‘Where the Day Takes You’

Filmmaker Marc Rocco understands how difficult it is to capture the immediacy of street kids’ lives in a dramatized format. His 1992 film works best when it’s at its loosest and most improvisatory. Whenever the seams in the script show, it loses its grit and takes on the aspects of a made-for-TV drama about runaways who end up on the streets of Hollywood. The cast features, from left, Dermot Mulroney, Ricki Lake, James LeGros, Balthazar Getty, Will Smith, Sean Astin and Lara Flynn Boyle (Cinemax Wednesday at 4 a.m.).