Paths of Glory (1957), Army of Shadows (1969), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Farewell My Concubine (1993), The Leopard (1963), Rome, Open City (1945), Persepolis (2007) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Firing Squad movies.
Storyline: Pompous phonetics Professor Henry Higgins (Sir Rex Harrison) is so sure of his abilities that he takes it upon himself to transform a Cockney working-class girl into someone who can pass for a cultured member of high society. His subject turns out to be the lovely Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn), who agrees to speech lessons to improve her job prospects. Higgins and Eliza clash, then form an unlikely bond, one that is threatened by aristocratic suitor Freddy Eynsford-Hill (Jeremy Brett).
Plot Keywords: 1910s, class differences, inheritance, bachelor, phonograph, teaching, gossip ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: It is the early 60s in France. The remaining survivors of the aborted French Foreign Legion have made repeated attempts to kill DeGaulle. The result is that he is the most closely guarded man in the world. As a desperate act, they hire The Jackal, the code name for a hired killer who agrees to kill French President De Gaulle for half a million dollars. We watch his preparations which are so thorough we wonder how he could possibly fail even as we watch the French police attempt to pick up his trail. The situation is historically accurate. There were many such attempts and the film closely follows the plot of the book.
Plot Keywords: assassin, assassination plot, paris france, conspiracy, sniper rifle, terrorist plot, race against time ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A German stage actor finds unexpected success and mixed blessings in the popularity of his performance in a Faustian play as the Nazis take power in pre-WWII Germany. As his associates and friends flee or are ground under by the Nazi terror, the popularity of his character supercedes his own existence until he finds that his best performance is keeping up appearances for his Nazi patrons.—Keith Loh <loh@sfu.ca>
Plot Keywords: nazi, nazi germany, theatre, expressionism, museum, price of fame, ambition ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: It's sometime during WWII. Italian national, Neapolitan Pasqualino Frafuso, is a big talking layabout who has grand ideas of his importance, especially in upholding the honor of his family consisting of his mother and his less than attractive seven sisters. He admits to himself that he too is less than handsome, but believes he nonetheless attracts the romantic interest of most women. It is in he upholding the honor of his sisters that he often calls himself Pasqualino Settebellezze, translated Pasqualino "Seven Beauties". Having gone AWOL from military service, he has just gotten off a train as a stowaway in an unknown locale having just met another AWOL soldier, Francesco, they believing they somewhere in Germany, which is indeed a correct assumption. In relaying his less than direct "point A to point B" story in how he arrived at this point in time to Francesco, Pasqualino tells one in which every conscious decision was what he thought would be the path of greatest ease for himself in less than ideal circumstances, that path which began with accidentally killing his sister Concettina's pimp and, according to her, lover and fiancé, declaring insanity in the ensuing legal battles rather than going to prison, and choosing military service rather than continue to endure medical intervention, such as shock treatment, at the psychiatric hospital. Pasqualino and Francesco are quickly captured by the Nazis and sent to a POW camp. Having already witnessed mass murders by the Nazis both inside and outside the camp, Pasqualino makes another such "easier path" decision in what ends up being a dangerous campaign of seducing the obese and sadistic female camp commandant.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: writer director, male nudity, male frontal nudity, male pubic hair, pubic hair, murder, f rated ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Israel 1956. Rachel, a Jew, rather unexpectedly meets an old friend at the kibbutz where she is working as a teacher. It brings back memories of her experiences in The Netherlands during the war, memories of betrayal. September 1944. Rachel is in trouble when her hiding place is bombed by allied troops. She gets in contact with a man from the resistance and joins a group of Jews who are to be smuggled across the Biesbosch by boat to the freed South Netherlands. Germans from a patrol boat murder them all however. Only Rachel is able to escape. She is rescued by a resistance group under the leadership of Gerben Kuipers. When Kuipers' son is captured after trying to smuggle weapons, he asks Rachel to seduce SS-hauptsturmführer Ludwig Müntze. Soon she will find out the attack in the Biesbosch wasn't a coincidence.
Plot Keywords: gestapo, 1940s, seduction, 1960s, german soldier, sadism, female rear nudity ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In 1979, the American embassy in Iran was invaded by Iranian revolutionaries and several Americans were taken hostage. However, six managed to escape to the official residence of the Canadian Ambassador and the CIA was ordered to get them out of the country. With few options, exfiltration expert Tony Mendez devised a daring plan: create a phony Canadian film project looking to shoot in Iran and smuggle the Americans out as its production crew. With the help of some trusted Hollywood contacts, Mendez created the ruse and proceeded to Iran as its associate producer. However, time was running out with the Iranian security forces closing in on the truth while both his charges and the White House had grave doubts about the operation themselves.
Plot Keywords: cia, based on true story, year 1979, f word, escape, hostage, iran ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In Russia, Boris Grushenko is in love with his pseudo-intellectual cousin Sonja, who loves him since he too is a pseudo-intellectual, but she is not in love with him. Instead she is in love with his brother Ivan. But as Ivan doesn't seem to return her affections, she is determined to marry someone - anyone - except Boris. If that person isn't the perfect husband, then she has to find a suitable lover in addition. Boris' pursuit of Sonja has to take a back seat in his life when he, a pacifist and coward, is forced to join the Russian Army to battle Napoleon's forces which have just invaded Austria. Despite Sonja not being in the picture while he's away at war, Boris' thoughts do not stray totally from women. Although they take these two divergent paths in their lives, those paths cross once again as they, together, both try to find the perfect spouse and lover, and try to assassinate Napoleon.
Plot Keywords: independent film, conspiracy, premarital sex, cannon, angel, ghost, suicide ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In 1944, a company of German soldiers on the Russian front are numbed by the horrors and hardships of war when Private Ernst Graeber's long awaited furlough comes through. Back home in Germany, he finds his home bombed. While hopelessly searching for his parents, he meets lovely Elizabeth Kruse, daughter of a political prisoner; together they try to wrest sanity and survival from a world full of hatred.—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
Plot Keywords: year 1944, repetition in title, bath, burial, gunshot, mercy, dead soldier ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: This movie charts the rise and fall of Yuri Orlov, from his early days in the early 1980s in Little Odessa, selling guns to mobsters in his local neighborhood, through to his ascension through the decade of excess and indulgence into the early 1990s, where he forms a business partnership with an African warlord and his psychotic son. This movie also charts his relationship through the years with his younger brother, his marriage to a famous model, his relentless pursuit by a determined INTERPOL Agent and his inner demons that sway between his drive for success and the immorality of what he does.
Plot Keywords: arms dealer, prostitution, sex standing up, government agent, helicopter, husband wife relationship, interrogation ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A journalist researching a documentary in the Sahara Desert meets a gunrunner who dies suddenly. When the journalist notices that they have a similar appearance, he assumes the recently deceased's identity and accepts the consequences that it brings.—MuzikJunky
Plot Keywords: north africa, architecture, london england, car chase, arms dealer, long take, police ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The Nazis have just invaded and are now occupying another Western European town in an Allied country, the Nazi District Commadant being Major Erich von Keller. Like other such occupied towns, the Nazis are keeping it a supposed free city in return for citizen cooperation. Some of the town's leading citizens, such as Mayor Henry Manville and the railway station master George Lambert, encourage that citizen cooperation outwardly to maintain peace, while such persons are able to profit individually in being in von Keller's proverbial back pocket. Paul Martin, a railway switch man and George's best friend, has gone even further by befriending occupying German soldiers. On the other side, the school head master, well-respected Professor Sorel, and young schoolteacher Louise Martin, Paul's sister and George's fiancée, openly but quietly resist although do not totally defy Nazi orders. Louise's fellow schoolteacher, middle-aged Albert Lory, is a timid man, his self-admitted cowardice exacerbated by his overbearing mother, Emma Lory, coddling him, she in return expecting that he never leave her. Albert is secretly in love with Louise, which most in town know, it being more of a joke to them than anything as they know he will never admit such in his cowardice. Someone or some faction in town has been clandestinely printing and distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. In addition, an act of sabotage at the railway yard which was intended to thwart the Nazis resulted in two German soldiers being killed. As such, von Keller is determined to find out the person or people behind these acts. If he is unable, he will not hesitate to imprison and execute innocent people to make them examples to the townsfolk. When the supposed saboteur is discovered and shot by the Nazis, Albert gets caught in the middle, with his life on the line. In this situation, the townsfolk may get a true picture of what it means to be a coward or a hero.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: title spoken by character, printing press, prison, prosecutor, reference to shakespeare's romeo and juliet, sabotage, soldier ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Jean Valjean, a Frenchman imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a police officer named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.
Plot Keywords: french revolution, police brutality, catholic church, based on novel, melodrama, harassment, father daughter relationship ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In 1920, rural Ireland is the vicious battlefield of republican rebels against the British security forces and Irish Unionist population who oppose them, a recipe for mutual cruelty. Medical graduate Damien O'Donovan always gave priority to his socialist ideals and simply helping people in need. Just when he's leaving Ireland to work in a highly reputed London hospital, witnessing gross abuse of commoners changes his mind. he returns and joins the local IRA brigade, commanded by his brother Teddy, and adopts the merciless logic of civil war, while Teddy mellows by experiencing first-hand endless suffering. When IRA leaders negotiate an autonomous Free State under the British crown, Teddy defends the pragmatic best possible deal at this stage. Damien however joins the large seceding faction which holds nothing less than a socialist republic will do. The result is another civil war, bloodily opposing former Irish comrades in arms, even the brothers.
Plot Keywords: hatred, british empire, irish catholic, nationalism, irish republican army, british army, guerilla warfare ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The story of a farmer in China: a story of humility and bravery. His father gives Wang Lung a freed slave as wife. By diligence and frugality the two manage to enlarge their property. But then a famine forces them to leave their land and live in the town. However it turns out to be a blessing in disguise for them...—Tom Zoerner <Tom.Zoerner@informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Plot Keywords: farmer, wealth, mud, violence, baby, old man, bride and groom ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: On May 27, 1942 the Nazi Reichsprotector of Bohemia/Moravia, the "Hangman" Reinhard Heydrich, died from the bullets of unidentified resistance fighters. Hangmen Also Die is the story of Heydrich's assassination in fictionalized form. It was Bertolt Brecht's only comparatively successful Hollywood project; the money he received allowed him to write "The Visions of Simone Marchand", "Schwyk in the Second World War" and his adaptation of Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi". Hanns Eisler won an Academy Award for his musical score.—J.Arnold Free <arnold@mayahtt.ca>
Plot Keywords: world war two, resistance fighter, assassination, frame up, lie, perjury, reference to adolf hitler ...
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