Join ichannel every weekend for thought-provoking classic and contemporary feature films starring some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Kate Winslet, Natalie Portman, Alec Baldwin, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Paul Giamatti, Meryl Streep and many more.

Week of February 20

RORY O’SHEA WAS HERE
Sunday Feb. 26
This acclaimed 2004 feature tells the story of two young disabled men (X-Men: First Class heartthrob James McAvoy and Steven Robertson) who are determined to escape the predictable confines of an institution and live independently. Directed by Damien O’Donnell (East Is East), the Irish production took the Audience Award at the 2004 Edinburgh International Film Festival. Roger Ebert called the film “funny and moving,” and The New York Times praised it for putting across “a forceful argument about the rights of the disabled.” For the film’s titular character (McAvoy), wrote Manohla Dargis, “raging against suffocating institutional benevolence isn’t just a matter of punk posturing; it is a question of human dignity.” Brenda Fricker and Romola Garai also star.

Week of February 27

THE LAST HANGMAN
Sunday March 4
Harry Potter’s Timothy Spall gives one of his finest performances in this big-screen biography of Albert Pierrepoint, Britain’s most prolific official executioner. A grocery delivery man, and later a successful pub owner, Pierrepoint presented to the world a portrait of quiet, middle-class gentility. Yet he was also responsible for ushering more than 400 men and women to their deaths, and took pride in the bloodness efficiency with which he dispatched the condemned. For nearly 20 years, Pierrepoint kept his career as a hangman secret, declining to speak of it even to his devoted wife Annie (Juliet Stevenson). But his anonymity was shattered when the British tabloids reported on his work executing Nazi war criminals, and in the glare of public scrutiny – he was at once hailed as an “avenging angel” and condemned as a murderer by capital punishment protesters – Pierrepoint’s dedication to his work began to falter. Eddie Marsan (Sherlock Holmes) co-stars as Tish Corbitt, a friend whose fate would collide, shockingly, with Pierrepoint’s and Clive Francis plays Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, who personally recruited Pierrepoint for the Nazi executions. Adrian Shergold directed, from a script by Bob Mills and Jeff Pope.

Week of March 5

DAMAGED CARE
Sunday March 11
Based on a true story, this made-for-TV movie powerfully dramatizes the issues at play in America’s ongoing debate over health care reform. Golden Globe winner Laura Dern (Enlightened) stars as Dr. Linda Peeno, a former HMO employee who became an outspoken critic of the U.S. system of “managed care,” in which the health and welfare of patients takes a back seat to profit. With James LeGros, Regina King, Adam Arkin and Diane Ladd. Ilene Chaiken (creator of The L Word) wrote the screenplay; Harry Winer directed.