April Webster Movies

The lines between science fiction and reality blur as J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman, the team behind Star Trek and Alias, regroup to craft this mind-bending series that begins as an international flight lands at Boston's Logan Airport with everyone of the passengers and crew members brutally murdered. When FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) and her partner Special Agent John Scott (Mark Valley) are called in to investigate, a mysterious, near fatal mishap prompts Special Agent Dunham to seek out the assistance of famed genius Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble). Dr. Bishop has a reputation as our generation's Einstein, but due to the fact that he's been institutionalized for the past twenty years, the only way of contacting him is by going through his estranged son Peter (Joshua Jackson). Later, Special Agent Dunham's investigation leads her into the lair of unscrupulous corporate schemer Nina Sharp (Blair Brown, who may hold the key that reveals the incident on Flight 627 as a small piece in a much larger, and frighteningly sinister, conspiracy. Only with the assistance of fellow FBI agents Phillip Broyles (Lance Reddick), Charlie Francis (Kirk Acevedo), and Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) will Agent Dunham and her partner have any hope of uncovering the twisted truth behind the crime that seemed too strange to be true. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The third entry in Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible film series involves super Impossible Mission Forces (IMF) agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) being forced back into the field just when he was planning on marrying his girlfriend, Julia (Michelle Monaghan). The agency asks Hunt to save an operative (Keri Russell) he trained after weapons dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) kidnaps her. With the help of his field team -- played by Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, and Maggie Q -- Hunt achieves his goal, but becomes involved in a web of double-crosses that leave him wondering if he can trust his superiors (Billy Crudup and Laurence Fishburne). Eventually Davian threatens Julia's life in order to get away with his evil plan. Simon Pegg appears as an IMF tech expert. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

The runaway hit of ABC's 2004-2005 TV season, the weekly, hour-long drama series Lost began at a point that in any other case may have been an ending: a passenger jet was torn apart in mid-air, crashing on an uncharted Pacific Island. Stripped of all vestiges of the civilized world, the 48 survivors were forced to fend for themselves in their new tropical surroundings, which departed from the "norm" for similar castaway dramas by boasting a bizarre and frequently incomprehensible topography, not to mention a most unusual variety of wildlife -- include at least one polar bear! Among the principal survivors were Dr. Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox); fugitive Kate Ryan (Evangeline Lilly); has-been rock star Charlie Pace (Dominic Monaghan); the reclusive and mysterious John Locke (Terry O'Quinn); hot-tempered and self-serving James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway); chauvinistic Korean husband Jin Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim) and his much-put-upon wife, Sun (Yunjin Kim); resourceful former Iraqi Republican Guard Sayid (Naveen Andrews); estranged siblings Shannon Rutherford and Boone Carlisle (Maggie Grace, Ian Somerhalder) -- she's a bitch, he's a control freak; dad Michael Dawson (Harold Perrineau) and his sullen young son, Walt (Malcolm David Kelley); roly-poly comic relief Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia); and very pregnant Aussie Claire Littleton (Emilie de Raven). Forced to rely upon one another to stay alive, this diverse group shares a number of sinister secrets and oft-unsavory interrelationships, with the truth behind each character revealed piecemeal via flashbacks and little-unexpected twists of plot. Adding to the suspense, at least during the series' first season, was the apparent presence of a person not on the passenger list, who seemed determined to bump off the hapless castaways one by one, and a mysterious, terrifying yet unseen monster-like creature. Co-created by J.J. Abrams of Alias and Felicity fame, Lost debuted on September 22, 2004. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Created by Anthony Zuiker, the CBS cop series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which first aired on October 6, 2000, could be described as "Quincy for the 21st century." Set in Las Vegas, the weekly, 60-minute series focused on the activities of that city's Crime Scene Investigations Bureau. Working the overnight shift, the principal characters deployed state-of-the-art forensic technology to solve unsolvable crimes. Whenever scientific analysis failed, however, the lab's "criminalists" relied upon good, old-fashioned logic -- logical to them, if not to their superiors. So efficient was the CSI team that it was rated the number two such crime lab in America. The series' main protagonist was Gil Grissom (William L. Petersen), once the youngest coroner in the history of the L.A. police department, who after 15 years with the Vegas PD, was put in charge of the crime lab when its former skipper, the mercurial Captain Jim Brass (Paul Guilfoyle), was transferred back to the homicide division. Grissom's elite ensemble included his second-in-command, onetime exotic dancer Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger), who juggled her professional responsibilities with her home duties as a single mother; ex-grave digger Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan), the only member of the team who was born in Vegas and, as such, the most savvy member when it came to the ins and outs of the casino industry that figured so largely in the proceedings; Warrick's friendly rival, the warm and outgoing Nick Stokes (George Eads), late of the Dallas PD; and the brilliant but somewhat distant Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox), who was initially brought in from San Francisco to investigate the murder of her predecessor, rookie criminalist Holly Gribbs (a case that had lost Captain Brass his position as head of the lab). Each of these worthies brought a distinct specialty to their work: Willows was a blood-splatter analyst, Brown an audio-visual expert, Stokes a hair-and-fiber specialist, and Sidle a materials-and-element analyst.

The criminalists generally worked in sub-teams to investigate the myriad of baffling cases which came across their desk in each episode (usually two crimes were depicted and solved per week). During the series' first three seasons on the air, there were no significant cast changes, though former recurring characters Greg Sanders (Eric Szmanda) and Dr. David Robbins (Robert David Hall) were gradually elevated to weekly-regular status. In many ways, however, there was an unbilled "major character" in the form of the series' fluid camerawork, deploying quickie montages, juxtaposed images, and dreamlike scene transitions -- all complemented by a driving but low-key background music score. Cinematographers like Michael Barrett and Frank Byers and editors like Alex Mackie and Alec Smight were as responsible for the "look" of CSI as were the series' producers, directors, and stars. As of 2002, the highly rated series had been nominated for a myriad of Emmy Awards, scoring one win for makeup artists Nicholas Pagliaro, John Goodwin, and Melanie Levitt. 2002 was also the year that the producers cooked up a spin-off series, CSI: Miami. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This lucrative, elephantine-budgeted sci-fi opus paved the way for director Roland Emmerich's mega-hit Independence Day (1996). The story commences in Giza, Egypt, circa 1928, where an archaeological expedition unearths an ancient ring with cryptic hieroglyphs. The film then moves to the present day, where Egyptologist Daniel Jackson (James Spader) is busily trying to convince a group of skeptics that the pyramids were not built by man, but by an extraterrestrial force. After the lecture, a military man approaches him and offers him a job translating the said ring; its inscriptions actually constitute a map to a massive stargate (or interstellar portal). The army sends over resident crackpot colonel Jack O'Neill (Kurt Russell) to travel through the stargate and see what's on the other side; Jackson accompanies him, and the two men turn up in a desert planet on the other side of the universe, with three moons in its sky. The world in question is ruled by Ra (Jaye Davidson), a hermaphroditic Egyptian sun god, who oppresses hordes of slave workers. Jackson and O'Neill then join forces to help the said workers revolt against their oppressor. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In this made-for-TV movie, the well-known DC comic book character the Flash must use his super-human abilities to stop the Dark Riders, an evil motorcycle gang who caused the death of his brother and now threatens to take over Central City. A TV series of the same name resulted from this pilot film. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Superlative photography by Vilimos Zsigismond highlights the family-oriented outdoor drama Journey to Spirit Island. Set in the Pacific Northwest, the films stars Bettina as Maria, a teenaged Native American girl. When her grandmother organizes a protest against defiling their ancestors' sacred burial ground, Maria takes up the cudgel. The villains are the requisite Evil Land Developers, who seek to transform Spirit Island into a vacation resort. The producer of Journey to Spirit Island was Bruce Clark, previously the director of such on-location fare as Hammer (1972) and Ski Bum (1975). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Alan Parker and writer Bo Goldman chronicle the emotional disintegration of an unhappy marriage. Albert Finney and Diane Keaton play George and Faith Dunlap, a seemingly happily married couple living with their four daughters in a converted farmhouse in Marin County, California. George is inwardly empty and decides to have an affair with Sandy (Karen Allen), who has doubts about how long their affair will last. Faith is also suffering from ennui and takes up with Frank Henderson (Peter Weller), the contractor for the Dunlap's tennis court. Frank, after discovering about Faith's affair, is in a confused state: he wants to leave and live with Sandy but doesn't want his wife to date other men and demands the love of his daughters -- all of whom now detest him. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide