Alan Barnette

Faith of My Fathers tells the story of the young John McCain (Shawn Hatosy). The film charts McCain's early home life with his father, Admiral Jack McCain (Scott Glenn), follows him through his years of training in the Navy, and focuses on his harrowing years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. The film is based on the memoir of the same title that was written by McCain himself. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Kim Delaney stars as Lt. Kate Timmons, a U.S. Navy officer whose traitorous ex-husband, Eli Dixon (David Keith), is imprisoned for selling secrets to the Russians. Escaping from Leavenworth, Dixon mounts an elaborate campaign of terror to get even with the United States in general and Kate (whose testimony helped put him away) in particular. Working hand in glove with the FBI, Kate desperately tries to prevent Dixon from using his extensive computer knowledge to wage full-scale war upon the country he has sold out. Highlight by an elaborate bank heist and innumerable capture-and-rescue sequences, Love and Treason was first telecast by CBS on March 7, 2001. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Originally seen on cable's Sci Fi Channel, the fifth and final season of Sliders continues the efforts by a group of time-and-space travelers to hopscotch from one alternate world to another, with the ultimate goal of saving their world (which of course is also our world) from the despotic reign of the warrior Kromagg race. In the course of events, the series loses its original leading man: Quinn Mallory, the college student who'd invented the device that enabled him and his companions to "slide" from world to world, is lost during a "bad slide," and at the same time his brother Colin is blown to smithereens. Though we may never see Colin again in this world, Quinn's life essences are transferred to another slider who is immediately rechristened Quinn Two -- a mighty slick method to replace departing cast member Jerry O'Connell with newcomer Robert Floyd. As for Quinn Two's sliding comrades, only Cleavant Derricks as Rembrandt Brown remains from the series' original cast; the other slider, Maggie Beckett (Kari Wuhrer), has been with the series since its third season. In addition to Quinn Two, Rembrandt, and Maggie, the slider team now boasts the services of African-American scientist Diana Davis (Tembe Locke). At the conclusion of the series, the team ends up on yet another alternate earth, where "slideology" has become a religion thanks to a prophet called The Seer, and the sliders' exploits have been dramatized on a cable TV show. (What was that old saying, "life imitates art?") Now it is up to our heroes to take this Earth's miraculous "anti-alien" virus to Rembrandt's Earth in order to squash the Kromagg -- but as so often happens on Sliders, things go awry, and the whole cycle starts all over again! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

During the first two seasons of the Fox series Sliders, college student Quinn Mallory (Jerry O'Connell) and his companions Prof. Arturo (John Rhys-Davies), Wade (Sabrina Lloyd) and Rembrandt (Cleavant Derricks) have used the time-sliding device created by Quinn to pop up in various alternate versions of contemporary San Francisco, all the while endeavoring to return to their own world. Beginning with season three, the sliding device has been modified so that the foursome will be able to emerge in countries and worlds other than San Francisco -- meaning, in many cases, alternate editions of the universe. The two-part episode "The Exodus" introduces Kari Wuhrer as Captain Maggie Beckett, a slider from another world whose husband has been killed by the sinister Col. Angus Rickman (played variously by Roger Daltrey and Neil Dickson), who has been hopping through time and space to drain the intelligences of innocent victims in order to save his own diseased brain. Joining Maggie in her pursuit of the elusive Col. Rickman, Professor Arturo dies at the villain's hands. The season finale finds Maggie, Quinn, Wade, and Rembrandt finally reaching "their" world and cornering Rickman, who perishes by diving off a cliff. As the timing device's vortex begins to close, Quinn and Maggie manage to escape -- but are thrust far into the future, and to yet another alternate world. It sure looks like the end for Sliders, and indeed it is so far as the series' Fox network run is concerned. But it will not be long before the series returns with new episodes on the cable's Sci Fi Channel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Originally telecast on the Fox network, season one of Slidersopens as college student Quinn Mallory (Jerry O'Connell) develops a device resembling a TV remote-control which enables him to open a portal to what seems to be a different universe. Entering the portal, he is disappointed to find that he is right back where he started, in the San Francisco of 1995. And yet, there are subtle differences: Elvis Presley still lives, the colors of traffic lights are reversed (green now means stop), and so on. Clearly he has stepped into some sort of parallel San Francisco, and upon this discovery, Quinn summons his grumpy psychic professor Arturo (John Rhys-Davies) and his computer-store co-worker (and erstwhile girlfriend) Wade Wells (Sabrina Lloyd) to test out the device again. Inadvertently swept into the trio's next foray into an alternate world is Rembrandt "Crying Man" Brown (Cleavant Derricks), a has-been pop singer en route to a gig that might have enabled him to make a comeback. In rapid succession, the four sliders end up in a contemporary San Francisco still mired in the Ice Age, then emerge in the same city at the same time -- only now San Francisco is a satellite of the old Soviet Union! For the rest of the series' first season, the protagonists hopscotch through a variety of alternate worlds in their efforts to return to their own world. In the process, they foment a second American Revolution (seems the British won the first one back in 1776); they save a parallel San Francisco from destruction by an asteroid; they enter a realm in which the '60s hippie movement is still alive and well; they show up in a Frisco where women hold all the big jobs and men are subservient; and, in the series finale, Wade is targeted for extermination when, in a utopian San Francisco, she draws a winning lottery ticket that doubles as her death warrant (shades of Shirley Jackson!). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After English professor Charles Lattimore (Pierce Brosnan) assigns his class to plot the perfect murder, he finds himself the prime suspect in a police investigation after a student and another faculty member wind up dead. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

Based on Doug Magee's novel Slow Coming Dark, the made-for-cable Somebody Has to Shoot the Picture is about a photojournalist (Roy Scheider) who is hired by a man (Arliss Howard) convicted of killing a policeman to photograph his execution. As the execution grows nearer, the photographer uncovers evidence that suggests the convicted man is actually innocent, and he tries to save him before it's too late. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Divided into four separate independent films originally made as a television pilot, Nightmares begins with "Terror in Topanga," a story about a young woman who goes out one night to buy a pack of cigarettes, knowing full well that the infamous "canyon killer" is on the loose -- and sure enough, a subtly menacing store clerk (Anthony James) begins to loom large in the woman's journey. The second story, "Bishop of Battle" is a sequence with animation that details the saga of a video games champion who comes up against a supernatural opponent. The next vignette, "The Benediction" is about a priest who gives up on his faith and takes off down the highway, only to be confronted with a demonic minivan and good reasons for remaining a believer. The last story, "Night of the Rat" has the rodent that ate Manhattan looming large over the home of a young couple, but never fear, the husband is blasé enough to handle anything, or so he thinks. As might be expected, the low-budget production and facetious scripting of a few of these sequences work against the intended scary effect of the stories. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide