Cyrano de Bergerac (1985)
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José Ferrer won the Oscar for Best Actor for his portayal of the swordsman-poet using his silver tongue to woo the woman he loves for another man. Cyrano de Bergerac is a play written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand. Although there was a real Cyrano de Bergerac, the play is a fictionalization of his life that follows the broad outlines of it. The entire play is written in verse, in rhyming couplets of twelve syllables per line, very close to the Alexandrine format, but the verses sometimes lack a caesura. It is also meticulously researched, down to the names of the members of the Académie française and the dames précieuses glimpsed before the performance in the first scene. The play has been translated and performed many times, and is responsible for introducing the word "panache" into the English language.
A humble and simple Takezo abandons his life as a knight errant. He's sought as a teacher and vassal by Shogun, Japan's most powerful clan leader. He's also challenged to fight by the supremely confident and skilful Sasaki Kojiro. Takezo agrees to fight Kojiro in a year's time but rejects Shogun's patronage, choosing instead to live on the edge of a village, raising vegetables. He's followed there by Otsu and later by Akemi, both in love with him. The year ends as Takezo assists the villagers against a band of brigands. He seeks Otsu's forgiveness and accepts her love, then sets off across the water to Ganryu Island for his final contest.
In war-torn Japan, the Tokugawa Shogun, desperate to restore peace to his people, orders the assassination of the hostile warlords. A beautiful young woman is raised from birth with nine other orphans, to become an assassin. Her name is Azumi, the ultimate assassin.
Lagaan tells the tale of the Indian village Champaner, beset by drought and British colonialism in the year 1893. Without a drop of rain in months, the worried villagers of Champaner decide to ask the local authorities for a temporary repeal of their taxes -- the hated lagaan. Led by the heroic Bhuvan (Indian superstar Aamir Khan) they bring their plight to the military governor, Captain Russell (Paul Blackthorne). But the sadistic Russell threatens to raise the lagaan threefold, unless the villagers can beat his men at a game of cricket, in which case he'll lift taxes on the entire province for a period of three years. Bhuvan accepts the challenge, but there's a problem -- no one in Champaner knows how to play cricket. A band of misfits come to the rescue, coached by Russell's soft-hearted sister Elizabeth (Rachel Shelley), and the race is on to be ready in three months' time. An epic reworking of Victory with eye-popping song-and-dance routines.
The youngsters Matahi and Reri are in love with each other. The old warrior Hitu announces that Reri is to be the new chosen virgin for the gods. This means she must stay untouched, otherwise she and her lover will be killed. But Matahi abducts and escapes with her to an island ruled by the white man, where their gods would be harmless and powerless. Tabu is the last film from director F.W. Murnau; he died before the filmâs premiere in a car accident.
In a time of war and disease, a young officer gallantly tries to help a young woman find her husband.
Embarrassed by his large nose, a romantic poet/soldier romances his cousin by proxy.
The Birth of A Nation is a silent film from 1915 and the highest grossing silent film in film history. The film tells a romance story during the American civil war. Director Griffith created many new camera effects and innovations in filming the movie. Way ahead of it's time in many regards. That said this movie will offend most people today. The very negative portrayal of newly freed slaves (mostly white actors in black face) went on to create and propagate negative images of blacks of the early 20th century in the Unites States. This film was used as a recruiting propaganda by the KKK until the 1940's.
Gritty adaption of William Shakespeare's play about the English King's bloody conquest of France.
One man defeated three assassins who sought to murder the most powerful warlord in pre-unified China.
In the year 1215, the rebel barons of England have forced their despised King John to put his royal seal on the Magna Carta, a seminal document that upheld the rights of free men. Yet within months of pledging himself to the great charter, the King reneged on his word and assembled a mercenary army on the south coast of England with the intention of bringing the barons and the country back under his tyrannical rule. Barring his way stood the mighty Rochester castle, a place that would become the symbol of the rebel's momentous struggle for justice and freedom.
Defiant's crew is part of a fleet-wide movement to present a petition of grievances to the Admiralty. Violence must be no part of it. The continual sadism of Defiant's first officer makes this difficult, and when the captain is disabled, the chance for violence increases.
Based on an acclaimed 1935 novel about the War of Liberation (1918-1920) that ensured Estonia's independence, the film tells about a group of young schoolboys heading to the front to fight the army of Soviet Russia.
A historical drama set in Roman Egypt, concerning philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria and her relationship with her slave Davus, who is torn between his love for her and the possibility of gaining his freedom by joining the rising tide of Christianity.
Two best friends, So-yool and Yeon-hee, dream of becoming the top artists in Seoul together. But their friendship doesn't last long as Yoon-woo, So-yool's first love and songwriter, falls in love with Yeon-hee and her voice. So-yool's feeling of jealousy and inferiority towards Yeon-hee grows by the day, and she eventually makes a drastic decision to bring the two lovers down.
The film is set in Tuscany during the Black Death. As in the Decameron, ten young Florentines take refuge from the plague. But instead of telling stories, they have lusty adventures, bawdy exchanges, romance and swordplay. There are randy nuns, Saracen pirates, and a sexy cow.
The Medieval and Renaissance blade, a profound and beautiful object handcrafted by master artisans of old. An object of great complexity, yet one with a singular use in mind- it is designed to kill. The truth of the sword has been shrouded in antiquity, and the Renaissance martial arts that brought it to being are long forgotten. The ancient practitioners lent us all they knew through their manuscripts. As gunslingers of the Renaissance they were western heroes with swords, and they lived and died by them. Yet today their history remains cloaked under a shadow of legend.
The sensitive swordsman Cho Yi-Hang is tired of his life. He is the unwilling successor to the Wu-Tang clan throne and the unsure commander of the clan's forces in a war against foreign tribes and an evil cult. One day, he meets the beautiful Lien, a killer for the evil cult who is equally unsatisfied with her situation, but their love angers both the Wu-Tang clan and the evil cult.
Blind swordsman Zatoichi, jailed briefly, is implored by another prisoner to aid him in proving his innocence of a crime for which he is sentenced to death. Zatoichi is reluctant to get involved, because he knows how often such involvement has led to trouble in the past. But events conspire to thrust him repeatedly into involvement, and gradually he comes to believe in the man's innocence and determines to free him.
Blind swordsman/masseuse Zatoichi befriends a young woman returning home with her baby. When gangsters mistake her for Zatoichi and kill her, Zatoichi determines to escort the baby to its father. He gains the reluctant help of a young pick pocket and together they travel to find the baby's father. But they do not reckon on the father's reaction to their arrival, nor on their own growing feelings for the child.
Due to his own extreme ideals, famed swordsman Li has lost everyone dear to him. After his life is saved by a rival swordsman, Li's overwhelming pride means he forsakes the woman he loves and lets her marry his saviour. Li's only comfort is alcohol and the simple life he has now accepted. On one such journey, the lonely swordsman befriends the exceptionally skilled, yet secretive Fei who has his own pressures to contend with. The person behind Li's troubles proves to be elusive, though all the clues seem to point to the legendary 'Plum Blossom Bandit', a disguised figure whose identity has long proved elusive to the martial world.
Zatoichi is a blind massage therapist and swordsman who finds out that something troubling is taking place on the outskirts of town. After discovering who the guilty parties are -- an accomplished Chinese martial artist named Wang Kang and his youthful attendant -- Zatoichi finds them and discovers that the pair's mixed up with a dangerous bunch of terrorist samurai who murdered the boy's parents. Now, Zatoichi must step in to save the day.
The adventures of a blind, gambling masseur and master swordsman. Zatoichi targets a yakuza-controlled village, because war with a neighbouring town's smaller gang is brewing.
Blind masseur and master swordsman Zatoichi finds a robbed and fatally wounded pregnant woman, whose baby he delivers before she dies. He takes the baby in search of its father and finds the child's aunt, who is about to be forced into prostitution for want of a payment the dead mother was bringing. Zatoichi determines to save the woman from her cruel fate.
Stranded on an island, a group of schoolboys degenerate into savagery.
A very successful stock broker is called to court to testify against a mob boss who was into some inside trading. Andrew Morenski must become Max Hauser and go back to high school for protection from the mob.
907 AD, the Tang Dynasty in China. The movie is set in an empire in chaos. The Emperor, the Empress, the Crown Prince, the Minister and the General all have their own enemies.
Lei Li lost his right-arm in a sword duel with the master of a martial arts school, long ago. Now, he is able to defend himself well with just his left arm, and kung fu techniques. That he proves with just the help of his friend Chung-Chieng, when he crosses his path with a beautiful girl in need, Pao Chiao. Even against impossible odds, he will prove a great warrior.
A political thriller advancing the theory that it was in fact Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford who penned Shakespeare's plays; set against the backdrop of the succession of Queen Elizabeth I, and the Essex Rebellion against her.
Oscar-nominated film adaptation of the rock opera of the same name, based on the last weeks before the crucifixion of Jesus. The film was directed by Norman Jewison. Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson were nominated for two 1974 Golden Globe Award for their portrayals of Jesus and Judas, respectively.
In Montauban in 1944, Julien Dandieu in a surgeon in the local hospital. Frightened by the German army entering Montauban, he asks his friend Francois to drive his wife and his daughter in the back country village where Julien has an old castle. One week later, Julien decided to meet then for the week end, but the Germans are already occupying the village.
Rasputin is one of the most interesting people in the world during the early 20th Century. He was also one of the most enigmatic and contradictory. A holy man who was accused of raping a nun, excessive drinking, and being power hungry. Barrymore's portrayal of Rasputin plays this up, plus making claims that he will be Russia. He seems almost like Charles Manson at times in the way he can make someone, especially the Czarevitch, behave like they are totally different people compared to the way they acted before meeting Rasputin.
The movie is based on the acclaimed novel K T N Kottur Ezhuthum Jeevithavum by T. P. Rajeevan, which is set in the backdrop of India's freedom struggle and depicts a magical history of a Kerala village.
The 1960s was an extraordinary time for the United States. Unburdened by post-war reparations, Americans were preoccupied with other developments like NASA, the game-changing space programme that put Neil Armstrong on the moon. Yet it was astronauts like Eugene Cernan who paved the uneven, perilous path to lunar exploration. A test pilot who lived to court danger, he was recruited along with 14 other men in a secretive process that saw them become the closest of friends and adversaries. In this intensely competitive environment, Cernan was one of only three men who was sent twice to the moon, with his second trip also being NASAâs final lunar mission. As he looks back at what he loved and lost during the eight years in Houston, an incomparably eventful life emerges into view. Director Mark Craig crafts a quietly epic biography that combines the rare insight of the surviving former astronauts with archival footage and otherworldly moonscapes.
Tom Wolfe's book on the history of the U.S. Space program reads like a novel, and the film has that same fictional quality. It covers the breaking of the sound barrier by Chuck Yeager to the Mercury 7 astronauts, showing that no one had a clue how to run a space program or how to select people to be in it. Thrilling, funny, charming and electrifying all at once.
A love story offering an intimate look inside the marriage of Winston and Clementine Churchill during a particularly troubled, though little-known, moment in their lives.
Before the war, in Berlin, Adam was an entertainer- cabaret impresario, magician, musician-loved by all until he finds himself in a concentration camp, confronted by Commandant Klein. Adam survives the camp by becoming the Klein's "dog", entertaining him while his wife and daughter are sent off to die. "Adam Resurrected" is the story of a man who once was a dog who meets a dog who once was a boy.
Harrowing story of a young Jewish girl who, with her family and their friends is forced into hiding in an attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
Tracing the lives of several Roman emperors, this is an epic of ruthless ambition, shocking debauchery and murderous intrigue set in one of history's most fascinating eras. Bearing witness to the saga is Claudius, whose stutter and limp have marked him a fool - yet whom prophecies have foretold will one day rule Rome.
In the 16th century in Chosun dynasty, HWANG Jung-hak and LEE Mong-hak create the âGrand Allianceâ with the united dream of a better world. While the new leader LEE dreams of eradicating this world of all its corruption and becoming king himself, the legendary blind swordsman HWANG who had once been his comrade goes after him with the loss of his good friend at the hands of LEE. Just as the king abandoned his kingdom from Japanese invasion, the two come face-to-face inside the empty palace and begin their last battle they were destined to fight.
The film follows Kaspar Hauser (Bruno S.), who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man who wears a black overcoat and top hat who feeds him.
Henry IV finds himself facing uprisings from the Welsh chieftain Owen Glendower and impetuous young Harry Hotspur, son of the Duke of Northumberland, angry with the king for not paying Glendower ransom for his brother-in-law Mortimer. Another trial for Henry is the fact that his son, Prince Hal, keeps company with the older, reprobate drunkard Sir John Falstaff. Though the prince is his friend he is not above playing cruel jests on Falstaff, robbing him in disguise and returning his money after Falstaff has given an exaggerated account of his bravery in the hold-up. Hotspur is routed but Henry and Hal still have to face the uprisings of Glendower and Nortumberland, now joined by the archbishop of York.
When a scroll containing valuable martial arts secrets is stolen from the Emperor, an army detachment is sent to recover it. It is based on the novel The Smiling, Proud Wanderer by Jinyong.
The story is set in the 12th century in Arab-ruled Spanish province Andalusia, where famed philosopher Averroes is appointed grand judge by the caliph and his liberal court judgements are not liked by everyone. The caliph's political rivals, centered around the leader of a fanatical Islamic sect, force the caliph to send Averroes into exile, but his ideas keep on living thanks to his students.
A luminously beautiful biopic of the celebrated eighteenth-century Italian poet, essayist and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi, who created immortal verse whilst struggling with a debilitating illness.
The crowning achievement of Orson Wellesâs later film career, Chimes at Midnight returns to the screen after being unavailable for decades. This brilliantly crafted Shakespeare adaptation was the culmination of Wellesâs lifelong obsession with the Bardâs ultimate rapscallion, Sir John Falstaff, the loyal, often soused childhood friend to King Henry IVâs wayward son Prince Hal.
Based on one of the most popular historical plays by Shakespeare and made in order to boost the morale of British troops during WW2, this movie is about English King Henry V and his military campaign in France in 1415.
Adaptations of the eight sequential history plays of William Shakespeare (Richard II, Henry IV: Part 1 & 2, Henry V, Henry VI: Parts 1, 2, & 3 and Richard III).
Set in the late 15th century during the reign of King Yeonsan, two male street clowns and tightrope walkers, Jangsaeng (Gam Wu-seong) and Gong-gil (Lee Joon-gi), are part of an entertainer troupe. Their manager prostitutes the beautiful Gong-gil to rich customers, and Jangsaeng is sickened by this practice. After Gong-gil kills the manager in defense of Jangsaeng, the pair flee to Seoul, where they form a new group with three other street performers...
In small-town Texas, high school football is a religion, 17-year-old schoolboys carry the hopes of an entire community onto the gridiron every Friday night. When star quarterback Lance Harbor suffers an injury, the Coyotes are forced to regroup under the questionable leadership of John Moxon, a second-string quarterback with a slightly irreverent approach to the game.
A nerdy teen, Ryan Woodman is smitten with the popular and gorgeous Ashley Grant, who apparently has no interest in him. Meanwhile, dim star athlete Chris Campbell has his eye on Ryan's brainy and beautiful friend, Maggie Carter. The two agree to help each other in their romantic quests, but, as they come closer to their goals, both Ryan and Chris suspect that they might be pursuing the wrong girls.
Ãmile Durand, an insecticide manufacturer, is appalled to learn that his son Gérard has fallen in love with Suzy, the daughter of a travelling theatre company. Realising his father will never favour the union, Gérard joins the company on their next tour. In an attempt to heal the rift, Durandâs wife goes after Gérard and ends up performing in their next playâ¦
This movie is a stark portrayal of life among a group of heroin addicts who hang out in Needle Park in New York City. Played against this setting is a low-key love story between Bobby, a young addict and small-time hustler, and Helen, a homeless girl who finds in her relationship with Bobby the stability she craves.
7G Rainbow Colony is a 2004 Tamil drama film written and directed by Selvaraghavan, starring Ravi Krishna, who debuted in this film, and Sonia Agarwal in lead roles, with music scored by Yuvan Shankar Raja and cinematography handled by Arvind Krishna. The film, released on 15 October 2004, met with critical acclaim and commercial success upon release.[1][2] Moreover, Ravi Krishna received the Filmfare Best Male Debut (South) for his acting performance, whilst Yuvan Shankar Raja was awarded the Filmfare Best Music Director Award for his highly praised musical score. The film was simultaneously released in the Telugu language as 7G Brindhavan Colony, and in Bengali Language as Prem Amar which too became very successful.
Bachelor Party is a 2012 Malayalamâlanguage Indian action film directed, co-produced and filmed by Amal Neerad. The film stars Asif Ali, Indrajith, Rahman, Kalabhavan Mani, Vinayakan and Nithya Menen in the lead roles while Prithviraj makes a guest appearance, and Padmapriya and Remya Nambeesan appear in musical item numbers. The film's screenplay is by noted authors Unni. R and Santhosh Echikkanam while the critically acclaimed original music and background score are composed by Rahul Raj. The film released on June 15, 2012, to negative reviews.Its plot is loosely based on Johnnie To's Exiled, a 2006 Hong Kong action film and has been given thanks in the opening credits. This film was released with high expectations and was declared as hit in box office
Nandha (Tamil: நநà¯à®¤à®¾) is a 2001 Indian Tamil drama film written and directed by Bala, starring Suriya and Laila in the leading roles, while Rajkiran, Saravanan and Rajshree play other supporting roles. The film also marked the debut of comedian Karunas, whilst its music was scored by Yuvan Shankar Raja and cinematography handled by R. Rathnavelu. The film released on 14 November 2001 and received critical acclaim.
Amelia and Pippo are reunited after several decades to perform their old music-hall act (imitating Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) on a TV variety show. It's both a touchingly nostalgic journey into the past, and a viciously satirical attack on television in general and Italian TV in particular, portraying it as a mindless freakshow aimed at morons.
Angaadi Theru (English: Market Street) is a 2010 Indian Tamil drama film written and directed by Vasanthabalan of Veyil fame, starring debutant Mahesh and Anjali in the lead roles. The film, the title of which refering to the Ranganathan Street in Chennai where the story plays, also features actress Sneha appearing in a cameo role as herself and music jointly composed by Vijay Antony and G. V. Prakash Kumar.[1] An Ayngaran International production, the film was launched on 11 February 2008 [2] and released on 26 March 2010 to critical acclaim.
A most whimsical, hurly-burly quasi-autobiographical love romp from the master of operatic intellectual romance! French pop star Jacques Dutronc is a genius computer programmer diagnosed with a terminal brain disease, and Sophie Marceau is the flighty main attraction of a hilariously surreal mentalist nightclub act. Embarking on a billowy, tempestuous May-September fling (mirroring Zulawski and Marceauâs own marriage), they both move through their respective childhood traumas, while simultaneously racing to retain Lucasâ grasp of language. A pastel-and-neon poetic feast not only on the visual level, but also literally, My Nights⦠astounds with its lush wordplay â for the only way that Lucas is able to progressively battle his own evaporating mind is to speak with increasingly rhyming and metaphorical flourishes, until the entire world becomes one big sweet-toothed, Zulawskian word-association game.
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