Sunset Blvd. (1950), Citizen Kane (1941), Fury (1936), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Zelig (1983), Pierrot le Fou (1965), La Vie en Rose (2007), Sons of the Desert (1933) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Newsreel movies.
Storyline: In Hollywood of the 50's, the obscure screenplay writer Joe Gillis is not able to sell his work to the studios, is full of debts and is thinking in returning to his hometown to work in an office. While trying to escape from his creditors, he has a flat tire and parks his car in a decadent mansion in Sunset Boulevard. He meets the owner and former silent-movie star Norma Desmond, who lives alone with her butler and driver Max Von Mayerling. Norma is demented and believes she will return to the cinema industry, and is protected and isolated from the world by Max, who was her director and husband in the past and still loves her. Norma proposes Joe to move to the mansion and help her in writing a screenplay for her comeback to the cinema, and the small-time writer becomes her lover and gigolo. When Joe falls in love for the young aspirant writer Betty Schaefer, Norma becomes jealous and completely insane and her madness leads to a tragic end.
Plot Keywords: butler, madness, recluse, hollywood california, actress, delusion, comeback ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A group of reporters are trying to decipher the last word ever spoken by Charles Foster Kane, the millionaire newspaper tycoon: "Rosebud". The film begins with a news reel detailing Kane's life for the masses, and then from there, we are shown flashbacks from Kane's life. As the reporters investigate further, the viewers see a display of a fascinating man's rise to fame, and how he eventually fell off the top of the world.
Plot Keywords: new york, journalist, marriage, new york city, adultery, suicide attempt, newspaper publisher ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Based on the story "Mob Rule" by Norman Krasna. Joe Wilson and Katherine Grant are in love, but he doesn't have enough money for them to get married. So Katherine moves across the country to make money. But things go disastrously wrong for Joe when he stops in a small town and is mistaken for a wanted kidnapper. Through the course of the movie, Fritz Lang shows us how a decent and once civilized man can become a ruthless and bitter man.—Andre'a M. Thompson <athompso@ziggy.st.hmc.edu>
Plot Keywords: mob, lynch mob, xenophobia, social injustice, memento, miscarriage of justice, black american ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: 'Toon star Roger is worried that his wife Jessica is playing pattycake with someone else, so the studio hires detective Eddie Valiant to snoop on her. But the stakes are quickly raised when Marvin Acme is found dead and Roger is the prime suspect. Groundbreaking interaction between the live and animated characters, and lots of references to classic animation.
Plot Keywords: live action and animation, year 1947, private detective, pants falling down, parallel universe, false accusation, conspiracy ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Fictional documentary about the life of human chameleon Leonard Zelig, a man who becomes a celebrity in the 1920s due to his ability to look and act like whoever is around him. Clever editing places Zelig in real newsreel footage of Woodrow Wilson, Babe Ruth, and others.
Plot Keywords: mockumentary, disappearance, fat man, hypnotism, jew, song, baseball ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Ferdinand Griffon, married to a wealthy Italian wife, has recently been fired from the television station where he worked. His wife forces him to go to a party at the home of her influential father, who wants to introduce him to a potential employer. Her brother brings babysitter Marianne Renoir to take care of their children. Feeling bored at the bourgeois party, Ferdinand borrows his brother-in-law's car to head home. He meets Marianne, who was his mistress five years ago and insists on calling him Pierrot, and offers to take her home. They spend the night together and he learns that she's involved in smuggling weapons. When terrorists chase her, they decide to leave Paris and his family behind and go on the run, on a crazy journey to nowhere.
Plot Keywords: on the run, smuggling, mediterranean sea, vietnam war, on the road, fugitive, reading ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: An un-chronological look at the life of the Little Sparrow, Édith Piaf (1915-1963). Her mother is an alcoholic street singer, her father a circus performer, her paternal grandmother a madam. During childhood she lives with each of them. At 20, she's a street singer discovered by a club owner who's soon murdered, coached by a musician who brings her to concert halls, and then quickly famous. Constant companions are alcohol and heartache. The tragedies of her love affair with Marcel Cerdan and the death of her only child belie the words of one of her signature songs, "Non, je ne regrette rien." The back and forth nature of the narrative suggests the patterns of memory and association.
Plot Keywords: female singer, title based on song, based on true story, boxing match, airplane crash, car crash, boxing ring ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: So that he and Stan can sneak away to Chicago and attend the annual "Sons of the Desert" lodge convention, Ollie pretends to be sick, and gets a doctor (who turns out to be a veterinarian) to prescribe a long ocean voyage to Hawaii. Decked out in leis and strumming ukuleles, they return home only to learn that the ship supposedly carrying them has sunk. Their hastily-contrived tale of "ship-hiking" their way back cuts no ice with their wives, who've been at the movies watching a newsreel of the lodge's convention parade, starring - guess who?—Paul Penna <tterrace@wco.com>
Plot Keywords: convention, honolulu hawaii, chorus line, black eye, police officer, sea voyage, deception ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In 1947, Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) was Hollywood's top screenwriter until he and other artists were jailed and blacklisted for their political beliefs. TRUMBO (directed by Jay Roach) recounts how Dalton used words and wit to win two Academy Awards and expose the absurdity and injustice under the blacklist, which entangled everyone from gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) to John Wayne, Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger.
Plot Keywords: communist, gossip columnist, gossip, film industry, screenwriter, communism, hollywood california ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Jack Burden is a newspaper reporter who first hears of Willie Stark when his editor sends him to Kanoma County to cover the man. What's special about this nobody running for county treasurer? He's supposedly an honest man. Burden discovers this to be true when he sees Stark delivering a speech and having his son pass out handbills, while the local politicians do their best to intimidate him. Willie Stark is honest and brave. He's also a know-nothing hick whose schoolteacher wife has given him what little education he has. Stark loses the race for treasurer, but later makes his way through law school, becoming an idealistic attorney who fights for what is good. Someone in the governor's employ remembers Stark when the governor needs a patsy to run against him and split the vote of his rival. The fat cats underestimate Stark; but Jack Burden, Stark's biggest supporter, overestimates the man's idealism. To get where he wants to go, Willie Stark is willing to crack a few eggs - which ...
Plot Keywords: politician, governor, rise and fall, election campaign, political corruption, based on novel, ambition ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: While husband Tim is away during World War II, Anne Hilton copes with problems on the homefront. Taking in a lodger, Colonel Smollett, to help make ends meet and dealing with shortages and rationing are minor inconveniences compared to the love affair daughter Jane and the Colonel's grandson conduct.—Ron Kerrigan <mvg@whidbey.com>
Plot Keywords: hospital, horse riding, high school, grandfather grandson relationship, graduation, golf, garden ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A semi-autobiographical project by John Boorman about a nine year old boy called Bill as he grows up in London during the blitz of World War II. For a young boy, this time in history was more of an adventure, a total upheaval of order, restrictions and discipline. The liberating effect of the war on the women left behind. And the joy when Hitler blows up your school.
Plot Keywords: warplane, world war two, grandfather grandson relationship, 1940s, premarital sex, teenage girl in underwear, teenage pregnancy ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Henri Young stole five dollars from a post office and ended up going to prison - to the most famous, or infamous, prison of them all: Alcatraz. He tried to escape, failed, and spent three years and two months in solitary confinement - in a dungeon, with no light, no heat and no toilet. Milton Glenn, the assistant warden, who was given free reign by his duty-shirking superior, was responsible for Young's treatment. Glenn even took a straight razor and hobbled Young for life. After three years and two months, Young was taken out of solitary confinement and put with the rest of the prisoners. Almost immediately, Young took a spoon and stabbed a fellow prisoner in the neck, killing him. Now, Young is on trial for murder, and if he's convicted he'll go to the gas chamber. An eager and idealistic young attorney, James Stamphill, is given this impossible case, and argues before a shocked courtroom that Young had a co-conspirator. The true murderer, he says, was Alcatraz.
Plot Keywords: based on true story, corporal punishment, torture, court trial, escape attempt, san francisco california, 1940s ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: While traveling with his father, young Alec becomes fascinated by a mysterious Arabian stallion who is brought on board and stabled in the ship he is sailing on. When it tragically sinks both he and the horse survive only to be stranded on a desert island. He befriends it, so when finally rescued, both return to his home where they soon meet Henry Dailey, a once-successful trainer. Together they begin training the stallion to race against the fastest horses in the world.
Plot Keywords: based on novel, castaway, shipwreck, horse, color in title, survival, 1940s ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: From more than eight million feet of newsreels, amateur footage, tape-recordings and more, David L. Wolper presents a priceless detailed account of the time and events surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Plot Keywords: john f. kennedy assassination, assassination of president, dallas texas, stock footage, political assassination, year 1963, murder ...
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