Posts Tagged ‘based-on-true-story’
Female Agents (2008)Thursday, February 18th, 2010 |
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In May 1944, a group of French servicewomen and resistance fighters are enlisted into the British Special Operations Executive commando group under the command of Louise Desfontaines and her brother Pierre. Their mission, to rescue a British army geologist caught reconnoitering the beaches at Normandy, and to kill a German SS colonel who is close to figuring out the imminent secret of D-Day, proves to be emotional and brutal. The story is inspired by the accomplishments of decorated SOE agent Lisé de Baissac. |
Eight Below (2006)Thursday, February 18th, 2010 |
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In the Antarctic, after an expedition with Dr. Davis McClaren (Bruce Greenwood), the sled dog trainer Jerry Shepherd (Paul Walker) has to leave the polar base with his colleagues due to the proximity of a heavy snow storm. He ties his dogs to be rescued after, but the mission is called-off and the dogs are left alone at their own fortune. For six months, Jerry tries to find a sponsor for a rescue mission while his dogs fight for survival. |
Cop Land (1997)Thursday, February 18th, 2010 |
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Policemen have always been the idols of Freddy Heflin. Due to being slightly deaf, Heflin could never pass the physical to become a police officer himself. However, because of his friendly, amiable nature, he’s managed to get himself elected Sheriff of a small New Jersey county outside of New York City, and he lives in a town where many NYPD cops also live. Mo Tilden is an Internal Affairs investigator for the NYPD, and his investigation of some crooked cops leads him to this small town, and to Sheriff Freddy Heflin. Heflin begins to help Tilden, and discovers that some of his heroes may have feet of clay… |
Anastasia (1997)Thursday, February 18th, 2010 |
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Anastasia, the daughter of the last Russian czar, is at a party, when Rasputin, an evil monk, declares a curse on the Romanov family. Anastasia and her grandmother escape with the help of a young kitchen boy Dimitri, but Anastasia falls, hits her head, and loses her memory. Ten years later, Anya (Anastasia) leaves the orphanage where she grew up, and goes to St. Petersburg with her puppy fried Pooka. There she meets a grown-up Dimitri, and his friend, Vladimir, who are holding auditions, for an “Anastasia” to fool the empress, and get a lot of money. They choose Anya, and take her to Paris. Rasputin, who has died, uses minions to try and kill Anya, failing twice. During the course of all these events, Dimitri and Anya fall in love. |
Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion (2003)Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 |
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Shattered City, an epic two-part mini-series, dramatizes a compelling piece of Canadian history. It is the story of how a tragic incident at the height of the First World War became a living metaphor for the worldwide conflict, and how Halifax arose from the ashes after severe destruction and devastation. In the early hours of December 6, 1917, the Mont Blanc, a French-owned freighter loaded to the gunnels with thousands of tons of TNT, collided with a Belgian relief ship and exploded in the Halifax Harbour. The explosion was so vast that it killed more than 2,000 people, injured 9,000 more and completely flattened two square kilometres of northern Halifax. |
The Rookie (2002)Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 |
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When a shoulder injury ended his minor league pitching career twelve years ago, Jim Morris resorted to the next best thing: coaching. But Jim’s team, knowing their coach is a great ball player, makes a deal with him: if they win the district championship, they want Jim to try out for a major-league organization. Going from worst to first, the team makes it to state, and Jim is forced to live up to his end of the deal. While there prove to be a lot of pitches to be thrown before he makes it off the mound, big-league dreams are revived, and there’s no telling where he could go. |
Pocahontas (1995)Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 |
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Capt. John Smith leads a rag-tag band of English sailors & soldiers to the New World to plunder its riches for England (or, more precisely, for Governor Ratcliffe, who comes along for the ride). Meanwhile, in this “New World,” Chief Powhatan has pledged his daughter, Pocahontas, to be married to the village’s greatest warrior. Pocahontas, however, has other ideas. She has seen a vision of a spinning arrow, a vision she believes tells her change is coming. Her life does indeed change when the English ship lands near her village. Between Ratcliffe, who believes the “savages” are hiding the gold he expected to be plentiful, and Powhatan, who believes these pale newcomers will destroy their land, Smith and Pocahontas have a difficult time preventing all-out war, and saving their love for each other. |
Civil Action, A (1998)Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 |
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Jan Schlichtmann is a successful lawyer whose practically his own entrepreneur. He’s a humble bachelor with a nice car, a nice house, and a career that has amassed huge rewards. Not to mention being the founder and practice of the lucrative law firm he runs with his Boston partners, all in a case’s settlement. However, when the families of deceased children sue a giant food conglomerate, with the accusation of their companies are responsible for poisoning their children and afflicting them fatally with cancer. Jan cames to the rescue, thinking it’s one more case he can easily knock out of the park and make a fortune, as well as a name for he and his firm. With a class action lawsuit to file, Jan willingly puts himself and his firm as representatives of those families. However, it’s one case that could ruin Jan: his pride, his ambition, and ultimately, his career. As the pressures of the case begin to take their turn on both the prosecution, the defense, as well as the families, Jan is about to realize that he has taken on the biggest case of his life, and there is a price to pay. |
Dead Man Walking (1995)Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 |
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Tim Robbins’ movie about a convicted murderer on Death Row and the nun who befriends him addresses a controversial issue with an intensely personal look at the people involved in one such case. Through the portrayal of finely drawn characters and their interactions as the days, hours, and minutes tick down to the condemned man’s execution, powerful emotions are unleashed. While Matthew Poncelet and Sister Prejean desperately try to gain a stay of execution from the governor or the courts, scenes are intercut from the brutal crime, gradually revealing the truth about the events that transpired. In addition to her temporal help, the nun also tries to reach out spiritually and assist as a guide to salvation. |
In the Realm of the Senses (1976)Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 |
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Based on a true story set in pre-war Japan, a man and one of his servants begin a torrid affair. Their desire becomes a sexual obsession so strong that to intensify their ardor, they forsake all, even life itself. |
Mountain Patrol (Kekexili) (2004)Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 |
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Lu Chuan’s account of pauperized characters involved in a plexus of emotional transference and punishments of violent crime interpretively reenacted from a true story transpired in bucolic Tibet is an engagingly foreboding and unsettling melodrama of latter day isolationism. The Tibetan Mountain Patrol, a self-sponsored outcast regimen established to eliminate illegal slaughtering of endangered Tibetan Antelopes by impoverished local and out-of-province peasants, intimately engages with a half-Tibetan journalist from Beijing in a desolate depiction of human nature in the outskirts of Kekexili during a last resort campaign of portent and trial. |
Dead Ringers (1988)Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 |
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The Mantle brothers are both doctors – both gynecologists – and identical twins. Mentally however, one of them is more confident than the other, and always manages to seduce the women he meets. When he’s tired of his current partner, she is passed on to the other brother – without her knowing. Everything runs smoothly, until an actress visits their clinic, and the shy brother is the first to fall in love. Will they be able to ’share’ her ? |
Cradle Will Rock (1999)Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 |
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It’s a drama about theatre life in the 1930s during the times of the Great Depression, the Red Scare (communism), facism, unions, Hitler, Mussolini, New York mayor Nelson Rockefeller, director Orson Welles, painter Diego Rivera, and William Randolph Hearst. This film focuses on the lives of several people during hard times in New York as many struggle to find their place in America. The main focus of the film is a play entitled “Cradle Will Rock,” which tells a pro-union story about lower class workers trying to survive in a growing power-hungry world. |
The Straight Story (1999)Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 |
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Alvin Straight is a very old man with a quiet life in a small country town. When his brother gets seriously sick, he decides to put away their differences and visit him after many, many years. So, alone, he begins a long journey through hundreds of miles, just to see again his brother, even if it’s the last thing he will ever do… Based on a real story. |
Friday Night Lights (2004)Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 |
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Odessa, Texas, is a small, town in Texas. Racially divided and economically dying, there is one night that gives the town something to live for: Friday Night. The Permian Panthers have a big winning tradition in Texas high school football, led by QB Mike Winchell and superstar tailback Boobie Miles, but all is not well, as Boobie suffers a career-ending injury in the first game of the season. Hope is lost among citizens in Odessa, and for the team, but Coach Gary Gaines, who believes that “Perfection is being able to look your friends in the eye and know you did everything you could not to let them down”, is somehow able to help the team rise up from the ashes and make a huge season comeback. Now on their way to state, the Panthers must go out and be perfect, because they may never matter this much for the rest of their lives. |
The Dish (2000)Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 |
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In the days before the July 19, 1969 space mission that marked humankind’s first steps on the moon, NASA was working with a group of Australian technicians who had agreed to rig up a satellite interface. That the Aussies placed the satellite dish smack dab in the middle of an Australian sheep farm in the boondocks town of Parkes was just one of the reasons that NASA was concerned. Based on a true story, The Dish takes a smart, witty, comical look at the differing cultural attitudes between Australia and the U.S. while revisiting one of the greatest events in history. |
Lucky Numbers (2000)Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 |
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Winter, 1988: Harrisburg PA’s celebrity weatherman, Russ Richards, is broke: he’s borrowed heavily to open a snowmobile dealership, and it’s still unseasonably warm. Gig, his seedy pal, advises him to run an insurance scam; when it goes awry, Russ is out another $10,000 and in trouble with Dale, a bat-wielding thug. Gig convinces Russ to rig the state lottery with the help of Crystal, a gold-digging ditz with a heart of tin. They have to find a beard to buy the ticket, and then they have to cash it. Soon, murder and various double-crosses add to Russ’s nightmare. A lazy cop zeroes in. Jail is closer than riches. Will Russ have to choose between his money and his life? |
From Hell (2001)Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 |
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It is 1888 in London, and the unfortunate poor lead horrifying lives in the city’s deadliest slum, Whitechapel. Harassed by gangs and forced to walk the streets for a living, Mary Kelly and her small group of companions trudge on through this daily misery, their only consolation being that things can’t get any worse. Yet things somehow do when their friend Ann is kidnapped and they are drawn into a conspiracy with links higher up than they could possibly imagine. The kidnapping is soon followed by the gruesome murder of another woman, Polly, and it becomes apparent that they are being hunted down, one by one. Sinister even by Whitechapel standards, the murder grabs the attention of Inspector Fred Abberline, a brilliant yet troubled man whose police work is often aided by his psychic abilities. Abberline becomes deeply involved with the case, which takes on personal meaning to him when he and Mary begin to fall in love. But as he gets closer to the truth Whitechapel becomes more and more dangerous for Abberline, Mary, and the other girls. Whoever is responsible for the grisly acts is not going to give up his secret without a fight….will they be able to survive the avenging force that has been sent after them from hell? |
Behind Enemy Lines (2001)Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 |
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Fighter navigator Chris Burnett wants out: he was looking for something more than the boring recon missions he’s been flying. He finds himself flying the lone Christmas day mission over war-torn Bosnia. But when he talks pilot Stackhouse into flying slightly off-course to check out an interesting target, the two get shot down. Burnett is soon alone, trying to outrun a pursuing army, while commanding officer Reigert finds his rescue operation hamstrung by politics, forcing Burnett to run far out of his way. |
Apollo 13 (1995)Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 |
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It had been less than a year since man first walked on the Moon, but as far as the American public was concerned, Apollo 13 was just another “routine” space flight–until these words pierced the immense void of space: “Houston, we have a problem.” Stranded 205,000 miles from Earth in a crippled spacecraft, astronauts Jim Lovell (Hanks), Fred Haise (Paxton) and Jack Swigert (Bacon) fight a desperate battle to survive. Meanwhile, at Mission Control, astronaut Ken Mattingly (Sinise), flight director Gene Kranz (Harris) and a heroic ground crew race against time–and the odds–to bring them home. |



















