Solar Attack (2005) The Sun starts 'shedding its skin' and firing off Coronal Mass Ejections into space. Some, inevitably, head towards the Earth. Meanwhile Mr. Foster, our hero, is spending $100M on a private enterprise spaceship called Gallileo (which looks like a small version of Thunderbird 2) to measure the level of methane in the atmosphere. He thinks there's 5%, which is way more than the US government admits. A CME ignites a pocket of methane in the atmosphere and takes out Gallileo.
   A downed satellite takes out a big lump of Chicago. Foster reckons the ozone layer stops CMEs reaching the Earth but hey, we've blown holes in the ozone layer so CMEs can get through and set fire to all that methane, which will use up all the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere and everyone will suffocate in a few hours!
   US and Russian submarines on manoeuvres lose their satellite communications. Foster knows the captain of a Russian sub, so he flies out to it in a helicopter and persuades the captain to nuke the North Pole, which he manages to do with a gung-ho American sub commander shooting at him.
   And the huge fountain of (radioactive?) water caused by the nukes puts out the methane fire in the atmosphere!

Solaris (2002) is a remake. A much longer version of the 1961 novel by Stanislaw Lem was made in Russian in 1971. George Clooney plays Dr. Chris Kelvin, a psychiatrist, who is invited to the space station around Solaris to help sort out what is happening to the crew. A security force sent there has vanished.
   On arrival, Kelvin finds 2 body bags and Reese has disappeared, the whacked-out Snow tells him. Dr. Gordon is holed up in her room and not letting anyone in. She tells Kelvin that 'until it starts happening to him, there's no point in discussing it'. Snow advises Kelvin to sleep with his door locked.
   "Solairs seems to be reacting, almost as if it knows it's being observed," Kelvin is told in a dream about Reya, his dead wife, who is there when he wakes up. Kelvin freaks out, puts her in the airlock and spaces her. Snow's visitor is his brother. Reya is there again the next time Kelvin wakes up. Dr. Gordon refuses to take a construct back to Earth. "If you think there's a solution, you'll die here," Kelvin is told. "There are no answers, only choices."
   Reya tries to kill herself by drinking liquid oxygen but it doesn't work. Dr. Gordon can kill constructs with Higgs anti-bosons. Kelvin tries to stay awake by taking pills but he dreams about finding Reya's body. The construct is gone when he wakes up. Dr. Gordon has killed it.
   Dr. Gordon puts the Artificial Intelligence back on-line to go home. Then Kelvin finds Snow's body. The Snow they've been dealing with a construct! It says Solaris is taking on mass exponentially and they need their power for the drive, rather than making Higgs anti-bosons to kill 'him', to escape Solaris' gravity. Some stuff nicked from 2001: A Space Oddity as the station leaves Solaris. And at the end, Kelvin finds himself with another Reya.

Soldier (1998, Kurt Russell) In the 21st Century, kids were trained up as soldiers but when a group of 4 of the early lot survived countless wars and reached their mid-forties, they were replaced by younger, faster, stronger models. All 4 went under in a fight with just one of the new soldiers. The bodies were dumped on a garbage world, but one of them survived and joined the survivors of a crashed spaceship, who decided he was too damaged to join their community.
   But no sooner had they booted him out than the wiseguy in charge of the new troops arrived, looking to give them some killing practice. The new soldier, who had seen off the older guys, was in charge of the death squad sent to wipe out the unauthorized bodies on the garbage world. But he soon found that older can mean smarter.
   The soldier wiped out the upstarts one by one, took out the guy who'd killed the rest of his team and triggered a mutiny of the decent members of the spaceship's crew. The head bad guy had a nuke planted on the garbage world, but he found himself left there with the bomb as the soldier and the survivors of the shipwreck and the massacre zoomed away.

Solo (1996) is the plot of Universal Soldier combined with The Magnificent 7. An android soldier is deemed a failure when he chooses not to kill some civilians on an operation against South American bandits. The US military want him shut down and reprogrammed but he does a bunk, without his power management chip, when realizes being shut down violates his self-preservation directive.
   Solo deserts and a stroppy colonel is sent to bring him back. The peasants decide to bury him, instead of rebuilding the bandits' airstrip, because Solo looks dead while he's recharging his power system. He agrees to teach them to defend themselves in exchange for electricity.
   The bandits lose the battle, Solo's creator is killed (after he gives Solo his power management chip and makes him able to do superhero stuff again) by the stroppy colonel, who teams up with the bandits; only to blow them up when they have served their purpose. The colonel is killed but he is reincarnated as the Mark #2 android, which is eventually written off with a Mayan temple. And the military think Solo was crunched, too. But he wasn't. Cue the sequel.

Soulkeeper (2001) is a comedy horror film, in which two young thieves are commissioned to steal a talisman from the sorcerer Simon Magus. Lots of weirdness and laughs, and visual tricks. Then Magus tries to make one of the thieves into the host for his spirit and things get a bit serious at the end.

Something Beneath (2007) Gloop comes up through the ground at a construction site and a worker dies horribly. Dr. Connelly wants the work closed down because the local wildlife is disappearing. A year later, there's a conference centre open for business and Father Middleton (Kevin Sorbo) has filled it with tree-huggers.
   His star speaker is killed. So is a pushy actress. Alvin, the hotel's manager, keeps stashing bodies instead of calling the cops to avoid damaging the conference trade. The plumbers find the sewers blocked and fall victim to hallucinogenic gloop. The Rev Kev & the lady conference manager find Connelly lurking in the woods. He shows them that the gloop is alive.
   Connelly thinks the creature saw building the sewer as an attack on it and it has invaded the hotel's plumbing. Connelly is eaten alive by the creature and the stupid woman nearly follows him. But an ancient Indian prayer sees the creature off. Temporarily.

Source Code (2011) A US army helicopter pilot serving in Afghanistan suddenly finds himself in a strange body on a train approaching Chicago. He's sitting with a girl, there are a number of incidents then the train blows up. What follows is a cross between the 1998-2001 TV series Seven Days and the film Groundhog Day.
   Captain Stevens finds himself talking to Captain Goodwin. She tells him he has to find out who bombed the train, he can be sent back to 8 minutes before the explosion and he's been with the Source Code programme for two months. Stevens finds out that he's sharing the last 8 minutes of a passenger who was killed on the train.
   It's not time travel, it's parallel travel. Saving the girl in his parallel doesn't save her in the world he came from. Stevens finds out that he was reported dead in Afghanistan 2 months before and his family got some ashes. Captain Goodwin tells him that his brain remains active and he has to complete the mission before they'll let him die.
   Stevens finds the crazy killer, who was planning to set off a dirty bomb in Chicago because the world needs to be blown to rubble and start again. The boss of the project wants to wipe his memory instead of letting him die. Captain Goodwin looks at the half-a-man in their capsule and switches him off. But Stevens saves the girl and the train reaches Chicago. Project Source Code has created a whole new world.

Space Cowboys (2000, Clint Eastwood) In 1958, a lunatic pilot broke a $4M X2 and the US government cancelled the Air Force's Project Daedalus; a team training for a Moon-shot; in favour of NASA's ape astronauts. In the present day, a Russian communication satellite was coming out of orbit and its obsolete guidance system; a stolen Skylab system; needed repair. NASA was ordered to help.
   Dr Frank Corman (Clint), the designer, was able to blackmail his old enemy Bob into putting the Daedalus team on the mission if they could pass the physical tests. So Frank, Hawk, Tank and Jerry cheated nobly while Frank (aged 69) remained convinced that Bob was trying to screw him.
   Hawk had inoperable cancer, so was that him off the mission? No, the old guys were heroes, the mission was leaked to the press and NASA was getting more cash, so Hawk made it into space. Surprise! The "communication satellite" was a Soviet nuclear platform, so stopping it from re-entering was vital, and the Russian general said Frank's guidance system was stolen from good old Bob by the KGB.
   Frank got to make an EVA. The satellite had a defence system, which threatened the shuttle. Frank's back-up, the traitor on the crew, went solo, got himself killed and nearly wrecked the shuttle with shrouds thrown off by the missile platform. Hawk piloted the platform on a one-way trip to the Moon so that he could fire the missiles into space and half-blind Tank and Frank had to land the wreck of the shuttle.

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983) is a Mad Max type adventure with its own Thunderdome thrown in. A bounty hunter takes on the job of rescuing 3 Earther females, who fled a doomed space liner and crashed on a plague planet full of mutants. Lots of creatures and lots of laughs along the way.

Agatha Christie's Sparkling Cyanide (1983) transplanted to Miami. Our hero is Tony Brown, who says he's a journalist. He takes a fancy to Iris, sister of Rosemary, who's having an affair with Stephan, a political candidate, who dumps her. She's stuck with her boring husband, George (whose secretary, Ruth, fancies), and she threatens to tell Sandra, Stephan's wife.
   Rosie is poisoned with a glass of champagne at a do before she can expose the affair to the 2 people who don't know about it. Colonel Potter of M*A*S*H is the police captain. Homicide or suicide? Iris gets the trust fund now. She spots that Tony is a phoney; he claims he's a P.I. Is the note Iris found in Rosie's pocket a suicide note?
   George gets a poison pen letter and sets a trap; but he drinks the next glass of cyanide. Tony and the police captain work out that George was done in accidentally and that Iris is the next target. Surprise! That nice Ruth is framed as the master criminal, and the spendthrift waster Victor is also involved.

Spawn (1997) Al, a hit-man for A 6, a US government agency, takes out some by-standers while taking out a target at Hong Kong airport and tries to quit. So Jason, his boss, takes him out on an operation to destroy a North Korean biological warfare plant. The Devil returns him to Earth as Spawn, a scorched wreck, 5 years later after Al agrees to lead his army in return for revenge.
   Al's widow is now married to Terry, Jason's media guy, his daughter thinks Terry is her dad but the family dog recognizes Al. Spawn's necroplasm hurts and he gets the Clown from Hell as his minder. Spawn crashes a reception to send Jason to Hell, but doesn't manage it, despite causing lots of mayhem, because Jason is working for the Devil.
   Jason gets himself an implant, which will trigger a massive release of a deadly virus and provide the Devil with a new army if he's killed. The Clown turns into a huge demon for a scrap with Spawn and kicks his ass. Spawn gets help from another undead guy, who's been around for 500 years.
   Terry leaks Jason's Armageddon plan to the meeja so Jason takes Terry and his instant family prisoner. Spawn won't play the Devil's game, the Clown gets what's coming to it and Director Jason is busted, leaving Spawn at a bit of a loose end and available for a sequel.

The Specialist (1994, Sylvester Stallone) Ray, as a soldier, has a dispute with another guy over blowing up a bridge as civilians drive on to it. In civilian life, he's hired by a woman who wants revenge on mobsters for killing her father. She's crazy for revenge. Ray beats up a gang of punks on a bus for a bit of exercise and to show the viewers how tough he is.
   Boom! A bad guy gone and surprise! Ray's enemy is working for the mobsters. Boom! No. 2 BG gone. Surprise! The "lady" is in cahoots with Ray's enemy, playing all the cards available to get her revenge. The enemy tries to get Ray in his hotel room but most of his posse, and a big chunk of the room, end up in the sea after Ray's booby traps blow up.
   The enemy uses the "lady" to set up another trap for Ray. Kaboom! Stuff around the trap starts blowing up and Ray escapes with his client. But the enemy works out where he's hiding. A million bent cops surround the hideout. Ray lets off a few bangs to discourage them. The enemy strolls in, only to get himself blown to bits. Later: Boom! The boss BG is blown up, completing the job and the "lady's" revenge.

Species (1995) begins with a little girl in a glass tank objecting to being poisoned with cyanide and breaking out of a research station. The SETI programme received signals from outer space, one giving a new way to make methane for use as a clean fuel and a second containing a DNA sequence.
   Mad scientists incorporated it into a human embryo and produced a fast-growing creature. The creature metamorphoses into an adult while a team of 4 misfits are hunting it down. An experiment to make another creature for study goes horribly wrong.
   Earthers are Galactic weeds, one of the team realizes, and the creature's job is to stop them spreading through the universe. Lots of chases and fun and games, but the trouble really starts when the creature gets itself pregnant – and we are left with the obligatory residual menace in the sewers.

Species II (1998), a sequel to Species, begins with a Mars mission bringing back alien DNA. Two members of the crew are affected – one female, who is written off quite quickly, and the male captain, who goes round mating with Earther females and producing alien children in a matter of minutes. There's another experimental female/alien clone in a government laboratory and she just has to mate with the captain. But good old defective human genetic material saves the day. Lots of blood and alien bits, high yecch factor.

Species III (2004) A Dr. Abbot escapes with Eve, a female/alien hybrid, and a fat child, which kills Eve with its chameleon-like tongue after she gives birth to yet another hybrid. Abbot runs off with the kid and back to his life as a nutty professor. The fat boy, now grown up, melts in Abbot's office as half-breeds have unstable DNA. Sarah, the 3rd generation hybrid in Abbot's basement lab, however, seems to be stable. Her only problem is that she can't find anyone she's interested in mating with.
   After metamorphosing into a woman, Sarah kills Dr. Turner, who's in charge of the university's fusion reactor and who got up the nose of Dean, a student whom Dr. Abbot takes under his wing. There's a messy autopsy of sorts on the fat boy. Another femalien turns up and kidnaps Dean's room mate to help with an alien breeding programme using eggs taken from Sarah by Dr. Abbot.
   A government agent press-gangs Dean into helping him clean up the mess 'by unofficial means'. Sarah's eggs end up in the fusion reactor and its explosion is blamed on the late Dr. Turner. Three weeks later, the room mate is appalled to find that Dean has created a mate for Sarah. But the sting in the tail is that he's sterile.

Spectre (2015) is another Bond epic. It's St. Necrophile's day in Mexico, JB does some earwigging and some killing, and destroys a shoddy building. One of the targets gets away but not for long. Bond gets his Octopus ring. M is not amused. MI5 and MI6 are to be merged and the Double-O programme faces the chop. Bond is grounded for going off the reservation. He plays a video message from the late lady M to Moneypenny.
   The late M asked him to kill the guy in Mexico. There's a big amalgamation of security info in the offing and a swank new building opening in London thanks to public subscription. Q looks like ancient 007's teenage son. 009 is getting the flash car. 007 gets a watch. He nicks the car. Off to Rome for the BG's funeral. Bond pops two guys who are stalking the widow and shivers her timbers. He crashes an Octopus crime syndicate meeting and he's spotted. Cue a car chase and the demise of the flash new car. The previous M was right about a big BG organization.
   Off to Austria to meet the dying BG Mr. White, whose daughter can lead Bond to L'Americain. Dr. Swann gives him the bum's rush. She's kidnapped. Q gets the Octopus ring and he's surrounded by BGs. Bond chases the car convoy in a plane. The doctor doesn't appreciate her rescue. The ring proves that Oberhausen is still alive. The BG organization is called Spectre. L'Americain is a place in N. Africa.
   South Africa has been bombed out of objecting and the new intelligence system is going on-line. C is taking over, M and the 00s will be history. M tells Q and Moneypenny that Bond is on his own for his own safety. Bond is attacked by a bald bastard. Luckily, the train is empty. Swann gets her timbers shivered afterwards. She and Bond get off in a North African desert. A 1948 Roller picks them up. Oberhausen, a.k.a. E.S. Blofeld, has a data centre in a meteor crater. Bond gets his head drilled a bit. The exploding watch works well; it touches off the entire complex in the crater!
   Back in London, C is Blofeld's lackey, M learns. Swann bows out. BGs crash M's car. Bond uses being bagged to get into the new, fancy spy building. He ends up in a set for The Prisoner! Blofeld ain't dead. Bond has three minutes to save Swann before the place, which Blowhard paid for, blows up. C has a big fall. Bond shoots down Blofeld's chopper and chooses not to finish him off. Finally, Bond slopes off with the steering wheel of his old Aston Martin, to which Q has attached a new car.

Speed (1994) features Dennis Hopper as a mad, ex-cop bomber who wants $3M, Keanu Reeves as the cop who gets involved with catching him and Sandra Bullock as a by-stander who has to drive a bus at over 50 mph to stop a bomb going off under it. Lots of bangs and crashes, lots of vehicles totalled by the careering bus, an airliner written off in a massive explosion and a ride on a subway train to finish. Totally daft but fun in a destructive sort of way.

Speed 2:Cruise Control (1997) The sequel features Annie (Sandra Bullock) and her police officer boyfriend Alex. Annie, on the way to failing her driving test, becomes involved in a shambolic police ambush and she finds that Alex is a member of the Suicide Squad. She complains that she knows nothing about Alex so he takes her on a Caribbean cruise.
   Surprise! Mr. Geiger, who designed the ship's computer system and who was fired by his company when he got sick, is aboard and planning to steal a multi-million dollar collection of jewellery. Alex, meanwhile, is looking for an opportunity to propose to Annie.
   Geiger chucks the captain overboard, takes over the ship's computer and persuades the first officer to evacuate the ship. Of course, Annie, Alex, some of the crew and some of the passengers are left behind. Geiger runs rings around Alex and sets the ship on a collision course with an island.
   Annie saves Alex from a trap set by Geiger and they discover that the ship is aimed an an oil tanker. So there are frantic attempts to slow it down and change the course. Geiger leaves the ship with Annie as his prisoner. The ship has a fender-bender side-on collision with the tanker.
   The ship ends up on a collision course with a town on the island, so lots of destruction. Alex has to rescue Annie from Geiger's plane, which ends up spiked on the mast of the tanker, dripping fuel. So the tanker & Geiger go up in a massive fireball. And Alex proposes to Annie at the end.

Sphere (1998) A team of salvage experts is told a plane has crashed and there's a fleet at the crash site in the ocean. But there's a huge spacecraft on the ocean bed! The team has to find out if there are any live aliens. The interior of the spacecraft is dry and has a breathable atmosphere. It turns out to be a 300-year-old American spaceship!
   There's a murdered man aboard and the log contains a warning of an unknown event. The ship collected a big, gold sphere in space and brought it back to Earth. A Trojan Horse? Is that one of the team inside the sphere? Naturally, a storm cuts off communication with the surface. Lots of freak-out episodes among the trapped expedition.
   An alien called Jeri starts talking to the team using the ship's computer. There's something outside the ship and there are eggs everywhere. The thing starts battering the spaceship, causing all sorts of chaos inside, including a fire, which kills Ted. Norman, the shrink, warns Jeri to stop messing about before it kills everyone.
   Surprise! Harry is Jeri when he dreams because he went inside the sphere, Norman concludes. Beth thinks it's Norman doing the manifesting but fails to kill him. That's what happened to the original crew: they went into the sphere and they went crazy and killed one another.
   The spaceship is going to blow up. Everyone out! That's Jeri's hash settled. The survivors end up in a decompression chamber. Norman, Harry and Beth have to work out why they are still alive and if they can still manifest stuff. They can and they join forces to blast the golden sphere out into space.

Spider-Man (2002) Peter Parker, the school nerd, who lives with an aunt & uncle and fancies Mary-Jane, the girl next door, is bitten by a genetically modified spider on a school trip. Meanwhile, Norman Osborn, founder of Oscorp and the father of Parker's best mate Henry, faces losing his US military funding to a rival.
   Parker mutates. Mr. Osborn tests a performance enhancer on himself and becomes the Green Goblin, a raging psychopath.
   Parker finds he no longer needs glasses, he has muscles, he can climb up buildings like Count Dracula (or a spider) and he can shoot out a sticky web. He vanquishes the school bully and realizes he's a superhero, which means he needs a costume. A steel-cage wrestling match with Bonesaw give him the name Spider-Man instead of his own version, The Human Spider.
   He is paid $100 instead of the promised $3,000, so he lets a thief stroll off with the night's takings. But the guy car-jacks and kills his uncle. So Spiderman goes after him. Meanwhile, Mr. Osborn (as the Goblin) zaps the general who's causing him trouble and also an exoskeleton stolen from Oscorp by a rival.
   After graduating from school, Parker starts fighting crime and gets a job as a freelance photographer for the Daily Bugle. Mr. Osborn is sacked by Oscorp's board, so the Goblin kills the lot of them. Spiderman has to chase him off and save Mary-Jane, who's attached to Henry now.
   The Goblin tries to recruit Spiderman, fails, and attacks first his aunt then Mary-Jane. Eventually, after lots of battles, the Goblin is hoist with his own petard, Henry blames Spiderman for killing his dad and Parker tells Mary-Jane they can be nothing more serious than friends.

Spider-Man 2 (2003) Parker's life sucks. He can't keep a job because he's always late through rescuing people, he's flunking out of university, the bank is about to foreclose on his aunt, a relationship with Mary-Jane is still off because it would be too dangerous for her because she'd be a target for Spiderman's enemies, and she's marrying the astronaut son of the editor of the Daily Bugle.
   Henry sponsors the work of Dr. Octavius, who is working on a fusion reactor, which requires a 4-arm bio-mechanical control system plugged in to his nervous system. There's a control chip to stop the gadget taking him over, but the chip is fried when the reactor runs wild and New York, and the Bugle, acquire a new super-villain – Dr. Octopus.
   Doc Ock robs a bank to rebuild his reactor, and it just happens to be the one which has turned down Parker's aunt for a loan. So a big battle and lots of peril for auntie. Parker is losing his spider powers, so he bins his costume and becomes an excellent student. He tells his aunt it's his fault that Uncle Ben was killed. Meanwhile, Doc Ock dangles Henry off a building to get some tritium. Henry tells him he can have as much as he wants if he kills Spiderman.
   Parker rescues a kid from a burning building. His aunt moves out of New York and Parker decides to become Spiderman again. So he's rejecting M-J again when Doc Ock arrives looking for Spiderman. Ock grabs M-J, he has a huge battle with Spiderman on a train, Spiderman is unmasked, remasked and delivered to Henry.
   The reactor runs riot again. Dr. Octavius comes to his senses and drops it into the river along with himself. M-J is dumped again. Henry discovers the secret of his father's criminal past as The Goblin. And at the end, M-J dumps the astronaut at the altar and rushes to Parker to undump herself from him.

Spies Like Us (1985) features incredibly young versions of Dan Aykroyd and Chevvy Chase. They play a couple of misfits recruited as decoys for a pair of real US agents. They end up in Pakistan then Afghanistan (Soviet territory at the time) as a plot by rogue elements in the US military unfolds. The big idea is to launch a Soviet missile to test a Star Wars defence system. Which doesn't work.
   The backup plan is to start World War 3 to preserve The American Way of Life. Luckily for the rest of us, that doesn't happen. Lots of comedy of the slapstick sort along the way. A bit strained in places but good for a laugh most of the time.

Spy Hard (1996) Leslie Nielsen of Police Squad fame stars in this spoof – James Bond not Die Hard. An exploding head to finish the titles! Agent Barbara Doll (daughter of the deceased Victoria) is trapped by the armless Gen Rancourt, who expects his Nemesis Agent Dick Steele to come after her. Steele, fresh from dumping the President in the drink in Florida, unassassinated, meets Mr. Cosby of I Spy at the golf club.
   Some Butch Cassidy biking. Dick chooses not to sit next to Mr. Culp on a plane. Fun & games at the spy HQ and the Q Dept. then Agent WD40 heads for a hot reception in L.A. and a ride on a bus (Ray Charles does the driving) with Agent 3.14 (daughter of the professor who invented the computer chip which the general wants), who's grabbed.
   More fun & games with assassins. Steele dresses up as a nun to rescue Agent 3.14 but the professor is grabbed. Fun & games on the general's dinosaur-infested island. Dick's laser works a treat and Hulk Hogan helps out. Finally, the general gets a brief ride on his rocket before the explosive finish.

Stargate (1994) This is one of the most original SF films of the 20th century, and it spawned the hugely successful Stargate SG-1 TV series.
   A strange artefact is found in Egypt in 1928. In the present day, everyone's laughing at Dr. Daniel Jackson's theory that the pharoahs didn't build the pyramids. The USAF offers him a job and a chance to prove himself right. Col. Jack O'Neill, suicidal after his son killed himself with a gun left lying around, is put in charge of the project at Creek Mountain, Colorado, ousting Dr. Cathering Langford, whose father found the artefact.
   Jackson corrects a translation and gives the object its name: stargate. He cracks the dialling system and the gate is connected to a planet on the other side of the galaxy (Abydos). Daniel is sure he can work out how to dial home at the other end but to everyone's dismay, the information isn't at the other gate.
   The visitors interact with the natives, who are mining something for an overlord. They are from Earth, which was ruled by an alien called Ra until a rebellion. A spaceship lands on the pyramid and the troops there are captured. Daniel finds 6 of 7 symbols of the gate address for Earth. O'Neill brought a nuke with him but Ra grabs it.
   The natives are shot up a bit and the rest of the visitors are grabbed. Daniel has to be repaired in a sarcophagus. Ra plans to blow up the Earth. The prisoners escape and one of the local kids draws the Point of Origin symbol for Earth. A rebellion starts. O'Neill triggers the nuke then finds he can't stop the timer. But Ra takes off in his spaceship and the nuke is ringed up to him. Daniel stays behind on the planet when O'Neill takes his troops home.

Stargate Continuum (2008) SG-1, General O'Neill and Vala went to the Tok'ra homeworld to witness the extraction of the Goa'uld Baal from his host. The prisoner claimed that he was not the real Baal.
   In 1939, the stargate was being transported from Egypt to Boston on an ancient tramp steamer called Achilles under the command of one of Col. Mitchell's ancestors. The stargate suddenly dialled. Enter Baal and a small gang of Jaffa. He used the gate to go somewhere else.
   People started disappearing at the extraction, including Vala and Teal'c. Baal killed O'Neill before he was shot. Mitchell, Carter & Jackson tried to get back to Earth but they ended up on the Achilles, stranded somewhere in the Arctic. Mitchell let off some C4 to blow them free, Daniel got his left leg soaked and ended up losing it.
   When they were rescued, the trio found themselves in an alternate time line where the stargate programme had never happened because Baal had changed history, Carter was dead and Mitchell had never joined the Air Force. Daniel freaked out O'Neill, who son wasn't dead. The trio made noises about repairing the time line but General Landry told them that everyone else was quite happy with the one they had, thank you very much. The three were given new identities, separated and forbidden to communicate.
   One year later, a Goa'uld fleet arrived at Earth to take over. Teal'c delivered Apophis to Baal for execution and became Baal's first prime on a promise that the Jaffa would be freed. The US president hoped to use the other stargate in the Antarctic, which was being made operations and the Ancient chair, if a ZPM could be found to power it, but Baal's forces blasted them to bitz. He was now the boss of the System Lords.
   Qadesh, Vala's Goa'uld, surprised Baal and killed him. Teal'c ringed off Baal's ship. Qadesh headed for Praxis as the Goa'uld fleet started to bombard Earth to get rid of excess population. Teal'c decided to use the other stargate on Earth to get there ahead of Qadesh. He joined forces with SG1 at the Russian base where the stargate recovered from the Achilles had been set up, and they found Baal's time machine on Praxis.
   Carter fired it up while the others had a shooting match with Qadesh's forces. Only Col. Mitchell got out alive, back to 1929, and Teal'c blew up the time machine, himself and Qadesh. Mitchell shot Baal and his troops to pieces when they arrived by stargate in 1939 to make sure that the gate reached Boston. Baal's host was unGoa'ulded after 2,000 years of occupation and SG-1 went for lunch on General O'Neill.

Stargate: Ark of Truth (2008) Millions of years ago in a distant galaxy, scientists created the ultimate brain-washing device but they didn't use it to destroy the Ori. SG-1 found something in ruins on Dakara. Daniel wouldn't open it, Vala wanted to. A gang of BGs arrived, led by Vala's husband, Tomin. A prior arrived and Tomin blasted the box (not the real Ark) and Mitchell blasted the prior to prove that Earth had technology to counter them.
   The SGC was lumbered with a new IOA stooge: Merrick, ex-CIA, replacing Woolsey. No one knew if the weapon sent to their galaxy had destroyed the Ori but there were still lots of Priors around with Ori technology, and Earth was still under threat of destruction. Finding the Ark offered hope of stopping the priors. Major Carter had a plan to destroy the Ori supergate but Daniel Jackson thought the Ark was still in their galaxy.
   An expediton went through the supergate in Odyssey. Teal'c told Tomin he would never forgive himself for what he had done in the service of the Ori. The expedition was looking for a Shangri La in the other galaxy. Merrick had his own agenda: to put replicators on Ori ships. All he did was release one on Odyssey. Daniel's searchers were stuck on the planet as the crew battled replicators on their ship and also Ori ships. General Landry offered just defiance to a visiting prior.
   Daniel found the Ark. Everyone but Teal'c was captured by a prior. The replicators turned Merrick into a cyborg and Mitchell had to battle it. Carter had to write her own shut-down program for the replicators. Vala's daughter turned up. Adria had Ascended, like the Ori, and she was getting all of the energy from their supporters. Daniel had a chat with Morgan le Fey, who messed him about a bit more.
   Morgan said Adrea was too powerful for her to tackle. Daniel managed to activate the Ark and zapped all of the Priors. Morgan took out Adrea in a battle reminiscent of the Battle of the Koshes in Babylon 5, and the Ark ended up in Area 51, which Daniel thought was a bad idea. Then it was back to work for SG-1 after their injuries had healed.

Starship Troopers (1997) got 4 stars and a diamond in the Daily Mail Weekend magazine. According to someone who'd actually read the orginal version, Robert Heinlein probably spins in his grave while it is being shown and the only things left from the original Sixties SF mag serial are the title and the war against the bugs.
   That said, it is fairly entertaining, gung-ho send-up of American war films and the animation of the multitude of bugs is very well done. And they splatted and splashed nicely when blown to bits with combat rifles that rarely ran out of good, old-fashioned bullets. Wot, no lasers!

Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2003) Despite the propaganda back home, the war with the Bugs isn't going well. A rabble of troopers holes up in a battered outpost after losing a battle with the Bugs. They find ex-captain Dax, a hero, locked up there for killing a superior officer who was getting too many troops killed. Millions of Bugs converge on the outpost and Dax is released to save the day.
   The troops' General turns up with some strangers. A borderline pregnant psychic trooper gets a feeling that the Bugs have a plan to wipe out everything human. The unit's psychic lieutenant won't admit anything is wrong. The new medic sets small bugs on a couple of guys. Dax is framed for murder and everyone but Dax and the psychic lady is, or becomes, infested with small bugs.
   Dax and the psychic are locked up but a sergeant releases them before killing herself. Dax and the psychic go bug-hunting. A pick-up arrives for the general, so Dax kills him and sends the psychic home with a warning for the Federation. He then stays behind to kill bugs and die a hero's death.

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008) The war with the bugs is going as badly as ever, kamikaze bugs are the latest threat, and the commie/fascist regime is hanging opponents of the war and Christians. A general, escorting a sky marshall, arrives on a planet of farmers, who don't want anything to do with the war. His team includes his girlfriend; a captain who's a former GF of Col. Rico, and the general has Rico arrested when they fall out. Then bugs break through the outer defences.
   The sky marshall is returned to his ship but the bugs shoot it down. Rico gets the blame. The sky marshall ends up back on the planet with a small group led by the lady captain. "Upstairs" doesn't want the sky marshall back but the captain has to be rescued as she knows where the human fleet's secret base is.
   The general saves Rico from hanging to lead an expedition back to the farmers' planet. Shock, horror! The sky marshall has been brainwashed and he thinks a Big Bug is god! Rico and his squad save the captain after the sky marshall is eaten by the Big Bug. Then the bug and its planet are blasted out of existence with a Q-bomb and the Christians get a reprieve.

Starsky & Hutch (2004) is a comedy set in Bay City in the 1970s. Starsky is a straight-laced cop, Hutch is a dirty one. So Captain Doby makes them partners. A Jewish drug dealer has made a version of cocaine which police sniffer dogs can't detect. Huggy Bear is a Godfather figure but still Hutch's snout. Starsky is all fired up to investigate a floater shot by the dealer while Hutch wants to shove the body back into the Bay. He then steals all the cash in the guy's wallet.
   S&H make an Easy Rider expedition to a biker bar. Big Earl, the owner, yanks S&H's chains in gaol but they get hold of some super-coke. Which the police lab says is just sweetener. Starsky puts some in his coffee and ends up totally spaced out. Starsky's car is shot up so S&H invade the dealer's daughter's birthday party and Starsky shoots the kid's pony. So our heroes are suspended.
   Hutch's house is blown up, and the guys go after the dealer again. Starsky's wig guy gets a call and the coke racket is blown. The dealer runs for it and ends up on his yacht. An attempt to jump onto the yacht puts Starsky's car at the bottom of the Bay. But Huggy is aboard, looking for payback. He also cops for a briefcase full of cash. And Starsky gets another car with go-faster stripes from the ancient originals from the TV series.

Star Trek (2009, prequel) The USS Kelvin is shot to bits by Captain Nero's freakin' huge load of scrap iron, some of the crew get away, including Captain Kirk's wife, who gives birth to James Tiberius just before Jim's dad crashes the wreck of his starship into Nero's monster. Nero is looking for Ambassador Spock, but he's too early.
   James T. grows up from hell-raiser kid to hell-raiser young man. After a brawl with a Shore Patrol, an officer who knew his dad persuaded Jum to enlist in Starfleet. On Vulcan, Spock is bullied for being half human and he turns down the Vulcan Science Academy in favour of Starfleet.
   Young versions of the classic Enterprise crew arrive on the scene. Kirk & Spock clash when he sabotages a Spock simulation which is impossible to win. Something attacks Vulcan and Bones smuggles Kirk, who's in disgrace, onto Captain Pike's Enterprise. Captain Nero is drilling into the planet with intent to destroy it. Which he does, killing 6 billion Vulcans, including Spock's mom, and only 10,000 survive.
   Nero takes Captain Pike prisoner; he's taking revenge for the destruction of Romulus, which hasn't happened yet; something which Spock failed to prevent. Earth is next on his hit list of Federation planets. Kirk tries to give Spock orders so he's marooned, attacked by monsters and meets an ancient version of Spock and also young Scotty.
   Spock & Nero both went through the time-shifting effects of a black hole after Spock failed to save Romulus. Scotty beams Kirk back aboard Enterprise at warp. Spock has a punch-up with Kirk then makes him captain. Kirk & young Spock board Nero's ship, which is taken out.
   The older Spock tells the younger one to put aside logic and stay in Starfleet. Kirk is made a captain-hero and takes over Enterprise from Captain Pike. And Spock rejoins the ship as first officer.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996) features the TNG crew and the return of the Borg. Where the scriptwriters got the basic plot became clear after about 15 minutes – they have recycled the Jum Kirk era Star Trek episode The City at the Edge of Forever. The Borg have come up with the idea of going back in time to assimilate the Earth in the mid-21st Century before Star Fleet is invented.
   Capt. Picard, having ignored orders to stay away, gets the fleet to zap a Borg cube off Earth then follows a sphere back in time to 2063, to the period just after World War 3 blighted most of the planet. Captain Picard has to fight ghosts from his own assimilation experience, and the poor old inventor of the warp drive, the boozy Dr. Cochrane, has to put up with tremendous amounts of hero worship from his future fans.
   As usual, the crew of the Enterprise is fought to a standstill as the Borg take over most of the ship to use it to communicate with the contemporary collective in the Delta Quadrant. Picard takes refuge from the Borg in the rumpus room with Lily, Dr. Cochrane's assistant before taking a trip out onto the hull to sabotaging the deflector dish.
   Everyone else wants to evacuate the ship and blow it up but Picard is in "no surrender, no retreat" mode. Lily makes him realize he has turned into Captain Ahab; Picard has read Moby Dick, she hasn't. The evil Borg Queen tries to convert Data to her cause but Data screws things up for her.
   So Earth does make contact with the Vulcans, who are left to deal with mad Earth scientists, weird American whiskey and recycled 1950s/1960s rock 'n' roll music when what's left of the Enterprise heads back to the 24th century.

Star Trek Generations (1994) gives employment to the casts of the original show, TNG and a few others, including Mr. Tuvok from Voyager (but without his Vulcan ears). Jum Kirk is written off in the first 20 minutes then we jumped forward 78 years to the TNG crew messing about in their rumpus room. Data has had an emotion chip installed, which was a terribly bad move.
   A mad scientist working for the Klingons has used trilithium stolen from the Romulans to build a star-killer weapon. They want to use it to regain their empire but his plan is to gain access to a "ribbon" travelling through the galaxy to take him to the "Nexus".
   Soren captures Mr. LaForge after his first weapon knocks out a star and the next one will take out a pre-industrial civilization. So Capt. Picard has to stop him. Soren's planet, and his family, were wiped out by the Borg, so he has no "humanity" any more.
   A gang of Klingons shoot lumps off the Enterprise before being zapped. Enterprise crashes on the planet, where Picard fails to stop Soren from using his weapon. They both end up in the Nexus, an unsatisfying alternative to reality. Picard meets Jum Kirk there and recruits him to the cause of frustrating Soren. Which gets Jum killed all over again.

Star Trek Insurrection (1998) The Federation is spying on a rural community. Mr. Data runs amuck and exposes the observation post and the crew of Enterprise gets the job of sorting him out. Captain Picard gets 12 hours to catch or terminate him in a region of space where communications are difficult. Picard sings HMS Pinafore at Data to get his attention while Worff switches him off.
   On the planet, Picard learns that the locals, the Baku, turned their back on technology. Mr. LaForge finds that Data was damaged by weapons fire before he ran amuck. Picard starts to investigate and the dodgy admiral in charge of the surveillance tells him to get off the planet. Data drains a lake and finds a Federation ship containing a holodeck, which simulates the nearby village.
   Picard realizes that the ship is to be used to relocate the population. Everyone who has visited the planet is in great shape and it turns out the radiation from its rings has a rejuvenating effect. The admiral is in partnership with some rather festered aliens, the Sonar, who have the technology needed to collect metaphasis particles from the rings, but they want the locals off the planet first.
   Picard doesn't do forced relocations and he leads the Baku into the hills, where minerals in the rocks will shield them from attempts to beam them off the planet. The Sonar harass them all the way. Rikker, sent to report to the Federation, tangles with Sonar ships. Enterprise is scragged but the bad guys are zapped.
   Meanwhile, Picard is captures and the Sonar turn out to be Baku who left the planet 100 years before in search of somewhere more interesting. The admiral is killed and Picard gets into a shoot-out with the Head Bad Guy and the Federation has to rethink relocating the Baku.

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) Captain Jerk gets himself chased by primitives, Mr. Spook is dropped into a volcano, where he feel entitled to commit suicide because of the Prime Directive. Kirk digs him out, shows the Enterprise to the primitives and creates a new Cargo Cult. His reward is to be sent back to the Academy in San Francisco as a screw-up.
   London, 2295: a weird stranger saves a Starfleet officer's dying daughter and he blows up an archive. Kirk gets a second chance as a first officer. The stranger has declared war on Starfleet, which means he's either a nutter or someone with the best interests of the galaxy in mind! He takes out the Starfleet top brass.
   Kirk is ready to start a war with the Klingons to get the stranger, who surrenders when threatened with 72 photon torpedoes; he's Khan and he has stashed his crew in them. They are all supermen. McCoy and Admiral Marcus' daughter find the stashed bodies when they have to disarm a torpedo.
   Scotty finds a huge base in orbit at Jupiter; created by Admiral Marcus, who wants to turn Starfleet into a military force by starting a war with the Klingons. His huge starship takes some pot shots at Enterprise but stowaway Scotty has done some sabotage.
   The original Spock tells the later one that Khan will kill them all if he gets the chance. Khan sees off Admiral Marcus and offers a prisoner swap for the torpedoes containing his frozen crew members. The torpedoes explode and wreck his captured ship. Kirk goes on a suicide mission to engineering to power up the enterprise by booting stuck equipment, then does a 'Death of Spock' scene in reverse with the new Spock.
   Khan dumps the wreck of the admiral's ship on Starfleet HQ in SF. Spook goes after him. Surprise! Doctor McCoy's experiments with Khan's blood and a dead tribble give him a way to bring Captain Jerk back to life. And a year later, off he goes, boldly going, in a rebuilt Enterprise.

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) The Romulans refuse to unite with the Remans so the Senate is exterminated. Riker is planning to marry Troi and become captain of Titan, so Picard has to break in another first officer after 15 years. Enterprise E detects an android in 6 pieces on the way to Betazed. The locals are hostile but the bits are retrieved with the aid of some fancy driving by Picard and fancy flying by Data.
   Picard tells Cmdr. La Forge to reassemble the android, which is called B-4; it's a Data prototype. Admiral Janeway sends Picard to Romulus to find out how a Reman; undesirable cannon-fodder; became Praetor of the Empire. The Praetor turns out to be human; a Picard clone. The Romulans had planned to replace Picard with the clone as a means of infiltrating the Federation, but the regime changed.
   Shenzon invades Troi's mind and he beams B-4 aboard Scorpion, his ship. Then he grabs Picard. But he has Data and Shenzon has been fed bogus data on the Federation fleet. Data frees Picard, they blag an attack fighter and they get off Scorpion the hard way. Shenzon is sure that the Federation will be cripled within 2 days. Dr. Crusher thinks he will die if he doesn't get a DNA transplant from Picard.
   Data deactivates B-4, judging it to be dangerous. Scorpion can swamp a planet with lethal radiation and the target is Earth! Enterprise attacks and is shot to bits, so Picard tries to talk his clone into being a better person. Luckily, 2 Romulan ships arrives to even the odds a bit. Troi attacks the Reman viceroy mentally to give Picard a fix on Scorpion.
   Remans board Enterprise, which rams Scorpion. Shinzan fires up his weapon. Picard beams across to Scorpion; Data crosses the hard way. Shinzan is stopped in his tracks. Data beams Picard back to Enterprise and does a Spock: destroying the weapon and himself. The Romulans decide to be friends with Picard. So Data has a wake, Enterprise ends up in a space dock and the Captain tells B-4 about his brother, Data.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) A tatty old Vulcan causes trouble on Nimbus III, the Planet of Galactic Peace in the Neutral Zone, because he wants a starship. Starfleet sends the Enterprise, which is in bits and mostly doesn't work, and has a crew of old codgers. A Klingon warbird also heads for Nimbus III because the captain wants a shot at James T. Kirk. The Vulcan nutter turns out to be Spock's half-brother, who believes in emotions, not logic.
   Kirk starts a punch-up on the planet and finds himself in a trap because Syborg can hypnotize everyone but Spock. The scumbags are confined to the shuttle bay on Enterprise but that doesn't stop them taking over the whole ship. Syborg is looking for the planet Shakari at the centre of the galaxy because he thinks god hangs out there. [Not to mention the super-massive black hole. Ed.]
   Getting through the Great Barrier is no problem. 'Heaven' looks like a good place to shoot a Western. The 'god' turns out to be just another scum-sucking alien with galactic domination in mind. The nutter Syborg tries to hypnotize it but Enterprise feeds it a photon torpedo. Then the Klingons arrive and finish the scum-sucker off because Spock has saved the day again.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) The first of the bunch. A huge alien cloud calling itself V'Ger is approaching Earth, destroying everything it meets. Admiral Kirk grabs back command of a refitted Enterprise, upsetting and demoting Captain Decker. Not much on the ship works, including the transporter and the engines. Kirk annoys Decker even more by not being competent to run the ship.
   Spock turns up with a story about feeling a consciousness in the cloud. A probe grabs the bald alien navigator and she is replaced by a robot in a skimpy dressing gown. Spock tries a mind-meld with the alien vessel in the cloud and finds that it's V'Ger, a machine with consciousness.
   V'Ger turns out to be Voyager 6, a probe launched by NASA 300 years before. It went through a wormhole and it was sent back homewards, upgraded by a machine civilization. V'Ger wants to contact its creator to unload all the information it has gathered, and to destroy the carbon-based life-forms which are infesting the creator's home world. The universe is saved when Decker merges with the robot and V'Ger, creating a new life form, which disappears into another dimension.

Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country (1991) is full of old guys and gals in wigs messing about with the Klingons, who have blown up the planetoid which generates most of their power, which means they face extinction in 50 years if they don't stop their crippling cold war with the Federation. Peace will mean the military side of Starfleet will be disbanded; which doesn't go down well at all with those facing the chop.
   Mr. Spock nominates Captain Kirk, whose son was killed by the Klingons, to escort the Klingon high chancellor to a peace conference. So Enterprise appears to fire on the Klingon ship and 2 crew members go aboard to shoot up the Klingon leaders. Kirk & Bones beam over, the high chancellor croaks and they end up in front of a kangaroo court, which sentences them to the Klingons' Devil's Island.
   Spock deduces that a new Klingon ship, which can use its weapons while cloaked, did the shooting, and he orders a massive search of the Enterprise for the assassins and their equipment. Meanwhile, Kirk, Bones and a shape-shifter stage a gaol-break. Kirk has to fight himself when the shape-shifter turned out to be an agent provocateur, and Enterprise beams Kirk & McCoy up just before they get the details of the conspiracy against the peace conference.
   The Vulcan traitor on Enterprise is unmasked and Spock does a mind-meld on her to get the names of the conspirators and the location of the secret peace conference. Mr. Sulu joins in when Enterprise is attacked by the new Klingon ship and General Chang is destroyed, which stops him quoting any more Shakespeare. Mayhem at the conference, then peace breaks out. At the end, Enterprise is supposed to be decommissioned; but only when Captain Kirk feels like obeying orders again.

Star Wars Episode 1 : The Phantom Menace (1999) Obiwan K'nobi and his Jedi master are sent to negotiate a trade dispute, which the hologram Emperor has cooked up with the planet Naboo. The Emperor orders the deaths of the Jedi, so mucho fighting. The Jedi see an invasion army on the space platform and sneak down to the planet's surface. Cue lots of CGI aliens.
   The Jedi break the blockade and take the queen and R2D2 to Tatooine, where they meet a know-all punk kid who sends every right-minded citizen in search of piano wire; Luke Skywalker's father. He's building C3PO. The Master sees Jedi qualities in him. The kid wins a pod race to get parts for the spaceship and buy his own freedom.
   The Emperor sends a demon with a red & black face after the queen. She tries to get help from the Senate and ends up proposing a vote of no confidence in the Chancellor. He's replaced by a guy you wouldn't trust as far as you could throw a planet. Back on Naboo, the locals stage a huge battle as a diversion for an invasion of the planet.
   The demon takes out the Master but Obiwan sees it off. The kid zaps the satellite controlling the 'droid army, so that's the end of the invasion. Then Obiwan overcomes the reservations of the Jedi Council, and he gets to train the kid; who will become Darth Invader!

Star Wars Episode 2 : Attack of the Clones (2002) Brexit is rife in the galaxy. There aren't enough Jedi to keep the peace with all these Separatists ditching the Republic, which fears war. Senator Amadala is almost killed. She's placed under Obiwan's protection, helped by a grown up Ani Skywalker.
   Another attempt on the lady almost gets Obi killed. The Jedi want to send the lady home for her own protection with Ani while Obi looks for a bounty hunter, who sent the assassin. Obi ends up on a planet erased from the Republic's archives, where a clone army is being built. The bounty hunter and a young clone of him are there.
   Ani and the Senator have lots of fun. Ani takes her to meet his mom, but she was grabbed by raiders a month ago. Obi chases the bounty hunter and does some spying on the people behind the clone army. Ani's mom croaks just after he finds her, so he slaughters everyone in the raider camp and decides it's all Obi's fault.
    Obi is given a chance to join the clone army's offensive against the Sith; he declines. Then the Chancellor tells the Senate that he'll create a grand army of the Republic to counter the Sith threat. Ani and the Senator have some fun in a robot factory. Obi and Ani end up chained to adjacent pillars in an alien Colosseum. The Jedi join what becomes a battle with a robot army.
   Yoda brings reinforcements when all looks lost. The BGs are planning an ultimate weapon. Ani saves Obi from Count Dracula Dooku and becomes semi-armless. Yoda confronts the count but he gets away to tell the hoodie Emperor that the war has begun.

Star Wars Episode 3 : Revenge of the Sith (2005) It's war. Count Dracula Dooku of the Sith is socking it to the Republic and droid General Grievous Bo Didley Harm has kidnapped the Chancellor. Obi & Ani try to get him back. Ani kills Dooku on the Chancellor's orders and abandons Obi to get away; but he catches up with them. Then they're captured but they get away and Ani manages to crash their spaceship without killing everyone aboard.
   The General runs and hides. Ani hooks up with his wife; the lady with the headphones hairstyle. The hoodie emperor thinks the end of the war is near. Ani has a bad dream about his wife dying in childbirth. The Chancellor makes Ani his man on the Jedi council but the council won't make him a Master and they want him to spy on the Chancellor, who tells Ani about Darth Invader, who was slain by his apprentice.
   Yoda leads clones and Wookis against the droids. Obi finds General GBH and sees him off. The Chancellor tells Ani he needs to know the dark side of the Force to save his wife from certain death. Ani realizes the Chancellor is a Sith Lord and tells the Jedi council. The Chancellor refused to be arrested and Ani becomes his Dark Invader. He's sent to destroy the Jedi council.
   The Jedi at their temple are wiped out. The Republic is to be reorganized as the first Galactic Empire. Obi has to tell Ani's wife that Ani is a traitor. Ani tells his wife he's became more power to protect her and they'll rule the galaxy together. So he's gone nuts.
   Obi shows up for some fencing. The Chancellor has a rumble with Yoda, who gets away. Ani goes up in flames in lava but the BG robots repair him; sort of. Mrs. Skywalker has lost the will to live and she's carrying twins. Darth Invader gets his suit of armour and his pervert's heavy breathing.
   The emperor tells Vader that he killed his own wife. The twins are split up for their safety. The Jedi disappear until the time is right.

Star Wars Episode 4 : A New Hope (1977) This is where we started with Princess Leila on a ship carrying the Death Star's plans being ambushed by BGs. R2D2 and C3PO eject in a life pod and land on Tatoine. They're grabbed by local yokels and bought by Luke Skywalker and his uncle. Luke see's Leila's message when R2 plays part of it. It takes him to Obiwan 'Old Ben' Kanobe, who saves him from an ambush by hostile locals.
   Luke gets his father's light saber and learns about the Force. Leila wants the plans delivered to Alderan. The Emperor has abolished the last of the Republic. The Death Star is the ultimate weapon and the crew wants to try it out. Luke's aunt & uncle get it, so he join's Obi's trip to Alderan. Why would they go on Mr. Solo's ship when he doesn't even know what a parsec is?
   Solo buys off trouble with Jabba the Blob. The Death Star takes out Alderan after the princess lies about where the rebel base is. Luke gets some Jedi training. The gang invades enemy territory to shoot some storm troopers and rescue the princess. Fun in the trash compactor. Obi does some fencing with Darth Invader; doesn't go too well for him.
   The gang reaches the Falcon and fights some fighters to escape. The rebel base is reached and an attack on the Death Star is launched involving skin dancing and dropping a missle down a tiny ventilation shaft. Solo upsets Luke by chickening out but the comes back to save Luke's ass. Luke uses the Force to take out the Death Star and the humans get medals from the princess.

Star Wars Episode 5 : The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Three years on from blowing up the Death Star, Luke & Co. are hiding on the planet Hoth and Darth Invader is scouring the galaxy for them with drones. The wildlife on Luke's planet ain't too friendly. Solo is set to bug out but he has to rescue Luke first. What everyone thought was a meteor turns out to be one of the drones, which has reported finding the new rebel base.
   The ghost of Ben tells Luke to study under his master: Yoda. The rebels have to leave when the planet is attacked by forces with robot elephants! So a comedy battle. Princess Leia had to escape on Solo's bucket of bolts, which breaks down, so they hide in an asteroid belt.
   Luke ends up on a foggy swamp planet when his spaceship croaks and Yoda messes him about a lot. The holographic Emperor can sense a great disturbance in the force due to Luke. He tells Darth Invader that Luke must not become a Jedi. DI promises that Luke will be turned to the dark side or he'll be dead.
   Luke gets spirit messages telling him that Leila and Solo are prisoners. Solo is frozen and returned to Tatooine for Jabba's bounty on him. Leia and some others escape. Luke falls into DI's trap. Shock-horror! He's Luke's father and he wants to rule the galaxy with him. And he chops Luke's hand off!
   Luke manages to escape and contacts Leia telepathically, so he's rescued by the gang on the Falcon and he gets a robot replacement hand. Then it's off to Tatooine to save Solo.

Star Wars Episode 6 : Return of the Jedi (1983) Luke is back on Tatooine to rescue Solo from Jabba the Gut and the Emperor is building another super weapon. Lord Asthmatic arrives to get the new station up and running. Solo is currently carbonized. Chewbacca and Princess Leia are also prisoners. Luke's Jedi tricks don't work on Jabba and he gets to play with Jabba's monster in a pit.
   The gang are introduced to a sand-monster in the desert but everyone escapes from Jabba's clutches and Jabba is blown up. Luke goes off to see Yoda, who is 900 years old and croaking. He warns Luke about the dark side of the Force and the Emperor. Then the ghost of Obiwan tells Luke that he has to take out his father, Darth Invader, and by the way, Princess Leia is his twin sister.
   The rebels are planning to take out the Death Star before its weapons are finished, and if they take out the generator for its shield on the moon which the DS is orbiting, they will be able to zap the Death Star quite easily. But there are problems. The moon is infested with hostile furry midget bears, who are turned into allies. Darth Invader detects the presence of his son and Luke also detects his presence. He knows he has to face Vader and he tells Leia that she's his sister; and she also has the power of the Force; and Vader is his father.
   Luke does some 'ya-booing' with the Emperor, who knows that the Resistance fleet is sneaking up on him. Surprise! The DS is fully armed and operational. Luke gets himself captured to try to save his dad. The million-year-old emperor tells Luke that he's pulling all the strings in the galaxy.
   There are big battles on the planet and in space. Luke refuses to become a dark-sider. The energy source on the moon is disconnected and the Death Star's shield goes down. Vader kills the Emperor to save Luke. The DS erupts up as if the Mythbusters had got their mitts on it! The dying Vader unmasks for Luke, and what a horrible sight he is! Then it's sweetness and light all round.

Stealth (2005) The US Navy's 3 top guns, in their stealth fighters, take out bad guys around the world. Talons 1-3 get a posting to a carrier and a 4th wheel; Tin Man, a.k.a. EDI – Extreme Deep Invader, a "bag of chips" which is like a cross between Kitt and Hal 9000, and reckoned to be the future of stealth operations.
   The gang gets a mission against terrorists in a building in Rangoon. Eddie works out how to do the mission but hot-shot Talon 1 insists on glory grabbing against orders. Eddie goes strange after a lightning strike. A warlord with nukes in Tadjikistan is the next target. Talon 1 doesn't want Eddie along but the boss says, "He goes!"
   Talon 1 tries to abort the mission but Eddie goes ahead, the Scud warheads get it and the locals get nuclear dust. Eddie goes rogue. Talon 3 is splashed trying to take out the machine. Talon 2's plane goes faulty and she ends up baling out over North Korea.
   A programmer finds that Eddie's next target will be a hypothetical cold fusion weapons lab in Siberia. EDI & Talon 1 take out some Russian fighters, then Talon 1 gets EDI under control and they land in Alaska. N. Korean troops hunt Talon 2 and Talon 1 is nearly done in by a doctor as a cover-up starts.
   There will be no rescue for Talon 2, so Talon 1 takes off in EDI after blowing up the Alaskan airfield. He and the machine try to start a war with N. Korea. EDI is destroyed but Talons 1 & 2 get safely to South Korea.

Steele Justice (1987) John Steel and his mate are shot by a thieving general at the end of the Vietnam war. But they survive to become L.A. cops. Steele is sacked for indiscipline. General Kwan, now a drug dealer, is going into politics. His son kills the mate, his wife and her mother, but misses the daughter, to terrorize the local Vietnamese population.
   Steele is more difficult to kill and one of the general's sons ends up dead when he tries it. The police captain goads Steele and lets him run riot. Kwan tries to kill the daughter, so it's gloves off and war.
   Kwan is about to dump 100 kg of poisoned coke on the streets, so Steele commits grand theft military weapons and shoots up the deal. Natch, Steele's C.O. from 'Nam is in with the bad guys. So he joins the body count with Kwan.

Stonados (2013) A monstrous water spout sucks people and things off the shore, including Plymouth Rock, which is dropped on Boston. Maddy, a cop, calls her ex-professor turned school-teacher after his wife died brother, who used to chase wild weather with TV weatherman Lee. Lee spots that the "meteorite" is really cold and the Plymouth Rock.
   More waterspouts form; they are like the Sharknado (qv), but hurling frozen masses instead of sharks. Everyone ignores Joe when he rants at them to leave Boston harbour. A shower of rocks changes their minds. Lee thinks the Stonados are caused by aerosols from an underwater volcano. The authorities don't want to know.
   Joe thinks the storm will charge up the Charles river, where there's a regatta in progress, natch. (That's Jaws ripped off). Boston is wrecked and Joe has a daft theory to explain what's going on. No one notices a stonado until it attacks the football stadium. Can Joe fix the problem by causing global warming on a local scale? His rocket launcher doesn't work so he and Lee drive a truck with a bomb into the path of the stonado. Boom! Problem solved.

The Stone Killer (1973, Charles Bronson, Michael Winner, director) Lou Torrey, a tough New York cop, moves to L.A. when N.Y. goes soft on teenage punks with guns. He gets to deliver a hit man to New York. The guy tries to do a deal, saying there's going to be a big hit, before he's hit. Torrey is left just with the name Wexton. A prisoner is helped to break out of custody, then he's hit. Torrey gets tough with a guy involved in the second hit.
   A Mafia boss is planning revenge for the Sicilian Vespers, a massacre on 1931/04/10, on the 40th anniversary. Langley, the guy who made the plates for the car used in the 2nd hit, escapes a bust. Torrey gets to visit an Ashram in Carmel. Some of the mobsters don't like using stone killers; Vietnam vets; for the big hit. The 9th victim in a New York Mafia war goes down.
   Torrey chases Langley through an outdoor market and runs him down when he pulls a gun on him. The killers have a base out in the California desert. The guy Torrey bashed is released to lead the cops to the base, but he ends up ambushed and dead. The camp is busted after the stone killers have gone.
   Torrey makes the 10th April connection and realizes there will be a BIG hit at a Mafia council meeting. The cops load up for a war. The New York hit goes down. HUGE underground car-park battle. And Al, the head bad guy, gets away with it.

Stonehenge Apocalypse (2010) Archaeologist Joseph, digging at Waterside, Maine, finds an inscription, takes a golden ankh out of a box and it flies over to the inscription. Stonehenge (a very cheap copy!) starts rearranging itself and 7 tourists are fried by a huge EM burst. Jacob, a prodigy and American conspiracy theorist, calls Joseph, who tells him to go to Stonehenge; it might be his last chance!
   The British army has taken over Stonehenge and there's something in the altar stone broadcasting radio waves. Another EM incident triggers a massive volcanic eruption from an Aztec pyramid in Mexico. Jacob is picked up by the army when he sneaks into Stonehenge. There's a count-down going on in the altar stone and the US military decide to blow up the monument.
   Stonehenge ignores the C4. Joseph, in Maine, finds another altar stone. A volcano takes out Indonesia when the count-down reached 30 hours. Dr. Leeds decides she has to team up with Jacob to prevent Stonehenge from destroying the world. The Yanks are all for neuking it! Jacob thinks the planet is being terraformed again, which happened in the past to get life started.
   Jacob ends up in competition with Joseph for an ancient artefact. Jacob wants to switch off Stonehenge, Joseph wants to give the world a make-over with just his gang surviving to enjoy it. The next supervolcano starts at the pyramids at Giza. Joseph's pyramid rises out of the ground in Maine.
   Joseph ends up dead and Jacob races back to Salisbury Plain as the Yanks send a fighter to nuke Stonehenge. Which doesn't work out. Jacob has to negotiate Joseph's mole, and he doesn't survive saving the world. So Dr. Leeds takes over his radio show so that the world can continue to hear The Truth.

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992) is a Sylvester Stallone comedy that works! Sgt. Joe is a tough San Francisco cop whose New Jersey mom is about to visit him. She won't pick up the phone when he tries to call her so he can't put her off. He has history with his Lieutenant, who dumps him. Mom arrives, Joe tackles a jumper on the way home, mom embarrasses him thoroughly and the jumper decides his problems are nothing in comparison with Joe's.
   Mom does hoovering in the middle of the night and she gives Joe's gun a wash. So she feels obliged to buy him a new one. She ends up buying a Mac 10 from a guy in the street and witnesses a big shoot-out. Then she invades the police station and as she has to stay in San Francisco as a witness, she decides to help Joe crack the case.
   Joe catches up with the bad guys briefly but his mom is driving and she ends up in a dumpster. The guns are supposed to have been destroyed in a fire, but they're really being shipped to South America. Only a couple of crooks ripped some of them off and sold one to Joe's mom. Joe goes for a look at the warehouse where the fire was; so the bad guys try to demolish it onto Joe & mom.
   Joe gives mom a set of rules and she tells him how to persuade Lt. Gwen to undump him. One of the guys who ripped off guns surrenders to Joe, he handcuffs him to mom but she gets loose. Mom is nabbed at the airport where the guns are being flown out of the country, Joe wrecks the plane and mom shoots the head bad guy. Cue a closing joke at the airport as mom spots a bad guy as she's going home.
   American comedy can be totally tedious, but 'mom' saves this one by being a pest but also a human being with a sense of humour.

Storm Cell (2008) Two kids see their stupid parents make no effort to get out of the way of a twister. One becomes a meteorologist specializing in extreme weather and the other becomes a cop in Seattle. The Prof. reckons global warming equals more violent weather. Her daughter, Dana, gets upset when a twister destroys her school and Mom isn't there to hold her hand.
   When they visit Uncle Sean, Seattle has its first ever tornado and the dumb ass cop thinks his sister caused it! Dana gets pally with the spoilt son of a local developer, feeling neglected by her mom, whose attention if focussed on a forming supercell. The storm throws an F3-ish twister and the Prof. goes for a helicopter ride with TV newsman and old pal Travis.
   Dana sneaks off with the yob. Shock, horror! Travis is her dad and mom never told him. Dana gets into a punch-up with the delinquent as the storm closes in, then she finds a twister in the back yard! Mom & the cavalry arrive, however, the storm misses them and the yob is busted.

Storm Chasers: Revenge of the Twister (1998) is another in the 'silly sciffy' category. The US military is trying to generate and steer hurricanes as a non-nuclear weapon of mass destruction. Only things aren't going too well and the likes of Hurricane Andrew in 1992 are the consequences of their blundering. College professor Dr. Ron Young has some success in steering a storm but he loses his pilot's licence and his job. So the Brigadier (Martin Sheen) recruits him to a project run by a Dr. Platt at a research station in L.A.
   Here, Young meets an old girlfriend, who's a TV reporter, and he quickly falls foul of the station's psychotic security officer. Ryan, Young's pal back at the university, does some hacking and uncovers the list of storms created by Dr. Platt. Then Ryan is killed in a car crash and Young is fitted up for a hit-and-run killing. So he tells the reporter to keep an eye on a storm heading for Mexico.
   Mexico is thinking of nationalizing its oil, the US is upset and a hurricane for the Mexicans is the reprisal. But Dr. Platt steers it away from Mexico, for which he is killed, his plane is destroyed and the amplified storm heads for L.A.! Young is sent up in another plane to regain control of the storm. Lots of fun & games, and the security guy is tossed off the plane's cargo ramp. Then the pilot starts shooting at him.
   Young bails out, the plane hits the gadget amplifying the storm and it dissipates after wrecking L.A. a bit. Young's story goes out to the Great American Public but the investigation is cut short when the brigadier has a car crash.

Strange Days is a film released in 1995 and set at the end of 1999 – the bogus millennium change. It's all about Lenny, a guy who sells illegal "recorded reality" tapes, who finds himself looking at murders and then has guys trying to kill him and his friends. The even worse news is that the bad guys are cops.
   At the back of it all is the death of a trouble-making rapper against a background of the LAPD trying to keep order in the streets with riot squads and tanks. Lenny finds that some of his friends aren't too solid but some will stick with him, no matter what.
   The best bit of the film is where Lenny is leaning over a hotel balcony with a bad guy hanging on to his tie and dangling into space, and Lenny pulls the knife out of his own back and cuts his tie!

The Stranger (2010, Steve Austin) is another WWFsploitation gig. The FBI in Seattle spots "Our Guy". He's now a derelict and the Russian Mob is after him. His head is screwed up but he knows who the Russian mole in the FBI is. The boss of the local Bureau wants to forget him but Dr. Bishop, a lady psychiatrist, goes after her former patient.
   Three months later, our hero is busted smuggling Mexicans, so he wrecks a bunch of cops. Then he gets a job on a Russian fishing boat in Oregon. The shrink catches up with him there and tells him he has amnesia. A bad guy crashes the party. Them someone from our hero's past crashes in.
   The head Fed in Seattle goes after our hero again because he used to be an agent and it was he who discovered that the Russians have a mole in the agency. Tom lets the Feds catch him. They want "the money", which he stashed while undercover buying Mexican drugs for the Russian mob.
   Tom Tomashevskiy is our hero's name. He's grabbed by another bad guy but he helps the shrink to escape. She finds that Agent Mason is dirty. Tom gets his memory back and Mason gets dead. Tom remembers where he put the money, and he has a kill list.

Striking Distance (1993, Bruce Willis) Some sick creep is killing women; 4 dead. We're in Pittsburgh in 1991. Our detective hero is an outcast because he testified against his brutal partner, cousin Jimmy. Tommy ends up in the River Police. Let's have a chase to get things going and a big kaboom! in a tunnel. The killer gets away from millions of cops and Tommy's cop dad ends up dead.
   The cops frame some non-entity, to Tommy's disgust. Jimmy jumps off a bridge to avoid gaol but no body found. More women Tommy knew are killed and he gets phone calls. He and his female partner, who tries to rehab him in bed, relieve a hijacked boat on the Ohio river. Tommy lights up the killer's car with a flare; the cops pretend he shot at a litterbug.
   The partner is Internal Affairs but she tells a tribunal that Tommy is okay. She is bagged. No surprise that Jimmy is still alive. He bags Tommy and the feckless cousin Dave, too. His dad turns up with a gun. Dad killed Tommy's dad to let Jimmy escape; he's shot by Jimmy.
   Cue a boat chase and some fun in the river. One drowned rat called Jimmy.

Stripes (1981) is a comedy which takes the mickey out of the US army. John the photographer loses his job as a taxi driver, his car and his girlfriend in the same morning, so he talks his mate Russell into joining the army with him. They end up at Fort Arnold under the control of Sgt. Hulker. Everyone is a psycho, including the officers who aren't useless but excluding the nice lady MPs.
   John tries to desert but Russell stops him. Fun at a mud-wrassling club and everyone is busted. After their sergeant in injured due to a bungling officer, the misfits stay up late rehearsing for a passing out parade and get there late. But they impress the general with their fancy drill and he sends them to Italy.
   They are reunited with Sgt. Hulker at Fort Milano. John & Russell stroll off with the general's Urban Assault Vehicle to see their MP girlfriends in Germany. Their captain goes after them with the rest of the misfits, and steers them into Czechoslovakia and a confrontation with 200 Russians.
   Sgt. Hulker bales out and sends a distress signal. So John, Russel & the ladies charge to the rescue in the UAV, show the Russians what's what and end up heroes.

Submerged (2005) A mystery man triggers a massacre at the US embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay, using a mind-control system. A US assault force sent to take out his base is ambushed. Cody the convict (Steven Seagal) is sprung from gaol for another mission of the sort that got him gaoled in the first place. Agent Fletcher is wished on him, so Cody dumps Fletcher and avoids an ambush.
   Cody assaults the base under the dam after the bad guys have gone and rescues the brainwashed, Trojan horse prisoners from the first assault team. World War 3 breaks out on the submarine transporting Cody & Co. The Navy wipes it out with a missile; after Cody & Co. have taken to the lifeboats.
   Dr. Brainwash has been hired to do his stuff on the president's girlfriend because El Presidente isn't friendly to a big company, which has decided to sort him out. Cody takes a trip to the opera. His crew has a head-on crash but they arrive for the shoot-out.
   Dr. Brainwash doesn't get his $250 million, the opera house is trashed, the bad guys are vanquished but there are still brain-washed Trojans around.

Sudden Impact (1983) The 4th Dirty Harry film is produced & directed by Clint Eastwood, and stars the then Mrs. Eastwood as Jennifer Spencer, the female lead. JS shoots someone at the start. The next day, DH arrives at the San Francisco court to hear a useless judge let a guilty guy go free. DH goes to a diner and gets involved in a shoot-out with some punks, who are robbing the place. 3 dead punks, "Go ahead, make my day!" to the 4th. Harry then crashes a Mob wedding and gives the mobster a heart attack.
   The guy shot at the start is found; shot in the groin and the head. His bosses think DH is a dinosaur and he is told to take some time off. JS has a sister in a vegetative state. Mobsters shoot up DH after dark but he outflanks them. Then the guy who got away with it in court, and a couple of mates, toss Molotov cocktails into DH's car and end up dead.
   The Lieutenant sends DH to San Paolo for information on the guy shot at the start. DH chases a robbery suspect in a bus and meets JS, who is an artist of sorts. She shoots another of the guys who gang-raped her and her sister 10 years earlier. DH's black mate, Horace, wishes an ugly dog on him and the dog helps DH to plug another assassin.
   JS plugs another rapist. DH busts her next target, so she plugs the town tomboy, who invited her to the gang bang. DH gives JS a lift home and gets to spend the night. Horace walks into a trap set for DH at DH's hotel. DH is also ambushed. JS walks into an ambush set by the police chief, whose rapist son is also a vegetable. Mick, the last surviving rapist shows up and the police chief is shot with JS's gun.
   DH finds Horace dead and the dog limping, so he gets his huge, .44 Magnum automatic out and goes to save JS from the bad guys. Mick gets the point on a fairground ride. The cops find JS's gun on him, so DH pins the blame for all the murders done with it on Mick and JS goes free.

Summer Shark Attack (2016) Young adults messing about in a river. One gone. Chomp! Two gone! Chomp! Only one survivor and there's a family of suckers heading for the fireworks festival at the lake. Chomp! That's grandma with her head bitten off. A good ol' boy, Jones, blasts the shark and says it's the first time one attacked a human.
   The useless sheriff hangs up on a call for help, and mom and dad are going onto the river. Jones has more weapons than the average militia. Chomp! A guy out fishing becomes fish-food. Damn! There are dozens of sharks. Chomp! Dad loses a couple of fingers and mom bags a shark.
   The sharks can jump out of the water. Jones is chomped. The family loads up with his psycho-killer weapons. The sharks reach the festival scene and the humans strike back. Molly's BF, Curtis, has a bright idea but he's not smart enough to stay alive. Molly has to bag the last shark for Curtis, Jones and grandma. She sends it into orbit. Then the useless sheriff arrives.

The Sum Of All Fears (2002) Jack Ryan is suddenly a lot younger than when he was Harrison Ford. An Israeli plane carrying a nuke is shot down in 1973. 29 years later, a coup in Moscow and the Russians start shooting? No, it's all an exercise. But the Russians are up in arms about Chechnya. Meanwhile, some Arabs find the bomb. The Russian president suddenly collapses while going on about how healthy he is.
   Jack Ryan is recruited by the CIA as he's an expert on the new Russian leader, Alexandr Nemerov. A South African buys the nuke for $400 and sells it on for $50 million! Ryan is taken to Moscow with the presidential party, Nemerov likes him and he tells the Yanks to stay out of Chechnya. Ryan spots that 3 scientists who could build a bomb are missing from a nuclear decommissioning plant.
   Everyone at a posh do in DC is bleeped. The Russians have attacked Grozny with nerve gas. Ryan thinks Nemerov didn't do it; which is right only he can't admit having lost control of his military. But he has the rogue generals killed. A bunch of European Fascists is behind the scheme with the Israeli nuke. The CIA locates the bomb builders in Ukraine.
   Ryan deduces the Russians aren't building a bomb; he's right, they're refitting the Israeli one. Ryan is sent to Ukraine on a recce but all the gang finds is bodies and a few clues. The Fascists plan to make American and Russia take each other out. The CIA finds that the bomb is heading for Baltimore, where Ryan's girlfriend works in a hospital. The President is rushed away from a football match just before the bomb goes off.
   Ryan & the president survive, the head of the CIA croaks. Russia goes on military alert and a rogue general, paid by the Fascists, orders an attack on an American aircraft carrier. The CIA finds that the plutonium in the bomb was made in the USA and 'stolen' by Israel. The Russian airbase which attacked the aircraft carrier is flattened. Escalation!
   Ryan is attacked while sneaking round the docks at Baltimore. But he is rescued and he gets on the hot line to Moscow as the American president orders a missile launch. Ryan tells the Russians they need to pause to show good faith. De-escalation! Peace breaks out and the South African, the rogue general and the Fascist are all killed.

Sunset (1988, Blake Edwards) Bruce 'Wimpy' Willis play Tom Mix, the Hollywood cowboy. The time is the 1920s and Alfie, the sadistic studio boss, has brought the Wyatt Earp story. Mix is to star in it and the real Marshal Earp is to be in the crew as a technical advisor. As soon as Earp arrives, Alfie's second wife, who knew Earp in Denver, asks him to help her drunken son Michael, who is accused of beating a girl up.
   Earp & Mix walk in on the murder of Candy, a club owner, and they split with Michael just ahead of the corrupt cops. Cheryl, Candy's daughter, gives Earp her mother's client list. Earp gets himself clobbered while snooping around Dutch, a gangster who's in league with both Arnie and the cops.
   Mix takes Earp for a ride in his plane then our heroes stage their own OK Coral shoot-out at Mix's ranch. Mix is busted on a phoney rape charge at Candy's funeral, and he meets Michael in gaol. Michael says he was framed. A lawyer steers Cheryl to her mom's fortune and a letter from Candy saying she saw Alfie kill his first wife.
   Alfie puts his second wife in hospital in a terminal condition. A trip to the first ever Academy Awards ceremony, where Alfie's sister does a lot of shooting. Alfie's battered chauffeur drives his boss into the harbour, Mix saves the chauffeur then Alfie attacks him. So Earp plugs Alfie and heads back home.

Super Collider (2013) Will the Zero Point Collider cause the end of the world? Looks like we're heading that way. An umbrella assassination before the titles. The news meeja are suitably alarmist before the collider comes on line. Boom! when it does. The world becomes a weird, blasted landscape and Victor thinks everything should be different; there shouldn't be tornadoes and his daughter didn't die at age 3.
   He finds a phone of a type no one else recognizes, which he parked in the control room just before everything went to hell. It shows pictures of his daughter's 7th birthday party. Company goons go after him as he decides that everything has been shifted to an alternate universe, where nothing but bad things happen.
   Victor is captured and tortured. It's all a corporate plot. "How do you make money out of free zero point energy?" asks the boss, who made things go wrong in the first place. Victor's first attempt to put things right is foiled by his stoopid buddy Chuck, who eventually lets Victor escape from the collider site after setting it to explode. Suddenly, everything is okay again.

Super Cyclone (2011) An ocean drilling rig hits magma and Catalina Island off southern California erupts. The NOAA starts to track a mega-storm. Dr. Sparks is doing storm-killing experiments using nanoflakes of silver iodide. Her ship gets a taste of the storm near the drilling rig.
   Heat from the lava is boiling the sea and creating a storm with 5x the power of Katriona! A cyclone which will wreck the entire West Coast of the USA! Some crew try to get off the rig but they're boiled alive in the sea. There's no way California can prepare for a storm of this size so Dr. Sparks has to stop it. A NOAA Global Warming Swindler starts going on about climate change when the super cyclone is the product of a super volcano.
   California is hit by floods, twisters and flaming hail! A bozo with a gun gets in Dr. Sparks' way and she half-kills him! She finally gets to the military but the crazy pilot who is sent to dump silver iodide into the storm is wiped out. Dr. Sparks and the engineer from the drilling rig decide to plug the volcano by pouring liquid nitrogen down the borehole. The lava flow is cut off and the storm loses its driving power. And California is saved!

Superhero Movie (2008, Leslie Nielsen) An invisible nerd goes on a school trip to a high-tech biolab and gets bitten by a mutant dragonfly. The dying boss of the company has a rejuvenation treatment and then kills the stroppy directors. The wheelchair guy visits the school for the science fair. Our hero finds out that he has grippy hands, like those of an insect or lizard, and he can climb walls.
   Rick stops a speeding truck dead in its tracks; he has super powers; shame about the old lady he saved from the truck. She ended up in a tree-chipper. Having got his parents killed in a Batman-style back-street robbery, Rick puts his uncle in hospital. Professor Xavier, the psychic, takes Rick to his school for freaks. Mrs Xavier tells him: "Make a costume, shithead!" when he asks how he can become a proper superhero
   Rick can't fly, and that bugs him. The tech company boss's chief nerd tells the boss that he has to kill someone every day to drain life-force and stay alive. The Dragonfly saves the blonde girl he fancies but has to reject, Spiderman-style. Thanksgiving is a comical disaster.
   Hourglass, the BG super-criminal, puts Auntie in hospital, where she croaks. The funeral is a disaster. Rick rejects the blonde again and goes to pot. Then he causes a riot at an awards evening. But he blows up Hourglass, finds that he can fly and gets the girl.

Superman Returns (2006) Superman disappeared after astronomers discovered the wreck of his home planet and Lois Lane won a Pulitzer prize for her article: "Why The World Doesn't Need Superman". The man of Sup returns to the Kent farm, after 5 years' absence, as Lex Luthor is plundering his Arctic retreat. Looking very like Christopher Reeve, Clark Kent returns to the Daily Planet to find that Lois is the unmarried mother of a sickly child.
   Luthor blacks out the US east coast with an experiment, forcing Superman to save Lois from the maiden flight of the new Genesis shuttle. Superman returns to fighting crime and stalking Lois, who keeps on rejecting him. Superman finds that his retreat has been invaded. Lois invades Luthor's boat with her kid. Luthor is planning to use crystals from Krypton to create his own continent and drown the United States!
   The asthmatic boy turns out to be spawn of Superman, not Lois's boyfriend. Metropolis starts dropping to bits when Luthor begins building his continent and Superman has to save Lois & family from the wreck of Luthor's yacht. Superman gets a beating after discovering that Luthor's new island is laced with green kryptonite, but Lois & family save him.
   Luthor's plan unravels. Superman ends up dead in an ER. Luthor, his girlfriend Kitty and her dog end up stranded on a tiny tropical island when their helicopter runs out of fuel. And the Man of Steel comes back to life for a final chat with the Kid of Steel and Lois.

Super Shark (2011) A giant shark takes out an oil platform after an earthquake. Then it eats some divers and a boat. Dr. Cat Carmichael, a lady marine biologist working for the government, goes snooping in the area where the rig went down. The sole survivor tells her that the rig hit hard rock, the company pumped special stuff down the bore and a giant shark pulled the rig over.
   The shark takes out a US submarine next. Dr. Cat lets the local boss of the oil company know that she knows their special stuff caused the earthquake. A US plane takes a photo of the monster shark. The Big Boss tells the local boss to deny everything and sleaze Dr. Cat.
   The shark can leap ashore and eat swimmers and life guards. Dr. Cat finds that there are no fish in the sea and the shark does a swim-by of her chartered boat. The local boss discovers that Dr. Cat was sacked by the government. The shark has to be zapped to protect the tourist trade to local beaches (i.e. a rip-off of the Jaws plot).
   Dr. Cat tells government officials that the shark is a dinosaur, which was in suspended animation until the oil company's earthquake released it. The army deploys a walking tank on the beach and plays the local radio station to attract the shark! The tank is no match for the shark. So Dr. Cat feeds it some C4 and blows it in half.

Super Tanker (2011) A meteor hits Alaska in 1965. 40 years later, the US government tries to fly part of a weapon made from it out of the country but manages only to blow up an unimportant bit of Canada. Ex-professor Robert Jordan, who used to work on the Ice Ten doomsday weapon, is recalled to help move it to the Mariana Trench and dump it safely. If anything goes wrong, it's nuclear winter for 1,000 years.
   A rogue wave hits the tanker. Some of the cargo has to be vented to stabilize the containment field and a Death Cloud takes out a cruiser. Jordan recalls Adam Murphy, who used to work on the Ice Ten project with him. Murphy brings a team, which had a narrow escape at a nuclear reactor in Baku when the locals screwed around with it and 2 Americans were killed.
   The colonel in charge of the super tanker is an idiot who won't follow Jordan's orders. He releases another death cloud, which heads for Hawaii. Jordan refuses to lie about the death clouds at a press conference, as the US government wants him to do. Murphy and his team have to get up close to the weapon to fix the containment field. The US military tries to nuke the tanker, which would have cause mile-high tidal waves, and the Admiral has Jordan shot when he tries to stop it.
   The colonel shows some right stuff at last. A helicopter pilot gets in the way of the missle. Murphy goes down with the ship, having had too much radiation to survive. The Admiral gets the Medal of Honour and Prof. Jordan survives.

Super Troopers (2001) The governor of Vermont is closing down a Highway Patrol station full of crazy guys, who are at war with the local Police Department, and they get into a brawl when a woman is found dead in a Winnebago. Two HPs bust a guy with 150 kg of pot in his trailer, but he locks them inside and escapes. There's a connection between the drugs and the murder, the HP boss decide; but the PD boss doesn't want to know.
   An HP guy finds more drugs in the Winnebago, which is in the PD impound yard, while larking about with a PD lady. The top PD cop recruits the worst of the HP cops, and when the governor drops in, the PD claims all the credit for solving the murder and the drugs case.
   The HPs sorts out the defector and the PD lady gives them a chance to be heroes. Surprise! The PD is in with the smugglers, who are bringing in marijuana from Canada. So the HPs, all drunk, kick their asses. But Governor F**khead still closes the HP station.
   3 months later, the HPs are delivering beer; but only as an undercover operation as they are the PD now.

Supervolcano (2011) starts with scenes of death & destruction & doom, and then does the dirty trick of 2 days earlier, when Kate, the vulcanologist, was upsetting Charlie, the head Ranger of Yellowstone Park and there was lava bubbling up in rivers and poaching tourists. The animals started running away and Kate got a call from a future self, who told her the supervolcano under the park was about to blow and wipe out life on Earth.
   Kate got instructions for preventing the disaster but her boss refused to evacuate 4 states based on a hunch. Future Kate provided a fix for the ash clouds. Charlie's daughter, Claire, went pratting about in a plane with junior Ranger Josh, and they crashed and had to be rescued by Charlie. Kate barely got the fix data from the future and she had to sell it to her boss and her colleagues.
   Charlie had to fly a suicide mission. Kate joined in and Josh stole an air force chopper for a rescue Kate expected because of her future knowledge. And life on the Earth, of course, was saved.

Surrogates (2009, Bruce "Wimpy" Willis) It's 2017 and no one leaves home any more because 14 years before, a Dr. Strickland invented surrogate bodies. By 2010, 98% of the population were using them, which eliminated most crimes and diseases. Some Luddites have made a weird religion out of being meatbags.
   A meatbag criminal zaps some surrogates and the FBI finds operators with their brains liquefied. FBI Agent Tom Greer (BW) has a wife who won't spent real time with him and they lost a child. One of the zapped victims is Dr. Strickland's son. Was the killer after the father, who was using the same surrogate?
   VSI, the company running the system, sez an operator can't suffer brain liquefaction due to a signal from a unit. The army denies having a weapon which can do this. Agent Jennifer Peters IDs the meatbag killer, who is being protected by the system. He fries a bunch of cops and Greer ends up in hospital then suspended. He goes after the weapon; an Overload Device made by Dr. Stickland's VSI, which has a virus in the program.
   The Prophet, the leader of the meatbag religion, turns out to be a surrogate. Greer goes after his boss, who tried to kill Strickland. Peters' surrogate is hijacked, cue a chase and mucho mayhem. Dr. Strickland, it turns out, is trying to destroy both the surrogates and the people who use them. But Greer sabotages his plan by letting the units be destroyed but keeping the operators alive.

Swamp Shark (2011) The crummy sheriff of a swamp town is hitting on the lady running a family restaurant and there's a shark in the swamp eating all the fish and the 'gators and the odd drunken bum. No one believes Rachel when she says she took a shot at a shark, and the bozo sheriff arrests her brother, Jason. So Rachel goes shark hunting to clear his name and save the restaurant from being shut down by the scumbag sheriff.
   The shark kills 2 kids in a canoe but no one seems to miss them. The sheriff is in league with creature smugglers, who had a crash and dropped a shark from a deep ocean trench into the river; and the shark has a bulletproof hide, the Asian kid who's a computer whizz reckons!
   The shark bites the head off a peeping tom deputy by leaping out of the water. An undercover Federal agent on the track of the creature smugglers finds the remains of the dead kids and joins Rachel's crusade against the shark. Crystal, Rachel's stoopid younger sister, goes off with college guys on the river and gets into trouble.
   The Federal agent wants to shut down the 'Gator Fest (the routine rip-off of the Jaws plot) but that ain't gonna happen. The male students are eaten before Crystal is rescued. The Asian kid reckons a bullet-proof shark has to be attacked from the inside. Tyler, Rachel's bozo boyfriend, is eaten.
   The shark arrives at the 'Gator Fest. Jason and the Asian kid try to feed the shark a propane tank but Rachel fails to shoot it and make it go off. So the gang ends up harpooning the shark and dragging it into the propellor of an air-boat to turn it into sushi.

Swamp Thing (1982) Scientist Alex Holland is trying to make hybrids from plants and animals to give plants an animal's aggressive survival instincts. Bad guy Arcane (Louis Jourdan) sends a bunch of thugs to steal his research and kill his team, including Holland's wife. Holland spills his fluorescent green liquid on himself and dives into the swamp on fire. Only Alice Cable escapes the massacre with notebook #7.
   The bad guys track her down in the swamp but the Thing saves her and goes after the baddies. Cable phones her emergency number but the call goes to Arcane. The Swamp Thing saves her again so Arcane traps it using Cable as bait. Arcane duplicates the formula and tries it on his man Bruno, who turns into a weak midget. Holland/Swamp Thing explains that it amplifies a person's qualities; or lack of them.
   Arcane takes some of the stuff himself and turns into a strong monster. The Swamp Things do battle in the swamp. Cable is stabbed but Holland repairs her. More battling then the head bad guy is slain and what's left of Alex Holland heads off into the swamp despite Cable's pleas to stay and carry on his work, even though he's a monster.

S.W.A.T. (2003, Samuel L. Jackson) Bank robbers with automatic weapons shoot up everything outside a bank before being taken out by SWAT. The SWATs inside the bank disobey orders, keep everyone alive but a civilian is shot and she sues the city. So the maverick is chucked off the squad and his young partner is moved to the stores. 6 months later, LAPD is getting so many bad headlines that the jobsworth Captain brings in an old sweat, Hondo, (S.L. Jackson) to form an elite SWAT team.
   Hondo recruits the kid as his driver and makes the captain go with his choices, which include a woman. A French scumbag gangster flies in, kills his uncle and he's busted. The new SWAT does lots of training and the kid gets to use his invention on a job.
   SWAT gets the job of escorting the scumbag and an attempt to break him out fails. So he tells the TV cameras that anyone who frees him will get $100 million! A choppor is shot down so the scumbag is moved on the surface. The sacked maverick goes after the reward and there's a chase through the subway and beyond.
   The scumbag is loaded onto a hijacked small jet, which was landed on a roadway, but SWAT prevents it from taking off. The Frog is rebusted, the maverick is sorted out and the Frog ends up in tough Federal custody.

SWAT: Firefight (2011) An LA SWAT guy is bumped off to Detroit to train the team there. Cutler winds up the locals right away with a fake bomb threat. The local SWAT boss won't give up his command; he needs to be brow-beated a bit. SWAT gets on-the-the job training. On the first job, a woman kills herself when the cops won't kill the guy who was stalking her. Cutler is appalled when the local stooges let Walter the weirdo go on $1M bail.
   Cutler takes the lady psychologist to dinner then bed. Walter puts a bomb in his car but Cutler spots it. He refused to leave town. Walter joins in a siege at a large store but just gets the BGs killed. Surprise! He's a government asset/asshole, and he has protection. But he kills his two handlers and goes off and kidnaps the psychologist.
   The SWAT boss has another try at sending Cutler back to LA. His who team threatens to quit. The nutter kills more cops. But Cutler saves the psychologist and she helps Cutler to blow Walter to hell with his own bomb.

Sweeney 2 (1978) is now an historical documentar with the viewers going "he's dead" through the opening credits. Regan's old boss is going to gaol for corruption and there is a gang of armed criminals pulling off robberies in London. The bomb in the hotel sequence is a rather weird and pointless affair. The fishing expedition to Malta is similarly pointless. All the bad guys got wiped out eventually, and Regan's reaction to the last of them topping himself with a sawn-off, gold-plated shotgun seemed rather excessive.

The Sweeney (2012) Oh, no! That fukin Cockney spiv from the TV adverts, who keeps telling us he gembles rasponsabli, is pretending to be Jack the lad Regan. It's a wonder he has the time to spare to do any coppering with all the gambling he has to do.
   A big buncha BGs busted right away. The Sweeney is interested in a dodgy private bank. A guy from Internals, Lewis, is out to get the squad. The former Det. Charlie Crews is playing 'Askins, and taking far more cheek than the original would have. Regan's methods and all the collateral damage are a problem, Lewis tells Regan (who's shagging his wife), and there's some gold missing from the last job.
   Another big blag goes off. There's a spot of energetic interrogation by Regan. Yells of 'Armed police!' and a chase to liven things up. Regan gets to use his taser. Lewis thinks he's found Regan's weak spot so Regan grabs him by the froat! Lewis tries to turn George Carter. Then Regan is told to stand down. Cue a shoot-out at the private bank.
   Half of London is shot to bitz. Lewis's wife is killed and the BGs get away. Lewis thinks he's won and Regan gets round-the-clock surveillance. He tells Carter he wants a gun and a 'badge', then he goes hunting. Lewis has him busted and banged up in gaol, and has another go at Carter. Regan has to chastise some of the monkeys in the zoo, and gets a going over himself.
   Carter gets Regan out of gaol. They go and burgle the BG's boat; which gets shot up a bit. Cue a lot of dangerous driving and "You're, nicked." Then Reagan gets his 'badge' back and the squad is unsuspended and Lewis is left gnashing his teef.

Swordfish (2001) Rogue Federal agent Gabriel Shear (John Travolta) discusses what's wrong with the plot of Dog Day Afternoon while holed up in a bank under siege. Then the cops get cute and customer who's been turned into a human Claymore mine goes off in the street and bodies fly!
   4 days earlier, Ginger (Halle Berrie) offered a $100K job to Stan, the best hacker in America, who wanted access to his daughter. He was needed because the best hacker in the world had been stopped at LAX and killed on Shear's orders in FBI custody. And the head Fed on the case just happened to be the guy who'd sent Stan to gaol for trying to stop the US government reading everyone's emails.
   Stan had to hack into the Department of Defense. Surveillance told the FBI that Stan was in L.A. Shear offered Stan $10M to crack a 512-bit encryption code. Stan went to see his kid and had a run-in with the FBI. Ginger told him she was working for the DEA. Shear was planning to steal $9.5 billion, which the DEA had made while running operations against criminals. He planned to use the money to fight America's enemies and kill terrorists.
   The FBI had Shear's house under surveillance, the scumbag Senator who was running Shear found out, and he ordered a hit on Shear. Stan found what looked like Shear's body frozen in the wine cellar! Shear killed the Senator and roped Stan into his bank job by killing Stan's ex-wife and kidnapping his daughter. Stan moved the cash electronically but made a bog of hiding it from Shear.
   Shear used Ginger to make Stan make the money reappear, then everyone went for a ride in a bus, which was picked up by a helicopter! The useless pilot side-swiped a building with a bus and Stan shot down Shear's escape helicopter. But it was all misdirection. The DEA had never heard of Ginger, who reappeared in Monte Carlo to collect Shear's $9.5B, and some terrorists were wiped out to prove that the money was being put to good use.

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