Jean de Segonzac Movies

When HIV-positive teenager Lisa Downey (Janae Kram) is found murdered, it is revealed that she was carrying her older cousin Allison's ID. Unbeknownst to her family, Lisa had been living a double life as a hooker and porn-film actress, making her connections via the internet. After several suspects are questioned and released, the SVU teams is convinced that they've found their murderer--only to be thrown for a loop when he turns up dead, along with another teenage hooker. This episode is capped with a bravura performance by future Heroes costar Hayden Panettiere. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After three men are discovered hideously mutilated -- their faces have been removed -- and strung up among New York City's high-tension wires, Detective Klaski (Bruno Campos) stumbles upon a link: Each of the men knew entomologist Remy (Alix Koromzay), a teacher at an inner-city high school. Klaski considers Remy a prime, albeit unlikely suspect, in the killings until he witnesses for himself the shape-shifting creature that has been stalking Remy -- an intelligent six-foot-tall insect with the face of its previous victim. And it wants to mate with Remy. It's off to the races as Remy, Klaski, and a pair of her students are trapped inside the school as the creature hunts them down. Meanwhile, a military unit of bug busters gets ready to fumigate the school with poison gas. ~ Buzz McClain, All Movie Guide

Jean de Segonzac directs Richard Crenna and Craig T. Nelson in the police thriller To Serve and Protect. Police officer Tom Carr begins to look into the death of a woman, but his suspicions that his perp is a serial killer become more pronounced after the death of a judge. Although Carr is able to get help from two other generations in the Carr family, he must step up his game when the killer takes an unexpected hostage. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Essentially a feature-length episode of NBC's long-running series Law & Order, this crime and courtroom drama marks the return of Chris Noth (Detective Mike Logan) to Manhattan's 27th precinct. For the past three years, Logan has been stuck on Staten Island, the result of an incident in which he lost his temper. Regretting his outburst, Logan yearns to return to his home station. A murdered hooker's body found floating in the harbor may provide the key to his return. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Created by Tom Fontana and co-produced by Fontana and Barry Levinson (the same team responsible for Homicide: Life on the Street), the gritty, uncompromising cable drama series Oz was set within the walls of Oswald Maximum Security Penitentiary (later rechristened Oswald State Correctional Facility), known to inmates and guards alike as "Oz". In a similar burst of grotesque whimsy, the action took place in "Emerald City," an experimental "prison within a prison," wherein the inmates were allowed to function as a more or less autonomous community, awarded with mobility and privileges in exchange for submitting to a daily routine and a strict set of rules and guidelines. Emerald City was established at the behest of Warden Leo Glynn (Ernie Hudson) by idealistic unit manager Tim McManus (Terry Kinney), who hoped that by giving the inmates a sense of community and responsibility, he could smooth the road to rehabilitation. Unfortunately, there were some convicts who just couldn't see things from McManus' "New Age" perspective, leading to sundry outbreaks of violence and bloodshed throughout the season's six-year HBO run. Additionally, Glynn and McManus were at the mercy of Governor James Devlin (Zeljko Ivanek), who sailed into office on a tough law-and-order platform, and who was dead set against McManus' alleged coddling of Em City's most dangerous cons. As it happened, Devlin's administration was itself waist-deep in corruption and collusion, making his entire pro-law stance somewhat laughable (except that no one was laughing).

As for the inmates, they had divided themselves along ethnic and personality lines into various tribe-like factions, eternally enmeshed in deadly power struggles. Among these "tribes" were The Brotherhood, The Homeboys, The Muslims, The Italians, The Irish, The Latinos, The Gays, and a nebulous bunch called "The Others," of which the series' narrator, wheelchair-bound con Augustus Hill (Harold Perrineau Jr.) was a member of long standing. The series boasted an enormous cast of characters on both sides of the bars. Those who were seen throughout the series' entire run included the aforementioned Leo Glynn, Tim McManus, James Devlin, and Augustus Hill (who remained a key player even after he was killed at the end of season five!), as well as inmates Miguel Alvarez (Kirk Acevedo), Kareem Said (Eamonn Walker), Zahir Arif (Granville Adams), Vern Schillinger (J.K. Simmons), Tobias Beecher (Lee Tergesen), Bob Rebadow (George Morfogen), and the funky philosopher known as Poet (muMs).

Of the authority figures, those who went the full six-year distance included prison infirmary doctor Gloria Nathan (Lauren Velez) and spiritual leaders Sister Peter Marie Reimondo (Rita Moreno) and Father Ray Mukada (B.D. Wong). Other recurring characters worth noting were volatile inmates Chris Keller (Christopher Meloni) and Simon Abedisi (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje), self-proclaimed escape artist Agamenon "The Mole" Busmalis (Tom Mardirosian), pregnant convicted murderer Shirley Bellinger (Kathryn Erbe), pro basketball player-cum-convict Jackson Vayhue (Rick Fox), imprisoned televangelist Jeremiah Cloutier (Luke Perry), sympathetic prison guards Sean Murphy (Robert Clohessy) and Diane Wittlesey (Edie Falco), and not-so-sympathetic turnkeys Claire Howell (Kristin Rohde) and Clayton Hughes (Seth Gilliam) -- the latter a psychopath who ended up attempting to assassinate Governor Devlin. Debuting July 12, 1997, Oz turned out between eight and 16 episodes per year (running times varied from 45 to 70 minutes), until its final first-run installment on February 23, 2003. ~ All Movie Guide

Munch (Richard Belzer) suffers a crisis in faith when a middle-aged woman whom he had pined over in high school is found murdered. As he investigates the case, Munch flashes back to his mixed-up youth, yielding few answers but plenty of questions. Meanwhile, Mary Pembleton (Ami Brabson) walks out on her husband, Frank (Andre Braugher), when he shows up for their daughter's baptism. Among its many other virtues, "Kaddish" is the only cop-series episode in living memory to invoke the title of the long-forgotten 1959 private-eye TV show Johnny Staccato (an early John Cassavetes effort). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A seemingly ordinary couple jump the tracks into disaster in this drama based on a true story. Chris Anderson (Luke Perry) is a straight-arrow cop who meets Pam (Ashley Judd) after she's hurt in a barroom fight. He asks her to dance after helping to stop her bleeding, and it's love at first sight. While Chris plays by the rules, Pam likes to drink, smoke dope, spend money, and cause trouble, and while he wants to make her happy, her emotional instability makes this no easy task. After Chris is fired and takes a job as a security guard, he can no longer pay the bills that Pam is ringing up. He uses his knowledge of security systems to rob banks, and he discovers that he's good at it. Pam eventually finds out about Chris' sideline; the prospect of danger excites her sexually, and she insists on joining in for future robberies, goading him into a crime spree that leads to tragedy. While Normal Life was planned as a theatrical release, the film debuted on premium cable after disputes between the studio and director John McNaughton; despite this, the film earned positive reviews and a cult following. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Pembleton (Andre Braugher) is now a father, but he hasn't got much time to celebrate his baby's birth. Lewis (Clark Johnson) returns from his honeymoon and delivers a startling confession to Kellerman (Reed Diamond). And Giardello's (Yaphet Kotto) career is on the line when the state attorney launches an investigation of a wrongful death. This final episode of Homicide: Life on the Street's fourth season ends on a suspenseful note, as Pembleton suffers a stroke while interrogating a murder suspect. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The title of this documentary refers to a program implemented by former New York City Mayor John Lindsay during the late 1960s when the city was plagued with civil unrest. Included in this consciousness raising program were TV spots including a brief interview with a group of kids from Harlem's P.S. 197 in which they were asked, "What would you like to be when you grow up?" Now, 25-years later, filmmaker Adam Isidore has sought out those originally interviewed to find out what became of them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Documentary filmmaker Philip Haas made his dramatic feature film debut with The Music of Chance, adapted from Paul Auster's terse, existential novel. The film follows the plight of two hapless drifters -- Jim Nashe (Mandy Patinkin), who is escaping family and responsibility with an inheritance and a red BMW, and Jack Pozzi (James Spader), a down-on-his-luck gambler and world class manipulator. Pozzi convinces Nashe to shoot the works and put his remaining $10,000 into a high stakes poker game against two rich suckers -- reclusive lottery winners Willie Stone (Joel Grey) and Bill Flower (Charles Durning), who share a lavish but isolated country estate, using the remains of their lottery fortune to construct a self-contained world on the grounds of their mansion. Instead of bilking the two millionaires, however, Pozzi and Nashe lose their windfall and find themselves indebted to Stone and Flowers, who compel them to work off their losses by constructing a stone monument on their estate, a chore that results in deception, flight, and possibly murder. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Poet and National Public Radio commentator Andrei Codrescu was born in Romania, immigrated to the United States in 1966, but didn't learn to drive until the early '90s, when he was 45 years old. After undergoing what he calls "this essential rite of passage," he then sets out on "the ultimate American ritual," the cross-country road trip, behind the wheel of a cherry-red 1968 Cadillac convertible. He starts in New York, where he visits Ellis Island, chats with a group of homeless Haitians, and dines at Sammy's, a Romanian steak house. Among his stopovers: Walt Whitman's house in Camden, NJ, across the street from a huge jail; a commune in upstate New York populated by Christians who eschew material possessions and support themselves by building children's furniture; the Motown Museum in Detroit (Codrescu's first home in America); a roller rink in Chicago which hosts religious services; the National Western Stock Show in Denver; the Taos Pueblo and Santa Fe in New Mexico; Las Vegas, where he stops in at a quickie wedding chapel and tries his hand at high-stakes poker; and San Francisco, where he visits the venerable City Lights book store. The laconic Codrescu provides voice-over commentary throughout. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

Either loved or hated by the critics, this is the debut film by the 29-year-old writer/director, Nick Gomez. A three-day slice-of-life in Brooklyn done in the cinema verite style, this is a violent movie portraying two ruthless thieves and their friends involved in illegal activities--following them through the urban underbelly as they commit their crimes and are pursued by the police. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide