Modern Times

Modern Times is a 1936 comedy film by Charlie Chaplin that has his iconic Little Tramp character struggling to survive in the modern, industrialized world. The film is a comment on the desperate employment and fiscal conditions many people faced during the Great Depression, conditions created, in Chaplin's view, by the efficiencies of modern industrialization. The movie stars Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Stanley Sandford and Chester Conklin, and was written and directed by Chaplin.
Modern Times was deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress in 1989, and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Fourteen years later, it was screened "out of competition" at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.

Modern Times - Trailer

Braveheart

Braveheart is a 1995 epic historical drama film directed by and starring Mel Gibson. The film was written for the screen and then novelized by Randall Wallace. Gibson portrays Sir William Wallace, a 13th century Scottish knight who gained recognition when he came to the forefront of the First War of Scottish Independence by opposing King Edward I of England, also known as "Longshanks" (Patrick McGoohan).

The film won five Academy Awards at the 68th Academy Awards, including the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director, and was nominated for an additional five.

Braveheart (1995) - Trailer

Gangs Of New York

Gangs of New York is a 2002 historical film set in the mid-19th century in the Five Points district of New York City. It was directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian, and Kenneth Lonergan. The film was inspired by Herbert Asbury's 1928 nonfiction book, The Gangs of New York. It was made in Cinecittà, Rome, distributed by Miramax Films and nominated for numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Picture.
The film begins in 1846 and quickly jumps to 1862. The two principal issues of the era in New York were Irish immigration to the city and the Federal government's execution of the ongoing Civil War. The story follows gang leader Bill "The Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis) in his roles as crime boss and political kingmaker under the helm of "Boss" Tweed (Jim Broadbent). The film culminates in a violent confrontation between Cutting and his mob with the protagonist Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his immigrant allies, which coincides with the New York Draft Riots of 1863.

Gangs Of New York trailer

Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. The film is often considered the greatest of all time and is particularly praised for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film. The film was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories; it won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Herman Mankiewicz and Welles. It was released by RKO Pictures.

The story is a film à clef that examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a character based upon the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and Welles' own life. Upon its release, Hearst prohibited mention of the film in any of his newspapers. Kane's career in the publishing world is born of idealistic social service, but gradually evolves into a ruthless pursuit of power. Narrated principally through flashbacks, the story is revealed through the research of a newsreel reporter seeking to solve the mystery of the newspaper magnate's dying word: "Rosebud."

After his success in the theatre with his Mercury Players and his controversial 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, Welles was courted by Hollywood. He signed a contract with RKO Pictures in 1939. Unusual for an untried director, he was given the freedom to develop his own story and use his own cast and crew, and was given final cut privilege. Following two abortive attempts to get a project off the ground, he developed the screenplay of Citizen Kane with Herman Mankiewicz. Principal photography took place in 1940 and the film received its American release in 1941.

A critical success, Citizen Kane failed to recoup its costs at the box-office. The film faded from view soon after but its reputation was restored, initially by French critics and more widely after its American revival in 1956. There is a semi-official consensus among film critics that Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made, which has led Roger Ebert to quip: "So it's settled: Citizen Kane is the official greatest film of all time." It topped both the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list and the 10th Anniversary Update, as well as all of the Sight & Sound polls of the 10 greatest films for nearly half a century.

The film is set to be released in Blu-ray on September 13, 2011 for a special 70th Anniversary Edition.

A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange (known as Clockwork Orange or Clockwork Orange) is a British science fiction film satire, 1971, produced, written and directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is a film adaptation of the novel 1962, written by Anthony Burgess. The film, which was filmed in England, shows the character Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell), a criminal psychopath and charismatic, whose pleasures are classical music (especially Beethoven), rape and "ultra-violence." He leads a gang of thugs (Pete, George and Dim), which called droogs (the Russian word друг, "friend," "colleague"), with committing a series of violent crimes. He is captured and he attempts to rehabilitate through a technique of behavioral psychology. Alex narrates most of the film in nadsat, a fictional teenage slang that combines Slavic (especially Russian), English and cockney rhyming slang. In Spain and Latin America, some terms were adapted to the language.
The film is characterized by violent content that facilitate social commentary on psychiatry, youth gangs, behavioral theories in psychology and other topics located in a dystopian futuristic society. Its soundtrack is composed mostly of passages of classical music, some of them reinterpreted and sometimes, as in the case of debt securities, adapted by the composer Wendy Carlos used the Moog synthesizer

A Clockwork Orange - Trailer

The Great Dictator

Twenty years after the end of WWI in which the nation of Tomainia was on the losing side, Adenoid Hynkel has risen to power as the ruthless dictator of the country. He believes in a pure Aryan state, and the decimation of the Jews. This situation is unknown to a simple Jewish-Tomainian barber who has since been hospitalized the result of a WWI battle. Upon his release, the barber, who had been suffering from memory loss about the war, is shown the new persecuted life of the Jews by many living in the Jewish ghetto, including a washerwoman named Hannah, with who he begins a relationship. The barber is ultimately spared such persecution by Commander Schultz, who he saved in that WWI battle. The lives of all Jews in Tomainia are eventually spared with a policy shift by Hynkel himself, who is doing so for ulterior motives. But those motives include a want for world domination, starting with the invasion of neighboring Osterlich, which may be threatened by Benzino Napaloni, the dictator of neighboring Bacteria. Ultimately Schultz, who has turned traitor against Hynkel's regime, and the barber, may be able to join forces to take control of the situation, they using Schultz's inside knowledge of the workings of the regime and the barber's uncanny resemblance to one of those in power.

The Great Dictator - Trailer

Twelve Angry Men

12 Angry Men (1957), or Twelve Angry Men (1957), is the gripping, penetrating, and engrossing examination of a diverse group of twelve jurors (all male, mostly middle-aged, white, and generally of middle-class status) who are uncomfortably brought together to deliberate after hearing the 'facts' in a seemingly open-and-shut murder trial case. They retire to a jury room to do their civic duty and serve up a just verdict for the indigent minority defendant (with a criminal record) whose life is in the balance. The film is a powerful indictment, denouncement and expose of the trial by jury system. The frightened, teenaged defendant is on trial, as well as the jury and the American judicial system with its purported sense of infallibility, fairness and lack of bias. Alternatively, the slow-boiling film could also be viewed as commentary on McCarthyism, Fascism, or Communism (threatening forces in the 50s). One of the film's posters described how the workings of the judicial process can be disastrous: "LIFE IS IN THEIR HANDS - DEATH IS ON THEIR MINDS! It EXPLODES Like 12 Sticks of Dynamite."

Twelve Angry Men Trailer

Schindler's List

Schindler's List is a 1993 American biographical drama film about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg, and based on the novel Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally. It stars Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as Schutzstaffel (SS)-officer Amon Göth, and Ben Kingsley as Schindler's Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern.

The film was a box office success and recipient of seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Score, as well as numerous other awards (7 BAFTAs, 3 Golden Globes). In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked the film 8th on its list of the 100 best American films of all time (up one position from its 9th place listing on the 1998 list). It is considered among critics as one of the best films ever made.

Casablanca

Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in the words of one character, love and virtue. He must choose between his love for a woman and helping her and her Czech Resistance leader husband escape from the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca to continue his fight against theNazis.

Although it was an A-list film, with established stars and first-rate writers—Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch received credit for the screenplay—no one involved with its production expected Casablanca to be anything out of the ordinary; it was just one of dozens of pictures produced by Hollywood every year. The film was a solid, if unspectacular, success in its initial run, rushed into release to take advantage of the publicity from the Allied invasion of North Africa a few weeks earlier. Despite a changing assortment of screenwriters frantically adapting an unstaged play and barely keeping ahead of production, and Bogart attempting his first romantic lead role, Casablanca won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Its characters, dialogue, and music have become iconic, and Casablanca has grown in popularity to the point that it now consistently ranks near the top of lists of the greatest films of all time.

The Godfather

The Godfather is a 1972 American crime film based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo and directed by Francis Ford Coppola from a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne. It stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard S. Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte and Diane Keaton, and features John Cazale, Talia Shire, Al Martino and Abe Vigoda. The fictional story, which spans ten years from 1945 to 1955, chronicles the development of the Italian American Corleone crime family. Two sequels followed: The Godfather Part II in 1974, and The Godfather Part III in 1990.
The Godfather received Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay, and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In addition, it had been ranked third - behind Citizen Kane (1941) and Casablanca (1942) - on the AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies list by the American Film Institute. It was moved up to second when the list was published again in 2008