Jill Clayburgh

It is the 70s and Augusten Burroughs (Joseph Cross) is a young gay child who spends hours upholding his mother Deidre Burroughs (Annette Benning) with emotional support as she attempts to forge her career as a poetess. Augustens father Norman Burroughs (Alec Baldwin) is an alcoholic whose relationship with Deidre has eroded to the point that they spend most of their time aggressively attacking each others values and physically attacking each other as well. Augusten connects with each parent in certain ways but most of his time is spent skipping school, dressing up, and doing things like acting as audience to his self-involved mother. When the parents decide to give Augusten to Deidres psychologist Dr. Finch (Brian Cox), the young child must learn to live with a family of misfits whose primary activity seems to be to express their innermost feelings regardless of how it affects those around them. Augusten discovers his homosexuality with Neil Bookman (Joseph Fiennes) another adopted son of Dr. Finch and also befriends Natalie Finch (Evan Rachel Wood) who has issues of her own. Together Augusten and Natalie develop a way of dealing with the crazy environment until they discover a way out.

Eve tells her shrink, Ann, about kinky sex with a man. Ann learns that it's the same man, she's been seeing lately. Eve finds out and explodes. A murder follows. A psychiatrist (Sciorra) is helping a neurotic art gallery owner who has a submissive and very satisfying sexual relationship with her new lover, a domineering man with a violent streak. An airline pilot that the psychiatrist recently started dating turns out to be having an affair with the patient. When someone is murdered, the psychiatrist must decide whether the lover is a homicidal maniac or someone who loves her. Her mentor and his wife attempt to help her, but things aren't what they seem. —Ed Sutton <esutton@mindspring.com> In New York, the psychiatrist Ann Hecker has her office in the Fifth Avenue and is treating the artist John Castillo, who has violent sexual desires, and the gallery owner Eve Abergray, who loves to make kinky sex with her lover. Her best friends are the lawyer Sarah Green and her husband Leo Green, who was a former professor and mentor of Ann and now is Ann's psychoanalyst. When Ann meets the pilot Doug McDowell, she dates him and falls in love with him. But soon she learns that Doug is the mysterious lover of Eve. When she discover Ann's affair with Doug, Eve goes haywire, breaks into Ann's office and steals several tapes of her clients. Ann tells to Sarah and Leo and they hire a lawyer to Ann. She decides to meet Eve to recover her tapes and when Ann arrives at Eve's house, she finds her client hanged and dead. Now the abusive NYPD detective Larry Morgenstern investigate the murder case and suspects of Doug and John. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Psychiatrist Ann Hecker is ending one relationship and possibly starting an important new one, while finding that some of the sexual exploits her patients relate are weighing on her. Turning to a married friend from her research days for guidance, she finds his help increasingly important when a female patient is murdered and it turns out that her new boyfriend was also seeing the dead woman. —Jeremy Perkins {J-26}

A true story about Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Barbara Gordon's Valium addiction and her desperate attempts to kick the habit.

For the first time in history a woman is appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where she becomes a friendly rival to a liberal associate. Ruth Loomis becomes the first woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court. A staunch conservative, she immediately runs into conflict with Dan Snow, the high court's resident liberal. Although they never agree on the issues before the Court, they develop a respect and affection for each other after several comedic encounters. —Dave Gan <longbow@bigfoot.com>

A successful but stressed mathematics professor goes to her father's wedding and falls in love with the son of her new stepmother. A successful but stressed mathematics professor goes to her father's wedding and falls in love with her father's bride's son, a prematurely retired pro baseball player. She must choose between him and her current boyfriend, between Chicago and New York, and between research and administration. —David Metzler Chicago-based college mathematics professor Kate Gunzinger is at a complicated stage of her life. She has just moved in with her boyfriend, Homer, a builder, the move more out of a sense of "why not" than a compelling reason to do so. Their relationship is based on giving the other a total sense of freedom, which includes not being emotionally invested in the other's life. She has an interview for a job in New York City, which is more administrative than research, the balance which she could tolerate more than prefer. If she gets offered the job, she will not truly consider Homer in whether to accept it or not. Her widowed father Jacob is getting remarried in New York City at the same time as her interview, although she isn't sure if she will attend the wedding regardless since she doesn't like Emma, her new stepmother to be. At the last minute, Kate decides to attend the wedding. There, she not only gets a better sense of Emma not only as a woman but as her father's new wife, but also meets Emma's son, ex-Cleveland Indian Ben Lewin, who had to quit the game due to injuries. Despite Ben having a wife and daughter back home in Akron, the two embark on a more than casual relationship. Her short time with Ben that weekend gives Kate a better perspective on what is missing in her life, regardless of if there is a long term future for the two of them. —Huggo

In New York City, Phil Potter (Burt Reynolds), a freelance magazine writer, tries once more to reconcile with his wife Jessica (Candice Bergen), but she wants a divorce and is ready to pursue an independent life as a singer-songwriter. Leaving their apartment with a single suitcase, Phil moves to Boston, Massachusetts, where his brother, Michael "Mickey" Potter (Charles Durning), resides. While Mickey, a psychiatrist, recommends a local support group for divorced men, and his wife, Marva (Frances Sternhagen), states that the end of marriage could be an exciting new beginning, Phil is too sad to consider their advice. Later, Phil rents an apartment in town and tries to make the place feel like a home, but longs for companionship. Walking to Mickey's house for dinner one night, Phil encounters a skittish woman, who believes Phil is following her. After cursing at him, she runs away. When Phil arrives at the house, Mickey introduces the same woman as Marilyn Holmberg (Jill Clayburgh), a nursery school teacher and friend, whom he and Marva invited to dinner, hoping she and Phil might be well matched. Realizing the mistake she made, Marilyn is overcome with embarrassment. At the end of the evening, Phil asks Marilyn for a date, but she is wary of recently divorced men and thinks they should wait. After learning his divorce is final, Phil joins the support group and has his first date in eight years with an overeager woman named Marie. As soon as he arrives home from the uncomfortable experience with Marie, he telephones Marilyn and persuades her to have dinner with him. The evening goes well, and Phil and Marilyn enjoy getting to know each other over the next two weeks. Phil, however, confides to the support group that he has avoided going to bed with Marilyn, and a fellow divorce suggests that he probably still feels married. One evening, Phil surprises Marilyn at her apartment and announces that he wants to have sex with her. Despite his abrupt declaration and her anxiety, they spend the night together. When Phil leaves before dawn, Marilyn angrily reminds him that she is not a one-night stand, but Phil reassures her. As his relationship with Marilyn progresses, Phil overcomes his fear of teaching for the first time and begins a new job educating college students about magazine writing. At Thanksgiving, Mickey and Marva notice how happy the couple appears. During the holiday dinner, Marilyn answers the telephone and tells Phil that Jessica is on the line. While everyone at the table overhears the conversation, Phil awkwardly informs Jessica that Marilyn is a friend of Mickey and Marva. Upset, Marilyn leaves the gathering. Phil follows her, explaining that he was nervous since he had not spoken to Jessica in awhile and felt as if he was cheating on her. Although Marilyn is more comfortable with Phil than any previous boyfriend, she believes he still has feelings for his former wife and says goodbye. Later, Phil approaches Marilyn while she volunteers at the nursery school's charity fair. In light of her outburst at Thanksgiving, Phil believes they need to define their relationship more clearly, then asks Marilyn to move in with him. With both nervousness and enthusiasm, she agrees. To celebrate their first evening of co-habitation, Marilyn makes a "Welcome Home Hotstuff" banner, while Phil is at work. On the way back to the apartment, Phil arranges for duplicate keys and adds Marilyn's name to the mailbox. Upon arrival, however, he is shocked to find Marilyn sitting on the couch with Jessica. To ease the awkward encounter, Marilyn enables the former spouses to visit in private. Dressed in a sexy blouse, Jessica explains to Phil that she impulsively decided to visit him and apologizes for her timing, but confesses she is disappointed to find he is not pining for her. As Phil drives Jessica back to her hotel, she flirts with him, while he admits that he is still mad at her. When they arrive at her hotel room, Jessica hangs the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door and has a bottle of wine waiting. Phil is ready to give in to the seduction, but as she sings her song, "Better Than Ever," dedicated to their reconciliation, his desire dissipates, and he leaves. Jessica telephones later that evening to explain that her dramatic behavior was inspired by her love for him. During the support group meeting, Phil confesses that he desperately wanted to have sex with his former wife. While shopping for a couch with Jessica, Phil has an anxiety attack in the department store, and Mickey is summoned to calm him down. After he recovers, Phil reveals to Marilyn that he must return to Jessica. As Marilyn angrily moves back to her apartment, she persuades Phil to "swear on his brother's life" that he will never contact her again. In New York City, Phil attempts to resume his relationship with Jessica, but as they bicker, Phil is reminded that the connection with his former wife does not feel as "terrific" as the one with Marilyn. After six weeks, he arrives back in Boston. Phil, however, is unaware that Marilyn has been has been dating John Morganson, a professional basketball player with the Boston Celtics. At the department store, he buys the couch Marilyn wanted, then arrives outside her nursery school dressed for the Christmas season as Santa Claus. Marilyn does not immediately recognize him as she meets her new boyfriend and drives away. When Phil tries telephoning her, she pretends to be a voice on an answering machine. Next, Phil tracks down Marilyn at the Boston Garden arena while she watches her boyfriend practice with the Celtics. Seeing Phil arrive, Marilyn immediately claims she is no longer interested in their relationship, until Phil asks her to marry him. Shocked by the proposal, Marilyn cannot hide her feelings, and embraces him.

A biography about the love affair between 1930s Hollywood superstars Clark Gable and Carole Lombard.