Founding Fathers (2000)

How did such a “mismatched group of quarrelsome aristocrats, merchants and lawyers” ever find a way to bury their differences and create the United States of America? This four-hour History Channel documentary presents these men as imperfect individuals who somehow worked together to pull it off. Directors Mark Hufnail and Melissa Jo Peltier use well staged reenactments and carefully chosen period drawings and engravings to tell their story. Noted scholars like Richard Brookhiser and Joseph Ellis place each of the four segments in their proper context.

The action begins with the protests of Samuel Adams (Beau Bridges) against “taxation without representation” and then to the Boston Tea Party. The Virginians — Patrick Henry (Burt Reynolds), Thomas Jefferson (Peter Coyote) and George Washington (Brian Dennehy) — pick up the torch of liberty, and these patriots form the Continental Congress, win the Revolutionary War and write the Constitution. Included are portraits of the currently fashionable John Adams (James Woods) and the controversial Benjamin Franklin (Hal Holbrook).

Tex (1982)

There are lots of movies about teenagers, but few depict that time of life from the adolescent's point view. Tex, the best of the films adapted from S.E. Hinton's novels, is a gritty but sweet drama about the coming-ofage of a 15-year-old boy (Matt Dillon) in a rural Oklahoma town. His mother is recently deceased, and his dad is an itinerant rodeo rider. His 17-year-old brother Mason (Jim Metzler) holds the household together while hoping to win a basketball scholarship to college. Money is so tight they must sell their beloved horses for groceries.

Tex and his best buddy Johnny (Emilio Estevez) are always in and out of trouble. The anxieties and boredom of small-town life are convincingly evoked.