Movies: American Playhouse

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...

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....

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...

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

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

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...

On Christmas Eve, a relentlessly cheerful woman escapes from the killers hired by her husband, and embarks on a series of strange encounters....

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...

Giorgio, a young soldier, is in love with the married Clara and becomes her lover. But they are separated when Giorgio is posted far away, where he meets the unhappy, unhealthy, and unattractive Fosca, who develops a passionate love for Giorgio and ...

In 1940s Chicago, a young black man takes a job as a chauffeur to a white family, which takes a turn for the worse when he accidentally kills the teenage daughter of the couple and then tries to cover it up....

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....

Gallo Morales is the proud patriach returning home after a seven-year stint for manslaughter. Seeking to re-establish his legendary status as a champion breeder, he comes back for the rooster bred by his father. But it is Hector, his son who inherits...

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....

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...

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

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....

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....

An out of high school teen from the midwest moves to San Diego, California in the 1950s to live with his estranged father and new family. Escaping his past may not be as easy as he had hoped...or is it all a dream?...