G.W. Bailey Movies

No sooner has transplanted Atlantan Brenda Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) arrived in Los Angeles to assume her duties as deputy police chief of the LAPD's Priority Homicide Division that she is plunged into a bizarre murder case--which, like all those that will follow, is embarrassingly high-profile. Season One of The Closer also establishes that there is no love lost between the abrasive, temperamental Brenda and her coworkers, who don't so much resent her for being a woman than for the infuriating fact that her brash behavior and unorthodox methods always yield results. The season's remaining twelve episodes include "About Face", in which the murder of a supermodel brings Brenda literally face-to-face with the Hollywood scene, phony tinsel and all. In "The Big Picture", the victim is a Russian call girl with a list of celebrity clients. Latino gang members are apparently being picked off one by one by a well-trained military sniper in "Show Yourself". "Flashpoint" involves a murder motived by corporate intrigue in the pharamaceutical industry, but Brenda finds that media scrutiny of her checkered past is more troublesome than the case at hand. In "Fantasy Date", Brenda's team embarks upon an odyssey into the seamy underworld of S&M to find the rapist-killer of a congressman's daughter. The only witness to the murder of a much-despised judge is the victim's autistic son in "Batter Up". In "The Butler Did It", Brenda faces the double whammy of a wealthy and fatally dysfunctional family, and an apparent deliberately freeze-out by her own superiors. In "Good Housekeeping", Brenda's zeal to bring a murderer to justice threatens to cost her her job, while I "LA Woman", Brenda's romance with FBI agent Fritz (Jon Tenney) is jeopardized when they both probe the deaTH of an Iranian businessman. The plot complications "Fatal Retraction" include the premature release of a convicted murderer, a victim whose identity is a mystery, and the possibility of evidence tampering within Brenda's own department. And finally, in "Standards and Practices", an unknown antagonist sabotages Brenda's career as she tracks down clues in the murder of a film producer. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Disney presents the animated musical Western Home on the Range, featuring an original musical score by Alan Menken. The Little Piece of Heaven family farm is about to go under and outlaw cattle rustler Alameda Slim (voice of Randy Quaid) sets his sights on it. Three dairy cows -- tough Maggie (voice of Roseanne Barr), leader Mrs. Calloway (voice of Judi Dench), and naïve Grace (voice of Jennifer Tilly) -- team up to save the farm. Along with ambitious stallion Buck (voice of Cuba Gooding Jr.), helpful rabbit Lucky Jack (voice of Charles Haid), and other helpful barnyard friends, the cows set out to capture Alameda Slim and collect the reward money. However, a vicious bounty hunter (voice of Charles Dennis) is also after Slim. The film features vocal performances by Bonnie Raitt, k.d. lang, and Tim McGraw. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

He was a poor carpenter who never traveled further than 50 miles from his home and died at the age of 33, but his teachings changed the world and he's still followed by hundreds of millions of people around the world, 2,000 years after his death. Jesus, originally produced as a television mini-series, offers a glimpse of the human side of the messiah, as well as recounting the story of his life and martyrdom. Jeremy Sisto stars as Jesus, with Jacqueline Bisset as Mary, Armin Mueller-Stahl as Joseph, Gary Oldman as Pontius Pilate, and Debra Messing as Mary Magdalene. The home video release is expanded from the broadcast edition, featuring material that was cut for time purposes. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The tragic story of the Ruby Ridge "massacre" has been so thoroughly covered and disseminated by the mainstream press that to add anything here would be pointless. Suffice to say that the two-part TV movie The Siege at Ruby Ridge uses the facts at hand to show how the tragedy occurred, and how but for a multitude of blunders and miscommunications on both sides, it could all have been avoided. Randy Quaid stars as white separatist Randy Weaver, who for ten terrible days in 1992 barricaded himself, his family, and a number of zealous followers in a tiny refuge on a remote Idaho mountaintop, while 200 government agents surrounded Weaver's headquarters with orders to arrest Weaver's group alive -- if possible. The catalyst for the crisis is of course Randy Weaver himself, though his wife Vicki (Laura Dern) is shown to be just as rigid, stubborn, and foolhardy as her husband -- maybe even more so. Ultimately, blood is shed and lives are lost, the result of such gross ineptitude that the ramifications of the tragedy would reverberate for decades to come. Featured in the cast is Laura Dern's real-life mother, Diane Ladd, and, in the small role of the Weaver's daughter, a very young Kirsten Dunst. The Siege at Ruby Ridge first aired over CBS on May 19 and 21, 1996. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In a major stumbling block toward better international relations, America's most laughable police officers are sent to Russia to fight crime in this comedy. In Moscow, master criminal Konali (Ron Perlman) has marketed a new computer game that has an unusual hidden feature -- it allows him to bring down any security system controlled by a PC on which the game has been played, with a string of major robberies as the result. Russian Police Commandant Rakov (Christopher Lee) is at his wit's end about how to deal with the crisis, so he asks for help from the U.S. law enforcement community. However, Rakov's American allies turn out to be Lassard (George Gaynes), Harris (G.W. Bailey), and the rest of the crew from the Police Academy (among them Michael Winslow, David Graf, and Leslie Easterbrook). Claire Forlani also appears in a small role as a Russian beauty. This was the seventh and last film in the Police Academy series, following the departure of franchise loyalist Bubba Smith. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this made-for-television drama a young mother finds herself unable to cope with her daughter's handicap and so puts her up for adoption. When her mother finds out, she launches a courtroom battle for the right to raise her granddaughter herself. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

When a poor waitress shoots her abusive husband, she is forced to battle the courts for custody of her children while waiting for a verdict on her trial for murder of her husband. Based on a true story, it does a credible job in the depiction of the abusive relationship but some of the impact is diminished when the film moralizes that the husband's latent homosexuality was the cause or as culpable as the physical abuse he inflicted upon his wife. ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi

Marlo Thomas stars as Lucille "Sis" Levin, whose husband Jerry (David Dukes) is an American TV journalist assigned to Beirut in 1984. Jerry is kidnapped by Muslim fundamentalists, a fact kept off the front pages by the State Department, ostensibly because the publicity could cost Jerry his life. Sis doesn't accept this (she suspects that our government doesn't want to offend the Lebanese government), and arranges on her own to communicate with her husband's captors. Israel stands in for Lebanon for the on-location scenes in Held Hostage: The Sis and Jerry Levin Story. This fact-based TV movie is wholly credible in every aspect save Marlo Thomas' uncertain Southern accent. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The mother of the title is played by Meredith Baxter. Her daughter (Carrie Hamilton) is raped by an unknown assailant who leaves no tangible clues behind. Obsessed with bringing the rapist out in the open, Ms. Baxter sets herself up as a potential assault victim. Farfetched though it sounds, A Mother's Justice was based on an actual case that occurred in Portland, Oregon. This TV movie had the rotten luck to be scheduled opposite Monday Night Football and a CBS M*A*S*H retrospective when it was first telecast on November 25, 1991. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Based on a best-selling novel from Danielle Steele, this made-for-television melodrama tells the sad story of a highly successful businessman whose idyllic life is destroyed when his new bride dies of cancer, leaving him with her daughter. To make matters worse, his late wife's ex-husband shows up demanding custody of the child. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Filmed in Alberta, The Gifted One was intended as the pilot for a weekly TV series. The title character, played by Pete Kowanko, is a very young man with remarkable mental and physical powers. Raised from childhood as a modern superman, Pete begins yearning for his roots and accordingly conducts a search for his birth mother. He is then pursued by sinister characters who have their own reasons for preventing Pete from finding out the truth about himself. The whole thing sounds a lot like the 1990s series The Pretender, which managed to get past the pilot stage. Also starring Wendy Phillips, Brandon Call, G.W. Bailey and John Rhys-Davies, The Gifted One was first telecast June 25, 1989. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi