Drama

Six Feet Under: The Complete First Season

The Fishers are your typical dysfunctional family. Ruth (Frances Conroy) is the stern matriarch who has trouble expressing emotion and snaps at the slightest problem. Daughter Claire (Lauren Ambrose) is an underachiever who cultivates a moody, mysterious loner image in high school (she's indulging in illegal substances too). Brother David (Michael C. Hall) works in the family business, and is uptight beyond belief (he's indulging in a secret homosexual relationship too). Elder brother Nate (Peter Krause) is the black sheep, who, eschewing responsibility, fled to Seattle but got lured back. And Dad (Richard Jenkins) watches it all bemusedly. Did we mention Dad's dead? Oh, and that the Fisher family business is a funeral home? It might sound off-putting, but coming from the mind of Alan Ball, the man who strip-mined suburban life to find the mordant wit underneath in American Beauty, Six Feet Under is a trenchant, stylish spin on standard family dysfunction.

This HBO series initially aspired to fits of Twin Peaks-like whimsy, with each episode starting with a death more outlandish than the previous, but soon settled into a comfortable groove that harkened back to the most familiar of TV family dramas (in fact, it's almost a mirror image of '70s drama Family, down to the three sibling archetypes). Of course, its HBO roots allowed it ample leeway with sex, drug usage, profanity, and violence. While the writing strove to be a little too clever, the overall look and tone of the show remained solid and sometimes profound (sometimes absurd too, but usually with good reason). Krause and Hall, as initially warring brothers who come to a wary understanding, are solid anchors, but it's the women in the cast who do the most phenomenal work. Conroy infuses her almost stereotypical mom with an obstinate but ultimately accepting heart, and Ambrose's Claire is by far the show's most appealing character. And stealing scenes left and right is Rachel Griffith's Brenda, a mystery woman with an outlandish backstory who meets Nate on a plane, has sex with him at the airport, and infiltrates his life. Like Brenda herself, Six Feet Under is fascinating--and highly addictive. --Mark Englehart

From Alan Ball, the Oscar(r) winning writer of "American Beauty", comes a series that digs where others fear to tread. When a bus kills Nathaniel Fisher, owner of the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home in Los Angeles, the tragedy casts a pall on the homecoming of his prodigal son Nate. Together with with mother Ruth, brother David and sister Claire, they must address the family business, and the many more personal matters that arise when your life is Six Feet Under.
Running Time: 780 min.

Format: DVD MOVIE

61*

61* is an endearing ode to the baseball days of yore when the press was the enemy, salaries were in check, and breaking records with bat and glove took on Ruthian proportions. In 1961 baseball expanded its season from 154 games to 162, allowing weaker pitching into the major leagues and two New York Yankees teammates--the colorless Roger Maris and golden boy Mickey Mantle--to make an assault on the sport's ultimate record: Babe Ruth's 60 home runs. To add to the stew, baseball commissioner Ford Frick announced any record set in the last eight games of the season wouldn't count toward the official record; records had to be achieved in 154 games.

Director Billy Crystal guarantees success for his movie in the perfect casting of the leads. Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan's religious sniper) is deft as Maris, and Thomas Jane is a perfect Mantle, a superman in a Yankee uniform. Despite the differences between family man Maris and hard-living Mantle, they form a rewarding friendship amid the media and fan frenzy. The shy Maris took the brunt of the storm, even facing boo-birds in his home stadium. Crystal and first-time writer Hank Steinberg keep the pace moving quickly between the field, the locker room, the press box, and the home front. The film never tries to dazzle with more than the facts (and it softens Mantle up a bit), yet it belongs on the short list of grand baseball movies. --Doug Thomas

Conspiracy

On January 20, 1942, with the tide of war turning in favor of the Allies, a small group of SS officers, government ministers, and Nazi officials met near Berlin to decide the fate of Europe's Jews. Based on the only surviving record of that meeting, Conspiracy is a powerful combination of historical reconstruction and speculation that attempts to offer new insights into a pivotal moment in history.

The cast does a marvelous job of fleshing out the documentary evidence to create convincing characters. Kenneth Branagh is especially chilling as SS Chief of Security Reinhard Heydrich, who uses a combination of charm and ruthless power-mongering to gain support for his plans. Colin Firth is fascinating as Wilhelm Stuckart, a lawyer who sees the brutal tactics of the SS as a threat to his own intellectualized anti-Semitism, and Stanley Tucci gives a wonderfully understated performance as Adolf Eichmann.

Conspiracy is a carefully crafted, completely unsensational film that offers ample proof of the banality of evil. There are no histrionics and no comic-book Nazi villains, just a small group of politicians and war-weary soldiers arguing about the meaning of words and the logistics of extermination, calmly preparing to unleash an unimaginable horror on the world. --Simon Leake

Barbarians at the Gate

This HBO original comedy, adapted by Larry Gelbart (Tootsie) from the book by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, concerns one of the most compelling tales of corporate buyout madness in the go-go 1980s. James Garner plays F. Ross Johnson, CEO of RJR Nabisco. Following failed and expensive efforts to sell a smokeless cigarette to the public, Johnson decides that he's had enough of navigating around the wrath of the company's stockholders. Drawing up plans to buy RJR Nabisco outright, he soon finds himself outmatched (though still determined) in a race for the prize with takeover king Henry Kravis (Jonathan Pryce). The ensuing battle is both bitterly funny and full of acid-tinged insights into the '80s greed that changed corporate America forever. Besides Gelbart's great script and Glenn Jordan's competent direction, the star of this exciting film is Garner, who is absolutely wonderful as the gracious Johnson. --Tom Keogh

And the Band Played On

A superior, made-for-cable film, this Home Box Office adaptation of Randy Shilts's chronicle detailing the emergence of AIDS in America and the fight against bureaucracy and society for a cure is a taut, outrageous, and affecting true-life drama. Matthew Modine (Birdy, Married to the Mob) is featured as a doctor with the Centers for Disease Control at the time when the first reports of a disease plaguing the gay community were heard. Modine and his colleagues embark on an investigation that resembles a compelling detective story as they try to track the source of the disease and discover a cure. Their efforts are thwarted by an ambivalent government and a turf war between French physicians and a celebrated American researcher (Alan Alda) who seems to place his own glory above the dead and the dying. Featuring heartfelt performances from a stellar cast including Richard Gere, Glenne Headly, Anjelica Huston, Steve Martin, Ian McKellen, Saul Rubinek, and Lily Tomlin, this impassioned film stands as an impressive and important document of one of the darkest eras in modern human history, and a tribute to the spirit of those who sought to save lives. --Robert Lane

A Lesson Before Dying

On a bright sunny day in 1948, Jefferson (Mekhi Phifer) sets off down the road to go catch some fish; by the end of the movie's opening sequence, he is the one who's been caught, and wrongly accused of the murder of a white shopkeeper. Racial inequality, at the time, is so pervasive in Louisiana that the white defense lawyer's argument at Jefferson's trial is that his client is not worthy of conviction: "You might just as soon put a hog in the 'lectric chair as this," he declares. Outraged by this statement, Jefferson's godmother (Irma P. Hall) does not want her godson to die as a hog. To this end she enlists the reluctant aid of the black community's teacher, Grant Wiggins (Don Cheadle), to teach him to "be a man." As Grant and Jefferson get to know each other (and the viewer gets to know them both), it's not clear which of them needs the lesson more. As in Ernest J. Gaines's award-winning novel, the movie goes beyond the conflict between the races to explore divisions that splinter the black community: education versus religion, dark skin versus light. And, thanks to masterful performances from Cheadle and Phifer as well as a thoughtful screenplay by Amy Peacock, A Lesson Before Dying goes even further, examining what it means to be human and the responsibility a man has to himself and to his community. Originally made for HBO, this adaptation of Gaines's novel richly deserves to be seen by a wider audience. --Larisa Lomacky Moore

Boycott

When Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, the Reverend Martin Luther King was but a modest young Baptist minister suddenly thrust into the leadership of local bus boycott. What started as a one-day protest of unfair bus laws turned into the 381-day boycott that gave birth to the civil rights movement. This riveting, rousing made-for-cable drama meticulously recounts the challenges the protest faced. Jeffrey Wright (Basquiat) is excellent as King, capturing his charisma and rousing speeches while grounding his heroism in human vulnerability and fear, but Boycott reminds us that he was only one of the thousands of ordinary people roused into extraordinary action in the name of equality and social justice. That portrait of everyday heroes changing the course of history remains the film's most rousing message. --Sean Axmaker

Dinner with Friends

Directed by Norman Jewison and adapted by Donald Margulies from his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, this acclaimed HBO production offers a welcome antidote to the superficiality of mainstream Hollywood. With the same attention to emotional detail that he brought to Moonstruck, Jewison establishes a delicate balance of anguish and bittersweet humor, reaching peak intensity as two couples confront the aftershocks of infidelity. Dennis Quaid and Andie MacDowell play the steady pair, committed to surviving every marital peak and valley. Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette are splitting up, divided by his infidelity and forced to reevaluate connections to their long-term friends. While Jewison and cinematographer Roger Deakins expertly translate the stagy material, the revealing, nonjudgmental quality of Margulies's dialogue inspires excellence from this quartet of underrated actors. Funny, painful, and full of truth, Dinner with Friends presents marriage as an organic work in progress, never to be taken for granted, and never guaranteed. --Jeff Shannon

Always Outnumbered

Sometimes life throws a curve ball, a fork in the road, or a wall between you and what you want. For Socrates Fortlow, life keeps getting in the way, but nothing stays in the way of a man with his mission. Socrates is going to make it - his way on his terms - and if you aren't part of the solution, then you know where you stand. If you're a killer terrorizing the neighborhood, you'll have to deal with him first. If you're a beautiful woman who deserves more attention, attention will be paid. If you're a witness to murder and you need protection, you're staying alive in his hands. Life's questions can be hard, but the answers are east. When it comes to trouble, you look for the man who's still standing. Because the way he's fighting for his life is the way you want him fighting for yours.

DVD Features:
Biographies
Other:Chapter Selections

Citizen Cohn

James Woods seems to find his most adventurous roles in television movies, particularly this made-for-HBO biography of the late lawyer and powerbroker Roy Cohn. A hallucinatory, impressionistic look at his career and life, the film is comprised of flashbacks by Cohn, who is seen dying of AIDS in 1988 in his New York hospital bed. Woods sinks his teeth deeply into the role of the shark-like Cohn, capturing his arrogance and his insecurity, both at his own Jewishness and his deeply closeted homosexuality, even as he rides Sen. Joe McCarthy's anti-Communism campaign for all it's worth. Woods even manages to make the deeply detestable Cohn vulnerable, if not sympathetic. A strong supporting cast includes Joe Don Baker as an amused and calculating McCarthy, but the film lives and breathes in Woods's flamboyantly nuanced embodiment of the whiny, manipulative Cohn. --Marshall Fine