Brian Grazer Movies

A made for TV movie that provides a bridge between the sixth and seventh seasons of the hit FOX action series 24, 24: Redemption features series star Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer. As the program opens, Bauer spends his time doing missionary work in Africa, laying low while the United States government attempts to capture him. His work leads him into contact with an evil warlord who maintains a loyal army by constantly brainwashing children into joining him. Bauer risks his freedom in order to stop the warlord. Redemption co-stars Oscar winner Jon Voight, Gil Bellows, and Robert Carlyle. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Controversial rap star Eminem makes his acting debut in this hard-edged urban drama, inspired in part by incidents from the musician's own life. Jimmy Smith (Eminem), known to his friends as Rabbit, is a young man trying to make his way out of the burned-out shell of inner-city Detroit. Rabbit's entire life has been a hard climb, and it certainly hasn't gotten any easier lately; Rabbit has just been dumped by his girlfriend, forcing him to move back in with his emotionally unstable mother, Stephanie (Kim Basinger), and he's getting along especially poorly with Stephanie's new boyfriend. Rabbit has a factory job that's tough, demeaning, and doesn't pay especially well, and he's convinced his skills as a rapper are his only real hope at a better life. Rabbit makes music with a crew of DJ's and MC's who call themselves Three One Third, among them his close friend Future (Mekhi Phifer), but his status as a white kid making music in a predominantly African-American community and culture is extremely intimidating, and after Rabbit freezes up in the midst of an MC battle, he's convinced he's missed his chance and that he's doomed to lead a marginal life as a factory rat for the rest of his days. With the help of his friends, and his new girlfriend Alex (Brittany Murphy), Rabbit struggles to work up the courage and the confidence to take one more shot at making his dream a reality. 8 Mile was shot on location in Detroit; the name refers to 8 Mile Road, a thoroughfare along the city's perimeter which effectively separates the middle-class suburban neighborhoods from the lower-class inner-city. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Director Ridley Scott spins this yarn concerning a Harlem drug kingpin (Denzel Washington) who smuggles heroin into the country by hiding it in the bodies of U.S. soldiers killed during battle in Vietnam. There was a time when no one noticed reserved driver Frank Lucas (Washington), but when the criminal kingpin he was charged with transporting through the city streets suddenly dies, Lucas seizes the opportunity to build his own criminal empire. In the following months, Lucas solidifies his status as Harlem's most innovative drug dealer by delivering a product that is purer than the competitors' and cheaper, as well. When innovative businessman Lukas attempts to go semi-legit by becoming one of the Manhattan borough's biggest civil supporters, however, street-savvy outcast cop Ritchie Roberts (Russell Crowe) begins to sense a sizable shift in the hierarchy of the drug underworld. But Roberts is one of the few honest detectives operating within a corrupt system, and as he sets out to investigate the case, crooked detective Trupo (Josh Brolin) does everything in his power to compromise the integrity of his idealistic counterpart. Upon clearing all of the usual Mafia-connected suspects, Roberts begins to believe that a previously unknown black power player has come out of the woodwork to dominate the local drug trade. While Roberts and Lucas may be operating on opposite sides of the law, the one thing that both men have in common is a strict code of ethics that separates them from their opportunistic colleagues. Now, as a confrontation between the two men becomes inevitable and the fate of each becomes inexorably tied to the other, it gradually becomes apparent that only one of them will emerge from the conflict victorious. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

"Houston, we have a problem." Those words were immortalized during the tense days of the Apollo 13 lunar mission crisis in 1970, events recreated in this epic historical drama from
Ron Howard. Astronaut Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) leads command module pilot Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) and lunar module driver Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) on what is slated as NASA's third lunar landing mission. All goes smoothly until the craft is halfway through its mission, when an exploding oxygen tank threatens the crew's oxygen and power supplies. As the courageous astronauts face the dilemma of either suffocating or freezing to death, Mattingly and Mission Control leader Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) struggle to find a way to bring the crew back home, all the while knowing that the spacemen face probable death once the battered ship reenters the Earth's atmosphere. The film received an overwhelmingly enthusiastic critical response and a Best Picture nomination, but lost that Oscar to another (very different) historical epic, Mel Gibson's Braveheart. In 2002, the movie was released in IMAX theaters as Apollo 13: The IMAX Experience, with a pared-down running time of 116 minutes in order to meet the technical requirements of the large-screen format. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi

Making its Fox network bow on November 2, 2003, the weekly, half-hour Arrested Development would seem to meet all the qualifications of a "cult favorite." It was smart, hip, and savagely funny; it developed a fiercely loyal circle of fans; it was almost universally beloved of the critical establishment; and it never drew a large audience, barely making a second and then a third season. Jason Bateman headed the cast as Michael Bluth, a thirtysomething widower with a likable 13-year-old son named George Michael (Michael Cera). The level-headed Michael was disdained as the "white sheep" of his highly dysfunctional family because he refused to luxuriate in the wealth accumulated by his business entrepreneur father, George Bluth Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor), who had built a small Newport Beach frozen-banana stand into a vast financial empire. Instead, Michael broke from tradition by actually going to work for a living, and by not giving in to the ostentatious self-indulgence practiced by the rest of the Bluth clan. But when George Sr. was thrown in jail on a charge of fraud, Michael was forced to return to Orange County, CA, to take charge of the family and the family business, both of which were bankrupt because all of his father's assets had been frozen.

Now it was Michael's unenviable task to instill financial responsibility -- not to mention responsibility, period -- in the rest of the Bluth family. These included Michael's snobbish, boozy, hyperjudgmental mother, Lucille (Jessica Walter), who resided in a posh Balboa Bay penthouse and to whom credit cards were life's blood. Also living in Lucille's digs was Michael's youngest brother, Buster (Tony Hale), a perennial graduate student helplessly tied to his mother's apron strings (Buster would later become even more ineffectual, and far more of a thorn in Michael's side, when he lost his hand in an accident and was forced to use an ill-fitting hook). Moving in with Michael until conditions improved (if ever!) were his twin sister, Lindsay (Portia de Rossi), a selfish, scatterbrained liberal activist; Lindsay's husband, Tobias Fünke (David Cross), a former doctor who'd lost his license after administering CPR to a man who didn't need it, and who was half-heartedly trying to break into the acting profession (Tobias was also a deeply closeted homosexual, a fact obvious to everyone but himself); and the couple's spoiled-rotten daughter, Mae, aka "Maeby" (Alia Shawkat), for whom Michael's son, George Michael, harbored a somewhat unnatural crush. And just when you thought that the Bluth family couldn't be any more screwed up, we submit for your approval oldest son George Oscar II, aka "Gob" (Will Arnett), a spectacularly inept stage magician who suffered from a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease and who never had a job -- except when, during Michael's absence in season two, he inexplicably became the darling of Bluth Inc.'s board of directors.

Arrested Development also boasted a large cast of semi-regulars, most prominently Henry Winkler as the Bluth family's lovable but dangerously incompetent lawyer, Barry Zuckerkorn; Liza Minnelli as Lucille Bluth's neighbor and chief social rival Lucille Austero, aka Lucille 2, who at one point entered into a ridiculously torrid romance with the very much younger Buster; Justin Lee as Annyong, a 14-year-old Korean orphan whom Lucille Bluth adopted just to spite Buster; Ed Begley Jr. as George Sr.'s unscrupulous business rival Stan Sitwell; and an unbilled Ron Howard (whose Imagine Entertainment company produced the series) as the series' omnipresent narrator, forever filling in plot gaps with vital information (signature phrase: "In fact...") -- and always several steps ahead of the thick-eared characters. It is virtually impossible to chronicle all of the series' off-the-wall dialogue and surrealistic sight gags; suffice to say that the decision to approach the material in a hand-held "documentary" fashion, and to dispense with the use of a laugh track, only served to emphasize the million and one absurdities. The consistency of the series' lofty quality can be attributed to the fact that its creator, Mitchell Hurwitz (a veteran of such sitcoms as The Golden Girls and The John Larroquette Show), devoted every ounce of his energy to Arrested Development, refusing to accept any other projects throughout the show's run. Arguably too smart for the room, Arrested Development never got the huge audience it deserved, though the devotion of its fans and its multitude of industry awards all but shamed Fox into renewing the series beyond its first and second season. At the risk of offending devotees of Seinfeld and The Honeymooners, there are millions who regard Arrested Development as one of the best comedy series to grace network TV. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The Bluth family of Orange County, CA, once again forces the media critics to come up with new variations on the word "dysfunction" as the cult-favorite sitcom Arrested Development launches its second season. For those who came in late, straight-arrow Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) is still trying to keep his family and the family business from disintegrating after his entrepreneur father is thrown in jail on a fraud charge. Well, anyway, he was in jail until he broke out with the help of lookalike convict Oscar (also Jeffrey Tambor) at the end of season one. Now that George Sr. is on the run, the authorities target poor Michael for prosecution in their efforts to bring Bluth Inc. to justice -- and thus Michael's older brother, Gob, an habitually unemployed (and woefully) inept magician, becomes head of the family, managing to convince the company's board of directors that he actually has some business sense! In other developments, Michael's kid brother, Buster (Tony Hale), takes a break from his indolence by romancing Lupe (B.W. Gonzalez), a girl he'd met at a charity drive, and by joining the U.S. Army -- conveniently losing a hand in a freak accident just before he is to be sent to Iraq.

Meanwhile, bumbling detective Gene Parmesan (Martin Mull) gets lost somewhere south of the border while searching for the elusive George Sr.; Oscar, the man who'd traded places with George Sr. to effect his escape, may also end up replacing George Sr. in bed with his the elder Bluth's wife, Lucille (Jessica Walter); and Michael's 14-year-old son, George Michael, takes a surrealistic journey into "Charlie Brown" territory when he's dumped by his girlfriend. Plus, Michael's doctor-cum-actor brother-in-law Tobias (David Cross) edges further out of the closet when he adopts the drag alter ego of "Mr. Featherbottom." Also, this is the season when we meet George Sr.'s hated business rival Stan Sitwell (Ed Begley Jr.), whose daughter Sally (Christine Taylor) was once (and may still be) Michael's childhood sweetheart. Other guest performers include Martin Short as the paraplegic, monumentally annoying Uncle Jack Dorso, an old family friend who offers to help the Bluths regain their stock majority in their own company -- at a price; and blind lawyer/congenital liar Maggie Lizer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who shows up pregnant, leading Michael to believe that he's going to be a father again; and Ben Stiller as Gob's magician mentor Tony Wonder, whose most famous illusion was being baked in a loaf of bread -- and who, like everyone else on the show, has an ulterior motive for lending the Bluths a helping hand. The last episode of the season finds George Sr. still on the lam; Tobias linking up with his father-in-law's blackmailing, self-deprecating former secretary Kitty (Patricia Velasquez); and George Michael entering into a relationship with the devoutly Christian Ann Veal (Mae Whitman), despite her total revulsion for his family and everything they stand for. As in season one, Arrested Development earned several Emmy nominations for its second season, winning the prize for Outstanding Writing. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In a rare foray into documentary filmmaking, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment produced this behind-the-scenes look at professional wrestling, shot on digital video by director (Barry W. Blaustein), screenwriter of several hit Eddie Murphy comedies. An unabashed wrestling fan since childhood, Blaustein nevertheless takes an unflinching look at the dark underbelly of the "sport," as he shadows a trio of wrestlers representing three very different aspects of the profession. Mick Foley is a superstar shown to be the complete opposite of "Mankind," his successful wrestling character. At work, Mankind is a bloodthirsty animal, but when his mask is off, he's a loving, doting father clearly worshipped by his two young kids, who are traumatized when they witness Foley being bloodied at an Anaheim, California, event. Terry Funk is a portrait of what Foley could become, a former legend now at the end of his career and in desperate need of knee surgery, but continuing to perform dangerous stunts in the ring. Jake "The Snake" Roberts, on the other hand, travels in second-class wrestling circles, a recovering drug addict who has a painful reconciliation with his daughter. Blaustein also interviews the World Wrestling Federation's boastful bigwig Vince McMahon. McMahon later tried to block the release and promotion of the film. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

A champion surfer who never met a wave she couldn't conquer, California teen Dana (Sasha Jackson) leaves Beverly Hills behind for the adventure of a lifetime, and makes some remarkable new friends along the way. Dana's late mother grew up in South Africa, and kept a detailed diary about her childhood experiences. Inspired by her mother's words, the privileged teen rejects her father's requests to enroll in college, instead booking a flight to South Africa to walk the beaches she has read about since childhood. Her mother's dream was to surf the waves of Jeffreys Bay, and with a little help from some fun-loving friends, Dana prepares to fill in the missing chapter of the book that guides her voyage. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Eddie Murphy plays Marcus Graham, a hotshot ad exec who's also an insatiable womanizer. He is thus hardly prepared for his new boss, Jacqueline, played by Robin Givens. In terms of things romantic, Jacqueline is nothing more or less than a female version of Marcus -- and now, for the first time, he's getting the runaround. Boomerang boasts supporting-cast contributions from Halle Berry, David Alan Grier, Martin Lawrence, Grace Jones, Eartha Kitt, Geoffrey Holder, and Melvin Van Peebles. Watch closely and you'll see director Reginald Hudlin in a bit role. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Comedian Chris Rock stars in this scattershot satire of rap music in the vein of This Is Spinal Tap. This film within a film begins with A. White (Chris Elliot) screening a rough cut of a documentary he has made of the notorious CB4 rap group -- consisting of group leader Albert, also know as MC Gusto (Chris Rock); Otis, also known as Stab Master Arson (Deezer D); and Euripides, also know as Dead Mike (Allen Payne). White charts the course of CB4's success, their superstar status a result of the fact that they are the only gangsta rap group who are, in fact, actual gangsters, coming direct from rap sheets to rap music. They are considered so bad that they even give rapper Ice-T pause: "I thought I was hardcore. But these guys are serious! What am I supposed to do now?" Unfortunately, at the height of their fame, their gangster pose is revealed to be a sham. Albert, Otis, and Euripides turn out to be a bunch of middle-class blacks striking a gangsta facade to look cool. But now they are in trouble. The real Gusto (Charlie Murphy), a neighborhood thug who went to prison on a drug bust, has broken out of jail and is coming for CB4. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Inspired by actual events that occurred in 1920s-era Los Angeles, Clint Eastwood's The Changeling tells the story of a woman driven to confront a corrupted LAPD after her abducted son is retrieved and she begins to suspect that the boy returned to her is not the same boy she gave birth to. The year was 1928, and the setting a working-class suburb of Los Angeles. As Christine (Angelina Jolie) said goodbye to her son, Walter, and departed for work, she never anticipated that this was the day her life would be forever changed. Upon returning home, Christine was distressed to discover that Walter was nowhere to be found. Over the course of the following months, the desperate mother would launch a search that would ultimately prove fruitless. Yet just when it seemed that all hope was lost, a nine-year-old boy claiming to be Christine's son seemed to appear out of thin air. Overcome with emotions and uncertain how to face the authorities or the press, Christine invites the child to stay in her home despite knowing without a doubt that he is not her son. As much as Christine would like to accept the fact that her son has been returned to her, she cannot accept the injustice being pushed upon her and continues to challenge the Prohibition-era Los Angeles police force at every turn. As a result, Christine is slandered by the powers that be, and painted as an unfit mother. In this town, a woman who challenges the system is putting her life on the line, and as the situation grows desperate, the only person willing to aid her in her search is benevolent local activist Reverend Briegleb (John Malkovich). ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

The directorial debut of Glenn Gordon Caron, the creator of the television series Moonlighting (1985-89), this intense, gritty drama was received as one of the best-ever cinematic treatments of substance abuse. Michael Keaton stars as Daryl Poynter, a hustling, successful Philadelphia real estate agent who has become addicted to cocaine. He's already got problems, including nearly a $100,000 embezzled from his employer and lost on the stock market, when he wakes up one morning with a young woman dead in his bed from a coke overdose. His company is asking questions about the missing funds, and the dead girl's father is plastering his neighborhood with posters accusing Daryl of being a murderer, so he decides to hide out in an anonymous drug treatment program. There, however, Daryl runs into tough-minded counselor and former addict Craig (Morgan Freeman), who has heard all of Daryl's lies and tricks before. Daryl also finds romance with an abused fellow addict, Charlie Standers (Kathy Baker), and understanding with his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor (M. Emmet Walsh). ~ Karl Williams, Rovi