In 1914, "The Great War" - WWI - began in Europe. America chose at first not to fight, but some altruistic young Americans disagreed. A handful of volunteers decided to learn how to fly. The first of them - a squadron of only 38 - became known as the Lafayette Escadrille. In time, America joined their cause. The Escadrille pilots became legendary. Flyboys is inspired by their story.
Blaine Rawlings (James Franco) along with the other young Americans arrives in France, unable to speak the language and challenged by learning to operate a device that was only invented 10 years prior to the war-the airplane. At this point in time, France has been in battle for three years and has lost millions of men in battle.
Blaine and his squadron are trained under the command of the French Captain Thenault (Jean Reno). He and the other French pilots put the boys under vigorous training to prepare them for aerial combat. What they didn't realize was that they were about to embark on a great, romantic adventure, becoming the world's first combat pilots.
But it is when Rawlings falls in love with a local French woman named Lucienne he learns firsthand the costs of war as it has affected her and her family. When Lucienne finds herself behind enemy lines, Rawlings risks everything to save her and her family. Fighting a war that wasn't theirs, these young, na?ve adventure-seekers slowly learn the true meaning of love, brotherhood, heroism, courage, tolerance and, in return, gain a true reason to risk their lives.
Cast: James Franco, Jean Reno, David Ellison, Martin Henderson, Jennifer Decker
Directed by Tony Bill
English language with latvian and russian subtitles.
Academy Award®-winning director Oliver Stone tells the true story of the heroic survival and rescue of two Port Authority policemen - John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno - who were trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, after they went in to help people escape. The film also follows their families as they try to find out what happened to them, as well as the rescuers who found them in the debris field and pulled them out. Their story shows how the best in people rose above the tragic events of that day.
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Michael Pe?a, Maria Bello, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jay Hernandez
Directed by Oliver Stone
English language with subtitles in Latvian and Russian.
On this film were working one director, 40 operators and 2 and a half million heroes. According to statistics, in 1941 in Leningrad lived 2 992 000 people, and in 1944 left half of a million.
Soviet popularization hided the tragedy of Leningrad genocide in heroic packaging: authors of newsreel and movies about military Leningrad were prescribed to show the pathos of the fight, not the horror of the death. 62 years after the run of the blockade director - documentalist Sergey Loznica has broken ideological taboo and showed the blockade of Leningrad as a history of one separately taken population destruction. In the film production were used unique archival materials, most of them were never published before…
The retelling of France's iconic but ill-fated queen, Marie Antoinette. From her betrothal and marriage to Louis XVI at 15 to her reign as queen at 19 and to the end of her reign as queen and ultimately the fall of Versailles.
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Judy Davis, Asia Argento, Rip Torn
Directed by Sofia Coppola
In English with subtitles in Latvian and Russian.
Edward Wilson, the only witness to his father's suicide and member of the Skull and Bones Society while a student at Yale, is a morally upright young man who values honor and discretion, qualities that help him to be recruited for a career in the newly founded Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency). While working there, his ideals gradually turn to suspicion influenced by the Cold War paranoia present within the office. Eventually, he becomes an influential veteran operative, while his distrust of everyone around him increases to no end. His dedication to his work does not come without a price though, leading him to sacrifice his ideals and eventually his family.
Cast: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Robert DeNiro, Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, Tammy Blanchard, William Hurt, Timothy Hutton, Joe Pesci
Directed by Robert De Niro
The film is based on James Bradley's book "Flags of Our Fathers: Heroes of Iwo Jima".
The Battle of Iwo Jima, which took place in winter 1945, was a turning point in the Pacific theater. About 6,000 Americans died and 17,000 were wounded during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
The battle produced one of the most enduring images of WWII: a photograph of U.S. servicemen raising an U.S. flag on the flank of Mount Suribachi, the island's commanding high point.
Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, Paul Walker, Jamie Bell, Barry Pepper, John Benjamin Hickey
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Europe, 1709. Russia and Sweden are at war. Two French duelists are exiled by King Louis XIV of France: one to the side of Czar Peter the Great of Russia, the other to the side of King Charles XII of Sweden. Although separated by war and allegiance, fate has not finished with them.
Cast: Dmitry Miller, Alexander Bukharov, Nikolai Chindyaykin, Darya Semyonova, Alexei Chadov.
Directed by Oleg Ryaskov
"300" is an adaptation of Frank Miller's epic graphic novel. Using hyper-real renderings similar to Miller's own graphically stylized illustrations, the film tells the true story of 300 elite Spartan warriors led by their fearless king Leonidas (Butler), who thwart the charge of Xerxes and his massive Persian army at the battle of Thermopylae. Facing insurmountable odds, their valor and sacrifice inspire all of Greece to unite against their Persian foe, leading to the origins of democracy.
Cast: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West, David Wenham, Vincent Regan, Rodrigo Santoro
Directed by Zack Snyder
Russian legendary director Nikita Mihalkov presents the new historical epic about Distemper times in Russia, when, in 1612, people's home guard drove away Polish conquerors from the Kremlin and the legendary tsar dinasty of Romanovs was established... After tsar Boris Godunov's death, his widow and young heir Fyodor were killed. Russia went into chaos...
Cast: Mikhail Porechenkov, Artur Smolyaninov, Andrey Fedortsev, Alexander Baluev, Marat Basharov
Directed by Vladimir Khotinenko
Elle France editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, in 1995 at the age of 43, suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body, except his left eye. Using that eye to blink out his memoir, Bauby eloquently described the aspects of his interior world, from the psychological torment of being trapped inside his body to his imagined stories from lands he'd only visited in his mind.
Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny
Directed by Julian Schnabel
It is 1585 and, having reigned over England for nearly three decades, Queen Elizabeth I (Blanchett) continues to face bloodlust for her throne and the lingering threat of familial betrayal. A channel away, a destructive wind of fundamentalist Catholicism blows across 16th century Europe, with Spain's Philip II (JORDI MOLLA of Sultanes del Sur), its figurehead. Backed by the Church in Rome and armed with the Inquisition, Philip-with his powerful army and sea-dominating armada-presents an imminent threat to Queen and Country…the dark and pious king is determined to wrest the Protestant "heretic" from the throne and restore England to the glory that is the Roman Catholic Church.
Preparing to go to war to defend her empire, Elizabeth also struggles to balance ancient royal duties with an unexpected vulnerability in her love for Raleigh-despite his status as a commoner-who remains forbidden for a Queen sworn body and soul to her country. Unable and unwilling to pursue her passion, Elizabeth encourages her favored lady-in-waiting, Bess (ABBIE CORNISH of the upcoming Stop Loss), to befriend Raleigh and keep him near.
Reprising the roles they originated in seven-time Academy Award®-nominated "Elizabeth," Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush return for a gripping historical thriller laced with treachery and romance--"The Golden Age." Joining them in the epic is Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh, a dashing seafarer and newfound temptation for Elizabeth.
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Clive Owen, Samantha Morton, Abbie Cornish
Directed by Shekhar Kapur
Robert Redford, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise star in "Lions for Lambs," a powerful and gripping story that digs behind the news, the politics and a nation divided to explore the human consequences of a complicated war.
Directed by Academy Award® winner Robert Redford, the story begins after two determined students at a West Coast University, Arian (Derek Luke) and Ernest (Michael Pena), follow the inspiration of their idealistic professor, Dr. Malley (Redford), and attempt to do something important with their lives. But when the two make the bold decision to join the battle in Afghanistan, Malley is both moved and distraught. Now, as Arian and Ernest fight for survival in the field, they become the string that binds together two disparate stories on opposite sides of America. In California, an anguished Dr. Malley attempts to reach a privileged but disaffected student (Andrew Garfield) who is the very opposite of Arian and Ernest. Meanwhile, in Washington D.C. the charismatic Presidential hopeful, Senator Jasper Irving (Cruise), is about to give a bombshell story to a probing TV journalist (Streep) that may affect Arian and Ernest's fates. As arguments, memories and bullets fly, the three stories are woven ever more tightly together, revealing how each of these Americans has a profound impact.
Cast: Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Michael Pena, Derek Luke
Directed by: Robert Redford