M.C. Gainey Movies

In Peter Yates' crime drama An Innocent Man, Tom Selleck plays Jimmie Rainwood, a stock figure airline maintenance supervisor with a perfect family. Then, one day, Jimmie decides to take a shower. While scrubbing himself clean, two crooked cops are getting themselves dirtier. Mike Parnell (David Rasche) and Danny Scalise (Richard Young) are the kind of bad cops who bust the drug dealers, steal their supply, and sell it back to the local drug lords. On this day, unfortunately for Jimmie, they get the wrong address and bash down his door. When Jimmie comes out of the bathroom wielding his hair dryer, Parnell and Scalise think it is a gun and shoot him. Realizing their mistake, they cover themselves and frame him as a drug dealer. Jimmie refuses to take a plea and he is sentenced to six years in the slammer. In the brutal prison environment, he is taken aside by long-timer Virgil Kane (F. Murray Abraham), who gives him a bleak collection of options to chose from in order to survive prison. After seeing a prison gang rape, Jimmie chooses the kill-or-be-killed selection and stabs to death the nasty black convict who has been bothering him. After three years, Jimmie is released on parole, and he tries to pick up his life again. But Parnell and Scalise return to threaten Jimmie and his family. Realizing that his prison lessons must be carried over into civilian life, he sets up a situation in which the bad cops' drug dealings are revealed, and Jimmie prepares for a final reckoning between the cops and himself. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Thirty years after realizing that they had they had both found that rare once in a lifetime love, a man and a woman separated by fate decide to take a second shot at romance despite the fact that both had moved on with their lives a long time ago. As children growing up together in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, Mark and Sara were inseparable. As teens it just seemed that the two adolescents were just really close friends, but when Mark's family moves to New Orleans in the early 1970s the letters that he and Sarah exchange reveal that their true feelings for one another run far deeper. Though their love is vividly expressed in a pair of intensely heartfelt letters, any chance for romance is effectively destroyed when Mark's meddling mother Carole (Brooke Adams) intercepts the letters and hides them from her son. Mistakenly believing that each has rejected the other's love, Mark and Sara both manage to move on with their lives despite their initial devastation. Years later, Mark and Sara are both in their forties, living in different cities and locked in unhappy marriages - Mark to a career-driven psychiatrist named Laura (Jessica Hecht) and Sara to struggling alcoholic named Chris (Michael Arata). Mark feels like his life has become hollow, and spends the majority of his time confiding his true feelings in his older brother Earl (M.C. Gainey), an eccentric French Quarter artist. But one day, when Mark discovers the letters that had been hidden by his mother, he sees the opportunity for a new life of happiness and contacts Sara to tell her the truth. The moment the two make contact, it's as if they were both transported back to that special time when nothing else mattered aside from their growing feelings for one another. Neither Mark nor Sara are particularly happy with the way their lives have turned out, and excitedly make plans to rendezvous in New Orleans. Could it be that Mark and Sara were truly meant to be with one another, or did their one chance at a lifetime of happiness actually end with the hiding of those passionate correspondences so many moons ago? ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Two guys used to drinking beer for fun suddenly become fierce competitors in a sort of Lager Olympics in this over-the-top comedy. Todd Wolfhouse (Erik Stolhanske) and his brother Jan (Paul Soter) are from a German-American family but have never visited the Old Country until their grandfather dies and they fly to Germany to scatter his ashes. Todd and Jan arrive during the annual Oktoberfest celebration and accidentally discover a secret competition, "Beerfest," in which the world's leading beer guzzlers determine who can handle the most brew during several days of heated drinking games. Todd and Jan are no slouches when it comes to downing suds and offer to compete, but the German branch of the family, the Von Wolfhausens, scoff at their desire to enter the contest and inform them no mere American could hope to carry away the Beerfest honors. Determined to prove Yanks can swill beer and embarrass themselves just as well as anyone, Todd and Jan bring their most skilled drinking buddies to Germany to defend America's honor on the field of drunken battle and show their German relatives that the family's talent didn't vanish when they crossed the pond. Beerfest was written and directed by Jay Chandrasekhar of the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, and several other Broken Lizard members pop up in the film's cast, as do Will Forte, Mo'nique, Cloris Leachman, and Jürgen Prochnow. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this suspense thriller, a man discovers the unexpected danger of trusting a good Samaritan. Jeff Taylor (Kurt Russell) and his wife Amy (Kathleen Quinlan) are driving through the New Mexico desert en route to California when an incident with a lunatic driver causes their jeep to break down in the middle of nowhere. Jeff is trying to fix the vehicle when an apparently friendly truck driver, Red Barr (J.T. Walsh), stops by to offer help. Red tells the couple that there's a diner a few miles down the road where they can call for help; Jeff decides to stay with the car while Amy hops a ride with Red to see if she can find a mechanic to help them. After a long wait, Jeff is able to get the jeep running again, and he discovers that the diner is indeed a few miles down the road. But everyone there claims they've seen no sign of Amy, and Red claims to know nothing about picking her up. When Jeff attempts to file a missing person's report, he discovers mysterious disappearances are disturbingly common in this stretch of the desert; he soon realizes that someone has kidnapped his wife, but he's not sure who, or for what purpose. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The divisive issue of abortion is at the center of Citizen Ruth, a political satire that attempts to subject both pro-choice and pro-life forces to equal ridicule. Laura Dern portrays Ruth Stoops, an irresponsible, unemployed woman who's addicted to inhaling household chemicals and has becomes pregnant, for the fifth time. After she is arrested for substance abuse, the judge offers to lessen her sentence if Ruth chooses to abort her child. Ruth agrees, but that night she encounters a group of pro-life activists. They take her under their wing, promising to help her, while secretly planning to make her case public as a symbol for the pro-life movement . When Ruth discovers the deception, she takes refuge with a pro-choice group, sparking a media frenzy. Yet Ruth soon finds her new friends are also only interested in her value as a media icon. Realizing she has been used as a pawn in the abortion rights battle, the apolitical Ruth turns the tables, offering to join whoever will give her the best deal. What results is a frantic, comedic session of wheeling-dealing which argues that activists on both sides have become more concerned with waging political warfare than helping women. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

In the made-for-cable El Diablo, Anthony Edwards plays a bespectacled Eastern schoolteacher who is bullied and cowed by the wild westerners all around him. Soon, however, he is forced to summon up his courage to expedite the rescue of his prettiest female student (M.C. Gainey), who has been kidnapped by the notorious bandit leader El Diablo (Robert Beltran). Louis Gossett Jr. is on hand as the down-to-earth gunslinger who teaches Edwards the rudiments of frontier survival. Coproduced and cowritten by John Carpenter, El Diablo debuted July 22, 1990, over the HBO pay-cable service. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Walter Hill directs John Milius's script (co-written by Larry Gross) depicting a revisionist perspective on the "Geronimo Campaign" and how Geronimo, with 34 men, managed to elude 5000 U.S. cavalry men between 1885 and 1886 before his surrender at the Canyon of the Skeletons in September 1886. The film centers upon Charles Gatewood (Jason Patric), the U.S. Cavalry lieutenant who is charged with capturing the elusive Apache leader. Gatewood is torn by a grudging respect for Geronimo and his people and his duty to his country. But then all the white men in the film have a respect for Geronimo, even as they are trying to hunt him down and kill him. General Charles Crook (Gene Hackman), charged with overseeing the forced settlement of the Apaches on reservations, has nothing but admiration for Geronimo. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In the conclusion of Hunter's two-part Season Six finale, Hunter (Fred Dryer) swears vengeance after his mentor Dave Peterson (Ryan Cutrona) is killed just before his retirement, persumably by the thieves associated with a demented street fence called "The Captain". Meanwhile, McCall mulls over the prospect of marrying her former flame Dr. Turnan (Robert Connor Newman) and moving with him to London. Without giving too much away, it can be noted that this episode marks the final appearance of series costar Stepfanie Kramer--who, of course, plays McCall. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A passenger jet breaks apart in mid-air, crash-landing on a tropical island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Left without the creature comforts and basic necessities of civilization, the 48 survivors are forced to rely upon one another to stay alive -- and given the personality quirks of these survivors, this won't be easy during the first season of the ABC hit series Lost. Generally with the help of flashbacks, viewers learn a number of deep dark secrets about the castaways on a need-to-know basis, especially the demons plaguing Dr. Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) and one-hit-wonder rock star Charlie Pace (Dominic Monaghan). Every so often, a crisis arises for the principal purpose of revealing a hitherto unknown and unsuspected aspect of one of the characters. Inevitably, hostilities both minor and serious arise from the basic fundamental differences among the survivors: Korean couple Jin and Sun Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim) are unable to uphold their family traditions under the circumstances, while their inability to speak English creates an additional barrier between themselves and the others; and the MacGyver-like resourcefulness of former Iraqi Republican Guard Sayid (Naveen Andrews) is not enough to overcome the racism of some of his fellow passengers. Then there is the unfriendly aura of the island itself, with its inscrutable topography, and the bizarre menagerie of wild animals, ranging from a polar bear to a (possible) dinosaur! Also, the discovery in one episode of two long-dead bodies certainly does nothing to uplift the rescue hopes of the hapless survivors. And finally, there seems to be someone else on the island...someone not on the passenger list...someone who kidnaps two of the castaways and threatens to kill off the rest one by one. The one overriding question near the end of season one is: who among the "major" characters will not make it to season two? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Find the answers you have been looking for in the explosive third season of the show USA Today calls "the most gorgeous, audacious, expansive series on network TV." As the power of the island to both heal and destroy comes into sharp focus, the lines between good and evil are blurred and loyalties are challenged when the survivors of the crash become tangled within the lives of the Others. Plan your escape, and immerse yourself in all 23 episodes of Season Three. Go deeper than ever before in this seven-disc DVD box set, complete with hours of never-before-seen bonus features, including secrets from the world of the Others, behind-the-scenes featurettes, unprecedented access to the Lost writers room, and so much more.

The struggle of country music's mother-daughter duo The Judds is told in this made-for-television drama. Kathleen York stars as Naomi Judd (then known as Diana Judd) a single mother of two daughters, who turned to music as way to help positively influence her increasingly belligerent and rebellious eldest daughter Wynonna (then known as Christina). The movie chronicles Naomi's struggle to provide for her daughters (the youngest is actress Ashley Judd), the singing duo's rise from Nashville fame to national celebrity, the ups and downs that accompanied a working family relationship, and Naomi's eventual retirement from the music business. The movie was based on Naomi's autobiography Love Can Build A Bridge. ~ Bernadette McCallion, All Movie Guide