Impossible III (2006) Ethan Hunt had a bomb in his head and he had to give up the Rabbit's Foot. Cut back to when he got engaged to Julia, then he was sent to extract Agent Ferris from the clutches of Davian, an arms dealer. She was in Berlin. Ethan & his IMF destroyed a building but Ferris croaked because of a detonator shoved up her nose. Ethan's boss, Musgrave (of the Ritual?),told him that his mission was crap but he received a posthumous message from Ferris to say Davian was selling the 'Rabbit's Foot' (something apocalyptic) for $850M.
   Ethan & Julia got married then he got involved in a scheme to kidnap Davian from the Vatican. The plan worked, there was a destructive car chase through Rome but when Ethan was in a convoy on what looked like a monster bridge in Florida, the IMF was attacked and Davian was extracted. He then grabbed Julia.
   The boss was Ethan's prime suspect for the leak at HQ. Musgrave had him grabbed but Ethan had an ally, who helped him to escape to Shanghai. His IMF joined him there to go after the Rabbit's Foot. Back to the start of the film and Ethan was Davian's prisoner with a detonator shoved up his nose. Davian shot Julia to get information out of Ethan; only it was a member of his staff wearing a Julia mask.
   Ethan's ally was the traitor! Ethan escaped to be beaten up by Davian, who was creamed by a truck. Ethan got Julia to electrocute him to neutralize the detonator. Then he had to tell Julia what they were doing in Red China.

Mission: Impossible Ghost ProtocoI (2011) Murder in Budapesht. Gaol break from a Russian military prison: all the cells pop open. Ethan Hunt is extracted, taking a big, hairy Russian with him. A mission to bag a file went belly-up when someone else crashed the party. Ethan has to impersonate a Russian general to infiltrate the Kremlin and get hold of the file. The shape of the mission becomes pear. Kaboom! The Kremlin blows up and Ethan is caught on the fringes of the blast.
   He wakes up in hospital and escapes to tell his bosses he ran past the guy who blew up the Kremlin. But the president has dropped the blame on the IMF and Ethan is being set up as a patsy. But he could escape from the Americans to set the record straight. Then the van he's in is shot up and dives into a river.
   Ethan and an analyst get away. He hooks up with his team on a goods train. The mad terrorist is bent on world destruction. Off to the desert with camels on the road to let Ethan pratt about on the glass exterior of the world's tallest building. With a huge sandstorm approaching. A meeting with BGs becomes an all-over punch-up. The sandstorm arrives and Ethan does some vehicle surfing. The BG gets away.
   Cue a shouting match about how badly things went. There's a stolen Russian nuke in the wind. Let's go to Bombay to watch ladies dancing at a party. The team has to get control of a satellite. They have 3 minutes to jam the launch sequence and Ethan is 3½ minutes away. It's a bloody long 3 minutes. Ethan chases a briefcase, which is bouncing around in a car-stacker, and half-kills himself to disable the nuke. At the end, the US government invites the public to believe that the doomsday missle was just a meteor large enough to be seen in daylight.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) Minsk, Byelarus: the package is on the plane and Ethan is clinging to the side of the plane, waiting for one of the IM team to open the right door so he can get the package of nerve gas off the plane. London and Washington: the security forces think that the IMF is the shadowy The Syndicate and it should be swallowed by the CIA. Mr. Hunt is a non-person and screwed. A nice lady helps him to escape from BGs. He tells Benjy that the BGs are people listed as missing and dead.
   Six months later, the CIA busts a place in Havana as Hunt watches from Paris. Benjy accepts a trip to the Opera House in Vienna. There's a whole gang of BGs backstage, including the lady who helped Hunt earlier, and he has to protect the Kanzler from assassins. He reaches his car but there's a back-up bomb. Casablanca: Hunt & chums have to get into a computer vault with impossible access to copy some data. CIA finds that Hunt's British ladyfriend was ditched by MI6. She has to save Hunt from drowning to get him out of the vault. Then she strolls off with the data. Cue a huge chase.
   Ilse's boss tells her to kill Hunt to re-establish herself with The Syndicate. Their next target is the British PM, the only person who can access the encrypted data. Dave the Leader blown up? No great loss. No, HBG Lane wants the data unlocked. The head of MI6 has to admit he created The Syndicate despite being told not to by the PM. The data is where £24 billion was stashed for The Syndicate's use.
   The data is decrypted. Next job; get Lane and rescue his prisoners. Benjy is allowed to go. Then there's a shoot-out. Lane walks into a trap and gets gassed a bit. At the end, the CIA boss has to ask his government to reinstate the IM Force.

Mission To Mars (2000) An expedition to the red planet is attacked by an animated dust storm while investigating something strange and only Luke survives. A rescue mission, which includes Jim (Mac of CSI:NY) who would have been on the first mission if his wife hadn't died, becomes another disaster in Martian orbit and loses one of the guys. The other 3; Jim, Phil and Terri, the lady boffin; make it down to the surface.
   Luke is still alive but a bit demented. There's a big storm heading for the base. Luke shows the newcomers a giant head lying on the surface. The head plays a sonic representation of a DNA molecule. Jim decides that the sound isn't a signature, it's a test for people who find the head.
   Providing the answer to the test opens a doorway in the head. Luke, Jim & Terri learn that Mars was hit by a monster rock and the Martians went out into space. They also seeded Earth with life and one Martian stayed behind. There's a ship in the head and it's counting down to a launch. So Jim goes with the ship and the others rejoin Phil for a trip back to Earth in the ERV.

The Missouri Breaks (1976, Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando) Sandy, the rustler, was lynched and his mates were moaning because they couldn't move their stolen stock without someone seeing them. They needed a relay ranch but they had no money. Cue the worst train robbery of all time, no money left after buying the ranch and some of the gang wanting to rob a bank.
   Brando, with a truly terrible Irish accent, turned up as a regulator to tackle the rustlers, one of whom, Tom, (Nicholson) had set up as a rancher/farmer and was romancing the biggest ranch owner's daughter; the regulator's employer.
   The rustlers stole a herd of horses and got shot up by the regulator with his sniper rifle. He killed Tod then he got the sack for pratting about. So he went on a rustler-killing spree. Tom sold his land and put a stop to the bogus Irishman's antics by cutting his throat. Tom found that the old man who'd employed the regulator had gone feeble-minded, but Tom shot him anyway. Then Tom rode off into the sunset with the rancher's daughter. Difficult to imagine people paying good money to watch this in a cinema!

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) John & Jane met in Colombia 5 or 6 years ago, got out of a jam and got married. They are both crack shots and there are lots of spaces between them. And they both kill people for their respective agencies. They both get the same guy, The Tank, as a target, they get in each other's way and the target gets away. Then each gets the other as the next target.
   Jane's outfit wrecks the marital home and confiscates John's gear. He makes Jane's outfit trash their own base. John dares Jane to kill him and she tries. They have a confrontation in a restaurant, which ends explosively, as does another confrontation at home. Eddy, John's pal, is offered $400K a head to whack John & Jane, whose house is blown up while they're comparing notes.
   There's a car chase and both agencies want John & Jane dead for marrying each other; that's why they got the Tank job – they were supposed to kill each other. But John & Jane decide to fight back and there's a whole lot of shooting, and it all gets very Butch & Sundance at the end with our heroes shot full of holes. We had to reload the TV with bullets after this film was over.

Mr. Nice Guy (Dir. Sammo Hung, 1997) is a Jackie Chan vehicle, which also features contributions from Sammo from Martial Law in a cameo role. Jackie plays a TV chef, who is caught up in a battle between Giancarlo, a Melbourne drug baron, and a bunch of punks, who steal his coke. There's a huge shoot-out when Giancarlo tries to get it back. Diane, a TV reporter, tapes the whole thing and Giancarlo wants the tape, which is swapped accidentally for a tape of Jackie's show.
   Jackie is chased and goes for a destructive ride in a horse-drawn carriage. Jackie, his girlfriend Micky and Diane head for the home of Letice, Jackie's assistant, to hide out. But the bad guys grab Micky. Jackie dumps the cops and goes solo when an attempt to get her back flops.
   The bad guys grab Jackie but he escapes in a traffic shambles. Then there's a load of business at a construction site. Jackie, his harem & the coke end up in Giancarlo's hands. Jackie is almost crushed by a monster truck, so he gets his own back by driving it through Giancarlo's palatial home.

Moby Dick (2010) is the classic Melville yarn +150 years. In 1969, a US sub was wrecked by a HUGE white whale while sneaking around in Soviet waters. Seaman Ahab recorded a "hole in the water" signature of the whale and lost his left leg. In the present day, the whale was taking out fishing boats, oil platforms and freighters, so Captain Ahab hijacked a lady whale boffin and went after it in USS Pequod, America's newest nuclear sub.
   Naturally, the bozos at HQ in San Diego assumed he had gone rogue and he was doing the damage, not a 500-foot whale. The USS Essex met the whale and sank itself with one of its own torpedoes. Cap'n Ahab told his crew they'd have to chase the whale to Hell. The Navy decided to sink the Pequod.
   A chopper chasing the Pequod was eaten by the whale. The whale turned out to be twice as smart as Ahab, when he attracted it with his 1969 recording, and also the buddy who was chasing Ahab in a plane. Ahab chased the whale into a coral island's lagoon for single combat, and got his stoopid self killed.
   The whale took out the Pequod, a nuclear explosion took out the whale and the island, and only the lady boffin survived.

Mongolian Death Worm (2010) A plant in Mongolia extracting shale oil upset giant carnivorous worms, which caused an outbreak of cholera at a nearby village. Our hero, myth-hunter Daniel, used his pal, the local cop to escape from a local nutter. Then he was obliged to give a lift to 2 "Doctors of Hope" heading for the plague village as the crooks at the oil plant were worrying about "the shipment". Then they were told their drilling had woken up Mongolian Death Worms!
   Daniel & the doctors were kidnapped by minions of the nutter, who was financing Daniel's search for Ghengis Khan's tomb and annoyed by the lack of progress. Worms ate the nutter and his men. The crooks at the oil plant had to neutralize a guy from the States, who wouldn't shut up.
   Daniel & the lady doctor went to the plant in search of a phone and were chased by a worm. The doctor decided pumping hot water into the ground to extract the oil had woken the worms out of suspended animation, so the plant needed to be shut down.
   The cop shot some worms at the hospital. Daniel found that the plant was built over the tomb, which the crooks had been looting. Daniel decided to blow up the plant to kill off the queen worm. Steve, the head crook, and the cop were eaten. And when the plant blew up, it started raining gold.

Monster Island (2004, Adam West) Josh is dragged to an MTV event on an island courtesy of his sister. The star is grabbed by a monster insect, there's no cell service and a power failure. The kid leads an expedition in search of Carmen. It includes Maddy, his prissy ex-girlfriend, and Chase, her obnoxious new boyfriend. They meet a preying mantis the size of a house!
   Chase goes fishing and catches the Monster from the Black Lagoon. Then Dr. Harryhausen of the Dept. of Atomic Energy shows up. The US army stole the island from Stone Age tribesman and let off 4 H-bombs off its coast. Dr. H was sent to find out what happened afterwards: the bugs. He reckons the island will sink quite soon.
   Maddy goes jungle-crazy, thinking she's the tribesmen's god. More messing with the mantis. The "mountain" is a giant ant-hill and the queen grabbed Carmen. She has turned the tribesmen into slaves and Carmen was grabbed to sing to them. There is a huge battle with the 2 soldier ants, Josh rescues Carmen and gets back together with Maddy, and the island starts sinking and the volcano blows its top.

Monsters (2010) 6 years ago, NASA sent a probe to investigate life in another part of the solar system. It broke up over Mexico during the return and an area of the border became an Infected Zone. Andrew, a reporter, had to rescue Sam, his boss's daughter, who was caught up in an alien event in San Jose. They caught a train home but Andrew decided to leave it and head for the coast. Big mistake.
   The crooks running the ferry company wanted $5,000. Sam, the dozy cow, left her passport with Andrew, who was robbed by the woman who spent the night with him. So the crook at the travel office wanted $10,000 for a river boat and an armed escort for a trip through the Infected Zone.
   The boat's useless engine blew up, of course. So they continued overland. Through monster country. An encounter with HUGE bugs in the night left everyone else dead. Sam & Andrew continued on foot to The Wall at the US border. They found no one at the checkpoint and the area on the US side had been bombed. And there was the body of a freakin' huge monster on a building.
   Our heroes met some monsters at a gas station some distance from the border but survived. Then they were rescued.

Monster Wolf (2010) Drillers working without permission blow up an old Indian site and 6-10 end up dead. The sheriff blames a pack of coyotes or a bear. Maria, a pushy young lawyer, is brought back to her home town to help her boss, Mr. Stark (the doctor from Star Trek Voyager), deal with the Injuns. The chief says the drillers were taken out by a spirit, which protects their land.
   The monster claims more victims, all associated with the oil company. When Stark starts buying up the town, one of his customers is done in. So Stark brings in a gang of exterminators as rivals to the sheriff's band of useless hunters. The chief warns Stark that his killers will be killed, along with everyone else in his tribe.
   Maria meets the monster and quits her job. The Chief reminds her of her Indian heritage, which makes her immune from the monster and he reckons Stark is going to have to sacrifice himself to make things right again.
   The killers take out the chief and tell Stark to bug out. When Maria crashes a police car, she remembers she's the right sort of Injun to slay the monster; but not until after Mr. Stark has been done in. Then peace returns.

Morituri (1956, Yul Brynner, Marlon Brando) In Tokio in 1942, a "good" German, Captain Mueller (YB), was obliged to take charge of a freighter with a cargo of rubber for the Reich because his family had been taken prisoner. In India, British Intelligence gave a German with false papers, Craine (MB), the job of sabotaging the scuttling charges on the ship so that the Allies could grab the rubber.
   Crain was put aboard the ship with false SS papers and clashed with the captain right away. He was confined to the passenger areas of the ship but he managed to sneak about and recruited help from political prisoners in the crew. Mueller disguised his ship as a British freighter and found himself in an Allied convoy in fog.
   Crain prevented Mueller from scuttling the ship but his plan to get the crew out of the way failed. A U-boat dumped 50 prisoners on the captain and visiting officers got suspicious of the passenger. Mueller got drunk when his son was awarded a medal for being a good Nazi and the first officer took over.
   Crain led an attempt to take over the ship, but he had to fire the unsabotaged scuttling charges. Everyone but him and the captain abandoned ship but the rubber kept it afloat! So they sent a radio message asking to be collected by the Allies.

Morlock (2011) is loosely based on H.G. Wells' The Time Machine with additional ideas nicked from the TV series Primeval. [Or wherever they got the idea for their anomalies. Ed.] US Soldiers are attacked by monsters and lose The Latch. Mad scientist and author Dr. James Radnor is grabbed; Angela, his ex-wife, is involved in a US military exploitation of Dr. Radnor's time travel system aimed at getting technology from the future. But rifts are appearing in increasing numbers and letting monsters through.
   James has to find and fix The Latch, which controls rifts and is 1,000 years in the future. He wants to know why there are no humans around, the Captain and his escort just want to get the job done. They meet a couple of human guinea pigs, whom James "lost" a year before. Angela gets herself eaten by a Morlock monster? The creatures are descendants of a single human male, DNA tests show.
   Lots of battles with Morlocks. The Colonel in charge of the project wants to use Morlock DNA to fix his son, who has cancer. James finds that Angela is a prisoner of the Morlocks. The Latch is nearby. Another big battle with monsters. James gets the survivors back to the present in a lift! The Colonel has James locked up because saving the Colonel's son will make everything go sideways!
   Surprise! The trip into the future is just 68 years to 2080, not a thousand years. Millions of Morlocks invade the base through a rift. The Colonel is dumped through a rift after he shoots the Captain., who goes through the rift and shoots The Latch. The base is blown up to take out the remaining Morlocks.
   Bummer! The Colonel was able to send out the Morlock DNA map, his son gets the treatment and he turns into a monster!

Mortal Kombat (1995) There's a tournament in China for the best martial artists. Half of them seem to have killed someone in the life of the other half; brothers, cop's partners, etc. It's all video-game stuff with actors thrown in, and a handful of people in a leaky boat set off to save the works in the Mortal Kombat tournament.
   A film star, a lady cop and a Chinese guy (who isn't ready yet) come up against all sorts of wizards and demons. The contestants do a bit of ultraviolence. Our heroes are told that their own greatest fear is all they have to overcome to survive.
   The actor sees off the sorcerer's monster, so the sorcerer zooms off with the lady cop. The other 2 heroes follow. Cue more kung foolery. The Chinese guy hurls the sorcerer into the pit of spikes and releases the souls he's consumed; including the Chinese guy's brother. At the end, the Emperor comes for everyone's soul. Cue a sequel.

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) Our heroes found themselves surrounded by monsters summoned by the Emperor of the Outworld. He planned to destroy the Earth in 6 days. Cage, the film star, was done in right away. Rayden got some new allies and tried to rat out the emperor to the elder gods. Cue some kung foolery. Princess Katana was grabbed by the bad guys, leaving the Chinese guy alone. But he soon found a new friend.
   The lady cop dug out her partner, who had cybernetic arms; good for kung foolery against an armoured monster. The Chinese guy had a run in with an Injun werewolf on the way to save Katana. The cop did some mud fu with a lady assassin. Her partner took out a freakin' big monster.
   The elder gods were useless. Rayden got a make-over. Lots and lots and lots of battles. Suddenly, the Good Guys had won, and Rayden got a place in the Imperial Palace.

Most Wanted (1997) was made in 1997, so when they blow away the First Lady, a Hillary Clinton look-alike is wasted. The film got only 2 stars in the Daily Mail Weekend magazine but it deserves an extra star for having as much back-stabbing as a couple of episodes of The Bill during the Superintendent Chandler era.
   What is it about? An evil industrialist is in cahoots with a covert military unit to cover up testing lethal substances on American soldiers. The covert military bunch stomps all over civilians, the press and the cops. And the CIA in the background pulls all the strings. Oh, yes; and stunts, and things getting blown up and bad guys getting wasted in large numbers.

The Mummy remake (1999) is a fast-paced film with great special effects, lots of laughs and the plot, such as it is, doesn't get in the way of the action. Probably the best new film on telly in 2002 and right up there with Groundhog Day as far as movie excellence is concerned.

The Mummy Returns (2001) begins in Egypt 5,000 years ago with The Rock (a WWE wrestler with a mobile eyebrow and an attitude) playing the Scorpion King, then on to 1933 and tomb robbers and their horrible kid nicking the scorpion bracelet of Anubis. The wife keeps having visions from a past life in ancient Egypt.
   There is a massive punch up at the tomb robbers' home in England, and the wife is kidnapped after the kid puts the bracelet on, which means that the Scorpion King will awaken in 7 days and destroy the world.
   Imhotep is revived and hopes to take over the world using the Scorpion King's army. Fun & games on a No. 12 bus. Then the kid is grabbed. Everyone shoots off to Egypt and Dad and his allies take a trip in a jet-propelled hot-air balloon to a Lost World oasis around the Scorpion pyramid in the desert.
   They survive being attacked by killer Hobbits. Mrs. Tomb Robber is stabbed to death but the kid brings her back to life while the Arab legion is involved in a HUGE battle with monsters and our heroes are engaged in individual combat. The airship saves everyone after Imhotep has been defeated.
   The film is a load of rubbish but it is fun rubbish.

The Mummy's Shroud (1966, Hammer) 2,000 BC. The pharaoh was killed by his brother but he had time to send his son away with Prem, a slave. But Mentah died in the desert and was buried there. Prem was found with the royal seal but the wealthy Mr. Preston didn't believe he was the pharoah and sent an expedition looking for the real one. The expedition, which included his son, got lost.
   Sir Basil, the leader, got himself bitten by a snake at the prince's tomb just before Preston found his expedition. The prince's body was taken to the restoration workshop, where Prem's body was kept. Sir Basil ended up in a lunatic asylum courtesy of his boss but he escaped.
   The mad keeper of the prince's tomb reanimated Prem to kill everyone involved with the expedition; starting with Sir Basil. The photographer was done in next. The local police inspector wouldn't let Preston leave and he was done in. But the police inspector eventually shot the mad keeper and Clair, the expedition's lady with psychic feelings, zapped Prem, the killer mummy, with the Words of Death.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008, Jet Li) The first emperor of all China did the dirty on his best general so he and his army ended up cursed instead of immortal. But after World War II, Alex, the son of the family from The Mummy Returns, and Professor Wilson find the Emperor and his terracotta army. Alex also meets some crazy Ninja chick.
   His parents are at a lose end and his mother has writer's block. The government asks them to deliver the Eye of Shangri-la to Shanghai, where Alex's uncle has a club, in which the family have a reunion. Surprise! Prof. Wilson is in league with a crazy Chinese general, who wants to bring the first emperor back to life so that he can conquer the world with his terracotta army.
   Alex & Co. have a huge battle in Shanghai among new year fireworks. Lin, the Ninja girl, has a knife which can kill the emperor, drags everyone to Shangri-la for a shoot-out with explosions and yetis. Lin meets her mother at the Pool of Everlasting Life. Mom fixes up Alex's dad, who was stabbed by the Emperor. He takes a dip in the Pool and there's a huge battle between his army and his revived victims after the ladies sacrifice their immortality. But the Emperor is stabbed eventually with the dagger and the world is saved. Then Alex's uncle heads off to Peru, where there are mummies . . .

Murder At 1600 (1997, Wesley Snipes, Alan Alda) Det. Regis, a Washington homicide cop, is sent to the White House when a cleaner finds a body in the toilets. Meanwhile, North Korea has been holding the crew of a crashed AWAC aircraft for 182 days and the public and the military are fed up of the president's dithering. And Regis is being threatened with eviction by a govt. department, which wants to knock down his apartment block to build a car park.
   Regis is paired with Secret Service Agent Chance, he has to do battle with Spikings, her boss, and he's being bugged. Carla, the dead woman, looked like she was about to sell her story about being the mistress of both the president and his son, and do a runner to the Virgin Isles. Spikings tries to frame a male cleaner but Regis becomes interested Kyle, in the president's son, who actually had an affair with Carla.
   Chance admits that she had helped to cover up an assault by Kyle on another girlfriend and Regis says he's not going to let the cleaner fry. Meanwhile, the US military wants the dithering president to use force on N. Korea. Kyle tells Regis that someone else killed Carla, and Regis believes him.
   Regis & Chance decide someone is using the murder to compromise the president. Spikings is taken out and the real bad guy turns out to be the nice Al Jordan (Dr. Hawkeye in the TV version of M*A*S*H), who thinks the president is letting America down. He persuades the president to resign.
   Regis & Chance infiltrate the White House through Civil War era tunnels and tell the president he's being conned before he can resign. Chance gets to take a bullet for the president, Jordan is killed, everyone ends up a hero and the truth is covered up. And Regis gets the president to save his apartment building.

Murder By Death by Neil Simon (1976, Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness, Peter Falk, David Niven, Maggie Smith) A millionaire with a blind butler invites famous detectives to his god-forsaken mansion: spoofs of Charlie Chan, Hercule Poirot, Sam Spade, Miss Marple, and an English aristocrat plus wife.
   Falling gargoyles fail to see off Wang and No. 3 son, Mr. & Mrs. Charleston and others at the front door. Miss Marbles, with her ancient nurse, arrive in time for a non-event dinner. Mr. Wang gets poisoned wine. When Mr. Twain shows up, he locks everyone in and offers a million dollars to whoever solves the murder, which will be committed at midnight.
   The butler is killed at 11:40, his body is stolen but his clothes are left behind, and rooms move about mysteriously. Twain is done in on the stroke of midnight. Lots of uncomfortable secrets about the detectives are exposed.
   Each gets something lethal in their room; snake, scorpion, gas, descending ceiling, etc. In the end, it's the butler who dunnit. But who is the butler? A strange creature, who keeps whipping off a mask to reveal another identity under the mask.

Murder By Numbers (2002) Two wiseguy school kids plot the perfect murder, a woman picked at random, which is investigated by psychologically damaged Captain Cathy (Sandra Bullock), who is being harassed to testify at a parole board hearing for one Carl Hudson. Justin, the bright one, gives Richard a lecture on police forensic procedures while they burn incriminating evidence. The police question both of them then target their school's dope-dealer janitor, not knowing that he has been set up as the fall guy.
   Captain Cathy doesn't think he fits the profile, he's too sloppy, and falls out with her partner yet again. Richard videos himself shagging Lisa, the girl whom Jason fancies, to prove she's a slag. Then he kills the janitor and makes it look like suicide; which convinces Cathy that he's not the ritual killer. Her boss chucks her off the case but she takes no notice. The kids are raked in and the cops tell them how they did the crime, but a lawyer springs them as the cops are trying to get Jason to rat out Richard because they think Richard killed the woman.
   Cathy tells her partner that Carl Hudson is her ex-husband, who stabbed her 17 times and left her for dead. Both kids go on the run and Cathy catches up with them at a wrecked building on a cliff top, where Richard tries to swindle Jason in a suicide pact. Cathy makes a bog of the arrest but she gets to toss Richard into space. Jason saves her ass so she makes him admit that he killed the woman. Then she goes to the parole board hearing.

Murder In Black & White (1990) After 3 weeks in his job, Charles Stover, the new (black) police chief, is fished out of a boating lake in Central Park. Was he killed or was it a stupid accident while he was paddling in the middle of the night? Lt. Frank Janek of Internal Affairs gets the case. Meanwhile, another body is found in a nearby garden; a naked (white) doctor. Same cause of death for both victims.
   Janek gets 3 days to crack the case. Someone in the PD is leaking stuff to the press, which conjures up sensational headlines. Black racialists are causing all sorts of bother. The police department tries to fit up a black junkie, who's found with the chief's wallet, etc., as the killer but Janek doesn't buy the railroad job. The other body belongs to a doctor, who was having an affair with a nurse, who is found dead at her home. Her dog is dead, too, and it bit the killer. A neighbour saw someone other than the doctor visit the nurse.
   Martin, the chief's draft-dodger son, returns from Canada and tells Janek that his dad quit the police force after going along with the cover-up of the killing of a black guy by a white cop. Someone slugs Janek and tries to shove him under a bus. The railroaded junkie sues the city for $6M and Janek is chucked off the case. An incident as he's discharging himself from hospital leads him to discover that the shoes found at the boating lake don't belong to Stover.
   That and the stomach contents of the deceased lead Janek to the Japanese restaurant, where Jim, the head of the PR department, is a regular visitor. Janek confronts him with what he knows and asks if he has any dog-bites. Jim, the killer cop who was worried about being exposed by the new chief, obligingly eats a bullet to save the PD the embarrassment of a trial for his 4 murders.

Murphy's Law (1986, Charles Bronson) A teenage car thief steals Det. Murphy's car and wrecks it. He catches her but she boots him in the groin and escapes. Then he gets a death threat from a woman who says she's going to put him through Hell. Murphy is a mess, whose wife left him and now works in a cheap strip joint.
   Murphy busts Arabella, the car thief. Then the Hell lady slugs him, shoots the ex with Murphy's gun and he ends up in the lock-up with Det. Ed trying to railroad him. Murphy escapes handcuffed to Arabella and strolls off in a police chopper. Which promptly runs out of fuel.
   Murphy crashes onto a dope farm's barn. He does some shooting with the good ol' boys whose barn he trashed, and steals their truck. The fugitives head for the home of Murphy's old partner, who's retired. The Hell lady gets him. Murphy goes after Vincenzo, the mobster. He didn't have the ex-wife killed and he puts 10 grand on Murphy's head after being humiliated.
   The Hell lady kills her parole officer. Murphy discovers she's killing everyone who put her in gaol; his partner, the judge, the prosecutor, etc. Det. Ed tries to feed Murphy to his pal Vincenzo but the psycho bitch gets him. And Vincenzo and the Hell lady are no match for Murphy at close quarters.

Mystery Woman: Game Time (2005) Sammy, who runs the Mystery Woman Bookstore with the help of elderly black computer expert Toby, gets Mr. Fisk, an unreliable author, to attend a book signing; and he's found dead the next day. Randy, a guy who claims he knows Fisk, is trying to get Sammy to sell his computer game. The police chief is useless and Fisk was poisoned, so Mrs. Fisk, the ex-wife, is busted for buying pesticide.
   The chief busts Randy next and Sally's pal Cathy in the DA's office obligingly lets her see all the evidence. Sally is slugged and Fisk's PC is stolen, but the hard drive turns up later. The Russian Mafia is thrown into the equation. It turns out that Fisk wrote the game, for which Randy supplied the graphics, and he was poisoned with DX, which was made by the Russian military.
   Randy keeps telling a different story about his relationship with Fisk. Sally gets an armed burglar, who strolls off with Fisk's hard disk, but Toby's copy thwarts him. Mrs. Fisk is busted. But, eventually, Sally gets to boot the real killer in the mush.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006) G-Girl foils an armed robbery then returns to being Jenny Johnson. Nerdy Matt Saunders tries to chat her up, egged on by his bozo mate Vaughan, and Matt chases a skinhead, who grabs Jenny's handbag. She's impressed enough to fix up a dinner date. She has to put out a Towering Inferno fire during dinner, and she breaks Matt's bed when they get back to his place.
   Matt is kidnapped by Prof. Bedlam, a super criminal, who's Jenny's rejected school boyfriend. He tells Matt she's G-Girl and she got her super powers from a meteorite. Bedlam has a piece of another meteorite, which will suck G-Girl's super powers out of her.
   Matt sets up a double date with Hanna (the workmate he fancies and who fancies him), her boyfriend and Jenny. Only the boyfriend is a no-show and Jenny has to go off and tackle a missile. She turns nasty when Matt dumps her, trashing his car and his apartment.
   Bedlam gets Matt to help 'neutralize' Jenny, who chucks a shark into Hanna's apartment when she & Matt get together. Hanna & Vaughan crash in but the neutralization begins. But Hanna also acquires super powers and gets into a huge fight with Jenny. Then Matt fixes Jenny up with Barry Bedlam, and he gets Hanna.

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