Mr. Wydey's Film Guide Letter B

Ba'al: The Storm God (2008) 3 months after a robbery at his museum, Dr. Stanford found a Sumerian tablet at his dig in Inuit country. He was looking for the 4 Ba'al amulets, which everyone else believed were mythical. But when he found the Earth amulet, the whole site was trashed by a violent, instant storm.
A storm chaser tipped off the Federal Severe Storm Command about the storm and the US Navy lost a plane sent to investigate it. Dr. Stanford and his satellites went after the other amulets. Dr. Penya, the weather lady, thought the Earth could be engulfed in a planet-wide superstorm. A new storm developed over Turkey when the next amulet was dug up, and the 2 storms looked like merging.
Dr. Penya wanted to nuke the storms but the Navy tried its super-absorbent powder; which only made the problem worse. The mad Dr. Stanton got what was coming to him when he triggered a 4th supernatural storm with the final amulet. Back at the museum, statues of ancient Sumerian gods came to life to have a punch up while the Navy fired off a nuke. And the evil Ba'al storm subsided.

Babylon 5, Movie 1, In the Beginning (1998), has Emperor Londo Molari presiding over the wreck of Centauri Prime in 2278 and telling the story of the Earth-Minbari war to a couple of kids who have found their way to the throne room. 30 years earlier, Earth was expanding its sphere of influence at the edge of Minbari space and the military ignored Londo's warning to leave well alone.
   The Minbari Rangers wanted cash and resources in the light of prophecies that another war with the Shadows was about to start. The military caste turned them down but their leader went to see Dukat, leader of the Grey Council, and he suggested an expedition to Za'ha'dum to look for signs of the Shadows returning. Which is where they ran into Earthers. Minbari scans prevented the Earthforce ships from jumping to hyperspace, so they started shooting, believing they were about to be attacked. Dukat was killed and Delenn, his pupil, ordered the extermination of the entire human race.
   Earth ships were no match for the Minbari, the Centauri refused to help but the Narns were willing to supply as many weapons as the Earthers could afford. Delenn began to regret the genocide which she had ordered but the military caste wouldn't stop killing. Dr. Franklin was gaoled for refusing to provide data to Earth's bioweapons division. Commander Sheridan destroyed a Minbari raider to provide Earth with a propaganda victory. Delenn sent the head of the Rangers to contact the humans but Londo, to his later regret, bombed the meeting.
   After 2 more years of war, with the Minbari ignoring Earth's surrender, the President called for one last stand to buy time to let civilians be taken to neutral territory to keep their species alive. Commander Sinclair was taken aboard Delenn's ship for interrogation during the Battle of the Line and he lit up a triluminary, proving that Minbari souls were being reborn in humans. Minbari do not kill Minbari (a law junked during the Minbari civil war) so Delenn ordered a cease-fire and a memory wipe for Sinclair.
   For the next 10 years, everyone wondered why the Minbari had surrendered on the eve of total victory. What happened next is another story, Londo told the kids. But the five Babylon stations were the legacy of the war – "Our last, best hope for peace."

Babylon 5, Movie 2, Thirdspace (1998) is set in 2261 between the Shadow War and the war with President Clark. Ivanova's squadron discover a vast object adrift in hyperspace and bring it to Babylon 5. Sheridan is interested in new technology to protect the station against Earth's forces and he does a deal with Dr. Trent of InterPlanetary Expeditions (IPX). She agrees to ignore President Clark's blockade on supplies in exchange for the chance to study the artefact, which is over a million years old.
   The telepath Lyta Alexander is affected badly by the presence of the object, the station suffers power fluctuations all over and Lyta tries to use a fleet of bots to destroy the artefact. Dr. Trent thinks she might be under Vorlon control as Lyta can sense the presence of the electronics in surveillance camera; she's a P5 and only P9s and above can do that.
   People start freaking out all over the station and Ivanova and Vir Koto share a dream of a weird city. Dr. Trent thinks the artefact is a jump gate which opens into thirdspace, which is faster than hyperspace and the key to instantaneous travel – and instantaneous attacks on enemies. IPX give the artefact a power pack, and it switches on and starts to drain all power from Babylon 5. The station goes into lockdown as the inhabitants riot and Lyta gives Sheridan and Delenn a Vorlon warning from the past.
   The artefact is a Vorlon mistake. It opens a gate for creatures which want to destroy all life other than their own. As the creatures of thirdspace start to emerge, Sheridan gets a nuke out of stores and flies in a spacesuit through the battle with the invaders!!! A giant jellyfish with big teeth chases him after he plants the bomb inside the artefact. And when the thing blows up, peace breaks out all over the station.

Babylon 5, Movie 3, The River of Souls (1998), is a real Star Trek offering from the post-Sheridan era (June 2263) when Captain Lochley is in charge of B5 and Mr. Garibaldi is a total baldy. Dr. Bryson, an archaeologist, is looking for the secret of eternal life as an Edgars Industries 'black project'. After a spot of tomb-robbing, he takes a glowing globe to Babylon 5, where he has a meeting about funding with Garibaldi.
Captain Lochley and security chief Zach Allen are having problems with a holo-brothel and the owner's shyster lawyer. Their problems increase when Bryson releases souls from the globe and a Soul Hunter arrives. His sect captures "souls" at the point of death, they filled the globe with the population of an entire planet and they want it back. Lochley is taken to the point of death by one of the souls and she finds herself in the globe. She learns that the Soul Hunters harvested a race as everyone was evolving to the next plane of existence, not dying. And after 10,000 years in the globe, they are as mad as hell – those of them who are not insane.
The souls have taken control of Babylon 5's reactor and they plan to blow it up, destroying themselves, the station and the Soul Hunter ships gathered around it. Lochley blows up the holo-brothel, which the souls are using to create temporary bodies and the original Soul Hunter ends up in the globe after promising that his people correct their mistake and find a way to release the trapped souls permanently. And the shyster lawyer ends up getting nothing.

Babylon 5, Movie 4, A Call To Arms (1999), is set during the Sheridan presidency (as the 5th anniversary of the Interstellar Alliance approaches), and provides a prologue to the 1-season TV series Crusade. Mr. Garibaldi is trouble-shooting new ships based on Vorlon and Minbari technologies, and having lots of trouble with the too-cautious Mr. Drake, who is in charge of contruction. The ship has a main weapon which leaves it dead in space and out of power for one minute after firing!
   Meanwhile, the thief Dureena Nafeel arrives on Babylon 5 and Galen, the technomage, is messing about with people's dreams. He shows Sheridan and Dureena a world destroyed by Shadow technology in the hands of their former dogsbodies, the Drakh. Galen warns Sheridan that the former servants are preparing to become masters and the Drakh plan to start their war with an attack on Earth.
   Sheridan is drawn to a rendezvous with Dureena and the captain of the EarthForce destroyer Charon at B5. They take the 2 new prototypes, Excalibur & Victory to Daltron 7, where they find a Drazi (dead) who was supposed to meet them at B5. The Shadow War has been over for 6 years but the planet was destroyed by one of their planet killers just a week earlier, proving that Shadow weapons are still in circulation.
   The Drakh try to use their last planet killer at Earth but Dureena spots the control centre in the death cloud and Victory rams it. The good news is that there is no rain of thermonuclear bombs on Earth. The bad news is that the Drakh release a genetic plague, which will wipe out everyone on Earth in about five years when it has evolved to its new enviroment. Sheridan is convinced that another civilization somewhere in the galaxy had found a cure for the plague. So cue a 5-year mission to find it.

Babylon 5, Movie 5, Legend of the Rangers: To Live And Die In Starlight (2002) A Ranger ship loses a battle with raiders and the Minbari Grey Council is worried about a menacing new race. The leader of the Council and G'Kar are looking for information on the newcomers. David Martel, a human Ranger who is looking for something to believe in, is in danger of being chucked out for failing to sacrifice his weaponless ship needlessly after his captain was killed. G'Kar crashes a Grey Council meeting to point out the absurdity of expelling David for not dying pointlessly.
   David's Minbari rival, Tannier, gets a new ship – the Valen, David gets the Liandra, a cursed ship found adrift with a dead crew. David's Minbari 2nd in command, Dulann, is a sensitive and he sees ghosts of the previous crew. The Valen takes a group of ambassadors on a secret mission with Leandra as an escort. Raiders attack the Valen and destroy the colony that was its destination. The Valen rams the last raider on the scene as the Liandra collects ambassadors from their escape pods.
   G'Kar says information about the new race was found at an archaeological dig at the destroyed colony. There's a city 8 miles below the ground and a billion years old. It's people drove an enemy out of normal space and they're back and killing everything in sight. Liandra hides from raiders in a comet's tail. Ghosts of the crew tell Dulann someone sold them out and the same is happening again. An encrypted record on the ship says the same.
   David catches a traitor ambassador sending a message. Then Liandra flies into a minefield! David launches an escape pod containing the signalling device and a bomb to kill another raider. Liandra has no weapons left after another pounding. The traitor comes from a new addition to the Interstellar Alliance, who think the bad guys will leave them alone if they co-operate.
   David roughs up the traitor and he says the bad guys are The Hand (of God or Death), they've found a way back to normal space and the Shadows were like insects compared to them. Liandra reaches a jump gate, only to find a raider lurking there. "Surrender the ambassador or die," is the message. So David feeds them another exploding escape pod and they fall for it! Liandra makes it back to Minbar for repairs and at the end, G'Kar is dropped off at Babylon 5.

Back To The Future III (1990), the final part of the trilogy, sees Marty go back in time to 1885 to rescue Doc from being murdered. Marty meets some ancestors and he ends up calling himself Clint Eastwood and ripping off Clint's spaghetti Western ideas in a duel with the head bad guy. Lots of action and an absorbing story which holds the viewer's attention right through, even if he/she can recall only dimly what happened in parts I & II.

Bandits (2001) is an effective comedy in which Joe Blake, the action man, and Terry Collins, the thinker, bust out of gaol on impulse in a cement truck and start robbing banks with a stuntman as their getaway driver. Kate, a bored married woman, crashes into their lives and gets Joe and Terry competing for her affections, which screws everything up. But some devious media control, a slight change of M.O. and some of the stuntman's gadgets make everything okay again in the end.

Batman & Robin, the latest in the series of films about the Caped Crusader, turns out to be a cartoon story with none of the pretentious sub-text of the earlier films. The villains are Mr. Freeze, played by Big Arnie, who is weird and fun in a criminal sort of way and not totally bad [which seems to be in Arnie's contract]; and Poison Ivy, who is just plain daft.
Batgirl, Batperson or what ever she'll be called is another misfit, who fits right in to the team. Maybe, after a few more films, we'll end up with a whole crew of Bat-characters like the Misfits In Action crew of the now departed World Championship Wrestling.

Batman Forever (1995) Bruce Wayne meets Chase, a pushy broad with an action-woman complex, during a tussle with Two-Face. He then upsets his crazy employee Edward Nigna, who is working on a mind-control gadget. Two-Face kills most of the flying Graysons and Bruce Wayne gives a home to Dick, who cracks his secret, goes joyriding in the Batmobile and insists on becoming Batman's partner with killing Two-Face at the top of his agenda.
Meanwhile, the sacked Mr. Nigma has teamed up with bank-robber Two-Face to put free holographic TV set-top boxes in every home as a way of peering into everyone's mind, with Bruce Wayne's top of the list. Batman retires because he doesn't want to help Dick kill Two-Face. Two-Face and the newly created Riddler invade Wayne manor, kidnap Chase and destroy the Bat Cave.
But there's still a Batsuit left and Robin joins in. Batman scrags Two-Face but ends up his prisoner. Batman blows up the Riddler's mind-machine, the bad guys are vanquished and E. Nigma ends up in the looney bin thinking he's Batman.

The Beast (1996) is Jaws with a giant squid instead of a shark, more or less. We have the honest fisherman refusing to do illegal trap fishing, which is blamed for destroying the local fish stocks. The lack of fish also sets a giant squid looking for alternative food sources, such as shipwrecked humans and divers.
A battered bloke with an even more battered boat kills a giant squid but it turns out to be a baby. And we are expected to believe that Mom will take her revenge on any humans available. In the end, the bad and the pushy characters all get theirs, the hero and his girlfriend are rescued by a coast guard helicopter and the mommy squid is barbequed.

Belly Of The Beast (2003) A Steven Seagal epic. We open in Thailand in 1994, where Jake of the CIA is involved in a shoot-out and one of his team is shot along with a lot of others. Cut to Hawaii in the present day. Jake's older, fatter, his wife is dead and his daughter, Jessica, has just been kidnapped in Thailand with a senator's daughter, apparently by terrorists. Jake gets into a monumental scrap with criminals as soon as he arrives in Thailand.
   Another punch-up when he helps a hostess in a club while on the way to ask the owner for help. The guy who was shot in 1994 gives up being a monk to help Jake, who doesn't believe terrorists are behind the kidnapping (and he's right, of course). Big shoot-out when Jake crashes an arms deal. He has a gun that never needs reloading and he doesn't shoot the leader of the terrorists.
   The CIA saves Jake from the cops. Jessica's friend is almost raped and the hostess's room mate is killed. Jake's next target is wiped out, and he & the monk get into another big battle. Jake meets the bandit boss. He realizes the club owner was behind the kidnapping and takes out him and his lady-boy.
   The US president decides to send in the cavalry but Jake & the monk go after the girls. About 1 million bullets fired off. Jake takes out the Thai general who organized the kidnapping, the monk croaks of his injuries and the CIA arrives after the trouble is over.

Beverley Hills Cop II (1994) begins with Axel Foley's raid on a Detroit chop shop going horribly wrong. His boss is killed and the Feds get in his way when he tries to pursue the leader of the gang. Axel follows him to LA anyway, and meets Det. Rosewood again. The trail leads to Uncle Dave's Wonderworld theme park, where the bad guys are in charge of security.
Fun and games on the Spider ride, where Axel does an heroic rescue while escaping from the bad guys. Uncle Dave tells Axel that the guy who designed the theme park has disappeared. Axel causes a riot at an awards ceremony and the head bad guy so the Secret Service tells him to get out of town.
Axel won't quit, he finds out what the bad guys are up to and they try to frame him for shooting Uncle Dave. Axel and the bad guys do their best to turn Wonderworld into Junkworld, everyone but everyone is shot in the final battle but the good guys all survive.

Bionic Ever After? (1994) The $6M Man and the Bionic Woman are supposed to be getting married but Jamie's bionics start acting up as a gang of terrorists take over the US embassy in the Bahamas and install a nuclear-tipped missile. Jamie's bionics have been corrupted by a virus in a chip planted by Kimberley, the daughter of Dr. Wells' former partner, and she does the same to Steve Austin.
Dr. Wells repairs Jamie and she and Oscar Goldman go to see the partner's widow, and see a photograph of Kimberley. Jamie recognizes a patient and Oscar recognizes the woman who is now Austin's partner. Jamie goes to Nassau to save Austin's ass. The bad guys escape from the embassy with a prisoner under the cover of a fake radiation alert. But they don't get far when the bionic duo go after them. End with the wedding.

Black Dog (1998) features Patrick Sawyze as an ex-con who gets involved in delivering a truckload of illegal weapons to save the family home and Meatloaf as a Bible-quoting nutter, who supplies the weapons and then tries to hijack the load en route to New Jersey. Lots of big trucks battering one another amid shooting, murder and mayhem.
The FBI and ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco & Fuck-Ups in the opinion of the head FBI agent) know about the delivery and agents from the 2 agencies keep falling out in the background. The ex-con's employer kidnaps his wife and kid to make sure he delivers the guns and we have a dramatic confrontation at the docks with lots of shooting.
Curiously, the confrontation takes place at night but everyone knocks off and it's full daylight when the wounded are taken to hospital. And just when everything seems to be going all right for our hero; he's got his family back, his home is safe and his driving licence has been restored; Meatloaf comes roaring back for revenge.

Black Eagle (1988) John-Claude van Damme, the Mersels from Brussels is a bad guy! An American F-11 fighter with a top-secret laser sight is shot down and crashes off Malta. Ken Tani, code name Black Eagle, finds that the CIA has shipped his kids to Malta so he can work on recovering the sight while spending time with them. He drops in by parachute. The Mersels is on the crew of a Russian spy trawler.
Tani has a CIA priest as an assistant and a lady CIA agent looking after the kids at Valetta. Tani plays tag with the Russians and kills some of them. He has to zap more of them at his hotel and their leader lets him know that his cover is blown. The Russians recover the sight and plan to ship it out on their cargo ship Gorki. They figure that the Yanks might blow up a trawler but they won't sink the Gorki.
The Russians grab the 2 kids and their minder, one kid gets away and the police end up with him. Tani goes to the castle to rescue the other kid and the minder, and does some karate with the Mersels. Then he goes after the laser sight. He has another confrontation with the Mersels, who comes to a sticky end, and with the priest's help, he recovers the sight and blows up the ship. The police invite him to leave town and he heads off to a holiday with his kids in Rome.

Blackjack (1998) A mobster threatens Casey, a casino owner's daughter, for a piece of the action, so he calls in Jack (Dolph Lundgren), who used to be in the Secret Service. Jack gets into a punch-up on arrival. The bad guys return to shoot up his pal's home and Jack ends up with a phobia about the colour white after a flash grenade goes off. His shrink tells him that most phobias can be cured and keep wearing the dark glasses.
   A sniper takes a shot at the model Cinder on the catwalk at a fashion show. Casey is dumped on 'Uncle Jack' after her parents are killed. Cinder is in line for a $6 million contract and she has a million bodyguards. Their boss used to work with Jack in the Secret Service. He calls Jack in just before he takes a bullet for Cinder. Jack has to confiscate her pills and rescue her from the rail of a balcony.
   Jack hides Cinder in a motel, she blows their security and they bug out into an ambush. Jack follows the killer into a dairy, loses his glasses in all that whiteness and gets beaten up, but the rest of the team saves his ass. Jack confiscates Cinder's new supply of pills and sets his shrink on her.
   The stalker is Rory, Cinder's ex-husband. Jack and his batman walk into a trap; but get away. Jack is fired but he stays on the job. He wastes a dozen chances to shoot the stalker at another fashion show. Rory strolls off with Cinder and a fancy diamond necklace, but Jack overcomes his phobia and takes Rory out.

Black Knight (2001) Jamal, who's working for an entertainment park (think Eddie Murphy without all the effing and blinding), is hurled back to 1328. But he thinks he's in Castle World, a rival attraction which is about to open nearby. The locals assume he's a messenger from Normandy as they're expecting the duke. Jamal gets to see an execution, and he realized he's not in 2001.
Victoria, whom he fancies, thinks he's part of a plan to kill the king. Jamal tells the king he's the duke's jester as well as a messenger, so cut a lot of business. He foils an assassination attempt by accident and gets the castle security job instead of the stroppy Percy. He is sentenced to death for screwing the king's daughter but he persuades everyone that he is a sorcerer and the rebels rescue him.
The rebel camp is raided, Jamal tells the others to fight on and the queen reveals herself. A big battle at the castle and the Black Knight arrives; but Jamal makes a total prat of himself. Percy chucks the king in the moat but he ends up dead and everything is okay. Then Jamal finds himself back in 2001 briefly; until he suddenly finds himself in the Colosseum with the lions about to be released.

The Black Mask (1996) is something we've not seen for a long time – a dubbed film. This one is made in Chinese but it doesn't look too strange on digital TV, where the sound sometimes becomes separated from the picture and one can hear the thud of a fallen object before seeing it hit a solid surface. The plot concerns a group of soldiers whose nervous systems have been removed so that they can't feel pain!
Their leader wants to wipe out all of the drug barons in Hong Kong(?) and do a deal with the Colombians. One of the soldiers doesn't go along with this and there is lots of martial arts mayhem and people not being fazed by being shot or stabbed in the heart with a tube (to let the blood gush).

Blade II (2002) A derelict sheduled for complete draining kills the staff of a bloodbank in Prague. Meanwhile, Blade, a Daywalker who can hold the Thirst at bay, is hunting his mentor, Walker, who's been kidnapped and turned by vampires. Blade finds him in a stasis tank, rescues him and makes him human again.
   Vampires penetrate his HQ but they have a message from Lord Eli. There's a mutant vampire, who's spreading his version of their virus and threatening to wipe out vampires then the human race. Blade is teamed up with the Blood Pack, which includes Lisa, Lord Eli's Pureblood daughter.
   A battle in a vampire club shows Blade that the mutants are immune to silver & garlic, but not UV light, so Blade wants to take them on in during the day. Blade's assistant comes up with UV grenades and everyone heads for the sewers. Billions of mutants are wiped out. The vampires turn on Blade when they think the war is won.
   Shock, horror! The mutants didn't evolve, they were created by Lord Eli, who botched the job, and Blade's assistant betrayed him. Lord Eli tries to have Blade harvested to find out why he's a Daywalker but Walker saves him as mutant's attack Lord Eli's stronghold.
   The original mutant kills Lord Eli and battles Blade, but he's fried after biting Lisa. So Blade lets her see the sunrise before she can turn into a mutant.

Blade Trinity (2004) An expedition woke up something nasty in the Syrian desert and Blade was seeing off vampires again. But he was bamboozled into killing a human, which set the FBI on his trail. A bunch of vampires had the creature from Syria stashed; they wanted it to kill Blade.
   The Feds did a knocking job on Blade on TV as a young woman was taking out street-punk vamps, just like Blade. The Feds busted Blade's HQ, Whistler blew it up and Blade ended up in a cell at the mercy of a shrink who was a vampire familiar. Blade was rescued, only to end up in a 3-way scrap as his rescue force battled cops/Feds and the vampires sent to grab Blade.
   The rescue force was led by Abi, Whistler's daughter, and a guy called Hannibal, and the Syrian revived by the vampires was Dracula! The new gang were working on a biological weapon to wipe out vampires and they wanted some of Dracula's blood for the untainted DNA.
   Blade got to chase Dracula, who told him the vampires hoped he could turn them into Daywalkers. The police chief was another vampire familiar. He ended up dead after showing Blade a huge vampire blood farm, which Blade destroyed. Triple H and other vampires trashed the new gang's HQ and kidnapped Hannibal and Zoe, Abi's niece. Blade was told that the Daystar virus could kill him, too.
   Blade battled Dracula while Hannibal battled Triple H, Dracula turned into Draczilla but a dose of the virus fixed his wagon. All of the vampires in the building, but not Blade, were taken out. Then the Feds arrived in force to sweep up the vampire ashes.

Blazing Saddles (1974) is as old as the hills now but it is a well worth watching again. In these politically correct days, you wouldn't get away with calling a black sheriff a 'nigger' once, and hearing it all through the film comes as something of a surprise. Still, lots of laughs and anarchy, and the movie framework itself is too small for the action, which bursts out of the film studios at the end. Classic comedy from Mel Brooks & Gene Wilder.

The Big Easy (1988) 2 a.m. in New Orleans and the cops have dead meat; Freddy, a wiseguy scumbag, dumped to send a message. Lt. Remy McSwain is visited by a blonde from the DA's office, Anne Osbourne, who's investigating police corruption, which is rife. More bodies and the rumour is that cops did the killings. Carmine the wiseguy is McSwain's prime suspect.
   IAD sets up Lt. Remy for running a protection racket; the Captain was the real target of the sting. Remy's lawyer tells him to do a deal, but he doesn't want to go to gaol. He calls in a favour and gets someone to park a big magnet in the police property story next to the incriminating videotape. Case collapsed.
   Carmine's warehouse blows up with him inside. Is it a drug war? Annie is kidnapped and dragged to Remy's Cajun celebration party. More bodies floating in the river. Remy tells the Captain to take him out of the 'Widows' & Orphans' Fund'. The killings are over 20-30 kilos of heroin. A mobster tells Annie there's no drug war going on just before he's whacked by someone in an unmarked police car.
   Ms. Orbourne busts the police department and finds the car. Remy's brother is shot while wearing Remy's raincoat. The Captain, who wants to marry Remy's mom, tells him he wants to go out a winner. Remy admits to Annie that he's corrupt. The Captain is shot by his confederates when he tries to get rid of the dope, Remy shoots them and he ends up in the clear and married to Annie.

Blind Fury (1989) Rutger Hauer stars as Nick Parker, a US soldier who is blinded in Vietnam and adopted by a village, where he learns Samurai swordplay. 20 years later, he's in Miami to look up army buddy Frank, who's in Reno being dangled out of a window to persuade him to make designer drugs for a casino boss. One of the gangster's men and 2 corrupt cops arrive to collect Frank's kid (Billy), Frank's ex-wife ends up dead and Parker splits with the kid.
   Billy is a real pain in the butt! He's grabbed while running away from Parker in a cornfield but rescued. The Head Bad Guy needs the drug money to keep his casino afloat. Parker gets the kid to Frank's place in Reno only to be captured with Annie, who works at the casino. She changes sides when Parker & the kid escape, and Parker ends up driving a stolen van through Reno when he breaks Annie's glasses.
   Parker causes a riot in the casino when he proves the roulette wheels are rigged. Then he goes up to the penthouse to rescue Frank, the guy who left him in the lurch in 'Nam. Frank torches the lab but escapes with a box of blue drug.
   Frank does a runner again when they are ambushed while trying to rescue the kid & Annie. But he fuses the lights to help Parker fight the bad guys. The HBG's deal falls through, Parker gets to fight a Japanese swordsman, all the bad guys are vanquished, and the film closes with a Shane moment.

Blind Horizon (2004) A bloke is found in the New Mexico desert and he's taken to hospital, shot & in a coma. The cigarette smoke of Liz, his nurse, triggers some memories of being left for dead and the bloke wakes up with amnesia.
   4 Days to Rhombus The president is the the south-west of the USA but he's not due to visit this area. The sheriff finds John Doe's hotel room and a Chloe Richards, who's his fiancée. Frank Cavanaugh works for the IRS but he doesn't remember Chloe. He calls the Secret Service to warn them about a threat to the president but he can't provide any details.
   3 Days to Rhombus Frank has a card with the word 'Rhombus' on it and a pager number. He is discharged from hospital. A journalist who wrote a story about him buzzes Frank in a bar. Frank finds a key taped under his phone in the hotel room. He has a confusing meeting in a cinema, he acquires a card with a website address and he's beaten up.
   1 Day to Rhombus A guy crashes a tanker rig to divert the president to the town where Frank is. Liz finds the card and ends up looking at a Swiss bank account with a balance of 5,000,000.00 and the chance to transfer the cash. Then she tells Frank she's leaving town and invites him to join her.
   Frank follows the reporter but learns that all he's up to is proving that the deputy sheriff is being paid off by a Mexican people smuggler. A body turns up in the desert. The sheriff learns that Chloe is a fake. Frank finds an FBI ID. He's one of a team of 3 assassins. The lady who hired him admits using him to find the rest of his team when the hit was called off. She ends up dead, as does Chloe. Frank takes out a sniper before he can plug the president and takes off with Liz.

Blood Simple (1983) [21:00, Turner Classic Movies] is billed as a stylish thriller. A bar owner hires a private eye to spy on his wife and Ray, an employee who is also her lover. When hired to kill them, the PI fakes pictures of the couples dead and shoots the bloke, after he's been paid, with the wife's gun.
Ray goes to the bar, finds the gun and buries the bloke alive, assuming the wife shot him. But she has no idea what he's talking about when Ray says he's cleaned up the mess. Another employee accuses Ray of stealing money from the safe. Ray opens the safe and finds the PI's photo. He stalks the couple and shoots Ray, but he misses the wife. And when he goes after her, it's the PI who is shot.

Blue Thunder (1983, Roy Scheider) "Where the hell's Murphy?" The hotshot, maverick L.A. police pilot gets a new sidekick as a member of the mayor's team on violence is killed. Murphy realizes a cover-up is going on when the cops keep going on about a non-existent rape. He is grounded and he's up for a psych evaluation as he gets flashbacks to Vietnam.
   The commissioner dies and Murphy finds a document at the crime scene, which the police team missed. Murphy is put on a special detail to fly a new helicopter prototype; it's to stop a Munich-style massacre at the L.A. Olympics. But there's also a hidden agenda to stir up trouble in the Hispanic community so that the chopper can be used on them.
   Murphy has to work with Col. Cochrane, who tried to get him court martialled in Vietnam. He makes Murphy have a helicopter crash. Murphy records him talking about the attack on the commissioner and promising to kill Murphy. Murphy's sidekick is killed and Murphy is blamed.
   Murphy strolls off with Blue Thunder and sends his recording to the TV news via his girlfriend. He gets into an aerial battle with first a pair of F16s then Cochrane, and L.A. gets it big-time! Cochrane is wiped out, Murphy parks the $5M chopper in front of a train and the bad guys are exposed on the TV news and busted.

Boa Vs Python (2004) This is a thoroughly daft comedy "creature feature". Mr. Broddick imports a huge python from S.E. Asia, planning to assemble a bunch of paying customers to hunt it. Only it escapes in Pennsylvania and invades the Philadelphia water & power plant, where it snacks on a couple of workers. The local police find the abandoned python transporter and Agent Sharp of the CIA takes Monica, a tracking expert to see Dr. Emmett, a snake expert [a.k.a. Dr. McKay of Stargate Atlantis]
Emmett has a giant boa constrictor (which is red to distinguish it from the green python), to which Monica fits a tracking device while Broddick gets his hunt going. The boa is released into the water plant's tunnels. The tracking gear works only some of the time. Boa and python get to mating. Agent Sharp is blown away by the hunters and the boa starts laying eggs.
Broddick's girlfriend is crushed after she breaks an egg. Broddick is busted by the army. The python is eating the eggs. Broddick steals a troop transporter and goes on the rampage with his flame-thrower when the python invaded a rave-up and eats the D.J. Monica is almost eaten. Broddick is eaten. The snakes do battle in the U-Bahn. The python loses its head and Betty the Boa escapes.

The Bone Collector (1999) has a quadriplegic crime scene investigator (black) recruiting a black female beat cop to do the on-the-spot work as he pursues a demented serial killer from his bed. Unlikely? You bet! Amelia chokes when the expert tells her to cut a dead woman's hands off to preserve fingerprints on handcuffs. The captain takes personal control of the case and sacks the expert; only to make a fool of himself. The killer is leaving coded messages at the crime scenes and he is working through the killings at a turn of the century (19th/20th) book called The Bone Collector. His excuse is that the expert's testimony ruined his career and the killer's final target is – the expert!

Bone Daddy (1998) features Rutger Hauer as a former medical examiner, who turns the unsolved case of a serial killer into a dire but best-selling work of fiction called Bone Daddy, only to set the killer killing again. His literary agent becomes the next victim and his son is also scheduled for the chop at the final confontation after the killer is unmasked by clever forensic work.

The Bourne Identity (2002) A man shot twice in the back is hauled out of the sea by a fishing boat's crew. A doctor removes his bullets and finds a laser gadget under the skin of his hip. It projects the details of a Jason Bourne's Swiss bank account. The man with the implant doesn't know if it's his because he has amnesia. Meanwhile, a CIA agent reports the failure of a mission to his boss.
   The Geneva police roust Bourne while he's kipping on a park bench and he sorts them out. Meanwhile, a deposed African dictator is accusing the CIA of trying to kill him while trying to blackmail the CIA into returning him to power so that he doesn't name names and spill the beans on what they've been up to in a book. So Bourne's boss is in the doghouse for failing to kill Mr. Wambosi.
   Bourne goes to the deposit vault and finds his passport, lots of cash, a gun and a whole bunch of other passports in other names. He takes refuge in the American embassy with the cops after him, and gets into a fight with Security. Bourne wanders around on the outside of the building then buys a ride to Paris for $20K from Maria, a stroppy woman who was raising hell in the embassy over the uselessness of the staff.
   Bourne has a palatial apartment in Paris. One of his alternative identities, Kane, was killed in a car crash 2 weeks earlier. An armed intruder attacks Bourne at the apartment then dives out of the window, leaving behind a leaflet with pictures of Bourne & Marie. There's a car chase with the cops, some of it wrong-way driving, and Marie gets a new haircut.
   Wambosi looks at the 'Kane' body in the morgue and decides it's not the right bloke. Then a sniper takes him out. The CIA think Bourne did the job and he'll return to the fold having completed his mission (not knowing about his amnesia). Bourne and Marie go on the run. Bourne survives a shoot-out with another free-lance and ditches Marie with a big bag of cash. Then he uses the dead guy's phone to call the CIA. They turn up mob-handed to a meeting so Bourne invades their base, which is being closed down.
   There, he learns that he's a malfunctioning $30 million agent who's supposed to be invisible. He wasn't sent to kill Wambosi directly, he was supposed to make it look like an assassination by one of Wabosi's organization. Bourne starts remembering the mission and he quits the CIA with violence. The man in charge of his project is whacked by the CIA as part of the tidying up process. Finally, Bourne tracks down Marie.

The Bourne Supremacy (2004) is a sequel to the Identity. Jason Bourne starts remembering bits of a mission after 2 years. A CIA operation in Berlin goes pear-shaped and the Russians are up to no good. Bourne spots a Russian assassin looking for him in India and his girlfriend is killed when their Jeep takes a dive off a bridge after a car chase.
    The Russians planted Bourne's fingerprint in Germany and Agent Pamela Landry of the CIA finds that Bourne's records are blocked with those of the Treadstone Project, a black on black assassination bureau. The CIA is looking for $20 million, which vanished during a wire transfer. Landry and Ward Abbott (who used to run Treadstone) are told to take Bourne out.
   Bourne fights his way from Naples to Munich to Berlin, where he tells Landry he wants to come in. She sends Nicky, whom he used to know in Amsterdam, to collect him. He tells her he was in India, 4,000 miles away, when Landry's operation in Berlin flopped. Bourne remembers being in Berlin but Nicky tells him Treadstone never sent him there.
   A CIA tech proves Bourne didn't sabotage the operation so Abbott kills him. He and a Russian used the stolen CIA cash to buy Russian oil leases, and the wheels are starting to come off their scam. Bourne shoves a gun against Abbott's head until he has recorded a confession, which he sends to Landry. She plays it after Abbott kills himself.
   Bourne goes to Moscow next. Police assassins chase him to a huge pile up in a tunnel and the Russian crook is busted. Then apologizes to the daughter of the Russian MP Neskii, whom he killed for Treadstone 2 years before. The MP's wife was framed for murder/suicide by Abbott. Bourne then phones Landry, who tells him his real name.

Brainstorm (1983) is about a virtual reality system, which records everything from all 5 senses and gives someone replaying the tape the same experience as the person who recorded the tape. Lillian, the female on the team, doesn't want the company to let the military have the system, but she has a heart attack and records herself croaking. Michael, her co-worker, replays the tape, finds himself replaying Lillian's memories and ends up in hospital.
His boss locks the tape away and boots Michael off the project. So he hacks into the company's computer, watched by the staff, and finds his invention is being perverted by the US government for brainwashing. Then his stupid kid experiences a tape of someone having a psychotic episode and ends up in hospital. Michael sabotages an automatic factory and hacks into the system again. And then he replays the whole of Lillian's tape and doesn't croak himself. A somewhat pointless film.

Breed, The (2001) Two cops in a future totalitarian society fall foul of a super-strong vampire and the NSA tells the survivor, Grant, that there are some 4,000 vampires world-wide. Vampires are a mutated super-breed, they made contact the year before and they no longer need human blood. Grant is teamed with Gray, a vampire cop, who wants to catch the renegade, who is a member of a militant group which is trying to disrupt human-vampire relations.
The humans have a virus that acts like ebola on vampires. Grant gets to see vampire society and get personal with a rather Oriental looking Lucy Westenra vampire. There's a dramatic but rather pointless shoot-out involving human storm troopers, vampire refugees and the vampires who are helping them to go into hiding to tie in with Gray's flashbacks to being persecuted by the Nazis in his native Poland. The vampires get to prove they're stronger than humans and they can float about in mid-air while shooting off their guns.
Grant might have been infected with all the vampire blood flying around. Some of the vampires are going into hiding and the rest are getting ready to fight the humans, so Dr. Seward decides to release the virus. But Grant learns that it kills humans but vampires recover from it. And Dr. Fleming, the creator of the virus, thinks he's going to be made into a vampire. Wrong! All he gets is his throat cut. But an internally applied hand grenade, and an exploding boss vampire, solves all problems. Grant isn't infected, after all, and he ends up with Lucy.

Broken Arrow (1996) Boxing buddies Captain Hale & Major Deacon have to fly a mission in a stealth bomber loaded with 2 nukes as a test of US detection systems. Only Deacon is planning to hand the nukes over to some bad guys. He makes Hale eject, blames him for the crash, dumps the nukes and ejects himself. Hale is found in the Utah desert by a female park ranger, who tries to arrest him.
   The Defense Department's initial reaction is to lie about a stealth bomber crashing but Mr. Prentice, a smart guy, tells them they'll never get away with it. Deacon meets the bad guys, who complain that the nukes are in the wrong place. Deacon & Co. bamboozle the US Military into thinking the bombs have split open. Then they shoot up the ranger's truck.
   Hale shoots down their helicopter, almost writing the ranger off. Prentice realizes there was no accidental crash but he assumes Hale plans to ransom the nukes. Hale and the ranger manage to capture the Hummer carrying the nukes and take them into a mine. Deacon catches up with them, removes one nuke and leaves Hale & the ranger to be blown up by the other one.
   Hale & the ranger escape and the nuke goes off safely underground. The ranger is kidnapped and she ends up on a train with Deacon & Co. and the remaining nuke. By now, Deacon has disposed of his client and he's following his own plan; which is to blow up Denver, not Salt Lake City, Hale deduces.
   Lots of shooting, lots of fighting. Hale boards the train from a helicopter, he sabotages Deacon's helicopter on the train and he boxes Deacon for the nuke's remote control. Deacon dies horribly, Hale & the ranger get off the train and there is a huge train wreck. Which the nuke survives.

Bugs (2003) A cop chases a suspect into a tunnel, and is killed horribly and torn apart. An insect-like digestive enzyme is found on the body and a female expert decides the cop was eaten by a huge insect. VIPs board a train for a 'half-way' party; the tunnel project now goes 18 miles through a mountain and 2 miles deep. The boss of the company building the tunnel, who isn't on the train, doesn't believe there's anything big down there; but he has to change his mind when giant bugs invade the train and kill everyone aboard.
   A SWAT team, plus the female expert, goes in to sort the bugs out, and starts taking casualties when a whole swarm of big bugs attacks. The mouth of the tunnel is sealed off and they have to find their own way out. They stop their train at a station to try to change a set of points and the bugs attack again. The 'expert' decides the insects are 65 million years old and from the Carboniferous Period (315,000,000 BC to 280,000,000 BC), so she's out by only about 200-250 million years.
   The survivors have to change the points manually to reach a staging area for equipment, which lies off the main line. They also erect an electrified fence, which is powered by the dwindling fuel cell on the train. The expert finds some dead bugs and concludes they were trying to moult and change into another form.
   The big boss shows up at the staging area, which contains dynamite, which the team plans to use to blow up the tunnel. He offers the 4 survivors $20 million apiece if they don't blow up the multi-billion-dollar tunnel and let him send in some expendable exterminators to try to take care of the bugs. Some of the bugs have developed into a flying form, and they get the boss when he tries to lock the team in and escape by helicopter.
   The engineer chooses to blow himself up with the train, a SWAT guy who went mad dies battling a flying bug and the SWAT leader and the expert escape after another flying bug is fried when the big bang goes off.

Bulletproof Monk (2003) Tibet 1943: A monk completes his training and he gets the job of protecting a scroll with a message, for which the world is not yet ready. Meanwhile, the Nazis are closing in, they kill everyone and the monk goes off a cliff. 60 years later, in the USA, the monk and a thief combine to save a kid's life in the subway. The thief strolls off with the scroll and he's nabbed by a gang which thinks it has the local crime franchise. Jade, the head bad guy's girlfriend, looks a lot like Dr. Cameron in House MD.
   The monk gets the scroll back and decides that Kar, the thief, could be his successor. So the monk moves in with him. Meanwhile, the Nazis are running a human rights organization as a scam and the guy from Tibet in 1943 thinks the scroll will rejuvenate him; and the local monks think they've found a successor to Bulletproof.
   The Nazis crash a training session and gets the scroll; which turns out to be a recipe for noodle soup. Mr. Fujima gets it but Kar and the monk escape to Jade's place. Her gaolbird father is the head of the Russian Mafia. The Nazis grab the monk, who has the text of the scroll tattoo'd on his body. Jade & Kar infiltrate the human rights organization's HQ.
   The Nazi rejuvenates but finds the last verse is in the monk's memory. Lots of ultra-violence, the Nazi is fried and having fulfilled 3 prophecies, Kar gets the monk's job and the tattoos. The Nazi returns to shoot Jade but he's crushed by a statue as the cops arrive. Jade isn't dead, however, and she become co-guardian of the message.