Browse Movies : Released : Historical (Page #5)

Seduced by the challenge of an impossible case, the driven Dr. Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) takes the unbalanced yet beautiful Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) as his patient in A Dangerous Method. Jung's weapon is the method of his master, the renowned Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen). Both men fall under Sabina's spell.

True story of how three astronauts, stranded 205,000 miles above the earth, fight a battle to survive while Mission Control works against time to bring them home.

Set in 1999, during the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, an eclectic group of demonstrators, including environmental activists, doctors, anarchists, attorneys, eco-terrorists and just plain folks, brings the city to a state of near-chaos, and chases the WTO straight out of town.

In 1993, an elite group of American Rangers and Delta Force soldiers are sent to Somalia on a critical mission to capture a violent warlord whose corrupt regime has lead to the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Somalis. When the mission goes terribly wrong, the men find themselves outnumbered and literally fighting for their lives.

In South Africa, Patrick Chamusso is a charming and loving husband to his wife Precious, and a caring father to his two young daughters. He works as a foreman at the centrally located Secunda oil refinery, which is a symbol of South Africa's self-sufficiency at a time when the world was protesting the country's oppressive apartheid system. In his spare time, Patrick coaches a local boys' soccer team. Carefully toeing the hard line imposed on blacks by apartheid, Patrick is completely apolitical. Nic Vos is a Colonel in the country's Police Security Branch. The shrewd and charismatic Vos strives to maintain order in volatile situations, which have become more and more frequent as the outlawed activist organization African National Congress (ANC) rallies blacks against apartheid. Vos is also concerned for the safety of his wife and two daughters. He and his family live a world away from the Chamusso family--until the innocent Patrick comes under suspicion and is arrested (in June 1980) for sabotage of the Secunda oil refinery. His alibi is compromised, and Patrick is desperate to shield Precious from a past indiscretion and keep his job. But he is ill-prepared to withstand brutal interrogations by Vos' men. As Vos further insinuates himself into the lives of the Chamussos, to Patrick's shock and shame, Precious herself is jailed and tortured. Although he and Precious are soon released from custody, Patrick is stunned into action and completely reorients his sense of self and purpose. He leaves his family to join up with the ANC. Becoming a rebel fighter and political operative, Patrick is radicalized on behalf of his people and his country. He ultimately envisions a formidable and dangerous follow-up strike against the Secunda refinery, risking his own life and future. Change must and will come, for Patrick and his family, and for South Africa itself.

Langston Whitfield (Samuel L. Jackson) is a "Washington Post" journalist. His editor provocatively sends him to South Africa to cover the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, in which the perpetrators of murder and torture on both sides during the Apartheid era are invited to come forward and confront their victims. By telling the unvarnished truth and expressing contrition, they may be granted amnesty. Can the deep wounds of Apartheid be healed through reconciliation? Langston is deeply sceptical. He tracks down Col. De Jager, the most notorious torturer in the SA Police and tries to penetrate the mind of a monster, an experience that obliges him to confront his own demons. Anna Malan (Juliette Binoche), is an Afrikaans poet who is covering the hearings for radio. As a white South African she is shattered by the accounts of the cruelty and depravity committed by her fellow countrymen. Anna and Langston must both question their sense of identity. Where do they each belong? How responsible are they for what is done in the name of their respective countries? The moving testimony of the victims affects them deeply. In different ways they are both estranged from their families, and their shared experience draws them ever closer to each other. It is a story charting the unfathomable depths of human cruelty and the redeeming power of forgiveness and love.

France, 1789, just before the Revolution. A chef who has been sacked by his master finds the strength to free himself from being a servant to open the first restaurant

Set in Detroit, Michigan, a number of devastating riots take place over five summer days in 1967.

On a December morning in 1970, the King of Rock ’n Roll showed up on the lawn of the White House to request a meeting with the most powerful man in the world, President Nixon. Starring Academy Award nominee Michael Shannon as Elvis Presley and two-time Academy Award® winner Kevin Spacey as Richard Nixon, comes the untold true story behind this revealing, yet humorous moment in the Oval Office forever immortalized in the most requested photograph in the National Archives.

The film follows 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain (Romola Garai), and the fortunes of her eccentric family, struggling to survive in a decaying English castle. Her father (Bill Nighy) is desperate to repeat the spectacular success of his first novel, but hasn't written a word for 12 years; her exquisite sister Rose (Rose Byrne) can only rail against their fate, and their bohemian step-mother Topaz (Tara FitzGerald) is a nudist and no help at all. Salvation comes in the form of their American landlord Simon Cotton (Henry Thomas) and his brother Neil (Marc Blucas).

In 1935, J. Edgar Hoover forms the FBI and makes it an efficient crime-fighting organization — in part by harassing dissenters and building secret files on politicians. Hoover also fights the gangster wars in the ’30s and, later, the Mafia. He remains the FBI's director until his death in 1972.

Former Mayor Ed Koch is the quintessential New Yorker. Still ferocious, charismatic, and hilariously blunt, the now 88-year-old Koch ruled New York from 1978 to 1989—a down-and-dirty decade of grit, graffiti, near-bankruptcy and rampant crime. First-time filmmaker (and former Wall Street Journal reporter) Neil Barsky has crafted a revealing portrait of this intensely private man, his legacy as a political titan, and the town he helped transform. His three terms included a fiercely competitive 1977 election; the burgeoning AIDS epidemic; landmark housing initiatives; and an irreparable municipal corruption scandal. Through candid interviews and rare archival footage, Koch thrillingly chronicles the personal and political toll of running the world’s most wondrous city.

The film recounts the dramatic story of the secret Israeli squad assigned to track down and assassinate 11 Palestinians believed to have planned the 1972 Munich massacre—and the personal toll this mission of revenge takes on the team and the man who led it. Eric Bana stars as the Mossad agent charged with leading the band of specialists brought together for this operation.

Inspired by actual events, the narrative is based on a number of sources, including the recollections of some who participated in the events themselves.

In the picturesque Vienna of the 1930s Victor Kaufmann (Moritz Bleibtreu), the son of wealthy Jewish art gallery owners, Rudi (Georg Friedrich) and Lena (Ursula Strauss) have been friends since childhood. The inseparable trio vows to stick together, come hell or high water.

But after the German annexation of Austria, Victor is shocked to discover his best friend Rudi on his doorstep in an SS uniform. Though Rudi tries to prevent it, Victor and his family are sent to a concentration camp. Years later, the Nazis want to present a gift to Mussolini – in the form of a Michelangelo sketch belonging to the Kaufmanns. But when the sketch is proved to be a fake, Victor is taken out of the concentration camp to produce the genuine article. But a dramatic plane crash, switching identities and an elaborate – perhaps crazy - scheme are just what Victor needs to try and set things right. With a fast pace, hilarious characters and a rollicking story this WWII adventure always keeps you guess just what craziness will happen next.

Set in 1303 AD medieval India, Padmavati is the story of honor, valour and obsession. Queen Padmavati is known for her exceptional beauty and is the wife of Maharawal Ratan Singh and pride of the Kingdom of Chittor, a prosperous kingdom in the northwest of India. The legend of her beauty reaches the reigning sultan of Hindustan – Allaudin Khilji. The sultan, who is a tyrant, is fixated with wanting anything that is of exceptional beauty for himself. He lays siege on the impregnable fortress of Chittorgarh. After a grueling six months, he returns to Delhi empty-handed. He becomes obsessed and now wants to capture Chittor and its Queen at any cost. He returns back with a bigger army and raging fury. He attacks Chittor with brutal force, and a bloody and fearsome battle takes place between the righteous Maharawal Ratan Singh, defending his kingdom and the honor of his queen, and Sultan Allaudin Khilji. Khilji manages to breach the fortress but in vain, as the Queen chooses to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect her dignity.

Focuses on a power hungry general who wipes out his rival along with his entire family, save for one newborn. The infant is protected by the doctor who delivered him and raises him as his own, hoping to mold him into his own instrument of retribution.

The story of Mr. Lincoln and his self-appointed bodyguard, U.S. Marshal Ward Hill Lamon - a banjo-playing Southerner who foiled repeated attempts on the President's life, and kept him functioning during the darkest hours of the Civil War.

The roads cross at San Antonio de Bexar at a small, ruined mission called The Alamo—a place where myth meets history and legend meets reality. In the spring of 1836 nearly 200 Texans—men of all races who believed in the future of Texas—held the fort for thirteen days under siege by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, ruler of Mexico and commander of its forces. Led by three men—the young, brash Colonel William Travis; the violent, passionate James Bowie; and the larger-than-life living legend Davy Crockett—the Texans and their deeds at the Alamo would pass into history as General Sam Houston's rallying cry for Texas independence. As well, their actions would become legend for their symbolic significance.

Meticulously depicts the disintegration of Samuel Bicke (Sean Penn), a failed salesman and ineffectual would-be assassin. Unwillingly separated from his beautiful wife, Marie (Naomi Watts), Samuel is a meek and earnest everyman who grows increasingly embittered as mounting disappointment and rejection dash his dreams one by one. On the brink of a nervous collapse, he yearns for the success he sees in others, unable to understand why it cannot also be his. Inspired by real-life events, The Assassination of Richard Nixon tells the story of Samuel's breakdown and his subsequent attempt to assassinate the president – an endeavour which, like everything in his life, is inevitably doomed to failure. With the noise of Watergate providing a constant blaring background to the dissolution of his marriage and the loss of his job, Bicke loses his tenuous grip on reality. His desire to lash out at the government for his personal anguish drives him to conceal a gun under an orthopaedic leg brace. His intention: to hijack a plane and fly it into the White House.

In the wake of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, seven men and one woman are then arrested and charged with conspiring to kill the President, the Vice-President, and the Secretary of State. The lone woman charged, Mary Surratt, 42, owns a boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and others met and planned the simultaneous attacks.

Against the ominous back-drop of post-Civil War Washington, newly-minted lawyer, Frederick Aiken, a 28-year-old Union war-hero, reluctantly agrees to defend Surratt before a military tribunal. As the trial unfolds, Aiken realizes his client may be innocent and that she is being used as bait and hostage in order to capture the only conspirator to have escaped a massive manhunt, her own son.