TITLE & REVIEW

Against A Crooked Sky (1975)

This starts with a voiceover narration, about an ancient civilisation and the three Native American horsemen that it produced. After some spectacular scene-setting footage, we switch to the 1800s where a white pioneer family are settling the Wild West. When his elder sister is abducted by the horsemen, the young boy sets out to rescue her. He is helped by an old prospector who wants the golden treasure of the lost civilisation.

The explorers discover that the Native American tribe live in a secret valley. However, when they are inevitably captured the boy must face a challenge to save his sister's life. The good news is that the Native American princess is Ashkea ( Brenda Venus ), best known as George in The Eiger Sanction (1975).

The less said about the ending the better. All that can be said without spoilers is that this is a 1970s movie that seems to have been adapted for a younger audience.

Congo (1995)

Charlie (Bruce Campbell - Evil Dead ) leads a team of explorers into the African jungle. They find some ancient ruins, and a deposit of priceless blue diamonds. Unfortunately, before they can report everything to HQ they are attacked by an unknown monster.

Laura Linney is Charlie's ex-lover, and the ex-CIA trouble-shooter at his company. This gives her two good reasons to go looking for him. However, when her boss (Joe Don Baker - Goldeneye ), who is also Charlie's dad, orders her to go looking then she gets upset. His good business sense, which is to protect the jobs for FORTY THOUSAND employees, is deemed to be selfish and wrong.

Nearby, the nice-guy Doctor from Nip/Tuck has a friendly gorilla named Amy. He has taught her sign-language, and a thanks to a sci-fi device her signs are verbalised. Yes, this movie is more accessible to the low-brow audience because it avoided the necessity of subtitles. However, Amy's face may be well-crafted for animatronics courtesy of Stan Winston but it is nowhere as expressive as that of a real gorilla. As a result she runs the risk of breaching suspension of disbelief.

The Doctor and his sidekick (Grant Heslov - True Lies ) want to take Amy the gorrilla back to her birthplace in the jungle. Luckily they meet Herman Homulka (Tim Curry - Rocky Horror Picture Show ), who offers to pay for their expedition. Laura catches a ride with them to Africa. After all, it helps to have a massive corporation covering your expenses.

In Africa they meet up with their guide, Munroe (Ernie Hudson - Ghostbusters ). The expedition proceed by truck, while Munroe's sidekick Eddie (Joe Pantoliano - Matrix ) and the luggage hop ahead by DC-3. This may seem overly complicated, but it allows them to have a run-in with the local military commander (Delroy Lindo - The Core ).

As always in a modern Hollywood movie, there is a nod to racial politics. The colonel says that westerners care more about gorillas than they do about humans. Later on the guide points out that in the jungle, it is unusual for the leader to be a black man because they are usually given manual labour jobs. This illustrates the reverse hierarchy of privilege at work, which has only gotten worse in the following decades. The more disenfranchised and marginalised a group is perceived to be, the more concern is felt for them.

Despite being in the most remote and undeveloped part of the world, there is a lot of high-tech weaponry floating around. The border guards in Zaire have a plethora of stinger missiles, and they fire several of them at every passing airplane.

Once they parachute into the jungle, things get even worse. The Doctor, supposedly an expert in gorillas, does not know enough about them to avoid looking one in the eyes.

Eventually they discover that Homulka is after the Lost City of Zinj, which is reputedly the location of King Solomon's Mines . Well, it makes sense that if there is a large deposit of diamonds then someone in the last few thousand years would have discovered it. Unfortunately the city is built on an active volcano that is about to erupt.

This movie is based on a novel by Michael Crichton , so it has his usual science is bad schtick. In many ways it can be seen as a follow-up to Jurassic Park . However, it is nowhere near as good. Perhaps Spielberg could have done a better job, with better cinematography and pacing. If one compares the climactic stalk-and kill scenes they are just not as good as Spielberg's Velociraptor scenes. Then they humans set up sentry guns to protect their camp's perimeter. Again, this is nowhere near as good as the comparable scenes in Aliens . The director is Frank Marshall , who made his name as 2nd-Unit director on Spielberg's films but lacks his flair. The producer is Kathleen Kennedy, Marshall's ex-wife, who was recruited by Disney to run Lucasfilm after Lucas sold it.

The casting may seem to be imaginative. After all, the action hero is a woman and the Great White Hunter is a black man. However, the sad fact is that the actors (like the director) are the B-Movie equivalent of the cast of Jurassic Park.

Dora And The Lost City Of Gold (2019)

Dora the explorer is a little girl who lives in the jungle with her father (Michael Pena - Ant Man ) and mother ( Eva Longoria ). They are proud to be explorers, as opposed to treasure hunters. If only the PC brigade would show respect to Christopher Columbus and other people who faced great hardship to map uncharted areas.

Ten years later, teenage Dora ( Isabela Moner ) is sent to Los Angeles. Unfortunately she lacks social skills, so she has difficulty fitting in and making friends.

Dora and her three school colleagues are abducted by Powell (Temuera Morrison - Barb Wire (1995) ) and his gang of treasure-hunters. One of them is Swiper the Fox (Benicio Del Toro - Licence to Kill (1989) ) - a talking CGI animal that interacts with the human characters.

These treasure-hunters use the kids to find the Lost City of Gold. The climax owes a lot to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade . In other words, it seems a bit predictable. That said, it is enlivened by the Inca priestess ( Oriana Kilcher ) and an unexpected audio cameo by Danny Trejo ( Machete ).

Legend of the Lost (1957)

Produced and directed by Hollywood's Henry Hathaway , this was made by an English crew (Director of Photography was Jack Cardiff ) and shot on location in Libya.

An ex-pat American lives in a city in North Africa. Thanks to his arrangement with a corrupt French colonial policeman he is teamed up with a well-intentioned foreigner and a woman that the American has a history with. Yes, it certainly has a lot in common with Casablanca (1942).

The Commandant (Kurt Kaznar - Land of Giants ) puts a wanabee explorer in touch with Joe January (John Wayne - The Conquerer ). January was originally meant to be a deserter from the French Foreign Legion - like in The Mummy (1999) . Of course, he dresses like a cowboy because he is a John Wayne character!

January leads the stranger and Dita ( Sophia Loren ) into the desert, in search of the lost city. As with Treasure of the Sierra Madre , greed corrupts.

Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958)

This starts with a musical intro that gives the background story of the Long Ranger. He was a lawman who was ambushed and left for dead by white outlaws, then saved by a Native American man named Tonto. Now the dynamic duo ride around the Wild West, righting wrongs.

The duo encounter a wagon that has been ambushed by desperados. They are too late to save the wagoneer, a Native American man, so they take the body to be identified by the local priest. Although the Ranger kills one of the desperados, they just leave the body for the vultures instead of trying to have him identified. This means it takes the rest of the movie to identify the rest of the villains.

The local sheriff is openly racist against Native American people. This has led to a disclaimer at the start of the movie, mentioning exclusionary or out-of-date attitudes. However, portrayal is not endorsement. All Native American characters, including Tonto himself, are shown as sympathetic but also competent. While the Lone Ranger takes their side, he is not portrayed as a mythical White Saviour type.

The villains are after five medallions which are worn by the elders of the local Native American tribe. It turns out that the medallions were made from the pieces of a golden plaque which was made by goldsmith to mark the location of ... an ancient lost City of Gold.

The Lost City (1996)

In the 1940s, a heroic Allied army officer finds a Lost City of Gold somewhere in the jungles of southern Africa. Unfortunately he does not survive his escape route. Fifty years later, his skeleton is discovered by archaeology students. The good news is that they recover the artefacts he had on him. The bad news is that their helicopter home crashes.

The tweens and the pilot end up in the hands of the locals. Not Black african tribesmen, but the mysterious caucasian-dominated civilisation that live in the mysterious lost city. Unfortunately the newcomers get dragged into local politics, as the noble princess and the wicked Queen Mother have a power struggle.

The result is an ugly mismash of scenes that follow a barely coherent storyline. It turns out that this movie is compiled from a South African TV show named Legend of the Hidden City. However, this is not the pilot movie or a two-episode storyline. The show lasted 22 episodes of 25 minutes each ... meaning this was cobbled together from ten hours of footage. No wonder the story barely makes sense.

The Lost City (2022)

A snobby writer ( Sandra Bullock ) thinks she is too good to be associated with the romance genre she has made millions in, and especially with the himbo male model (Channing Tatum - GI Joe ) who appears on the cover of her best-sellers. The model does not feel the same way, and is keen to romance her.

The writer is kidnapped. The model joins a professional mercenary (Brad Pitt - Once Upon A Time In Hollywood ) in tracking her down. Of course, the rescue attempt goes badly wrong.

The kidnappers work for a spoilt evil rich brat - Daniel Radcliffe ( Harry Potter ), playing pretty much the same character he did in Now You See Me 2 . This time he is obsessed with finding a fabled Lost City.

This is basically an updated version of Romancing the Stone , although by updating it the film-makers have also parodied it. Both female leads were intelligent novelists. However, in this new movie the male romantic lead lacks the competence that was his redeeming feature in the original.

Lost City Of Z, The (2016)

This is based on a true story, and the UK scenes were filmed in Northern Ireland. The story starts in the Edwardian era, the last great age of exploration. Shackleton gets a mention in passing for his polar expeditions, and the discovery of Machu Pichu is also referred to.

British Army officer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam - Pacific Rim ) is not content to stay at home with his wife ( Sienna Miller ), and instead wants to go out and have adventures. The Head of the Royal Geographical Society (Ian McDiarmuid - Star Wars: TPM ) sends him off to explore South America. He even introduces him to some travelling companions, including a newspaper reporter (Robert Pattinson - Twilight ).

The early exploration of the jungle seems reminiscent of Fitzcaraldo . In fact, there is an homage to that film when Fawcett encounters a rubber plantation owner (Franco Nero - John Wick 2 ) who has built his very own opera house in the middle of the Bolivian rain forest.

Finally, Fawcett focuses his obsession on a rumoured lost civilisation. He leads another expedition back to South America, to find the ruins he calls the Lost City of Z. He brings along an eager financier (Angus McFadyen - Saw III ), although this was not his smartest move.

MacKenna's Gold (1969)

This is a Carl Foreman production, directed by J Lee Thompson . They were the behind-the-scenes team responsible for adapting the Alastair MacLean novel Guns of Navarone, and a few cast members may look familiar. This movie was based on a novel too, which explains the omniscient voice-over narration that begins with a wild west version of Appointment At Samarra. That said, the photography in the opening credits is reminiscent of Saul Bass movie Phase IV .

MacKenna (Gregory Peck - Moby Dick (1950) ) is riding his horse through the Wild West when he discovers the dead body of an Apache chief. Before MacKenna can even bury the body, he is captured by Johnny Colorado (Omar Sharif - ) and his band of desperados. One of them is MacKenna's ex-lover, a Native American woman ( Julie Newmar ). They abduct MacKenna, and take him on a quest. The dead Apache was guardian of the secret location of a lost city.

There are others after the lost city of gold. A former associate (Eli Wallach - ) brings along the town militia. This includes an old blind man named Adams (Edward G. Robinson - ) and an Englishman (Anthony Quayle - ) in search of adventure. Meanwhile, a US Cavalry patrol led by a Sergeant (Telly Savalas - On Her Majesty's Secret Service ) is in the area.

Secrets of the Incas (1954)

Treasure of the Golden Condor (1953)

In France in the 1700s, the Marquis de St. Malo plotted to secure himself against other claimants to his inheritance. Also, he wanted to spite his wife Annette ( Fay Wray ). To do this, he adopted his brother's illegitimate son Jean-Paul. Unfortunately he only does this for selfish reasons, and keeps the boy as a bonded servant in the horse-stables.

Decades later, the boy Jean-Paul has grown up to become Cornel Wilde ( ). He is still a servant, though he is having a secret affair with the Countess ( Anne Bancroft ). Since she is his uncle's daughter, she is technically his cousin although nobody actually says this out loud. When the Marquis finds out, he gets violent. Not because of the incest, but because his inheritance is threatened.

A Scottish sailor (Finlay Currie - ) arrives in town, with a treasure map for an ancient Mayan city. The local priest is an expert in the Mayan language, but he refuses to help unless the sailor helps save Jean-Paul from the uncle's clutches.

The sailor takes Jean-Paul to Guatemala, where the movie was shot on location. They even encounter native tribesmen in authentic garb, something that the movie makes a big deal of. Unfortunately the city that the sailor loved in has been destroyed by an earthquake. This was supposedly recent, although there is decades worth of plant growth atop the ruins. Luckily the sailor's daughter ( Constance Smith ) is still alive, so she can be a secondary love interest in case the incest plan fails.

Jean-Paul's quest is not ended when he finds the reasure. He must return to France and reclaim his birthright, with the help of a lawyer (Leo G Carroll - The Man From UNCLE). This is all a bit reminiscent of The Count of Monte Cristo . Unfortunately, his cousin would rather be a Contessa than get promoted to the rank of Marquessa. Jean-Paul does not even bother explaining how much better this would be.

The climax is in a court of law. Yes, this is a very strange kind of swashbuckler, more stuck on the family inheritance squabbles rather than the action-adventure. This was adapted from a novel, but it seems the adaptation erred on emphasising the drama and not the thrills.

Uncharted (2022)

This opens with a bang. Nathan Drake (Tom Holland - Spider-Man: No Way Home ) is falling out of a cargo plane in a cartoonishly over-the-top version of the climactic scene of The Living Daylights . Then we get a flashback to Nathan's childhood, emphasising his main goal in life - to be reunited with his long-lost brother Sam.

The main story starts a few days before the action-packed opening scene. Nathan is hired by Sully (Mark Wahlberg - Ted ), a treasure-hunter who worked with Nathan's brother. With Sam missing, Nathan can take over for him. The mcguffin they are after is a famed lost treasure allegedly located by Ferdinand Magellan in the Philipines.

There are other treasure-hunters after the mcguffins. Braddock ( Tati Gabrielle ) and her hulking henchman The Scotsman (Steven Waddington - The Parole Officer ) are after Sully's treasure. They work for a banker, Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas - Mask of Zorro ), whose ancestors financed Magellan's voyage.

The globe-trotters head to Barcelona, Spain, where they team up with Chloe Frazer ( Sophia Ali ). She has the other key ... and she becomes Nathan's love interest. Yes, this is definitely an old-fashioned story.

The movie's strength is also its weakness. It racks up a massive body-count, but it is incredibly bloodless. Most of the killings involve throwing people out of aircraft, which is a horrible way to kill someone, but here it is shown as matter-of fact. Even when someone gets their throat cut, there is no actual exsanguation. Yes, this is emblematic of the quest for the PG-13 rating, which means modern-day action movies follow their own version of the restrictive Hayes code.

The final scenes set up storylines for a potential sequel involving Gage (Pilou Asbeck - Game of Thrones ).

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

This is a Disney Cartoon, featuring a cast of recognisable names rather than the usual group of voice-over specialists. It was written by Joss Whedon and Bryce Zabel.

It is 1914. Atlantis-obsessed Archaeologist Milo (Michael J Fox - Back to the Future ) is recruited by a friendly millionaire (John Mahoney - Frasier) and his hench-woman ( Claudia Christian ) to be the guide on an expedition.

Despite this being the era of the First World War, they have an amazing diesel-punk submarine that would make Captain Nemo or Jules Verne himself turn green with envy. The boss is Commander Rourke (James Garner - ), evidently a heroic member of the US Navy.

Eventually they find the lost city. Milo hooks up with the Princess ( Cree Summer ), despite the misgivings of the Atlantean Chief (Leonard Nimoy - Star Trek: TOS ).

Naturally, every story needs some conflict for the climactic third act. The real clue is the year. Some villains want to sell the Atlantean power source to the Kaiser!

Atlantis: Milo's Return

Atlantis: Milo's Return (2003)

It is several years since the events of the first film. The First World War is over, so ships can sail the Atlantic without fear of U-Boats. Unfortunately the excellent animation of the first film has been replaced with cheaper-looking imagery.

Milo (Michael J Fox - Back to the Future (1985) ) has been living in sin with the Princess ( Cree Summer ). Then his colleagues, the survivors of the first expedition, pay them an unexpected visit. They have anachronistic gyrocopters, which were developed at least a decade after this is set. However, in a cartoon about Atlantis the viewer can hardly expect accurate history.

Ships have been going missing in the Atlantic ocean. A Norwegian sea-monster known as the Kraken is blamed. The suspicion is that the Kraken is a robotic war machine created thousands of years ago by the Atlantean Chief. Milo and the Princess join the crew as they go looking for the legendary monster.

There is also a creepy old sailor who hangs around. He has obviously got something to do with the mystery. This makes Scooby Doo look subtle.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Dr Dolittle (1967)

The title character (Rex Harrison - ) is a physician in England, in a generic rural paradise that is so pre-industrial it is impossible to work out the actual date. The soldiers wear red coats and there are no police or steam trains, although there are stage-coaches and uniformed court guards, so it must be the late Eighteenth Century instead of the Victorian age.

Doolittle hates his clients, who are the most pompus kind of upper-class fools. He prefers the company of animals, such as his pet parrot. It turns out that the parrot can not only speak English, but it can also speak a thousand languages of other animal species. Doolittle gets the parrot to teach him as many as it can, and he ends up mastering five hundred of the most common ones.

Doolittle has a couple of allies, his loyal servants. Unfortunately his animal-loving ways mean he falls out with his neighbour. The General is not only head of the local fox-hunt, but he is also the local magistrate. The upper middle-class gentry had a lot of privilege in those days. Fred Fairfax ( Samantha Eggar ), the General's niece, begins as Doolittle's antagonist but becomes an ally.

Doolittle's big quest is to locate the Great Pink Sea Snail of the South Seas. To go on this expedition, he needs hundreds of pounds in cash. This leads on to a side-plot about joining the circus, which then leads to another side-plot about him being wrongly accused of murder. Well, story requires incident and conflict but this all seems a bit contrived.

Eventually the protagonists end up on a ship bound for adventure. They go to the South Pacific, where there is a mysterious wandering island. This idea seems to have influenced the TV show Lost .

Dolittle (2020)

Dr Dolittle (Robert Downey Jnr - Iron Man (2008) ) is a recluse since the mysterious disappearance of his wife. He has a superpower - he can talk to animals. This comes in useful when Queen Victoria falls mysteriously ill. Doolittle and his child sidekick set off to find a cure.

The villain sets off after them, aboard the Royal Navy's newest ship. Although this is set in the year 1850, the ship is an ironclad ... and the Captain is a black man.

The quest takes our heroes to the island of the Pirate King (Antonio Banderas - Mask of Zorro ). Unfortunately the ruler is also Doolittle's father-in-law, who blames Doolittle for the mysterious disappearance of his daughter. Yes, there is a backstory which also doubles as a sequel set-up.

How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

This is an animation about a community of Vikings living on an island where they are regularly attacked by Dragons.

A young boy named Hiccough (Jay Baruchel - The Sorceror's Apprentice ) finds a wild dragon that was wounded while attacking his village. He tames it, and becomes the first dragon-rider.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

This is set five years after the previous film. The vikings have adjusted to their new way of life, and have weaponised the dragons. Instead of making artillery, they make harnesses and saddles for the dragons. They use the sport of dragon-racing as a way of keeping their skills sharp in peace-time.

It turns out that there are a gang of dragon-catchers in the area. Worse, there is a war between two different groups of dragon-riders. The dragon-catchers sell their stock to Drogo Blood-Fist (Djimon Houson - Guardians of the Galaxy ), a warlord who is building an army. Meanwhile, a mysterious someone is stealing dragons from the catchers.

Hiccough has some personal problems, too. The bad news is that his father is training him up to be the new chief, even though Hiccough's decisions sometimes seem questionable. The good news is that he finds out what happened to his mother, Valka ( Cate Blanchett ).

As an animated movie, this relies heavily on its visuals. Luckily the visual consultant is Roger Deakins , while film director Guillermo Del Toro and poster artist Drew Struzan both get special thanks in the credits. In other words, this is a visual extravaganza.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019)

A young boy named Hiccough (Jay Baruchel - The Sorceror's Apprentice ) is now the Chief of his village. Likewise, his dragon is the alpha male of all the dragons. Now each of them has a love interest - Hiccough has America Ferrara while his dragon has a wild female albino. Of course, both males are clueless about courtship so their love lives will remain unresolved until the final Act of the story.

Our heroes spend their time stealing dragons from rival kingdoms. These enemy Kingdoms counter-attack, with the assistance of the world's best dragon-hunter - Grimmel the Grimm (F Murray Abraham - Slipstream ). He has his own dragons, trained to kill and eat anything that he wants them to.

Hiccough decides that his forces cannot defend their village. Instead the whole community moves west, island-hopping until they can find the entrance to the fabled Hidden World - the mythical homeland of the dragons.

The movie looks great, no doubt due to the work of visual consultant Roger Deakins ( Skyfall ).

Although the humans are meant to be Vikings, there is only one Norse name in the cast list. Instead we get a few Scottish ones - Gerard Butler ( Olympus Has Fallen ), Craig Ferguson ( ) and David Tennant ( Dr Who ). Even Cate Blanchett , despite being an Australian who played a Norse Goddess in Thor: Ragnarok , affects a Scottish accent here.

How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

Dragon Rider (2020)

Dragons are real, but they live in the mountains far away from humans. Now the humans encroach on the dragons' territory, so the dragons have to fight or flee. The youngest dragon (Thomas Brodie-Sangster - Maze Runner ) decides to find the dragons' secret homeland, the Rim of Heaven, so they can flee there rather than fight. This dragon meets a young human boy (Freddie Highmore - Bates Motel ) who is an orphan and thief. They are at the premiere of How To Train Your Dragon , and the human convinces the dragon it is a true story.

The human, posing as a Dragon Rider, joins the dragon on his quest to find the homeland. Unfortunately the dragons' ancient enemy (Patrick Stewart - X-Men ) learns of their quest and decides to hunt them down.

Soon