Conquering 90% of the known world by the age of 25, Alexander the Great (Farrell) led his armies through 22,000 miles of sieges and conquests in just eight years. Coming out of tiny Macedonia, Alexander led his armies against the mighty Persian Empire, drove west to Egypt, and finally made his way east to India. This film will concentrate on those eight years of battles, as well as his relationship with his boyhood friend and battle mate, Hephaestion. Alexander died young, of illness, at 33. Alexander's conquests paved the way for the spread of Greek culture (facilitating the spread of Christianity centuries later), and removed many of the obstacles that might have prevented the expansion of the Roman Empire. In other words, the world we know today might never have been if not for Alexander's bloody, yet unifying, conquest.
Starring: Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Anthony Hopkins, Jared Leto, Rosario Dawson, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers
From the director and star of "Amelie" (Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Audrey Tautou) comes a very different love story, "A Very Long Engagement," based on the acclaimed novel by Sebastien Japrisot. The film is set in France near the end of World War I in the deadly trenches of the Somme, in the gilded Parisian halls of power, and in the modest home of an indomitable provincial girl. It tells the story of this young woman's relentless, moving and sometimes comic search for her fiancée, who has disappeared. He is one of five French soldiers believed to have been court-martialed under mysterious circumstances and pushed out of an allied trench into an almost-certain death in no-man's land. What follows is an investigation into the arbitrary nature of secrecy, the absurdity of war, and the enduring passion, intuition and tenacity of the human heart.
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Jodie Foster
Set in the 12th century, the film focuses on a young blacksmith who becomes a knight and helps defend Jerusalem against the Crusaders. There is also a love story, as the young knight falls in love with a princess.
Starring: Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons, Eva Green, Edward Norton
Set in the Philippines in 1945, "The Great Raid" tells the true story of the 6th Ranger Battalion, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci (Benjamin Bratt) who undertakes a daring rescue mission against all odds. Traveling thirty miles behind enemy lines, the 6th Ranger Battalion aims to liberate over 500 American prisoners-of-war from the notorious Cabanatuan Japanese POW camp in the most audacious rescue ever.
Directed by John Dahl, the film also stars James Franco ("Spider Man"), Joseph Fiennes ("Shakespeare in Love") and Connie Nielsen ("Gladiator").
Starring: Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Connie Nielsen, Joseph Fiennes, Mark Consuelos
English language with latvian and russian subtitles.
From the producer of "Shrek" and "Shrek 2," comes this high-flying computer-animated comedy-adventure tale of a brave-but-undersized pigeon named Valiant (voiced by Ewan McGregor), who dreams of joining the elite Royal Homing Pigeon Service (RHPS), and serving crown and country during World War II.
Despite his small stature, Valiant's ambitions are enormous as he keeps a stiff upper beak and endures rigorous training in preparation for a dangerous mission to deliver vital messages to troops behind enemy lines. With a shortage of wingpower in the royal fleet due to increased attacks by a brigade of vicious enemy falcons (led by the ruthless General Von Talon), the mission falls to Valiant and the unlikely heroes of "Squad F" to try and save the day. With a wing and a prayer, Valiant and his fine feathered pals fly into harm's way and prove that it's not the size of the wingspan that counts, but the size of the spirit.
Filled with adventure, comedy and memorable characters, "Valiant" delivers great entertainment for audiences of all ages. John Cleese, Tim Curry, Jim Broadbent, and an all-star vocal cast of British favorites also add to the fun and excitement of this imaginative feature. The film was inspired by the fact that pigeons saved thousands of lives during the war, and 31 of the 53 top honors given to animal heroes went to pigeons.
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Ricky Gervais, Tim Curry, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Laurie, John Cleese
English language with latvian and russian subtitles.
Tough and gritty war movie about young Russians who have to go to Afganistan to fight for their homeland in a war many of them don't wholly understand. In this hell on earth, the illusions shatter quickly and what is left is the wish to get out of this place alive....
Finland, 1944. Captain Marinin is seemingly a fortune's favorite - he won the brightest victories in soviet marine history, a young woman falls in love with him from the first glance. However he is unacceptable for security services in his own country and becomes a target for them as well as for enemies.
The movie "First After God" as life itself brings lots of things - pain and hope, heroism and evil, friendship and betrayal, choice between fear and heroic deed, duty and love. Nothing is unambiguous - there can stand betrayal behind heroism, behind duty - cruelty, behind love - pure reckoning.
Film is produced by Mihail Kalatosischvili, grandson of famous director Mihail Kalatozov (Letyat Zhuravli, Soy Cuba).
Starring: Dmitri Orlov, Vladimir Gostyukhin, Nina Ruslanova, Michael Gomiashvili, Irina Björklund, Yuri Stepanov, Viktor Sukhorukov, Liza Boyarskaya, Sergei Gorobchenko
Russian language with latvian subtitles.
Jarhead follows "Swoff" (Gyllenhaal), a third-generation enlistee, from a sobering stint in boot camp to active duty, sporting a sniper's rifle and a hundred-pound ruck on his back through Middle East deserts with no cover from intolerable heat or from Iraqi soldiers, always potentially just over the next horizon. Swoff and his fellow Marines sustain themselves with sardonic humanity and wicked comedy on blazing desert fields in a country they don't understand against an enemy they can't see for a cause they don't fully fathom... Foxx portrays Sergeant Sykes, a Marine lifer who heads up Swofford's scout/sniper platoon, while Sarsgaard is Swoff's friend and mentor, Troy, a die-hard member of STA-their elite Marine Unit.
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jamie Foxx, Peter Sarsgaard, Lucas Black, Chris Cooper, Dennis Haysbert, Rini Bell
directed by Sam Mendes
English language with latvian and russian subtitles.
1943. Colonel Vyshnevetsky is assigned by the government to prepare the mountain-alpine group of condemned fighters to block the activities
of elite Nazi "Edelweiss" units. The group will consist of 14-15 years old delinquent, desperate kids. They must all be orphans so that nobody will look after them. These boys are selected from orphanages, prisons and colonies and are being sent to the special training camp in the mountains with a further mission to destroy the Nazi military base or to die as they are all "bearers of top secret information" and should not be left alive.
Producer: Alexander Atanesyan
Script: Vladimir Kunin, Alexander Atanesyan
Actors: Andrey Panin, Andrey Krasko, Alexander Golovin, Sergey Richenkov, Vladimir Kashpur
Directed by Alexander Atanesian
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.
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 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