Historical Movies (Page #5)

Based on the best-selling novel by Chantal Thomas, the film stars Lea Seydoux as one of Marie Antoinette's ladies-in-waiting, seemingly an innocent but quietly working her way into her mistress's special favors, until history tosses her fate onto a decidedly different path (in the final days before the full-scale outbreak of the Revolution).

In June 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Bill Murray) and his wife Eleanor (Olivia Williams) host the King and Queen of England (Samuel West and Olivia Colman) for a weekend at the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park on Hudson, in upstate New York – the first-ever visit of a reigning English monarch to America. With Britain facing imminent war with Germany, the Royals are desperately looking to FDR for support. But international affairs must be juggled with the complexities of FDR’s domestic establishment, as wife, mother, and mistresses all conspire to make the royal weekend an unforgettable one. Seen through the eyes of Margaret "Daisy" Suckley (Laura Linney), Franklin’s neighbor and intimate, the weekend will produce not only a special relationship between two great nations, but, for Daisy – and through her, for us all – a deeper understanding of the mysteries of love and friendship.

Julia Pastrana was a physically-deformed Mexican woman, just over four feet tall, covered with black hair with large, misshapen facial features, who fell in love with the man, Theodore Lent, who displayed her in his traveling freak show. What happened next is far from a happy ending...

Brittany, France, 1760. Marianne, a painter, is commissioned to do the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young lady who has just left the convent. Héloïse is a reluctant bride to be and Marianne must paint her without her knowing. She observes her by day and secretly paints her at night. Intimacy and attraction grow between the two women as they share Héloïse’s first and last moments of freedom, all whilst Marianne paints the portrait that will end it all.

1942. France is under Nazi control. The Allies have been pushed off the continent and their defeat in North Africa seems likely. Germany’s victory is nearly absolute.

Under this dark shadow, a man named Jacques (Cary Elwes) uses a radio to broadcast a message of hope. He hides in an attic with his daughter Juliet (Greer Grammer) and a small group of fellow survivors (Judd Hirsch, Mira Furlan), playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with the German occupiers.

The world becomes too dangerous when the Gestapo send Captain Klaus Jager (Sebastian Roche) to catch Jacques. As Klaus closes in, Jacques and his small group make a desperate bid to escape their pursuer, trusting themselves to the help of enigmatic Andre (Jason Patric), a Swiss banker. In the end, that trust may turn out to be the very thing that leads the hunter to his prey.

The movie follows two wreck divers who discovered the hull of a German U-boat in waters off New Jersey in 1991. The divers spent seven years searching for the truth behind the ship and men who died inside it.

CHARLOTTE is an animated drama that tells the true story of Charlotte Salomon, a young German-Jewish painter who comes of age in Berlin on the eve of the Second World War. Fiercely imaginative and deeply gifted, she dreams of becoming an artist. Her first love applauds her talent, which emboldens her resolve. But the world around her is changing quickly and dangerously, limiting her options and derailing her dream. When anti-Semitic policies inspire violent mobs, she leaves Berlin for the safety of the South of France. There she begins to paint again, and finds new love. But her work is interrupted, this time by a family tragedy that reveals an even darker secret. Believing that only the extraordinary will save her, she embarks on the monumental adventure of painting her life story.

Based on the life of revolutionary Che Guevara (played by Benicio Del Toro), this film follows the Argentinian from his beginnings as a doctor to his involvement in Cuban politics and his eventual murder in Bolivia.

The Egyptian queen Cleopatra, a firm ruler and military tactician, embarks on a ruthless rise to power. She twice marries brothers, killing each of them as well as a sister. Romantic alliances with the much-older Roman honchos Julius Caesar and Marc Antony help her solidify power, but her dalliance with Antony undoes both of them.

Free State of Jones is an epic action-drama set during the Civil War, and tells the story of defiant Southern farmer, Newt Knight, and his extraordinary armed rebellion against the Confederacy. Banding together with other small farmers and local slaves, Knight launched an uprising that led Jones County, Mississippi to secede from the Confederacy, creating a Free State of Jones. Knight continued his struggle into Reconstruction, distinguishing him as a compelling, if controversial, figure of defiance long beyond the War.

Through a family and the relation between father and son, the film describes the dilemmas of the Danish population during World War II. Like the government, the farmers and the industry, the father, a successful owner of a big electronics factory, tries to make the best of the situation to keep the wheels rolling. However this leads him into a problematic collaboration with the Germans. His son, on the contrary, reacts against the increasing oppression and persecution of Jews and communists by joining the rising resistance movement.

Benjamin Franklin Gates is a third generation treasure hunter. All his life, Gates has been searching for a treasure no one believed existed: amassed through the ages, moved across continents, to become the greatest treasure the world has ever known. Hidden by our Founding Fathers, they left clues to the Treasure's location right before our eyes--from our nation's birthplace, to the nation's capitol, to clues buried within the symbols on the dollar bill. Gates' life-long journey leads him to the last place anyone thought to look: a map hidden on the back of the Declaration of Independence. But what he thought was the final clue is only the beginning. Gates realizes in order to protect the world's greatest treasure, he must now do the unthinkable: steal the most revered, best guarded document in American history before it falls into the wrong hands. In a race against time, Gates must elude the authorities, stay one step ahead of his ruthless adversary, decipher the remaining clues and unlock the 2000 year-old mystery behind our greatest national treasure.

Treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates looks to discover the truth behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, by uncovering the mystery within the 18 pages missing from assassin John Wilkes Booth's diary.

Set in 79 A.D., Pompeii tells the epic story of Milo, a slave turned invincible gladiator who finds himself in a race against time to save his true love Cassia, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant who has been unwillingly betrothed to a corrupt Roman Senator. As Mount Vesuvius erupts in a torrent of blazing lava, Milo must fight his way out of the arena in order to save his beloved as the once magnificent Pompeii crumbles around him.

Catherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII's six wives, is an incredibly smart and capable woman who, through her own strength and ingenuity, manages to survive an incredibly dangerous man and a dangerous system.

Set against the dramatic landscape of the English coastal town of Lyme-Regis and centers on two female 19th century fossil hunters who make significant discoveries that changed the scientific world forever. The story reveals invisible women in science who were influential but marginalized and whose accomplishments were appropriated by men.

Set against the antebellum South, The Birth of a Nation follows Nat Turner, a literate slave and preacher, whose financially strained owner, Samuel Turner, accepts an offer to use Nat’s preaching to subdue unruly slaves. As he witnesses countless atrocities - against himself and his fellow slaves - Nat orchestrates an uprising in the hopes of leading his people to freedom.