The best Michael Beach’s drama movies

In the aftermath of an unspeakable act of terror, Police Sergeant Tommy Saunders joins courageous survivors, first responders and investigators in a race against the clock to hunt down the Boston Marathon bombers before they strike again.

In a broken city rife with injustice, ex-cop Billy Taggart seeks redemption and revenge after being double-crossed and then framed by its most powerful figure, the mayor. Billy's relentless pursuit of justice, matched only by his streetwise toughness, makes him an unstoppable force - and the mayor's worst nightmare.

When principal Joe Clark takes over decaying Eastside High School, he's faced with students wearing gang colors and graffiti-covered walls. Determined to do anything he must to turn the school around, he expels suspected drug dealers, padlocks doors and demands effort and results from students, staff and parents. Autocratic to a fault, this real-life educator put it all on the line.

Musical prodigy, Sparkle struggles to become a star while overcoming issues that are tearing her family apart. From an affluent Detroit area and daughter to a single mother, she tries to balance a new romance with music manager Stix while dealing with the unexpected challenges her new life will bring as she and her two sisters strive to become a dynamic singing group during the Motown-era.

Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.

Cheated on, mistreated and stepped on, the women are holding their breath, waiting for the elusive "good man" to break a string of less-than-stellar lovers. Friends and confidants Vannah, Bernie, Glo and Robin talk it all out, determined to find a better way to breathe.

Another young boy with 'hoop dreams' finds an old pair of Michael Jordan's sneakers and can suddenly play ball like the greatest player in the world.

After her fiance is falsely imprisoned, a pregnant African-American woman sets out to clear his name and prove his innocence.

Keen young Raymold Avila joins the Internal Affairs Department of the Los Angeles police. He and partner Amy Wallace are soon looking closely at the activities of cop Dennis Peck whose financial holdings start to suggest something shady. Indeed Peck is involved in any number of dubious or downright criminal activities. He is also devious, a womaniser, and a clever manipulator, and he starts to turn his attention on Avila.

When an energy experiment goes haywire, a rash of massive hurricanes rips across North America. A high school science teacher must get his family to safety before the hurricanes merge, creating a "hypercane" with the power to wipe the US off the map.

Johnny Scardino is working for blackmailers, photographing wealthy guys in seedy motels. One such assignment turns the wrong way and blackmailers die one by one. Is Johnny the next on the list?

When a Supreme Court judge commits suicide and his secretary is found murdered, all fingers point to Carl Anderson (Liam Neeson), a homeless veteran who's deaf and mute. But when public defender Kathleen Riley (Cher) is assigned to his case, she begins to believe that Anderson may actually be innocent. Juror Eddie Sanger (Dennis Quaid), a Washington lobbyist, agrees, and together the pair begins their own investigation of events.

Traditional Sunday dinners at Mama Joe's (Irma P. Hall) turn sour when sisters Teri (Vanessa L. Williams), Bird (Nia Long) and Maxine (Vivica A. Fox) start bringing their problems to the dinner table in this ensemble comedy. When tragedy strikes, it's up to grandson Ahmad (Brandon Hammond) to pull the family together and put the soul back into the family's weekly gatherings.

As punishment for drunken, rebellious behavior, a young white soldier is thrown into a stockade populated entirely by black inmates. But instead of falling victim to racial hatred, the soldier joins forces with his fellow prisoners and rises up against the insanely tyrannical and bigoted prison warden.

Earl Pilcher Jr., runs an equipment rental outfit in Arkansas, lives with his wife and kids and parents, and rarely takes off his gimme cap. His mother dies, leaving a letter explaining he's not her natural son, but the son of a Black woman who died in childbirth; plus, he has a half brother Ray, in Chicago, she wants him to visit. Earl makes the trip, initially receiving a cold welcome from Ray and Ray's son, Virgil. His birth mother's sister, Aunt T., an aged and blind matriarch, takes Earl in tow and insists that the family open up to him.

Following a series of drug deals and murders, three criminals -- Fantasia, Ray Malcolm and Pluto -- travel from Los Angeles to Houston, finally arriving in a small Arkansas town to go into hiding. Two detectives from the LAPD, who are already on the case, contact the town's sheriff, Dale Dixon, to alert him of the fugitives' presence in the area. Underestimating Dixon, the criminals have no idea what they are about to face.

A lawyer finds himself at the center of a trial in which a for-profit foster care agency puts a known sex offender into the same foster home as his young client Jamal, which leads to catastrophic results.

The true story of Ruby Bridges, an African-American girl who, in 1960 at age 6, helped to integrate the all-white schools of New Orleans. Although she was the only black girl to come to the school she was sent to, (and since all the white mothers pulled their children out of class, she was the only one there, period), and though she faced a crowd of angry white citizens every day, she emerged unscathed, physically or emotionally. Encouraged by her teacher, a white woman from the North named Barbara Henry, and her mother, Lucille, and with her own quiet strength, she eventually broke down a century-old barrier forever, a pivotal moment in the civil-rights movement

A security man goes to work for a sadistic gangster with an alluring wife.