Debbi Morgan Movies

The true-life story of a coach who tries to teach his players that there's more to life than basketball is brought to the screen in this sports drama. Ken Carter (Samuel L. Jackson) was once a star player on the Richmond High School basketball team in Richmond, CA, and years later, after establishing himself in publishing and marketing, he returns to the school and to the team as the new basketball coach. Carter quickly sees that his work is cut out for him -- the team is having an awful season, and their fights off the court are more decisive than their play on the court. While Carter wants to make the Richmond cagers into a winning team, he also wants a lot more -- to teach the boys to respect themselves and one another, and that they must excel in the classroom as well as in the gymnasium. Under Carter's guidance, the team turns their losing season around, with the state title a genuine possibility. However, when Carter learns that a number of his players have let their grade point averages slip below 2.3, as mandated in a contract he entered into with the students, he decides to lock the team out of the gym and send them into study hall until their marks improve. Carter's plan quickly becomes a subject of controversy among parents and team boosters, and their objections are soon picked up by the local news media, many of whom are not sympathetic to Carter's belief that his players must have goals beyond college ball or the NBA. Coach Carter also features Rob Brown and Rick Gonzalez as members of the team, and R&B diva Ashanti in her film debut as the girlfriend of one of Carter's players. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A young man is torn by divided loyalty in this hard-edged urban drama. Reggie (Ja Rule) was raised by his father (Giancarlo Esposito) after a violent incident in the neighborhood where he lived with his mother (Pam Grier). While Reggie has been encouraged to take up a life of crime by his older friend and street mentor J-Bone (Ving Rhames), his father thinks Reggie has a good head for business and urges him to use his smarts rather than his gun. When Reggie's father is murdered, J-Bone takes the young man under his wing, but as a consequence of their friendship, Reggie is linked to the killing of a local preacher -- whose daughter (Tatyana Ali) is Reggie's girlfriend. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this appropriately titled 100th episode of Charmed, the semi-demonic Cole (Julian McMahon) realizes that he will never be able to win back the love of Phoebe (Holly Marie Combs) so long as he is opposed by her half sister, Paige (Rose McGowan). To remedy this situation, Cole links up with the Avatars to make a journey into the past, where he can establish an alternate reality in which Paige never makes the acquaintance of Phoebe and Piper (Holly Marie Combs), and thus never becomes a "Charmed One." The plot thickens when the demons of the past rear their ugly heads, and when Paige suddenly finds herself able to penetrate Cole's alternate reality thanks to a bad cold! ~ Rovi

Now aware that she is slated to be Queen of the Underworld, Phoebe (Alyssa Milano) dolefully resigns herself to her fate because she is still in love with the "possessed" Cole. Even so, Phoebe has not forgotten her obligations as a "Charmed One," which include the saving of an "innocent." When she does this, her Underworld subjects threaten to overthrow both herself and Cole unless Phoebe proves her loyalty by killing her sisters, Piper (Holly Marie Combs) and Paige (Rose McGowan). However, this may not be necessary in the case of Piper, who is so depressed that she is liable to give up the ghost on her own. ~ Rovi

Debbi Morgan makes her first series appearance as The Seer, who foresees the death of The Source of All Evil (Peter Woodward) at the hands of the Charmed Ones. To prevent this, The Source breaks a centuries-old agreement between good and evil, unleashing an ancient vapor called the Hollow that has the capability of destroying the girls and their magic. Reformed demon Cole (Julian McMahon) wants to help the Charmed Ones in their efforts to stave off The Source, but Phoebe (Alyssa Milano) has a premonition that Cole's gallantry will destroy him as well! ~ Rovi

In her efforts to make up her mind whether or not to marry Cole (Julian McMahon), Phoebe (Alyssa Milano) casts a spell. In a twinkling, Phoebe is confronted with her past and future selves (played respectively by Samantha Goldstein and Frances Bay). What the "present" Phoebe doesn't know at this point is that Cole is now possessed by The Source of All Evil -- while The Seer (Debbi Morgan) plans to vanquish both The Source and the Charmed Ones and take over the Underworld. ~ Rovi

A young African-American couple navigates the tricky paths of romance and athletics in this drama. Quincy McCall (Omar Epps) and Monica Wright (Sanaa Lathan) grew up in the same neighborhood and have known each other since childhood. As they grow into adulthood, they fall in love, but they also share another all-consuming passion: basketball. They've followed the game all their lives and have no small amount of talent on the court. As Quincy and Monica struggle to make their relationship work, they follow separate career paths though high school and college basketball and, they hope, into stardom in big-league professional ball. Love and Basketball was the first feature film for writer/director Gina Prince-Bythewood, who previously helmed several comedy specials for Dave Chappelle. Spike Lee co-produced. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In 1966, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter was a top-ranked middleweight boxer whom many fight fans expected to become world champion. When three people were shot to death in a bar in Paterson, New Jersey, Carter and his friend John Artis, driving home from another club in Paterson, were stopped and questioned by police. Although the police asserted that Carter and Artis "were never suspects," a man named Alfred Bello, himself a suspect in the killings, claimed that Carter and Artis were present at the time of the murders. On the basis of Bello's testimony, Carter and Artis were convicted of murder, and Carter was given three consecutive life sentences. Throughout the trial, Carter proclaimed his innocence, saying that his African-American race and work as a civil rights activist were the real reasons for his conviction. In 1974, Bello and Arthur Bradley, who also claimed that Carter was present at the scene of the crimes, recanted their testimony, but Carter and Artis were reconvicted. In the early 1980s, Brooklyn teenager Lesra Martin worked with a trio of Canadian activists to push the State of New Jersey to reinvestigate Carter's case; in 1985, a Federal District Court ruled that the prosecution in Carter's second trial committed "grave constitutional violations" and that his conviction was based on racism rather than facts. Carter was finally freed, and he summed up his story by saying, "Hate got me into this place, love got me out." The Hurricane is based on Carter's incredible true story and stars Denzel Washington as Carter, Vicellous Shannon as Lesra Martin, and John Hannah, Liev Schreiber and Deborah Unger as the Canadian activists. Veteran filmmaker Norman Jewison directed. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Three of the most gorgeous TV witches since the days of Elizabeth Montgomery were the heroines of the hour-long WB fantasy series Charmed, which first materialized on October 7, 1998. Reunited in their ancestral San Francisco mansion, the Halliwell sisters -- Prudence (aka Prue, played by Shannen Doherty), Piper (Holly Marie Combs), and Phoebe (Alyssa Milano), and came upon a dusty tome titled the "Book of Shadows," which by and by revealed a secret that had long been withheld from them: the sisters were witches known as the "Charmed Ones," blessed with extraordinary powers which they were expected to use in the never-ending fight of good against evil. Prue, the oldest, had the gift of telekinesis, enabling her to move objects at will; middle child Piper was able to stop time; and Phoebe, the baby of the family, was able to see the future. The ritual enabling them to combine their powers involved the linking of hands and chanting in unison, "The power of three will set us free." Of course, now that the girls knew they were witches, they were immediately targeted for destruction by all manner of warlocks, sorceresses, and malevolent spirits, many of these hoping to steal the Halliwells' powers for themselves. Also, in their efforts to lead "normal" lives and not give away their secrets, the ladies encountered a great deal of difficulty in the romance department -- not to mention the holding and maintaining of regular employment.

During season one, Prue worked for the Buckland Auction House, whose owner turned out to be a warlock; she also lost her policeman boyfriend, Andy Trudeau (T.W. King), who was killed in an effort to save the Halliwells from a demon. Phoebe's private life was not quite so tempestuous, though she had a bad habit of losing jobs due to the bad things happening around her. The impressionable Piper, who managed to find work as a caterer and later as the owner of the "P3 Club" nightspot, thought she had found true love in the form of hunky handyman Leo Wyatt (Brian Krause), until learning that Leo was a "Whitelighter," a guardian angel fated to protect all good witches from harm -- and as such, was off limits. In later seasons, however, Leo was demoted to "mortality" and was able to marry Piper, with whom he had a "bewitched" son named Wyatt. By the time Leo's powers were back to full steam in season five, he'd been appointed an "Elder" Whitelighter; his former job of protecting the sisters was taken over by another Whitelighter named Chris Perry (Drew Fuller), who turned out to have a hidden agenda.

Season three saw quite a few upheavals in the lives of the sisters, with Phoebe falling for Assistant DA Cole Turner (Julian McMahon) -- who turned out to be the demon Belthazor, and whose mission was to kill the sisters. Cole managed to purge himself of evil, only to revert to wickedness -- a cycle that continued to repeat itself until, in season four, the "bad" Cole married and impregnated Phoebe with his evil seed. Eventually the baby was stolen by a demon called The Seer (Debbi Morgan), and poor, mixed-up Cole wound up trapped in another dimension before being "vanquished" permanently. (At least Phoebe landed a permanent job as a newspaper advice columnist once the dust had settled!) As for Prue, season three of Charmed turned out to be her last when she was killed during a "demon assault." Her place in the Halliwell household was taken in season four by the girls' half sister, Paige Matthews (Rose McGowan), who like the late Prue possessed telekinetic powers. Paige would eventually find "civilian" employment as a social worker, enabling her to emulate the other girls by applying her powers for the forces of good on a full-time basis.

There were scores of additional plot complications and story arcs occurring in and out of the "real world" and back and forth in time (at one point, for example, the heroines were converted into Greek goddesses). "Charmed" though the Halliwell girls may have been, it didn't mean that they exactly led charmed lives. Perhaps it was the unstable nature of the world in which our heroines dwelled that made Charmed one of the WB's most successful offerings; viewers literally never knew what to expect from one week to the next! ~ Rovi

The Huxtables brace themselves for Cliff's traditional junk-food binge when Clair (Phylicia Rashad) goes out of town for the weekend. Cliff (Bill Cosby), however, insists that he has turned over a new leaf, and serves up a healthy, well-balanced dinner to prove that he's reformed--and he almost gets away with his subterfuge! Elsewhere, Pam (Erika Alexander) and Charmaine (Karen Malina White) volunteer to keep close watch on Rudy (Keshia Knight Pulliam) and her friends, who are determined to prove how "cool" and grown-up they are by taking the subway to a school dance. This episode was originally produced for The Cosby Show's seventh season. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In the first episode of a two-part story, Whitley (Jasmine Guy) is more on edge than usual just before her engagement party. When her tensions and frustrations reach the spillover point, Whitley lashes out at her fiance Dwayne (Kadeem Hardison)--who, not unexpectedly, begins having second thoughts about the wedding. Elsewhere, Freddie (Cree Summer) inaugurates a romance with Shazza (Gary Dourdan) upon his return from Africa--much to the dismay of Kim (Charnele Brown), who is unconvinced that Shazza has changed his ways. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Dorian Harewood stars as the legendary black athlete in this made-for-TV biography that follows Jesse Owens from his collegiate career, to his pinnacle at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he won four gold medals--much to the dismay of Adolf Hitler and his squad of Aryan super-athletes. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi