Lorna Lesley Movies

A couple looking for adventure and romance get a lot more than they bargained for in this made-for-TV drama based on a novel by Louis L'Amour. It's 1955, and John and Helen Lacklan (Keith Carradine and Paris Jefferson) are two scientists who've been working for the United States government as part of the nuclear weapons development program. They're also man and wife, and when John wed Helen, he gave her a ring without a stone, promising to someday find the diamond that she deserved. Needing a vacation, the Lacklans travel to Borneo, hoping to find a diamond while getting away from it all. Needing a guide, the Lacklans hire Mike Kardec (Billy Zane), an American expatriate who knows the jungles of Borneo and has done some diamond hunting himself. Mike soon finds he's strongly attracted to Helen, and Helen is equally drawn to Mike; it doesn't take long for John to see what's happening, and he angrily fires Kardec, hiring instead a native boy who claims to know where diamonds can be found. However, what John doesn't know is, the boy is a member of the Dyak tribe, whose leader Jeru (Piripi Waretini) has been responsible for the disappearance of a number of visitors; when Mike gets word of this, he sets out to find the Lacklans before it's too late. The Diamond of Jeru also stars Jackson Raine and Peter Carroll. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Alan Cassell and Justine Clarke star in this drama following Alice and Mick, a pair of runaway teens who find themselves lost in the desert when their road trip doesn't go the way they had anticipated. Meanwhile, Alice's father nearly loses his life in his attempt to find her, prompting Alice to reevaluate her feelings toward him. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

The Chain Reaction is an Australian-made drama about a nuclear accident and its effect on the workers of the plant. Oates (Patrick Ward) knows of the accident and the eventual effects it will have on the workers and the surrounding community, and he tries to tell them but the owners of the reactor try to have him eliminated before he can do so. The cast includes Mel Gibson in an uncredited role as a mechanic. Also released as Nuclear Run, this thriller, with an intelligent script by Ian Barry, is worth a view. ~ Linda Rasmussen, Rovi

Set between the years 1949 and 1956, Newsfront tracks the destinies of two brothers, their adventures and misadventures placed in the context of sweeping social and political changes in their native Australia. Both of the protagonists are newsreel photographers. Frank (Gerard Maguire) is constitutionally resistant to change, while Len (Bill Kennedy) welcomes any alterations in his own life and in the world around him. The film fluctuates between black and white and color, between actual news footage and reconstructed events. Newsfront is what The Way We Were might have looked like on a tiny budget with a cast of unknowns. The film represented a laudable feature-film directorial debut for one-time documentary filmmaker Philip Noyce. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi