Browse Movies : 2003 : Historical

This movie tells two stories in three settings, going back and forth between each story as the film proceeds. One is the story of two cowboy brothers (Joseph Fiennes, David Wenham) who worked as mercenaries in Turkey around the turn of the century, and fall in love with the same woman (Anne Brochet). The other is set in contemporary New York, and is about a 90-year-old woman with a secret horde of Balkan gold and a thief (Adrian Lester), who surprisingly become friends. The third setting is the Ottoman Empire, circa 1913.

Through a chronological history of the liberation struggle in South Africa, the documentary cites examples of the way music was used in the fight for freedom. Songs united those being oppressed and gave those fighting a way to express their plight. The music consoled the incarcerated and created an effective underground form of communication inside the prisons.

This is the true story of a former bicycle repairman, Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges), who made his fortune introducing the automobile to the American West, and who owned a small, knobbly-kneed horse called Seabiscuit. Howard teamed up with a half-blind ex-boxing prize fighter, Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire), who became the horse's jockey and a former "mustang breaker" Wild West performer called "The Lone Plainsman", Tom Smith (Chris Cooper), who became the horse's trainer. As the United States struggled through the Great Depression, people around the country followed with rapt interest of the Seabiscuit story, leading to his win of the Horse of the Year honors in 1938...

Directed by Academy Award®-winner Anthony Minghella ("The English Patient", "The Talented Mr. Ripley") and based on Charles Frazier's best-selling Civil War novel of the same name, "Cold Mountain" tells the story of Inman (Jude Law), a wounded confederate soldier who is on a perilous journey home to his mountain community, hoping to reunite with his pre-war sweetheart, Ada (Nicole Kidman). In his absence, Ada struggles to survive, and revive her father's farm with the help of intrepid young drifter Ruby (Renee Zellweger).

Based on the acclaimed bestseller by Andre Dubus III. Massoud Amir Behrani (Ben Kingsley) is living a lie to fulfill a dream. Once a member of the Shah of Iran's elite inner circle, he has brought his family to America to build a new life. Despite a pretense of continued affluence, he is barely making ends meet until he sees his opportunity in the auction of a house being sold for back taxes. It is a terrible mistake. Through a bureaucratic snafu, the house had been improperly seized from its rightful owner, Kathy Lazaro (Jennifer Connelly). The loss of her home tears away Kathy's last hope of a stable life—a life that had been nearly destroyed by addiction—and Kathy decides to fight to recover her home…at any cost.

Russell Crowe is Lucky Jack Aubrey, the Navy's greatest fighting captain and Paul Bettany is ship's doctor Stephen Maturin. The ship, the Surprise, is suddenly attacked by a superior enemy. With the Surprise badly damaged and much of his crew injured, Aubrey – the "Master" of the Surprise and "Commander" of his men – is torn between duty and friendship as he sets sail in a high-stakes chase across two oceans, to the far side of the world, to intercept and capture their foe. It's a mission that can decide the fate of a nation – or destroy Lucky Jack and his crew. The film is based on the narrative outline of the tenth book in Patrick O'Brian's legendary "Aubrey/Maturin" series of high seas novels about the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars.

Genya Tachibana is a director and the president of a small production company. One day, he is contacted by the famous Gin Ei studios, that ask him to direct a documentary commemorating their 70 years of existence. Genya chooses as a subject the legendary actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, a superstar actress who 30 years earlier chose to end her career and disappear from public life. Chiyoko Fujiwara is a cinematographic enigma that nobody ever seemed to shed light on. Genya is obsessed by this fallen star, wanting to unravel the truth behind her secret. Accompanied by a young cameraman, Genya finds his way to Chiyoko, who has transformed into an elderly hermit living alone in an isolated house. At their first meeting, Genya sees that Chiyoko, although touched by the hand of time, has not lost any of her charm or energy. To gain her confidence, he brings her an ancient key that holds sentimental value, that rapidly allows Chiyoko to begin recounting her memories. The interview takes course, and our 3 protagonists are plunged into the past, visiting each fragment of what has been long gone, where the past and present meld together. The actress' recollections soon metamorphosize into a great adventure where cinema confronts her history and an incredible love is unveiled, that conflicted with her rather uncommon lifestyle...

Set in the late 1870s, this epic film depicts the beginnings of the modernization of Japan, as the island nation evolved past a feudal society, as symbolized by the eradication of the samurai way of life. We see all this happen from the point of view of an alcoholic Civil War veteran turned Winchester guns spokesman, Captain Woodrow Algren (Tom Cruise), who arrives in Japan to train the troops of the emperor, Meiji, as part of a break away from the long-held tradition of relying on employed samurai warriors to protect territories, as the emperor's new army prepares to wipe out the remaining samurai warriors. When Algren is injured in combat and captured by the samurai, he learns about their warrior honor code from their leader, Katsumoto, which forces him to decide which side of the conflict he actually wants to be on.

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 this documentary, Nathaniel Kahn examines the life and career of his father, Philadelphia architect Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974), whose work included the Salk Institute and the Parliament and Capitol Buildings in Dhaka, Bangladesh, before dying of a heart attack in a Penn Station bathroom in 1974, unidentified and broke despite having been one of the century's most influential architects. Louis Kahn also led three different personal lives, with three different families, fathering a daughter with his wife, and a child each by two other lovers (one of whom was the mother of Nathaniel, who was 11 when his father died).

Set shortly after World War II in Berlin, this is the story of an American officer's (Harvey Keitel) prosecution of German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler (Stellan Skarsgard) as part of the Allied Forces' de-Nazification trials. As the investigation progresses, the American, wanting to convict a man he sees as a Jew-killing Nazi is brought face-to-face into conflict with a man consumed entirely by his art, not politics.

Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense during the JFK and LBJ administrations, was one of the key figures in the Vietnam War. This documentary is built around 20 hours of interviews and additional archival footage of Mr. Namara, who later became president of the World Bank and broadened his global influence.

Set in a small Edo period Japanese brothel near Tokyo, this is the story of a young samurai, Fusanosuke (Hidetaka Yoshioka), who seeks refuge there in the company of a young prostitute, Oshin (Nagiko Tono), after he accidentally wounded a powerful samurai during an argument whose colleagues are now seeking to kill Fusanosuke in return. Soon falling in love with Oshin, Fusanosuke hopes to be able to cleanse her from the sins of her occupation so that she may be his wife, even as danger lurks all around the brothel.