Kevin Dowling Movies

Filmmaker Patricia Foulkrod produced and directed this documentary, designed to shed light on a little examined side of war -- the soldiers who do the fighting. The Ground Truth: The Human Cost of War focuses on the men and women who fought in the War in Iraq, but found themselves largely ignored in the media coverage of the conflict and in their treatment by the military bureaucracy when they came back from the front lines. In extensive interviews with veterans of the Iraq war, these men and women talk about the hardships of war, the danger of serving in a country where the people you defend often consider you the enemy, the onset of post-traumatic stress disorder, the gap between media coverage of the war and the grim realities soldiers see on the battlefield, and the often callous treatment extended to soldiers by military authorities and the Veterans Administration. The Ground Truth was planned with a March 2005 release in mind, in hopes of having the film in theaters in time for the second anniversary of the beginning of the war. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The ABC series That Was Then was a less comic variation on the premise of the like-vintage WB sitcom Do Over. James Bulliard starred as Travis Glass, a 29-year-old salesman who was still living with his parents. A perennial loser, Travis would give anything to return to his youth and correct past mistakes; more specifically, he would like to correct the glaring social error which drove his high-school sweetheart Claudia (Kiele Sanchez) into the arms of Travis' obnoxious brother Gregg (Brad Raider). Then on the eve of his 30th birthday, while listening to the Kinks' "Do It Again," Travis was miraculously thrust back to the year 1988 -- thereby getting his chance to use the knowledge and the experience gleaned in adulthood to straighten out the life of his "teenaged" self. Described by co-creators Daniel Cohn and Jeremy Miller as Back to the Future meets The Wonder Years, That Was Then premiered September 27, 2002. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Miserable in retirement, Richard (Edward Herrmann) is so desperate to do something useful that he agrees to mentor his granddaughter Rory's business-fair project. Once he's back on the job, however, the old spark roars into flame, and soon Richard is mapping out plans for a whole new career. Meanwhile, Dean (Jared Padalecki) mulls over various methods to win Rory (Alexis Bledel) back, and Lorelai inadvertently causes friction between her prissy concierge Michel (Yanic Truesdale) and his freewheeling French mother Gisèle (Janet Hubert-Whitten). ~ All Movie Guide

Monica (Roma Downey) takes novice angel Gloria (Valerie Bertinelli) under her wing to show her how best to bring the love and hope of God to ordinary human motals. Just when she is making headway, Monica is literally shaken by a bomb blast in an office building which kills dozens of people (ironically, this episode originally aired several months before 9/11). Suffering a near-total loss of faith, Monica wanders aimlessly in the desert, where she hitches a ride with a handsome, charismatic stranger (Mandy Patinkin). It doesn't take long for the stranger to betray his true demonic identity as he tempts Monica with the prospect of forsaking her angelic ways by becoming a human being...and his earthly emissary. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The will-o'-the-wisp black sheep of a North Carolina farming family, Frannie Vaughan (Farrah Fawcett) reacts to the news that her mother has only six months to live in her usual quirky fashion -- she dashes off to parts unknown, intending to return home in exactly six months so that she may be at her mother's bedside "when the time comes." Imagine her embarrassment when, upon coming back to the farm, Frannie learns that her mother's demise occurred three days before schedule,in fact, she is even late for the funeral. When she finds out her embittered sister, Natalie (Ashley Crow), intends to sell the farm, Frannie tries to make up for past misdeeds by earning enough money (200,000 dollars to be exact) to keep the property in the family. That is why the heroine ends up packing underwear in the local silk mill owned by a handsome and unattached chap named Ruben (Brad Johnson). An odd mixture of comedy, pathos, and heavy drama (including the loss of a limb in some faulty factory machinery), the made-for-TV Silk Hope originally aired October 17, 1999, on CBS. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An average middle-aged guy finds himself in an extraordinarily weird situation in this off-beat romantic adventure that begins when 53-year-old car salesman Al goes to a local coffee shop with his friends and ends up escorting voluptuous oversexed jailbait Ellie back to the desert trailer she shares with her mom Julie and her brutal psycho boyfriend Boyd. While Boyd and Ellie take off for a while, Al ends up dancing in the moonlight with sweetly seductive Julie. The moon that night is extraordinarily large and the two end up falling asleep. Eventually Al awakens and tries to go home, but unfortunately, his car will not start. Julie then informs him that most cars have trouble starting there. Still he manages to leave. Stopping at a filling station, he is appalled to discover that someone has stuffed a corpse in his trunk. That turns out to be only the least of his troubles. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide