Movies: American Playhouse

Carol White, a Los Angeles housewife in the late 1980s, comes down with a debilitating illness with no clear diagnosis....

Jaime Escalante is a mathematics teacher in a school in a hispanic neighbourhood. Convinced that his students have potential, he adopts unconventional teaching methods to try and turn gang members and no-hopers into some of the country's top algebra ...

In this Shakespearean farce, Hero and her groom-to-be, Claudio, team up with Claudio's commanding officer, Don Pedro, the week before their wedding to hatch a matchmaking scheme. Their targets are sharp-witted duo Benedick and Beatrice -- a tough tas...

Errol Morris's unique documentary dramatically re-enacts the crime scene and investigation of a police officer's murder in Dallas....

Traces over three generations an immigrant family's trials, tribulations, tragedies, and triumphs. Maria and Jose, the first generation, come to Los Angeles, meet, marry, face deportation all in the 1930s. They establish their family in East L.A., an...

Brother and sister Enrique and Rosa flee persecution at home in Guatemala and journey north, through Mexico and on to the United States, with the dream of starting a new life....

Connie, the fifteen-year-old black sheep of her family, finds her summertime idyll of beach trips, mall hangouts, and innocent flirtations shattered by an encounter with a mysterious stranger....

It is just another day in the small town of Hamlin until something disastrous happens. Suddenly, news breaks that a series of nuclear warheads has been dropped along the Eastern Seaboard and, more locally, in California. As people begin coping with t...

During the summer of 1981, a group of friends in New York are completely unprepared for the onslaught of AIDS. What starts as a rumor about a mysterious "gay cancer" soon turns into a major crisis as, one by one, some of the friends begin to fall ill...

A man wakes up in an alley, bleeding and with no memory of who he is. He stumbles into a coffee shop and is befriended by a charitable ex-nun who is failing in her attempts to write marketable pornography....

An international award winning saga of old Mexico. In 1528, a Spanish expedition flounders off the coast of Florida with 600 lives lost. One survivor, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, roams across the American continent searching for his Spanish comrades....

In 1902, an African-American family living on a sea island off the coast of South Carolina prepares to move to the North....

Married couple, Ethan and Zeena, are in need an extra hand around the house due to Zeena's debilitated body and constant illness. The young woman who joins them is a beautiful, spirited person. She and Ethan fall in love much to the dismay of Zeena....

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte by Georges Seurat is one of the great paintings of the world, and in "Sunday in the Park with George," book writer James Lapine and composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim bring a story based on the work ...

In a woods filled with magic and fairy tale characters, a baker and his wife set out to end the curse put on them by their neighbor, a spiteful witch....

Garnet Montrose (Michael Beihn) returns home to West Virginia after suffering horrible facial disfigurement from wounds at the battle of Guadalcanal. He watches his former sweetheart Georgia (Maureen Mueller) from his farm down the road. Garnett is o...

This film adaptation of James Baldwin's celebrated novel tells the journey of a family from the rural South to "big city" Harlem seeking both salvation and understanding and of a young boy struggling to earn the approval of a self-righteous and often...

Dennis is a handsome and bookish college student. His brother, Bill, is a roughhewn ladies' man and thief. Together they search for their dad, confront their expectations of each other, themselves, and their attitudes towards women....

Jude, a college professor, is obsessed with Sophie, his student. She, in turn, is intrigued by his scholarly charm. Flirtation turns to lust and the two become lovers....

The solo actor in Shimmer tells the story by becoming each character in turn. The play takes place in 1956, in a harsh Midwestern juvenile detention center, where two boys befriend each other....