True Story Movies 2013 List

When Walt Disney’s daughters begged him to make a movie of their favorite book, P.L. Travers’ “Mary Poppins,” he made them a promise—one that he didn’t realize would take 20 years to keep. In his quest to obtain the rights, Walt comes up against a curmudgeonly, uncompromising writer who has absolutely no intention of letting her beloved magical nanny get mauled by the Hollywood machine. But, as the books stop selling and money grows short, Travers reluctantly agrees to go to Los Angeles to hear Disney’s plans for the adaptation.

For those two short weeks in 1961, Walt Disney pulls out all the stops. Armed with imaginative storyboards and chirpy songs from the talented Sherman brothers, Walt launches an all-out onslaught on P.L. Travers, but the prickly author doesn’t budge. He soon begins to watch helplessly as Travers becomes increasingly immovable and the rights begin to move further away from his grasp.

It is only when he reaches into his own childhood that Walt discovers the truth about the ghosts that haunt her, and together they set Mary Poppins free to ultimately make one of the most endearing films in cinematic history.

When Walt Disney’s daughters begged him to make a movie of their favorite book, P.L. Travers’ “Mary Poppins,” he made them a promise—one that he didn’t realize would take 20 years to keep. In his quest to obtain the rights, Walt comes up against a curmudgeonly, uncompromising writer who has absolutely no intention of letting her beloved magical nanny get mauled by the Hollywood machine. But, as the books stop selling and money grows short, Travers reluctantly agrees to go to Los Angeles to hear Disney’s plans for the adaptation.

For those two short weeks in 1961, Walt Disney pulls out all the stops. Armed with imaginative storyboards and chirpy songs from the talented Sherman brothers, Walt launches an all-out onslaught on P.L. Travers, but the prickly author doesn’t budge. He soon begins to watch helplessly as Travers becomes increasingly immovable and the rights begin to move further away from his grasp.

It is only when he reaches into his own childhood that Walt discovers the truth about the ghosts that haunt her, and together they set Mary Poppins free to ultimately make one of the most endearing films in cinematic history.

In 1986, Ron Woodroof, a tough Texas electrician, is diagnosed with AIDS and is given six months to live. Frustrated with the lack of available medical options and unwilling to accept a death sentence, Woodroof finds a lifeline using alternative drugs and creates a lucrative smuggling business that makes the drugs available to AIDS patients. Woodroof dies in 1992.

A woman searches for her adult son, who taken away from her decades ago when she was forced to live in a convent.

A woman searches for her adult son, who taken away from her decades ago when she was forced to live in a convent.

Follows the true story of Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years.

CBGB follows the story of Hilly Kristal's New York club from its origins as Country, Bluegrass and Blues (CBGB) to what it ultimately became: the birthplace of underground rock 'n roll and punk. Kristal, a fan of Country and Bluegrass dreamed of having a club in the lower Eastside that catered to that kind of music, when he had difficulty booking those bands he turned to other kinds of rock music. Hilly had one demand of the acts he booked, they could only play their own original music. No top 40's, no covers. It was the credo he lived by, support the artist at whatever the cost.

Following Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Brühl), an early supporter and eventual colleague of Julian Assange (Cumberbatch), The Fifth Estate traces the heady, early days of WikiLeaks, culminating in the release of a series of controversial and history changing information leaks. The website’s overnight success brought instant fame to its principal architects and transformed the flow of information to news media and the world at large.

Hortense Laborie (Catherine Frot) becomes the private chef for French president (Jean D'Ormesson) when he falls in love with her cooking.

The Butler is inspired by Wil Haygood’s Washington Post article about an African-American man who served as a butler (Forest Whitaker) to eight Presidents in the White House for over thirty years. From this unique vantage point, The Butler traces the dramatic changes that swept American society, from the civil rights movement to Vietnam and beyond, and how those changes affected this man’s life and family.

On New Year’s Day 2009, Bay Area Rapid Transit police detained Oscar Grant, a young black man and then shot him in the back and killed him with many bystanders recording the event on their cell phone cameras. Protests and riots surrounded the ensuing trial and its verdict.

Film shows a group of teenagers obsessed with fashion and fame who burglarized the homes of celebrities in Los Angeles. Tracking their targets’ whereabouts online, the teens would break-in and steal designer clothes and possessions. Reflecting on the naiveté of youth, amplified by today’s culture of celebrity and luxury brand obsession, the members of the Bling Ring introduce us to temptations that nearly any teenager would find hard to resist. What starts out as youthful fun spins out of control and reveals a sobering view of our modern culture.

Starring Academy Award-winner Tommy Lee Jones, Matthew Fox, and newcomer Eriko Hatsune, Emperor brings to life the American occupation of Japan in the perilous and unpredictable days just after Emperor Hirohito's World War II surrender. As General Douglas MacArthur (Jones) suddenly finds himself the de facto ruler of a foreign nation, he assigns an expert in Japanese culture - General Bonner Fellers (Fox), to covertly investigate the looming question hanging over the country: should the Japanese Emperor, worshiped by his people but accused of war crimes, be punished or saved?

In 1994, Korean-American teenager, Hyun Jae, went to a bar in New Mexico where a handsome young man posing as a firefighter offered her a ride home. She was abducted and smuggled into Las Vegas where she was imprisoned as a sex slave for two years. During her captivity, Hyun Jae (dubbed Eden by her captors) ensured her own survival by steadily carving out power and influence within the very organization that imprisoned her. Inspired by the complex and harrowing true story of human trafficking survivor Chong Kim, Eden peers into the darkest corners of America and attempts to discover the humanity within.

Set in The Côte d’Azur in 1915 – Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s twilight years – he is tormented by the loss of his wife, and the terrible news that his son Jean has been wounded in action. But, when a young girl miraculously enters his world, the old painter is filled with a new, wholly unexpected energy. Blazing with life, radiantly beautiful, Andrée will become his last model, and the wellspring of a remarkable rejuvenation, inspiring some of Renoir’s most renowned works including Les baigneuses [The Bathers].

Back at his family home, Jean too falls under the spell of the new, redheaded star in Renoir firmament. In their Mediterranean Eden and in the face of his father’s fierce opposition – Jean falls in love with this wild, untameable spirit…and as he does so, Renoir’s weak-willed, battle-shaken son grows into a filmmaker, eventually becoming one of the greatest of all time.

Building on the terror of A Haunting in Connecticut, this horrifying tale traces a young family’s nightmarish descent into a centuries-old Southern hell. When Andy Wyrick (Chad Michael Murray, House of Wax) moves his wife Lisa (Abigail Spencer, TV’s Mad Men) and daughter Heidi to an historic home in Georgia, they quickly discover they are not the house’s only inhabitants. Joined by Lisa’s free-spirited sister, Joyce (Katee Sackhoff, TV’s Battlestar Galactica), the family soon comes face-to-face with a bone-chilling mystery born of a deranged desire…a haunting secret rising from underground and threatening to bring down anyone in its path.