Avery Brooks Movies

An action drama centering on the media circus, 15 Minutes focuses on a New York homicide detective named Eddie Flemming (Robert De Niro), a famous figure known for his heroic on-the-job manner. A tabloid news anchor (Kelsey Grammer) attempts to get the scoop on Flemming's latest beat when a pair of Eastern European criminals (Karel Roden and Oleg Taktarov) find a way to manipulate the media by filming their exploits, which they believe they can sell to bloodthirsty journalists and make themselves rich. In the wake of a double murder, Flemming teams up with Jordy Warsaw (Edward Burns), an arson investigator assigned to help locate the murderous pair. Meanwhile, Flemming must contend with his news reporter girlfriend Nicolette (Melina Kanakaredes) as he and Jordy find themselves enveloped in a lurid series of events that threatens to jeopardize their safety. Kim Cattrall, Avery Brooks, and Vera Farmiga are also featured in the cast. ~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide

Tony Kaye made his feature directorial debut with this dramatic exploration into the roots of race hatred in America. In a shocking opening scene, teen Danny Vinyard (Edward Furlong) races to tell his older brother, neo-Nazi Derek (Edward Norton), about the young blacks breaking into his car in front of the house, whereupon Derek gets his gun and with no forethought shoots the youths in their tracks. Tried and convicted, Derek is sent away for three years in prison, where he acquires a different outlook as he contrasts white-power prisoners with black Lamont (Guy Torry), his prison laundry co-worker and eventual pal. Meanwhile, Danny, with a shaved head and a rebellious attitude, seems destined to follow in his big brother's footsteps. After Danny writes a favorable review of Hitler's Mein Kampf, black high-school principal Sweeney (Avery Brooks) puts Danny in his private "American History X" course and assigns him to do a paper about his older brother, who was a former student of Sweeney's. This serves to introduce flashbacks, with the film backtracking to illustrate Danny's account of Derek's life prior to the night of the shooting. Monochrome sequences of Derek leading a Venice, California gang are intercut with color footage of the mature Derek ending his past neo-Nazi associations and attempting to detour Danny away from the group led by white supremacist, Cameron (Stacy Keach), who once influenced Derek. Director Tony Kaye, with a background in TV commercials and music videos, filmed in L.A. beach communities. Rated R "for graphic brutal violence including rape, pervasive language, strong sexuality and nudity." ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Written by Walter Lockwood and directed by Joan Micklin Silver, Finnegan Begin Again is a whimsical comedy drama about a late-blooming romance. Robert Preston plays a Mike Finnegan, 65-year-old newspaperman resigned to wasting his time on a lonely hearts column and caring for his ailing, unappreciative wife (Sylvia Sidney). Mary Tyler Moore portrays Liz DeHaan, a much-younger schoolteacher, recently widowed and mired in a go-nowhere relationship with a mortician (Sam Waterston). Liz comes to Mike for advice...and nature takes its course. Finnegan Begin Again premiered February 24, 1985, over the HBO cable service. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This video from the Discovery Channel documents the progress of archaeologists as they carefully uncover a wooly mammoth from its centuries-old tomb of ice inside a Siberian ice cave. Intrepid scientists trudge to this forbidding environment to reveal the latest information they have gathered from this uniquely intact specimen. Scientists present hypothetical explanations for the extinction of this species 20,000 years ago, as well as exploring the possibilities for using the DNA of this specimen to clone a new wooly mammoth. ~ Sean Hurley, All Movie Guide

Deviating from the storyline of Alex Haley's book, and the classic 1977 miniseries that followed, the plotline of 1988's Roots: The Gift finds African-born slave Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton) and his plantation friend Fiddler (Louis Gossett Jr.) helping freed black man Cletus Moyer (Avery Brooks) smuggle runaway slaves to freedom. Roots: The Gift was set during Christmas of 1775 because it was slated for telecast during the Christmas season of 1988 -- December 11, to be exact. This telecast was timed to coincide with the posthumous publication of Alex Haley's book A Different Kind of Christmas, which had nothing whatsoever to do with Roots but did concern itself with runaway slaves at Yuletide. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Half Slave, Half Free is the reissue title for African-American director Gordon Parks' TV movie Solomon Northup's Odyssey. Based on the autobiography Twelve Years a Slave, the film relates the story of Solomon Northup, a black freedman who, in 1841, was kidnapped in Washington D.C. and sold into slavery. Avery Brooks stars as Northup, having spent a dozen years' servitude in Louisiana before managing his escape. Northup's own written words bespeak a rebellious spirit not far removed from the firebrand freedom fighters of the '60s. Curiously, director Parks downplays this in favor of sentimentality. Under its original title, Half Slave, Half Free was originally telecast December 10, 1984, on PBS. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Spenser: Ceremony stars Robert Urich as Robert B. Parker celebrated private eye. The story involves Spenser and his partner Hawk (Avery Brooks) attempting to keep a teenage girl safe after her life on the streets leads her to discover criminal truths about a prominent politician who has a taste for teenage prostitutes. Barbara Williams portrays Susan Silverman, the only woman close to Spenser's heart. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Season One of Spenser:For Hire begins with the two-part "Promised Land", one of a handful of the series' episodes actually based on a "Spenser" story by novelist Robert B. Parker. In this one, tough but ethical Boston private eye Spenser (Robert Urich) is hired to find the wife of a powerful businessman, only to realize that his client may not be 100 percent trustworthy. In addition to Spenser himself, the series' inaugural season introduces Avery Brooks as Spenser's fearsome but loyal street contact Hawk (Avery Brooks), his guidance-counselor girlfriend Susan (Barbara Stock) and his liasons at the Boston PD, Lt. Quirk (Richard Jaeckel) and Sgt. Belson (Ron McLarty). Subsequent episodes found Spenser protecting a volatile police witness, going after a duo of thrill killers, butting heads with a crooked landlord, protecting the so-called twin sister of a neurotic woman, exposing a team of "dirty" vice cops, going undercover to trap a gang of heroin pushers who have infiltrated a private high school, attempting to dissuade the clueless Sgt. Frank from romancing a white supremict, and trying to avoid extermination by that most terrifying of adversaries, the Woman Scorned. Among the season's guest star are George Grizzard as Susan's ex-husband Frank Silverman, Shirley Knight as Lt. Quirk's wife Katie, and a young Jimmy Smits as a firebrand Mexican dockworker in an episode reminiscent of On the Waterfront. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The third and final season of Spenser: For Hire finds the titular private eye hero (Robert Urich again unattached romantically, inasmuch as his second-season sweetheart, Assistant DA Rita Fiori, has been written out of the show. But before you despair over the emotional well-being of Boston's best and most ethical P.I., be it noted that Barbara Stock, absent since Season One, has returned in the role of guidance counselor Susan Sullivan. It is explained that, after a year's residence in California, Susan has returned to Beantown, determined to give her relationship with Spenser a second chance despite the danger represented by Spenser's many enemies in the Underworld. But while Susan is back, another of the series' regulars, Richard Jaeckel at Lt. Martin Quirk of the Boston PD, has departed. The scriptwriters contrive to have Quirk retire from the force after suffering a heart attack. The season opens with Spenser mediating a deadly feud between a judge and a mobster, and soon after our hero's sentimental nature again resurfaces as he helps an alcoholic priest create a halfway house for homeless teams. The subsequent episode "Sleepless in Seattle" represents something of an inside joke for scripter Lee Goldberg, who names all the members of the fictional "Kincaid" clan after the characters in The Partridge Family. Meanwhile, Spenser's brooding, implicitly lethal street contact Hawk (Avery Brooks) exhibits the charisma that will soon enable him to star in his own self-named TV series, especially in the episodes wherein Hawk shield Susan against a "respectable" sexual predator, and in another story in which he tries to negotiate with a berserk, gun-wielding postal worker (and this BEFORE the popular coinage of the phrase "Going postal"!) Among the future stars appearing guest roles on Spenser: For Hire this season are Kadeem Hardison, Samuel L. Jackson, Laura San Giacomo, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ving Rhames. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this made-for-TV movie spun off from the series Spenser: For Hire, Robert Urich returns as private eye Spenser. Here, Spencer and his partner Hawk (Avery Brooks) are hired by Hugh Dixon (Leon Pownall) to find out who murdered his wife and children. Spenser and Hawk's investigation eventually leads them to a white supremacist terrorist who is plotting the assassination of a prominent African leader. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This 7-Disc set includes all nineteen episodes from the second season.

26 episodes on 7 discs: The Homecoming, The Circle, The Siege, Invasive Procedures, Cardassians, Melora, Rules of Acquisition, Necessary Evil, Second Sight, Sanctuary, Rivals, The Alternate, Armageddon Game, Whispers, Paradise, Shadowplay, Playing God, Profit and Loss, Blood Oath, The Maquis Part I, The Maquis Part II, The Wire, Crossover, The Collaborator, Tribunal, The Jem'Hadar.

This 7-disc set includes all 26 episodes from the sixth season.

Episodes: A Time to Stand, Rocks and Shoals, Sons and Daughters, Behind the Lines, Favor the Bold, Sacrifice of Angels, You Are Cordially Invited..., Resurrection, Statistical Probabilities, The Magnificent Ferengi, Waltz, Who Mourns for Morn?, Far Beyond the Stars, One Little Ship, Honor Among Thieves, Change of Heart, Wrongs Darker than Death or Night, Inquisition, In the Pale Moonlight, His Way, The Reckoning, Valiant, Profit and Lace, Time's Orphan, The Sound of Her Voice, Tears of the Prophets.