DV delight: movie madness for the living room: from Clark Gable and James Stewart to Robert De Niro and Tom Cruise, from merry old England to modern America, here are over 20 films worth watching

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), May, 2004 by Robert S. Rothenberg

King Rat (134 minutes, $19.95) supports our long-held contention that the British film industry maintains a prisoner-of-war camp somewhere so that there is a ready supply of emaciated actors on hand to be cast in World War II prison camp movies. (Check out the casts of "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "Paradise Road," "A Town Like Alice," and this 1965 film to see our point.) George Segal stars as Corporal King, one of a small contingent of American soldiers in an otherwise all British and Australian POW camp. While everyone else is suffering unbearable deprivation, he lives like his namesake by shrewdly trading with the Japanese guards and bribing the higher-ranking officers among the prisoners to look the other way. James Fox and Tom Courtenay are superb as, respectively, the upper-class officer who bonds with King and the almost overzealously honest provost marshal out to catch the wheeler-dealer in the act and clap him into the camp's lockup. With a solid supporting cast of such top-flight English actors as John Mills. Denholm Elliott, and James Donald, the film, based on James Clavell's novel and ably written and directed by Bryan Forbes, is as harrowing and memorable as "Kwai."

Brian's Song (74 minutes, $14.95), arguably the finest made-for-television movie in the history of the medium, is noted for having won five 1971 Emmy Awards and being the one film virtually guaranteed to bring tears to grown men's eyes, no matter how many times they watch it. James Caan and Billy Dee Williams costar as Chicago Bears running backs Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers, the latter an All-American and All-Pro blessed with unlimited talent, the former a dogged football player who had to straggle for every success. Thrust together by owner/coach George Halas (well played by Jack Warden), who decided to integrate the team by making the white Piccolo and black Sayers roommates, the two are shown to become the best of friends, ultimately sharing the same backfield, until Piccolo is stricken by the cancer that soon killed him. What could have been just another disease-of-the-week picture turned out to be uplifting and life-affirming, and--a rarity in sports movies--Caan and Williams look like they actually know what they are doing with a football in their hands. Special features include audio commentary by the two stars and a surprising downer, an interview with the real life Sayers based on the Hall-of-Famer's autobiography, First and Goal, in which he comes off as surly in his half-denial that the relationship portrayed in the movie actually existed, more me-me-me than us-us-us.

Robert S. Rothenberg is Senior Editor of USA Today.