Shot Down (1988)

Director
Andrew Worsdale

Main cast
Robert Colman; Megan Kruskal

Genres
Drama

Description
A portrait of left-wing white culture in 1980's Johannesburg.


Similar movies

Capitol Policeman John Cale has just been denied his dream job with the Secret Service of protecting President James Sawyer. Not wanting to let down his little girl with the news, he takes her on a tour of the White House, when the complex is overtaken by a heavily armed paramilitary group. Now, with the nation's government falling into chaos and time running out, it's up to Cale to save the president, his daughter, and the country.
A US Fighter pilot's epic struggle of survival after being shot down on a mission over Laos during the Vietnam War.
While flying a routine reconnaissance mission over Bosnia, fighter pilot Chris Burnett photographs something he wasn't supposed to see and gets shot down behind enemy lines, where he must outrun an army led by a ruthless Serbian general. With time running out and a deadly tracker on his trail, Burnett's commanding officer decides to risk his career and launch a renegade rescue mission to save his life.
Lt. Col. Iceal "Ham" Hambleton is a weapons countermeasures expert and when his aircraft is shot over enemy territory the Air Force very much wants to get him back. Hambleton knows the area he's in is going to be carpet-bombed but a temporary shortage of helicopters causes a delay. Working with an Air Force reconnaissance pilot, Capt. Bartholomew Clark, he maps out an escape route.
Henry Hill is a small time gangster, who takes part in a robbery with Jimmy Conway and Tommy De Vito, two other gangsters who have set their sights a bit higher. His two partners kill off everyone else involved in the robbery, and slowly start to climb up through the hierarchy of the Mob. Henry, however, is badly affected by his partners success, but will he stoop low enough to bring about the downfall of Jimmy and Tommy?
Two former Olympians, one a figure skater and the other a hockey player, pin their hopes of one last shot at Olympic glory on one another. That is, of course, if they can keep from killing each other in the process...
Air America was the CIA's private airline operating in Laos during the Vietnam War, running anything and everything from soldiers to foodstuffs for local villagers. After losing his pilot's license, Billy Covington is recruited into it, and ends up in the middle of a bunch of lunatic pilots, gun-running by his friend Gene Ryack, and opium smuggling by his own superiors.
George Clooney plays the dry cynical character of Ryan Bingham, an executive who specializes in "downsizing". Ryan lives out of his suitcase, traveling the country for the sole purpose terminating unwanted employees day after day. Just as Ryan is about to reach his life-long goal of the ten million mile frequent flyer mark some major changes come his way. Changes that threaten to crack the cold heartless exterior that is Ryan Bingham.
Margaret is a nurse in England during WW2, and married to a secret agent. Things get complicated when she falls for David, an American pilot.
The story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American pilots to fly in a combat squadron during World War II.
Pianist David Helfgott, driven by his father and teachers, has a breakdown. Years later he returns to the piano, to popular if not critical acclaim.
During the Allied Bombing offensive of World War II the public was often informed that "A raid took place last night over ..., One (or often more) of Our Aircraft Is Missing". Behind these sombre words hid tales of death, destruction and derring-do. This is the story of one such bomber crew who were shot down and the brave Dutch patriots who helped them home.
Sam Gifford remembers : In prewar years he was an arrogant southern cotton plantation owner, married to the daughter of a colonel. At the beginning of the war he was mobilized with his National Guard unit as a sergeant. Came the day when, revolted by the cowardice of his lieutenant, who had fired at his own men, he hit him. Downgraded, he was sent to a disciplinary battalion. Sam now discovers his new detachment, his new commanding officer, just another cowardly brute, Captain Waco Grimes. While in combat, Sam will gradually become closer to the privates, working-class people he used to despise. He will become another man, a better man.
Four fighters different backgrounds come together to train under an ex MMA rising star and then ultimately have to fight each other and the traitor in heir midst.
After a drug-op gone bad, Joey Gazelle is put in charge of disposing the gun that shot a dirty cop. But things goes wrong for Joey after the neighbor kid stole the gun and used it to shoot his abusive father. Now Joey has to find the kid and the gun before the police and the mob find them first.
Germany in Autumn does not have a plot per se; it mixes documentary footage, along with standard movie scenes, to give the audience the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The movie covers the two month time period during 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped, and later murdered, by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction). The businessman had been kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the orginal leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Enslin, and Jean-Carl Raspe, all committed suicide in prison. It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that these three were actually murdered by the state.
The story of a close-knit group of young kids in Nazi Germany who listen to banned swing music from the US. Soon dancing and fun leads to more difficult choices as the Nazi's begin tightening the grip on Germany. Each member of the group is forced to face some tough choices about right, wrong, and survival.
Lonesome Dove is a Western television miniseries based on Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. Starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, Lonesome Dove was originally broadcast by CBS on February 5, 1989, drawing a huge viewing audience, earning numerous awards, and reviving both the television western and the miniseries.
On the day of his daughter's birthday, William "D-Fens" Foster is trying to get to the home of his estranged ex-wife to see his daughter. His car breaks down, so he leaves his car in a traffic jam in Los Angeles and decides to walk. He goes to a convenience store and tries to get some change for a phone call, but the Korean owner does not oblige, tipping Foster over the edge. The unstable Foster, so frustrated with the various flaws he sees in society, begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them.
A semi-biographical account of Yip Man, the first martial arts master to teach the Chinese martial art of Wing Chun. The film focuses on events surrounding Ip that took place in the city of Foshan between the 1930s to 1940s during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Directed by Wilson Yip, the film stars Donnie Yen in the lead role, and features fight choreography by Sammo Hung.
An FBI agent (Debra Winger) falls in love with a white supremacist (Tom Berenger) whose group she infiltrates.
The film centres on the experiences of Robert Lawrence MC (played by Colin Firth), an officer of the Scots Guards during the Falklands War of 1982. While fighting at the Battle of Mount Tumbledown, Lawrence is shot in the head by an Argentine sniper, and left paralysed on his left side. He then must learn to adjust to his new disability.
During the Algerian war for independence from France, a young Frenchman living in Geneva who belongs to a right-wing terrorist group and a young woman who belongs to a left-wing terrorist group meet and fall in love. Complications ensue when the man is suspected by the members of his terrorist group of being a double agent.
In this prequel to Mou gaan dou (2002), Chan Wing Yan has just become an undercover cop in the triads while Lau Kin Ming joins the police force. Both the triads and the police find an enemy in a rival crime boss.
A screenwriter who travels to an abandoned house to finish a script on time, but a series of strange events lead her to a psychological breakdown.
A struggling, unemployed young writer takes to following strangers around the streets of London, ostensibly to find inspiration for his new novel.
Academy Award winner Tommy Lee Jones leads an all-star cast in this psychological thriller based on the bestselling novel by James Lee Burke. While on an investigation into a series of grisly murders, veteran detective Dave Robicheaux (Jones) navigates his way through the Louisiana bayou and the dark, sultry world of New Orleans mobster "Baby Feet" Balboni (John Goodman). Layers of corruption and long-dead secrets reawaken grudges and a lethal alliance A tangled web of killings, past and present, converges in a shocking showdown with stakes that become deeply personal to Robicheaux and his family. Featuring music from five-time GRAMMY Award-winner Buddy Guy, this film takes you deep into Cajun country's hidden worlds.
Young Musa is orphaned after a mysterious illness strikes his village in KwaZulu Natal. To help his grandmother, Musa sets out for Johannesburg with his father's last gift, a tribal drum, in search of work and his uncle. The journey confronts him with the stark realities of urban life, but his indomitable spirit never wavers; he returns with a truth and understanding his elders have failed to grasp.
Vusi Madlazi returns to the South African village he left as a young boy to bury his father. He meets up with his brother Ernest, who tells him their other brother Stephen couldn't be contacted. Vusi goes to Johannesburg to find him, but at first can only find his neighbor/girlfriend, Karin, a stripper. Vusi proceeds to learn how conditions have changed since the end of apartheid, not always for the better for black men.
Elisabeth leaves her abusive and drunken husband Rolf, and goes to live with her brother, Göran. The year is 1975 and Göran lives in a commune called Together. Living in this leftist commune Elisabeth learns that the world can be viewed from different perspectives.
In the Australian Outback, the Carmody family--Paddy, Ida and their teenage son Sean--are sheep drovers, always on the move. Ida and Sean want to settle down and buy a farm. Paddy wants to keep moving. A sheep-shearing contest, the birth of a child, drinking, gambling and a race horse will all have a part in the final decision.
One of the earliest exploitation films from South Africa, directed and produced by independant film maker Pierre D. Botha. This is a classic example of a ‘restless youth’ film. The action takes place in Johannesburg (The Godless city of the title) and focuses on the youth sub culture of the ‘Ducktails’ (“a white youth gang subculture which emerged within post Second World War South Africa. Rebellious, hedonistic, apolitical and showing little respect for the law, education or work”).
In a small Indian village Mandwa, Vijay Dinanath Chauhan is taught about the path of fire (Agneepath) by his principled father. His life is shattered when the evil drug lord Kancha Cheena hangs his father. Vijay leaves for Mumbai with his pregnant mother, and takes an oath that he will return back to Mandwa and take revenge against Cheena. In Mumbai, Vijay is taken under the wings of the drug lord Rauf Lala. Fifteen years later, his hatred for Kancha takes him back to Mandwa.
A White enclave in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the 1960s. Molly Roth, 13 years old, is the daughter of leftist parents, and she must piece together what's happening around her when her father disappears one night, barely evading arrest, and, not long after, her mother is detained by the authorities. Some of Molly's White friends turn against her, and her family's friendships with Blacks take on new meaning. Relationships are fragile in the world of apartheid. How will she manage?
When Triad leader Hung's wife gives birth to a baby boy, Hung considers leaving the world of the gangsters. Despite the fact that he is not sure of his decision, word gets out fast and now, a brutal war begins in the world of "jiang-hu". Two hoodlums, Wing and Turbo, set to make a name for themselves, are ordered to kill Hung. Meanwhile, an internal conflict begins between Hung and his #1 man, Left-Hand. Despite this conflict, the two have nothing but respect for each other. However, they know deep down, that there are people waiting to get rid of Hung.
"Africa United" tells the extraordinary story of three Rwandan children who attempt to realize the dream of their life: to attend the opening ceremony of the FIFA World Cup 2010 at Johannesburg. But the problems begin when Fabrice, Dudu and Béatrice get on the wrong bus and end up in Congo. Without papers, without money, they are brought into a children's refugee camp. But with incredible ingenuity, a some guts and a poster for the World Cup as a map, our heroes escape from the camp and leave to pursue their dreams, bringing with them a "dream team" of refugee children to help them through a series of exciting adventures. During this journey of 5000 km through seven countries, the film reveals an unseen Africa.
In the back country of South Africa, black minister Stephen Kumalo (Canada Lee) journeys to the city to search for his missing son, only to find his people living in squalor and his son a criminal. Reverend Misimangu (Sidney Poitier) is a young South African clergyman who helps find his missing son-turned-thief and sister-turned-prostitute in the slums of Johannesburg.
Der Baader Meinhof Komplex depicts the political turmoil in the period from 1967 to the bloody "Deutschen Herbst" in 1977. The movie approaches the events based on Stefan Aust's standard work on Die Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF). The story centers on the leadership of the self named anti-fascist resistance to state violence: Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin.
A second rated journalist from the US tries his luck in El Salvador during the military dictatorship in the 1980s.
A dramatisation that follows Tony Blair's journey from political understudy waiting in the wings of the world arena to accomplished prime minister standing confidently in the spotlight of centre stage. It is a story about relationships, between two powerful men (Blair and Bill Clinton), two powerful couples, and husbands and wives.
Mapantsula tells the story of Panic, a petty gangster who inevitably becomes caught up in the growing anti-apartheid struggle and has to choose between individual gain and a united stand against the system.
The South African multi-award winning film about a young South African boy from the ghetto named Tsotsi, meaning Gangster. Tsotsi, who left home as a child to get away from helpless parents, finds a baby in the back seat of a car that he has just stolen. He decides that it his responsibility to take care of the baby and in the process learns that maybe the gangster life isn’t the best way.
The film revolves around five individual characters and the events in their life, that, on the one hand, changes everything in their respective lives, which the film's title refers to, and, on the other hand, also brings together these people. It is an anthology film, that contains two parallel moving stories, which are connected by a freak accident in Chennai. A young architect, falls in love with a young beautiful pediatric doctor, runs after her and tries to convince her to marry her, while, simultaneously, a morose ex-football coach troubles a software engineer by vowing to kill his eight-year-old son. How these characters get connected and confronted through the accident forms the crux of the story.
A teacher opens a time capsule that has been dug up at his son's elementary school; in it are some chilling predictions -- some that have already occurred and others that are about to -- that lead him to believe his family plays a role in the events that are about to unfold.
A Gentle story with a moral of forgive and forget at the kernel of its’ comedy exterior ~ but also one that accurately foretold the changes that were to sweep across South Africa in 1994, as an uptight suburban Johannesburg housewife (Elize Cawood, with an equally uptight husband played by Marius Weyers) accepts a lift from a Sowetan taxi driver (Patrick Shai) and gets taken into another world entirely
A semi-paralyzed radio reporter is sent out to investigate a story that leads him into an odd subculture and on a journey of disturbing self-realization.
Three female friends, in the end of the eighties, share a house in Johannesburg, South Africa. Each of them has her own way to live the apartheid. Thoko is a black teacher, she practices non-violent passive resistance. The afrikaner Aninka takes refuge in archaeology not to see the reality. Sophie is a white militant, putting bombs in public places... Each of them respect the other two's ideas, but one of Sophie's bombs will change everything.
An aspiring DJ, from the South Bronx, and his best friend, a promoter, try to get into show business by exposing people to hip-hop music and culture.
The storyline follows Faith and her two young sons, who live on the streets of Johannesburg as she works a busy street junction begging from passing motorists. With the little money she makes she tries to raise her children, although they often go to sleep hungry and scared. Faith not only has to face the apathy of the wealthy elite that pass her every day but also the distrust and anger of the locals. —bizcommunity.com
During the Cultural Revolution, two young men are sent to a remote mining village where they fall in love with the local tailor’s beautiful granddaughter and discover a suitcase full of forbidden Western novels.
Claude heads to New York upon receiving his draft notice, leaving the family ranch in Oklahoma. He arrives in New York where he is rapidly indoctrinated into the youth subculture before reporting in for boot camp.
Having spent 10 years in prison for nationalist activities, Shack Twala is finally ordered released by the South African Supreme Court but he finds himself almost immediately on the run after a run-in with the police. Assisted by his lawyer Rina Van Niekirk and visiting British engineer Jim Keogh, he heads for Capetown where he hopes to recover a stash of diamonds, meant to finance revolutionary activities, that he had entrusted to a dentist before his incarceration. Along the way, they are followed by Major Horn of the South African State security bureau and it becomes apparent that he has no intention of arresting them until they reach their final destination
Lola, is a 1961 film, the debut film directed by Jacques Demy as a tribute to director Max Ophüls and is described by Demy as a "musical without music". Anouk Aimée starred in the title role. The film was restored and re-released by Demy's widow, French filmmaker Agnès Varda.
The movie is set in the remote chinese province of Fenyang, and spans the turbulent 1980s by following four performers in the state-run Peasant Culture Group. We see the group evolve from workers that are restricted to approved revolutionary classics that praise Chairman Mao, through performance of western classics, after china adopts an 'open door' policy, and the effects on their lives.
Come Back, Africa chronicles the life of Zachariah, a black South African living under the rule of the harsh apartheid government in 1959.
This is a story about a romantic journey of a culturally opposite couple - Krish Malhotra and Ananya Swaminathan. They meet at the IIM-Ahmedabad College and during the program they fall in love. Complications arise after the program comes to an end and they decide to get married. Krish and Ananya belong to two different states of India. Krish, a North Indian Punjabi boy from Delhi, and Ananya, a Tamilian Brahmin from Chennai. They take a conscious decision; they won't get married until their parents agree. Everything goes downhill when the parents meet. There is a cultural clash and the parents oppose the wedding. To convert their love story into a love marriage, the couple faces a tough battle in front of them. For it is easy to fight and rebel, but much harder to convince. Will Krish and Ananya's love for each other sustain the battles? Will they manage to convince their parents and make it to their wedding? The film thus is a humorous take on inter community marriages in India.
When a western Pennsylvania auto plant is acquired by a Japanese company, brokering auto worker Hunt Stevenson faces the tricky challenge of mediating the assimilation of two clashing corporate cultures. At one end is the Japanese plant manager and the sycophant who is angling for his position. At the other, a number of disgruntled long-time union members struggle with the new exigencies of Japanese quality control.
She searched for a home, she searched for love. Confronted by Apartheid and a father who was Minister of censorship. With men like Jack Cope and Andre Brink she found much love, but no home. In his first speech to the South African Parliament Nelson Mandela read her poem "The Dead Child of Nyanga" and addresses her as one of the finest poets of South Africa.
Dorian Gray, wishing to remain young and handsome for eternity, essentially sells his soul so that a portrait can age instead of him. Over the course of the years, Dorian commits every sort of sin, heavily influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton. But as his life goes on, he slowly realises the emptiness and evil which he has succumbed to.
After squandering his grant money, despondent and recently widowed anthropologist James Krippendorf must produce hard evidence of the existence of a heretofore undiscovered New Guinea tribe. Grass skirts, makeup, and staged rituals transform his three troubled children into the Shelmikedmu, a primitive culture whose habits enthrall scholars. But when a spiteful rival threatens to blow the whistle on Krippendorf's ruse, he gets into the act as well.

© Valossa 2015–2024