Not to generalize, but for the most part many Americans don’t like watching movies that show the seedy and heartbreaking truths that lie deep in the abyss of marriage and family life. For every Ordinary People or American Beauty that Hollywood puts out, there are dozens of Can’t Hardly Wait’s and Supernova’s. Audiences usually like to see pleasant things up on the silver screen — saving the misery for the ride home with the family. But once in a while, it doesn’t hurt to watch something that lets us be flies on the wall as we watch a dysfunctional and broken down familial situation.

Directed by Lee (Mulholland Falls, The Edge) Tamahori, Once Were Warriors is a film that packs a punch with its realistic brutality about how hard it is to be a strong family in the face of great adversity and social injustices. In fact, the film became so ingrained in my brain that I haven’t re-watched it since I originally viewed it over two years ago. (In fact, I’ve resisted a second viewing because I haven’t felt ready to go through it again.) Taking place in Auckland, New Zealand, Warriors follows a family who is struggling — struggling to make ends meet, struggling to move up, struggling to live together and hang on to whatever shred of a ‘normal’ life they have. Belonging to New Zealand’s indigenous Maori tribe who were strong in defeating the British, they are now engaged in other battles, such as alcoholism. Jake (Temuera Morrison – Six Days, Seven Nights, Speed 2) is the father of five and husband to Beth (Rena Owen), the matriarch, who is doing all she can to keep the family together and sane.

More than a social commentary on the plight of indigenous people (which can be transplanted to numerous countries), the film is an honest portrayal of how hard it is to have a stable and loving family when nothing around you is positive. Jake, who can be a great guy, drinks to excess in the bars (and house), which gets him into deep trouble. The family has to deal with constant partying in the house by some unsavory people. In between all the fighting, yelling and drinking, we can see the goodness in Jake, which makes things more difficult. The characters are all fleshed out and complex, just like ‘real’ life. It isn’t so easy to dismiss someone and just hate them when you can see their pluses despite all their flaws.

Beth has had enough of a struggle just in marrying Jake against her family’s wishes. They felt she was marrying down, below her social status. That was just the beginning of the long and hard life that she would have with this man. Not only is Jake’s behavior a problem, it also begins to affect the behavior of their older kids.

While not the sort of material you rush to the video stores to rent on a Friday night, there are times when such films should be given a viewing because, if anything, they will at least (hopefully) make you feel better about your own family life. Films of this nature that are made outside of the traditional Hollywood mold tend to bring an honest dimension to characters that are too often portrayed in black and white brushstrokes instead of the grayness that is life. By the last shot of this film, you will feel like you were just punched right in the center of your gut and it is wonderful.

While it is tough to make ‘message’ movies work well, sometimes they work just enough to be a curious little detour from the norm. It’s The Rage is one of those films. Sporting a spectacular character-actor cast, including Gary Sinise, Joan Allen, Jeff Daniels, André Braugher, David Schwimmer, Robert Forster, Giovanni Ribisi, and Anna Paquin, Rage concentrates on various stories (all somehow connected) that have to do with guns and the violence and destruction they can cause. No, this isn’t the NRA’s Best Gun Promotion Film Of The Year to be sure. It takes a left-leaning view of how senseless and easy it is to get guns and the problems they can bring to people who otherwise wouldn’t do what they do if they weren’t holding a piece in their hands.

Based on a play by Keith Reddin, the film has that slower pacing and wordier dialogue that play-to-film transfers often face. Echoing a world of Altman — and more recently, Paul Thomas Anderson (1999’s best film Magnolia) — intertwining lives and numerous storylines are a good idea but some realizations are more successful than others. An additional problem is this is a message film and, as such, it can get a little too preachy at times.

The best of the stories revolves around Sinise as a rich computer magnate recluse who lives out his life in his special room surrounded by video walls that display a digital ‘outside’ rather then the real one. (He doesn’t want any news or information coming in from the outside.) His new assistant (Allen) is trying to start a new life after leaving her husband (Daniels) following a shooting incident that starts the movie. To expand more would be to reveal the interconnectedness of this film.

Bottom line is, if you don’t see anything else to rent (and you’ve already seen Once Were Warriors!), you should take a look at this quirky film that, despite its flawed and simple "guns are bad" message, displays a wealth of talented actors doing a very fine job that’s worth watching.