TITLE & REVIEW

Awakenings (1990)

This is a true-life story about a medical discovery and a long-forgotten plague. Dr Sayers (Robin Williams - ), a researcher whose experiments were unsuccessful, gets a job as a psychiatrist at a hospital for the chronically ill. He teams up with his nurse Eleanor ( Julie Kavner ) to try and make improvements. Not in a Patch Adams way, but in a way that is actually based (somewhat vaguely) on real life.

Sayers discovers that some of the long-term patients who are believed to be catatonic or practically brain-dead are suffering with a form of encephalitis. When he starts to work with Leonard Lowe (Robert Deniro - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein ), Sayers discovers that the patients are not brain-dead or catatonic. With the help of a pharmaceutical salesman (Peter Stormare - Armageddon (1998) ) he manages to find a treatment that works.

Leonard recovers from the illness that has imprisoned him for decades. He even has a love interest, Penelope Ann Miller . If she looks familiar, it is because she was also the love interest for Al Pacino in Carlito's Way a few years later.

While the treatment is effective, at the end of the Second Act we discover that the effect is temporary. The patients, as well as Sayers and his team, must confront the harsh reality that the patients will return to their chronically ill condition.

State of Mind (2008) AKA Three Christs

Much like Awakenings (1990) , this is based on a true-life story about a psychiatric researcher who takes a job in an Asylum and tries new treatments on patients formerly considered incurable. He is known for stating that the medical establishment merely warehoused its patients, a good summary of the status quo in the Robin Williams version. This movie has slight differences, and a notably grimmer tone.

Doctor Stone (Richard Gere - ) treats three patients who all believe they are Jesus Christ. They are Peter Dinklage ( Game of Thrones ), Bradley Whitford ( ) and Walton Goggins ( Django Unchained ).

Apollo 13 (1995)

In 1970, NASA astronaut Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks - The Terminal ) is appointed commander of the next manned mission to the moon, codenamed Apollo Thirteen, along with colleagues Fred Hayes (Bill Paxton - Aliens ) and Ken Maddingly (Gary Sinise - The Stand ). Ken gets replaced with Jack Swaggart (Kevin Bacon - Friday the 13th ), and the team's luck seems on the down side.

As the team are rocketing towards the moon, their spaceship is rocked by an explosion. The astronauts must rely on Ground Controller Gene Kranz (Ed Harris - The Abyss ) and his support team for advice to keep them alive. As the tension rises, Lovell's wife Marilyn ( Kathleen Quinlan ) watches from the sidelines with NASA PR man Henry Hurt (Xander Berkley - Gattacca ).

This was an oscar-worthy film by Ron Howard , based on the first-hand account by Lovell himself. These days it is most famous for not mentioning the historical contributions of top NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, the African-American woman who calculated the return trajectory which ultimately saved the astronauts' lives. This fact was called out on the TV show Timeless , although Johnson actually got her own movie - Hidden Figures (2016) . There is another blatant historical anachronism. We see several people chewing gum, but nobody on-screen is actually smoking a cigarette.

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

The Dig (2021)

First Man (2018)

This follows the life of Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling - Blade Runner 2049 (2017) ), from his time as a USAF test-pilot to the conclusion of the Apollo 11 mission which saw him become the first man on the moon. Meanwhile, his wife ( Claire Foy ) is under constant stress as home-maker and virtual widow. Her storyline is reminiscent of that of Madeline Stowe as a military wife in We were Soldiers.

The ground controllers Kyle Chandler ( Early Edition ) and Ciaran Hinds ( Lara Croft: Cradle Of Life (2005) ) seem to have things under control. But Armstrong's fellow astronaut Gus Grissom (Jason Clarke - Terminator: Genisys (2016) ) discovers that there are a lot of risks involved.

Finally, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (Corey Stoll - The Strain ) set off on the Apollo 11 mission. We know how it will end, so only the highlights are shown, but there is an incredible sense of awe as we see it from a new perspective.

Hidden Figures (2016)

Katherine Johnston ( Taraji P. Henson ) and her friends Peggy ( Octavia Spencer ) and Janelle Monae work for NASA in the 1960s. The story starts with the three of them driving to work, encountering a white male police officer on the way. This sets the tone for the rest of the film.

The story should be about the womens' achievements, but in fact most of the movie is about invented problems. The boss (Kevin Costner - Waterworld ) is a stereotypical White Saviour. His minion, Paul (Jim Parsons - ) is a crawling snob who, if we did not automatically associate him with Sheldon Cooper in Big Bang Theory would be assumed to be some kind of racist misogynist. Meanwhile, Peggy has a female boss ( Kirsten Dunst ) who treats her more like a friend than a minion, and this kind of informality is taken as unprofessional behaviour intended to imply that the boss is a closeted racist.

There is a book of the same name as this film. Unfortunately the film is not based on the book, since they were both produced at the same time. They are based on the same magazine article, and while the book is well-researched the movie is low-brow and heavy-handed. The nearest comparison would be The Butler, similarly a real-life story of a successful person which became padded out so as to encompass every different kind of event in the life of every different kind of African-American.

Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks, The (2017)

The Lost King (2022)

Philippa Langley ( Sally Hawkins ) and her ex-husband John (Steve Coogan - Alan Partridge ) are a couple of English people living in Edinburgh, Scotland. Philippa has a mild disability, which makes her a more likeable character, and also gives her a reason to relate to hunchbacks.

Guided by ghostly visions of Richard III (Harry Lloyd - Game of Thrones ), Phillipa begins a one-woman mission to find the King's body. In order for her to appear competent, everyone else is made to look foolish. For example the professional archaeologist she hires - Richard Buckley (Mark Addy - Game of Thrones ) - is played as a blundering fool. He has never heard of overlaying an old map over a modern one, and does not have any faith in ground-penetrating radar. In reality, the UK TV show Time Team was doing these things decades earlier.

This is a typically British movie. The protagonist is an underdog, opposed by strawmen at every turn. It has a decent cast, who deserve better than such hack-written material.

Lucy In The Sky (2019)

Lucy Cola ( Natalie Portman ) is a NASA astronaut After successfully completing a space-walk and returning safely to the Earth, life with her husband (Dan Stevens - The Guest ) just does not seem like enough any more.

Lucy spends more and more time with work colleagues. A shuttle pilot (John Hamm - Baby Driver ) invites her to join the bowling team with the mission controller (Jeffrey Donovan - Blair Witch 2 ). She also discovers she has a rival ( Zazie Beets ) - and not just for a job as a shuttle mission specialist.

After the high of her spacewalk, Lucy slides into a mental decline once she is trapped in her normal life back on Earth. Lucy's downward spiral is noted by her boss (Colman Domingo - Fear The Walking Dead ). Of course, when he does something about it - as he really has to do, under the circumstances - this really just makes things worse for her.

As the story progresses and Lucy's downward spiral continues, it becomes more and more self-evident that this is based on a true story. Yes, the disclaimer in the end credits is basically untruthful.

Man Who Knew Infinity, The (2015)

Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel - The Green Knight ) is a University dropout who is obsessed with mathematics. Thanks to the assistance of his boss, Sir Francis Spring (Stephen Fry - Wilde ), Ramanujan makes contact with a Cambridge University Professor by the name of Hardy (Jeremy Irons - Dungeons and Dragons ). When Hardy invites Ramanujan to join him at Trinity, this is the beginning of a strange relationship between the two.

Ramanujan, an impoverished South Asian, is a fish out of water among the upper middle-class English people in Cambridge. Some of the staff, like Littlewood (Toby Jones - Your Highness ), are welcoming to the newcomer. Others, like MacMahon (Kevin McNally- The Outpost ), are unhappy at the presence of the outsider.

Ramanujan is far from home, where his wife ( Devika Bhise ) is stuck with his mother. This leads on to more drama.

Oppenheimer (2023)

This starts with a framing sequence of Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy - 28 Days Later ) being interrogated by a McCarthyite committee in 1954. As he recounts his encounters with communists, we get a series of flashbacks to his younger days. He had a relationship with Florence Pugh , but ended up married to Emily Blunt .

This is intercut with another framing sequence, starting with Oppenheimer's encounter with Stross (Robert Downey Jnr - Iron Man ). This secondary frame is Stross's hearing in front of the US Government. Just as Oppenheimer was held accountable for associating with leftists, so is Stross held to account for his own deeds.

Christopher Nolan delivers a three-hour film that may feel long, but does not lag. It combines high-level scientific discussions with petty workplace rivalry and office politics.

Radioactive (2019)

This starts with Marie Sadovska ( Rosamund Pike ) on her deathbed in the 1930s, then goes back forty years to when she first met Pierre Curie (Sam Riley - 6 Bullets ). They started sharing a laboratory, and their scientific partnership was productive. Also they got married and had some children.

The good news is that Curies definitely changed the scientific understanding of the universe. Before their discovery of radioactivity, Lord Kelvin had calculated the age of the sun based on the preconception that it was made of coal. Of course, the figure he came up with was a gross underestimate.

The bad news is that the newly discovered element, Radium, was shoe-horned into as many products as possible. While the Curies did not benefit from this crass commercialisation, it did not occur to them that it was potentially dangerous. The movie attempts to overcorrect this, by forcing in a scene of the destruction of Hiroshima in 1945.

Pierre dies first, although his death seems to have been sanitised. He has a coughing illness that is not explained, while in reality it was radioactive mouthwash which destroyed his jaw. As a result of his death, Marie inherits his Professorship at the Sorbonne. However, as the true dangers of radioactivity become apparent she is the one who carries the blame for the discovery. Worse, her boyfriend's wife ( Katherine Parkinson ) sets out to destroy her reputation by stealing and publishing intimate letters. This is a form of revenge porn, just as the baying mob outside Marie's home is a symbol of cancel culture.

As Marie's mental health deteriorates, we get a flash-forward to Chernobyl in 1986. Luckily, Marie wins the Nobel prize a second time. When the First World War breaks out, Marie is spurred to action by her daughter Irene ( Anya Taylor-Joy ). She plans to use mobile X-ray machines on ambulances sent to the front line.

Finally, as Marie's world blends with the future she sees the victims of her radioactivity from Hiroshima and Chernobyl. However, the end credits focus on the positive aspects of the Curies and their discoveries.

Right Stuff, The (1983)

A Theory Of Everything (2014)

Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne - Jupiter Ascending ) studies for his PhD at Oxford, alongside his best friend (Harry Lloyd - Game of Thrones ). A young woman ( Felicity Jones ) enters his life, and everything looks perfect. Then he gets a diagnosis of Lou Gehrig's disease, with a life expectancy of two years.

The story focuses on the family's domestic drama. Stephen gets a new nurse ( Maxine Peake ), an attractive and flirtatious woman who he develops a relationship with.

American Gangster (2007)

Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington - ) is the personal driver for Bumpy Johnston, the African-American gangster who ran the Harlem underworld since the days of Lucky Luciano and Dutch Schultz. When Bumpy dies, Frank takes the old man's advice. He cuts out the middle-men, goes straight to a manufacturer in the Far East ... and becomes the biggest importer of heroin into the USA. Although movies like Panther promote the CIA/Mafia conspiracy theory, so they could flood African-American neighbourhoods with drugs, this version gives all the credit to Frank Lucas himself. He seems to have the same plan as Mr Big in Live And Let Die , although he does not grow it on his own Caribbean island.

Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe - Gladiator ) is a police detective who thinks he is a good guy. Although he is willing to use lies and violence to get himself success as a policeman, he refuses to steal a million dollars of proceeds-of-crime money that he and his partner find unattended. His Wife ( Carla Gugino ) divorces him, and points out his hypocrisy.

Tricky Dicky Nixon starts the war on drugs, and Richie gets put in charge of the New Jersey DEA. Eventually he realises that winning the War on Drugs would be counter-productive. Without it, a hundred thousand workers in the police and prison-industrial complex would be unemployed. Certainly, the New York City detectives led by Trupo (Josh Brolin - Avengers: Infinity War ) are more than happy to tax the dealers rather than arrest them.

Richie realises that the Italian Mafia is going out of business, but he cannot work out who is behind it. Eventually he sees Frank, and wonders how a Black man could be so rich. Yes, it never occurred to anyone to ask who took over Bumpy's mob.

The movie needs a happy ending, so in the Third Act the cat and mouse become friends. Richie gets Frank to rat out the NYC cops who helped him, and while Frank is redeemed it means the bit-player Trupo ends up as the villain.

Directed by Ridley Scott , this was based on the article The Return of Superfly by Mark Jacobson.

American Made (2017)

Barry Seale (Tom Cruise - Mission: Impossible ) is an airline pilot who smuggles a few Cuban cigars as a sideline. He gets recruited by Shafer (Domhnall Gleason - Star Wars: The Force Awakens ), a CIA Officer who is running operations in Latin America. Shafer puts Barry in charge of the new version of Air America, taking aerial surveillance photos on the Sandanistas and smuggling weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua. However, the CIA are in complete denial about exactly how corrupt the Contras are. Barry gets sucked into their web of greed and deceit, smuggling drugs for the Medellin Cartel.

This story was previously told in a made-for-TV movie with Dennis Hopper in the lead role. The Cruise version is a lot more light-hearted, with this as almost a comedy version of the usual rise-and-fall criminal biopic. The cast is excellent, as the movie obviously had the budget necessary to tell a cinematic version of the story. The other main difference is the film's cynicism. While Reagan supported the Contras, he also waged the so-called War on Drugs which attacked their main form of fund-raising. The film also reminds us this is the same Reagan Administration that later armed the Contras with the help of the Anti-American Ayatollah Khomeni.

American Sniper (2014)

Bad Education (2019)

Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman - X-Men ) is superintendant of a High School in a snobby upper-class town in Long Island, USA. He spends his time placating overbearing parents and the millionaire head of the school governors, Big Bob Spicer (Ray Romano - ). Meanwhile Pam Gluckin ( Allison Janney ), the school's business manager, handles the expenses. Rachel Bhargava ( Geraldine Viswanathan ), the school newspaper's top reporter, checks out the records of the financial transactions.

This is about exciting as watching paint dry. Doing your taxes is far more exhilarating, because at least it is personally involving. We see a couple of people with middle-class jobs who aspire to live an upper-middle-class lifestyle, and clumsily embezzle school funds to do so. When Michael Mann covered white-collar crime in The Insider , he gave it the trappings of a neo-noir like Heat . In this case, Jackman is no DeNiro and the reporter is no Pacino.

Billionaire Boys Club (2018)

Dean Karney (Taron Egerton - Kingsman ) narrates the story of his rise and fall. He and his best friend, Joe Hunt (Ansel Elgort - Baby Driver ), run a get-rich-quick scam. They get involved with a rich investor, Ron Levin (Kevin Spacey - See No Evil, Hear No Evil ), and become archetypal Yuppies. The result is a rags-to-riches, rise-and-fall story like a 1980s Wolf of Wall Street .

This is really about Joe Hunt. His father (Judd Nelson - ) warns him not to let himself be corrupted by greed. His girlfriend ( Emma Roberts ) tries to look out for him. However, he keeps getting dragged in deeper and deeper. His bodyguard Tim Pitt (Bokeem Woodbine - The Big Hit ) is trigger-happy, and the rich kids in the Club are only out for themselves. Worse, since Joe is the dogsbody he has been delegated all the work. With great power comes great responsibility, and since everything traces back to Joe he is ultimately given the blame.

Although the title indicates this is about a group of boys, there are a couple of girls. Joe gets introduced to his girlfriend's mother ( Rosanna Arquette ), and Billy Lourde also pops up. Dean has a girlfriend of his own, Suki Waterhouse .

Bonnie And Clyde (1967)

Bonnie Parker ( Faye Dunaway ) is a young woman who elopes with Clyde Barrow ( ).

Boston Strangler: The Untold Story (2008)

This is based on a true-life story. Rather than a straight-forward Police Procedural, this focuses more on the main suspect. What puts this apart from the mainstream slasher is the fact that the suspect is now believed to have made a false confession.

In the 1960s, the American city of Boston is the hunting ground of a serial killer. Police detective Andrew Divoff ( Lost ) does everything he can to catch the killer, but when the press publish all the details of the killer's MO it means there are a slew of copycat killings.

Albert DeSalvo (David Faustino - Atomic Shark ) is a serial sex offender. He is Bud Bundy, not Ted Bundy. But his creepy cellmate introduces him to a smart-ass lawyer (Corin Nemec - Stargate: SG-1 ). Together, they cook up the idea for Albert to confess to all the killings.

Captain Philips (2013)

Captain Philips (Tom Hanks - Apollo 13 ) is a rich old white man - stale, male and pale - who commands a cargo ship that illegally traverses Somali waters. The good news is that Somalia cannot do anything about this, because their government has collapsed. The bad news is that Al Quaeda affiliates have filled the power vacuum, and subcontracted tax-gathering to local fishermen.

This is beloved by the US right wing, because it shows them triumphing over poor people from a hot country. They ignore the fact that the pirates are libertarians, while the US Navy Seals are part of a Big Government, Deep State unit funded by money appropriated from tax-payers.

Casino (1995)

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

The movie starts by introducing us to Frank Abagnale Jnr (Leonardo DeCaprio - The Wolf Of Wall Street ), who spent his late teens in the 1960s cashing forged cheques. FBI Special Agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks - Apollo 13 ) became obsessed with catching him, and eventually succeeded. The rest of the movie is an extended flashback showing how they did it.

Frank's father (Christopher Walken - A View To A Kill ) was a self-employed small-time businessman in New York City. When Frank's parents broke up, the youngster set out on his own. Eventually he realised it was easier to pretend to be an airline pilot, and enjoy the benefits and prestige attached, than to actually spend years learning to fly planes.

Frank lives a hedonistic lifestyle, fueled by James Bond fantasies. He loses his cherry to Cheryl the high-class hooker ( Jennifer Garner ), and gets engaged to Brenda the nurse ( Amy Adams ). Marci ( Ellen Pompeo ) and Lucy ( Elizabeth Banks ), Monica ( Jamie Ray Newman ) and Miggy ( Amy Acker ) also catch his attention. Meanwhile, Carl is a government bureaucrat with a limited salary and no real life outside of his work. The contrast is clear. Carl lives to work, while Frank works to live.

Steven Spielberg delivers a feel-good blockbuster based on the autobiography of Frank Abagnale Jnr. The ending might be considered something of a downer, if one is of the law-breaking persuasion. Frank ends up as a poacher-turned-gamekeeper, helping Carl to catch fellow crooks. In all fairness, the same thing happened to the Stainless Steel Rat. At least Frank has the excuse of being a real-life person, with real-life consequences to his actions.

Chopper (2000)

Mark Chopper Reid (Eric Bana - Hulk ) is a violent criminal from Melbourne, Australia.

Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind (2002)

This is based on the journals of Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell - Galaxy Quest ), creator of a series of popular low-brow US TV game-shows. It starts with his childhood, and charts how he began his relationship with Penny ( Drew Barrymore ) by dating her roommate Debbie ( Maggie Gyllenhall ) while he was still a wannabe producer pitching ideas to the TV networks.

Barris needs a source of income, so he is an easy recruit for Jim Byrd (George Clooney - Ocean's Eleven ). Byrd selects and trains independent contractors who perform assassinations for the CIA. Not only does Barris get an income while his projects are in development hell, he even borrows instructor Jenks (Robert John Burke - ) to suitably inspire the contestants of his game shows. This works two ways, as the CIA uses the TV show as cover for the missions Barris gets sent on.

Barris meets fellow agents Patricia ( Julia Roberts ) and Keeler (Rutger Hauer - Blade Runner ). However, the story takes a darker turn when a mole starts bumping them off.

The high point is really when a pretty woman ( Krista Allen ) swimming naked in a pool recognises Barris, and berates him for the damage that he and his shows have done to American society. In all fairness, Barris merely realised how low the audience expectations were. He can hardly be blamed for merely being the first one to capitalise on it successfully.

This is George Clooney's directorial debut, from a script written by Charlie Kaufman ( Anomalisa ) based on the autobiography of Chuck Barris himself. The result is a somewhat surreal and downbeat story, lightened up with celebrity cameos by some of Clooney's famous friends.

Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

Roy Woodroof (Matthew McConnaghey - Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4 ) is a homophobic Texas redneck. Unfortunately it is the 1980s, and all the unprotected sex he has been having leaves him in an HIV-positive state.

The doctors - Denis O'Hare ( The Pyramid ) and Jennifer Garner - give Roy thirty days to live. However, he is an unbelievably resilient individual.

Roy teams up with Raylen (Jared Leto - Suicide Squad ), a drag queen. Together they outwit the Big Pharma corporations that run the US healthcare system.

Detroit (2017)

Kathryn Bigelow , best known for action-adventure movies, delivers a film based on true-life events. When things get ramped up, the result is tense rather than exciting.

The title cards set the scene. It is the late 1960s, a turbulent time when African-American people protested in the hope of getting equal rights. This was met with brutality by the police, and frequently boiled over into riots.

A National Guard patrol thinks they are under sniper attack. Security guard John Boyega ( Star Wars: The Force Awakens ) is on duty, and gets pulled in to help them. They suspect the shots came from a nearby motel, so they take it over and hold the guests at gunpoint. A trigger-happy white cop (Will Poulter - Maze Runner ) and his buddies take over, and things spin rapidly out of control.

A couple of white girls are staying at the motel. The racist cops assume the girls are hookers, and their friend (Anthony Mackie - Captain America: Winter Soldier ) is their pimp.

The story eventually continues beyond the night in question. Although the cops are arrested and tried, their confessions are thrown out because - as in Miranda's Victim (2023) , they were not read their Miranda rights.

This may be made by White people, but it attempts to show the movie from a Black perspective. Despite the subject matter being chosen because it resonated with contemporary events, specifically the BLM protests of 2017, the film seemingly tries to do its best to keep to the facts. As a result, the villains come across as believable humans rather than as two-dimensional straw-men.

Extremely Wicked, Shockily Evil And Vile (2019)

In the early 1970s, Seattle college girl Elizabeth Kendall ( Lily Collins ) falls for a promising young man named Ted Bundy (Zac Effron - Baywatch (2017) ). It all goes well at first, but Bundy ends up in jail on suspicion of attempted abduction. His lawyer John O'Connell (Jeffrey Donovan - Blair Witch 2 ) puts up a good fight, but the jury ignores police malfeasance. Later, Detective Mike Fisher (Terry Kinney - ) has Bundy extradited to Colorado on suspicion of being a serial killer.

While Ted is in jail, Liz hangs out with her friend Joanna ( Angela Sarafyan ) and her cow-orker Jerry (Haley Joel Osment - Second-Hand Lions ) - both of whom try to convince her that Bundy is guilty. When Liz starts to avoid his phone calls, Bundy seeks solace with Carole Ann Boone ( Kaya Scodelario ).

As this is not a police procedural, we see things from the defence team's perspective. Bundy asserts that prosecutors like Larry Simpson (Jim Parsons - ) seem to be motivated by their own political gain. The Media treats Bundy as if he were guilty until proven innocent. At least Judge Edward D. Cowart (John Malkovich - Space Force ) seems keen on having a fair trial, even if he repeatedly tells Bundy Bless your heart.

On its release, this movie was castigated by feminists because it depicted a serial killer as a human being instead of a supernatural force for evil. They ignored the fact that it is based on the book The Phantom Prince: My Life With Ted Bundy by Elizabeth Kendall herself, and thus shows Bundy's charming side because that is the facade that he always showed Liz.

Fifth Estate, The (2013)

Daniel Berg (Daniel Bruhl - Captain America: Winter Soldier ) is a German tech nerd who teams up with Julian Assange (Benedict Cummerbach - ) - the founder of a website called WikiLeaks. They vow to protect whistleblowers, expose corruption and hold powerful organisations accountable. British Guardian reporter Nick Davies (David Thewlis - Dragonheart ), along with his editor Alan Rusbridger (Peter Capaldi - Lair of the White Worm ) and tech support Ian Katz (Dan Stevens - The Guest ), want to legitimise the rebels in exchange for access to fresh information.

This draws the ire of US Government officers like James Boswell (Stanley Tucci - The Terminal ) and Sarah Shaw ( Laura Linney ), who wants to protect her source (Alexander Siddig - Deep Space 9 ). Sam Colson (Anthony Mackie - Captain America: Winter Soldier ) is on hand as the arch-enemy of Count Nemo.

The director uses a lot of fancy camerawork to add excitement to scenes that are basically about people sitting at computers. That said, this is more of a character study than an attempt at a hard-edged thriller. Assenge even lampshades this, with his disgust at the mainstream media and their focus on his personal eccentricities rather than on the human rights abuses he exposed. However, since this is based on a book by his associate this basically boils down to the same thing as The Social Network .

The Front Runner (2018)

Goodfellas (1990)

This is based on the book Wiseguy, the biography of the gangster Henry Hill as written by journalist Nick Pileggi. Martin Scorsese delivers possibly the best true-crime biopic ever made.

Back in the 1950s, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta - Cocaine Bear ) was a kid from an Italian-American neighbourhood in New York. As a child he got a part-time job in a Mafia-owned business. When he grew up he worked with Tommy the hit-man (Joe Pesci - ), who worked for Jimmy the hijacker (Robert Deniro - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein ), who worked for Paulie the Boss (Paul Sorvino - The Rocketeer ) ...

Tommy makes Henry be his wingman on a double-date, and Henry ends up married to Karen ( Lorraine Bracco ). She plays an important role in the film as co-narrator, giving her own perspective on life in the criminal community.

Henry's memoir seems quite self-serving. Although his crew is involved in a lot of violence, the movie presents him as being a witness rather than a participant. For example, this version of events minimises his culpability in the movie's signature crime - the murder of Billy Batts. In reality, the killing may have been motivated by financial greed more than the emotive reasoning shown in this movie.

Henry was lucky not to be directly involved in the crew's biggest crime - the Lufthansa heist. The gang took six million dollars in cash, which should have been enough for everyone, but Jimmy decided to kill his own crew rather than pay them. Stacks Edwards (Samuel L Jackson - Avengers Assemble ) may have been a screw-up, but the movie excuses Jimmy's double-crossing as a house-cleaning exercise to remove people who defied his orders and spent money in a way that would attract unnecessary attention. In reality, since he would not pay Maurie then he would not have paid the others either.

The movie may attempt to mitigate Henry's behaviour, and that of his buddy Jimmy, but it does not shy away from his decline and fall. He cheats on his wife, and by 1980 he becomes dependent on the drugs he sells. It is only a matter of time before he inevitably get caught, and since Paulie specifically ordered the crew to avoid drugs it is clear he will be regarded as being expendable.

Some people have suggested that Henry gets away with his crimes. The truth is that he ends up serving a life sentence, being watched by prison guards while he himself looks over his own shoulder in case his former friends catch up with him. And the worst thing is that despite having nothing to eat but prison food, he has to pay for it out of his own pocket.

Hatton Garden Job (2017)

Matthew Goode ( Watchmen ) is a career criminal. He gets recruited by the leader of the Hungarian mob ( Joely Richardson ) to do a heist in London. She wants to spite her local rival (Stephen Moyer - Tru Blood ).

Hatton Garden Job (2018) AKA King Of Thieves

Michael Caine ( Dark Knight Rises ) is a career criminal.

House of Gucci (2021)

In the early 1980s, Patrizia Reggiani ( Lady Gaga ) gets married to Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver - Star Wars: TFA ). Unfortunately his father, Rudolfo (Jeremy Irons - Dungeons and Dragons ), disapproves of the match and disowns his son. Patrizia is very ambitious, and helps her husband weasel his way back into the family business.

When Maurizio inherits his father's half of the family business, a world-famous fashion brand, he has to share ownership with his uncle Aldo (Al Pacino - Once Upon A Time In Hollywood ) and his cousin Pablo (Jared Leto - Fight Club ). However, the father and son are estranged from each other so it is easy for Patrizia and her husband to turn them against each other.

Patrizia's friend Pina Auriemma ( Salma Hayek ) is a psychic, who warns her that betrayal is coming. Luckily the Gucci family lawyer Domenico De Sole (Jack Huston - Antebellum ) is around to help out. He is friends with an Arab billionaire who wants to invest in the brand. Things slowly spiral out of control, and Patrizia does not realise she is pushing her husband away. Things go from bad to worse ...

This was directed by Ridley Scott . However, it is not a macho boys-with-toys movie like his others. It focuses on the female perspective because it was written by a female screenwriter, based on a true-crime book by a female journalist.

Iceman, The (2012)

Richard Kuklinski (Michael Shannon - Man of Steel ) lives in middle-class suburban bliss, happily married to Winona Ryder . However, he has a nasty secret. His working-class father was abusive, and his brother (Stephen Dorff - Blade ) is serving a life-sentence in prison for murder. Richard has no objection to murder, although he claims to be morally superior because he is opposed to killing women or children.

One night, Richard meets Ron Demeo (Ray Liotta - Cocaine Bear ) - a notoriously murderous gangster. While Demeo had his own crew of Mafia soldiers, he supposedly hired Kuklinski as a freelance hitman. The justification is that Demeo's own crew was apparently unreliable. One associate (David Schwimmer - ) robs and murders some drug-smugglers, which incurs the wrath of senior gangster Leo Marx (Robert Davi - Licence To Kill ).

When Demeo ends his relationship with Kuklinski, Richard teams up with rival hit-man Mr Freezee (Chris Evans - Captain America ). Of course, he is too smart for any gangsters to get him. Unfortunately he has given no thought to law enforcement, as they seem to not be aware of his existence.

The movie's end-credits state that Kuklinski was suspected of a hundred killings. In reality, he may have boasted about alleged links to Demeo but there was no actual proof of any involvement in organised crime or assassinations. The only killings he was convicted of were sloppy, and he appears to be a fantasist who grossly exaggerated the scale of his crimes. At least the other Liotta gangster story, Goodfellas , has some verifiable facts to balance out its self-service.

The Journey (2016)

The story is set during the negotiations between the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Fein (PIRA) in Scotland. Reverend Ian Paisley (Timothy Spall - Red Dwarf ) takes a car to the airport. Paisley's arch-enemy, Martin McGuinness (Colm Meaney - Star Trek: DS9 ), tags along for the ride. They are driven by a child-like chauffeur (Freddie Highsmith - Bates Motel ) who attempts a half-hearted Scottish accent.

How is this a techno-thriller? It turns out that the car is bugged for video and sound. The whole thing is being manipulated behind the scenes by British Intelligence boss John Hurt ( Alien ), for the benefit of bumbling Prime Minister Tony Blair (Toby Stephens - Die Another Day ). In turn, Blair lets the DUP and PIRA delegates know that he is manipulating their leaders. Of course, none of this makes sense.

This was written by Colin Bateman, but it is certainly not his best work. The real problem is the story's structure. A few years previously Tom Hardy (Bane in The Dark Knight Rises ) starred in Locke, a one-man play where he spends the entire story stuck in the driving seat of a car, and communicates with the other characters via his hands-free telephone kit. However, this movie relies on tired old tropes to get the characters out of the car.

Judas And The Black Messiah (2021)

J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen - A.L.F. ) may have been on the side of the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi Burning, but in this movie he fears that Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluya - Widows ) is the Black Messiah who will destroy the American way of life. Not only is Hampton an outspoken proponent of Maoism, which is basically Stalinism, but he uses rhetoric that encourages violence.

Bill O'Neal (LaKeith Stansfield - Sorry To Bother you ), a con-man who steals cars, is arrested by the FBI. They force him to act as an informer and infiltrate the Panthers, with Hampton as the target. He does a good job, getting himself chosen as head of security.

This was written with the help of Hampton's widow, so it takes his side. The FBI are painted as the bad guys, in a conspiracy to maintain racial segregation by any means necessary, including murder. Meanwhile, the Panthers themselves are keen enough to murder people. Much like S.H.I.E.L.D. in Captain America: Winter Soldier , they espouse the same values they claim to abhor.

Kidnapping Mr Heineken (2015)

In 1982 a group of friends in Amsterdam are down on their luck. They decide to turn to a life of crime. To start with, they rob a cash deposit van for some investment capital. Then they do the big job - kidnapping local billionaire Freddy Heineken (Anthony Hopkins - Silence Of The Lambs ) and holding him for ransom. Naturally it does not go the way they wanted it to.

The plan actually seems solid. However, somehow the cops close in on Jan (Ryan Kwanten - True Blood ) and the others. Finally, Cor (Jim Sturgess - Geostorm ) and Willem (Sam Worthington - Clash Of The Titans ) go on the run together.

Krays, The (1990)

Ronnie and Reggie Kray, a famous pair of real-life gangsters, are played by fellow twins the Kemp brothers - better known at the time as a pop duo known as Spandau Ballet. This film starts with their childhood, but mostly concentrates on the high points of their careers. They are inexorably driven into confrontation with rival gangsters and the violent end to their life of crime.

Although the movie is named after the brothers, a lot of the movie's focus is on the women in the brothers' lives. The boys are devoted to their mother ( ), her sister Aunt Rose, and Reg's tragic wife ( ). These women are allowed long monologues about their stresses and tragedies.

Lansky (2021)

Dave (Sam Worthington - Clash Of The Titans ), a struggling writer, is hired to help Meyer Lansky (Harvey Keitel - Reservoir Dogs ) work on his autobiography. The old man recounts his younger days, including his marriage to AnnaSophia Robb .

Worthington gets his own love interest - Minka Kelly . However, he discovers that the FBI has him in their sights because they want the three hundred million dollars that Lansky supposedly has stashed away somewhere.

Legend (2015)

This is a bio-pic of Ronnie and Reggie Kray (Tom Hardy - Batman Rises ), the London gangsters previously played by Martin and Gary Kemp in the 1980s. This version is different because it is written and directed by Brian Helgeland , best known for adapting James Elroy's novel L.A. Confidential for the big screen.

The story is narrated by Frances ( Emily Browning ), possibly as a way of getting more female representation into an incredibly male-dominated story. Her brother Frank (Colin Morgan - Merlin ) had dealings with Reggie Kray, which is how Frances got involved with him - much to the disappointment of her mother ( Tara Fitzgerald ). Again, this soap opera seems intended to lighten the gangster story, which was what the Kemp Brothers version concentrated on.

Reggie is the level-headed brother, who works with middle-man Leslie Payne (David Thewlis - Dragonheart ) to make a deal with an American Mafia liaison (Chazz Palminteri - Mulholland Falls ). Ron is the mentally unstable brother, who hangs around with pretty-boy Teddy (Taron Egerton - Rocketman ) and does things that will draw unwanted attention from Detective Inspector Nipper (Christopher Eccleston - Heroes ).

The brothers' story is well-known in the UK, and this version does not really add anything new. There is a new cast, and using Paul Bettany ( Solo: A Star Wars Story ) in a cameo as Charlie Richardson is a nice touch since his breakout role was as a younger version of a similar character in Gangster No.1.

Lizzie (2018)

Lizzie Borden ( Chloe Sevigny ) discovers the brutally mutilated body of her stepmother ( Fiona Shaw ). Afterwards she is interviewed by the police, and we see the previous six months in flashback.

Lizzie lived with her father, stepmother, sister ( Kim Dickens ) and a housemaid ( Kristen Stewart ). The women were supportive to general degrees, but Lizzie's father was a puritanical skinflint. He received a series of poison pen letters, and there was no shortage of suspects. Local farmers hated him because he made dodgy land transactions. His only confidant was his uncle (Denis O'Hare - Pyramid (2014) ).

The identity of the real killer is revealed. It actually does not make much sense, because the elaborate plot to create an alibi and destroy evidence is completely done away with.

Lords of Chaos (2019)

Euronymous (Rory Culkin - Scream 4 ) is a Death Metal music fan in Norway. He starts a band, and quickly becomes a key member of the local industry.

The new Death Metal scene attracts a lot of hangers-on. One of them becomes a rival to Euronymous, and tries to out-do him. This escalates to arson in churches. However, the rivalry ends in murder.

Lyra (2022)

This is a documentary about Northern Ireland journalist Lyra McKee. As well as interviews with her friends and family, it features a lot of footage of Lyra herself.

The film delves into two cases that Lyra investigated. One is the death of a local man during the Ballymurphy Massacre, an event in 1971 at the start of the Troubles. That killing was by a soldier in the British Army, so there was a lot of documentation (albeit heavily redacted) and enough cooperation to ensure charges being filed. The second case is The lost Boys, a pair of schoolboys who went missing in the 1970s. Their case has been investigated by the police, but with limited success due to the lack of resources at the time. The suspects are members of a local IRA gang, which shows a lot less cooperation than the British Army did.

The final murder case that Lyra was involved in, details of which are interspersed in the film, is her own death. Footage from outside the courthouse where her alleged killers were arraigned illustrate the irony that despite her being a champion of the Catholic working class in Belfast, it was members of the Catholic working class who killed her.

Milk (2008)

This starts with Harvey Milk (Sean Penn - Gangster Squad ) narrating into a reel-to-reel tape, with instructions that it only be released if he is assassinated. As a piece of real-life news footage reveals, Milk was in fact assassinated. This introduces us to the story, told in flashback starting ten years previously.

Harvey lived and worked in New York City, where he hooks up with Scott Smith (James Franco - Your Highness ). They decide to build a new life for themselves by moving to San Francisco in 1972. Yes, New York - home of the Stonewall riots - was apparently too homophobic for them. Instead they set up a business on Castro Street, and before long hundreds of gay-identifying men flocked there. This movie, like a hagiography, makes it seem that Milk was single-handedly responsible for creating the gay community of San Francisco.

The first issue Milk faced was the homophobia of local businesses. He overcame this through economic warfare - by getting his community to only buy from the businesses which supported their political agenda. Anything deemed an anti-gay business was boycotted, so it would be replaced by something more acceptable.

The biggest threat to equal rights turns out to be a national political campaign run by Anita Bryant - one of the right-wing women of American politics who, like Mrs America, fell from sight once she had served the purposes of her reactionary masters. A local politician, John Briggs (Denis O'Hare - American Horror Story ), enforces her bigotry in California. Milk is the face of the Gay community, and publicly debates Briggs.

To win at politics, Harvey has to move outside the ghetto that he built for himself. He recruits a team, including token lesbian Ann Kronenberg ( Alison Pill ). Once elected, he finds an ally in Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber - Alias ). However, Harvey fails when it comes to making a deal with fellow politician Dan White (Josh Brolin - Avengers Endgame ). While White has a more reactionary viewpoint, and goes for the Family Values vote, Milk is portrayed as a bad politician for not making a deal.

In the end, White is Milk's nemesis. Ironically, a few years later the actors worked together on Gangster Squad - a cliched 1940s shoot'em up with Brolin as a heroic cop and Penn as a murderous gangster.

Miranda's Victim (2023)

The title character, Patricia Weir ( Abigail Breslin ), is a teenage girl working at a movie theater in USA in 1962. The film playing is To Kill A Mocking Bird, a famous story about a fictitious rape trial. In an ironic twist, our heroine gets real-life raped on the way home.

Patricia is the perfect victim for this kind of story - white, virginal and middle-class. Not at all like Sarah Tobias ( Jodie Foster ) in The Accused, so we are meant to automatically take her side. Her sister ( Emily VanCamp ) is supportive, although her mother ( Mirelle Enos ) wants to cover up the whole incident. Yes, they are all victims of the Patriarchy and Toxic Masculinity.

The cops catch the rapist, a guy named Ernesto Miranda. The District Attorney (Luke Wilson - ) prosecutes, and Alvin Moore (Andy Garcia - Father of the Bride ) provides the suspect with a legal defence. The jury convicts, but ACLU lawyer John Flynn (Ryan Phillipe - Way of the Gun ) appeals the case all the way to the SCOTUS. The Chief Justice (Kyle McLachlan - Dune (1984) ) announces the monumental decision - that even a guilty man has legal rights, and that every suspect should be informed of those rights in case they are too uneducated to know them already.

The climax of the film is Miranda's retrial in the court of Judge Donald Sutherland ( Don't Look Now ). Poor Trish has to testify all over again, just like Sarah/Jodie did in The Accused.

This seems to be a passion project for the female director, Michelle Danner . The film's message seems to be that suspects have more rights than accusers, and thus that victim-privilege should be extended to the extent of a presumption of guilt. In real life, the UK had the right to silence removed and the SCOTUS has consistently undermined the rights of suspects. All this piece of copaganda pity-porn does is further enable the worst instincts of the authoritarians.

Monster (2003)

This is based on the real-life story of Aileen Wuornos ( Charlize Theron ), a down-and-out alcoholic in 1980s Florida who scrapes a living as a truck-stop hooker. She meets Selby ( Christina Ricci ), a closeted lesbian from a religious family. The two women fall in love, but have no way to financially support themselves. Selby wants Aileen to be the breadwinner, but Aileen is a convicted prostitute without the college degree necessary for a good-paying job.

Aileen's return to hooking ends badly when she meets Vincent Corey (Lee Tergesen - Weird Science ), a violent john who she kills in self-defence. She then manages to kill a few other Johns, seemingly for robbery or with a certain reluctance. The reality is that she was addicted to the catharsis provided by rage killing, and sought to duplicate the sensation she felt when she made her first kill.

There are a couple of familiar faces for horror fans. The stuttering John (Pruitt Taylor Vince - Identity ) and the last John (Scott Wilson - Judge Dredd ) both worked together in Walking Dead: Season 2 . The stunt coordinator, Kane Hodder ( Friday the 13th Franchise ) pops up as a cop who arrests Aileen.

Director Patty Jenkins made her name on this movie, and over a decade later got the Wonder Woman job based on that reputation. What she delivers here is reminiscent of No Time To Die insofar as it is a love story, and the killing is only a subplot. To this effect, the movie is a prime example of The Female Gaze. Practically every scene is a mid-shot or a close-up, as the focus is on emotions rather than actions.

No Man Of God (2021)

This starts with TV news footage reporting the execution of serial Killer Ted Bundy.

The main story starts a few years earlier, in 1985. The boss of the FBI's Behavioural Analysis Unit (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2 ) needs volunteers to interview convicted serial killers. The more experienced agents all choose killers who are imprisoned in convenient areas. Rookie FBI profiler Bill Hagmier (Elijah Wood - Lord of the Rings ) is ordered to interview convicted serial killer Ted Bundy ( ).

Bill gets Ted to open up, and confess a lot of details to his crimes. Of course, when his execution date is finalised Ted starts to change his story to suit his own needs.

Official Secrets (2019)

Katharine Gun ( Keira Knightley ) is a young Intelligence analyst who works at GCHQ in England. In the run-up to the American invasion of Iraq, her office receives an email from the NSA requesting help in finding blackmail information on UN delegates so the USA can coerce a vote of support for George Bush's plans. Disgusted by this politicisation of a UK security agency and corruption of democratic freedom, Katherine leaks the memo to her Anti-War friend Jasmine ( Myanna Buring ).

Martin Bright (Matt Smith - Morbius ), a journalist at the Observer newspaper, receives the leaked memo. With advice from Peter Beaumont (Matthew Goode - Watchmen ) and help from Ed Vulliamy (Rhys Ifans - Hannibal Rising ), Martin gets his editor Roger Alton (Conleth Hill - Game of Thrones ) to publish the story.

The section with the journalists is reminscent of Fifth Estate, The (2013) , but it is not the core of the movie. The story switches back to Kat, who gets interviewed by GCHQ's internal security man. She ends up needing legal advice, so she visits Liberty and meets human rights experts Ben Emmerson (Ralph Feinnes - Harry Potter ) and Shami Chakrabati ( Indira Varna ).

Kat has a strong legal defence, since the Government was in the wrong. However, the Establishment is out to get her in order to make an example for any future whistleblowers. Ken MacDonald (Jeremy Northam - The Net ) puts his best man on the case.

Pain And Gain (2013)

Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg - Transformers 4 ) is a fitness trainer in 1990s Florida. Inspired by a get-rich-quick guru (Ken Jeong - The Hangover ), Lugo decides the easiest way to get rich quickly is to kidnap and extort Victor Kershaw (Tony Shaloub - ), his richest and most corrupt client. To this end, Lugo recruits his best friend Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie - Captain America: Winter Soldier ) and convicted felon Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson - Hobbs and Shaw ) to help with the plot. Of course, the trio turn out to be comically inept. This would have been a great comedy franchise, if it were not based on a real-life crime spree that ended in a couple of fatalities.

This is the ultimate Michael Bay movie, where he can show his talents while unfettered by any Franchise constraints. However, the storyline seems to be the antithesis of the other Bay movies. The blue-collar Americans are inept criminals rather than the heroes that Bay usually portrays. Police officers are shown as equally inept, if only because they are basically racist to the point of incompetence. Yes, all Bay's sacred cows are slaughtered here. At least the visuals reflect his typical Male Gaze. Also, the cast is quite impressive.

The People Vs Larry Flynt (1996)

Larry Flynt (Woody Harrelson - Zombieland ) owns a strip-club or two, and wants to spread the word by starting a newsletter. Before long the newsletter is available by subscription, and he eventually produces a high-quality edition for sale on news stands. His team includes his girlfriend ( Courtney love ) and his friends Vincent Schiavelli ( Tomorrow Never Dies ) and Crispin Glover ( Back to the Future ).

Flynt's porn falls foul of a bunch of right-wing censors led by James Cromwell ( Star Trek: First Contact ). With the help of Civil Rights lawyer Alan Isaacson (Ed Norton - Fight Club ), Flynt fights numerous court battles. The cost is severe, because after one court hearing Flynt is ambushed and crippled by a KKK gunman.

Flynt is an unlikely hero, an objectionable person who is basically a free speech warrior. His final case, that of satire rather than porn, goes all the way to SCOTUS - the Supreme Court of the USA.

Red Joan (2018)

Joan (Judy Dench - Goldeneye (1995) ) is a little old lady who lives in suburban England. One day the police arrest her, and charge her with treason. This bookends the story, as we see a series of flashbacks to the 1940s. As a young woman, Joan was involved in the British part of the Allied efforts to make nuclear weapons. She studied at Cambridge University, at the time when a famous Russian spy Ring was recruited there. Throughout the flashbacks, we see her involvement deepen.

This is based on the real-life case of Melita Norwood, a woman who evaded prosecution for her crimes due to the fact she was over eighty years old. In all fairness, other people who were older than her have actually been prosecuted if the crime is deemed serious enough.

This is more polished and Hollywoodised than the real story. Young Joan is a high-flying Cambridge graduate, an expert scientist in her own right who is kept down by the oppressive male patriarchy. Agent Carter is filled with this kind of cliche. The other thing that is intended to make Joan sympathetic to the audience is her ignorance of the evils of Stalinism. She claims that she only collaborated with the Russians in order to prevent another World War. To start with, this Mutually Assured Destruction made the Cold War drag on for decades. Secondly, her logic resembles the discredited appeasement policies of the 1930s. Finally, people like George Bernard Shaw and the Mitford sisters - who championed the Soviet Union as a utopia in the early 1930s - also championed Germany as a utopia after its change of government in 1933.

The Terminal (2004)

A harmless tourist, Viktor Naborski (Tom Hanks - Apollo 13 ), arrives at an airport in New York, USA. during his eight-hour transatlantic flight a civil war broke out in his homeland - the fictional country of Krakozia. As a result, Viktor's pasport and visa are invalid so local bureaucrat Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci - The Core ) refuses to allow him to leave the airport. This boils down to what is basically a battle of wills between the little man and the government securocrat.

Viktor makes a few friends among the staff, including Mulroy (Chi McBride - Pushing Daisies ) and Security Officer Torres ( Zoe Saldana ). He discovers that Torres is a Trekkie who cosplays as Uhuru, which is ironic since five years later Saldana played that role in Star Trek (2009) . Viktor also gets a love interest in the form of flight attendant Amelia Warren ( Catherine Zeta-Jones ).

Dixon is not a two-dimensional villain, trying to solve Viktor's problem by offering him refugee status. However, Viktor's ability to manipulate the system only applies when he is helping other people, not when his own future is at stake. He refuses to accept Dixon's offer, because even though his country is in the throes of civil war he will not admit he is afraid of death or oppression there. All Dixon wants is a promotion he has been working years to earn, but it will require his boss Salchak (Eddie Jones - Lois and Clark ) to sign off on it. The Viktor situation is putting that all at risk.

Steven Spielberg delivers another likeable piece of schmaltz. Sadly, the characters' abilities and motivations shift as the plot demands it. Sometimes they are smart or generous, other times stupid or selfish, without much consistency or logical development.

Wardogs (2016)

Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DeCaprio - Catch Me If You Can ) starts as a wannabe Wall Street broker working for Matthew McConaghey ( ) in 1987. Unfortunately, the Wall Street crash of that year derails Belfort's career. He has to build it up again from the ground up, by starting his own firm and recruiting a team of hard-nosed salesmen. His new best buddy (Jonah Hill - ) and his drug dealer (Jon Bernthal - The Punisher ) round out the team.

As Jordan becomes successful, he allows it to corrupt him. First he cheats on his first wife ( Cristin Milioti ) with the woman who becomes his second wife ( Margot Robbie ), then he messes up his second marriage too.

This was directed by Martin Scorsese . The obvious comparison would be with Henry Hill in Goodfellas . However, that film has a far more serious tone. Belfort's indulgence in sex and drugs is so over-the-top that this is clearly a comedy. The movie covers his rise and fall, although he avoids the horrendous suburbanite fate of Henry Hill.

Zola (2020)

Zola is an African-American waitress. She befriends Stefani ( Riley Keogh ), who gets her a job in a local strip-club. Then, with the promise of a better-paying job in Florida, Stefani and her flatmate (Colman Domingo - Fear The Walking Dead ) take Zola on a road-trip.

Although this is basically a sexploitation story, it is female-orientated. The women may be strippers and whores, but all the nudity is actually by the males. This is quite a change for Keogh, who does artistic nudity in most of her other roles.

Instead of being based on a book, or even on a magazine article, it was taken from a series of twitter tweets. Originally James Franco ( Your Highness ) was involved, but he took his name off it after he was accused of being a sleazy jerk. Instead, this effort is being portrayed as the work of an African-American female director. This leads on to an element of politicization. The character Stefani is a white-passing woman who uses a patois derived from Ebonics, which would at one time maker her an ally of the Black community but now leaves her open to accusations of cultural appropriation. In truth, when culture becomes successful it becomes mainstream, which means it gets dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.

King's Speech, The (2010)

The Duke of York (Colin Firth - ) is afflicted with a terrible stutter. Should not be too much of a problem, except for the fact that his job as a member vof the Royal Family includes making public speeches. Luckily, his wife ( Helena Bonham Carter ) seeks the help of speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush - Mystery Men ).

The British Empire is about to face a constitutional crisis. King George the Fifth (Michael Gambon - ) is not getting any younger. The Prince of Wales (Guy Pearce - ) is in a relationship with a woman named Wallis Simpson, who is unfortunately both a divorcee and an American. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Derek Jacobi - Dead Again ) and Winston Churchill (Timothy Spall - ) are both unhappy about this. But the Duke refuses to consider taking over his bother's position.

This is not a simple piece of family drama, but an exploration of important political events. At the time, Europe was divided between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. The only international balancing force was the British Empire, composed in a large part of what Churchill referred to as the English-speaking peoples, which represented a quarter of the world's population. As the de facto leader of the Free World, if only in a symbolic sense, the king's duty includes making radio broadcasts that will stiffen the Empire's resolve in the fight against evil.

Ultimately, this key moment in geo-politics is merely a backdrop for a heart-warming friendship between two men of very different backgrounds. The portrayal of Bertie, later King George VI, even met with the approval of his daughter Queen Elizabeth herself - whose childhood self is depicted in the film too.

Young Victoria (2009)

Young Victoria ( Emily Blunt ) lives under the heel of her mother, the Duchess of Kent ( Miranda Richardson ), and stepfather Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong - Stardust ). Eventually King William (Jim Broadbent - Harry Potter ) dies, and Victoria inherits the throne. She gets the chance to even some scores, but the burden of responsibility is massive.

King Leopold (Thomas Kretschmann - ) sends his son Prince Albert (Rupert Friend - ) to ingratiate himself with the new Queen. This becomes a romantic relationship. Well, Victoria had led a very cloistered life and she had no unsupervised contact with men. Luckily she had female helpers like Watson ( Morven Christie ) and the Duchess of Sutherland ( Rachael Stirling ).

Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany - ), the Prime Minister, uses his friendship with the Queen for his own political ends. The Duke of Wellington (Julian Glover - Empire Strikes Back ) is not impressed, because this endangers the status of the monarchy as politically neutral. However, it also shows Victoria how she can actually influence the country. The movie them implies that she was personally responsible for the progressive laws that parliament passed and she rubber-stamped during her reign.

Mrs Brown (1997)

Queen Victoria ( Judy Dench ) is grief-stricken after the death of her husband. Her husband's Scottish ghillie, John Brown (Billy Connolly - ), is summoned to serve her. He starts off as a stable-groom and riding companion, but as their friendship deepens he appoints himself as her unofficial bodyguard. After all, there are Irish rebels and English republicans on the loose.

This movie is set apart by the casting. The Queen's doctor is played by Geoffrey Palmer ( Tomorrow Never Dies ), who was Dench's real-life husband. John Brown's brother Archie is a young Gerard Butler, ( Lara Croft: Cradle of Life ), who went on to protect the POTUS in Olympus Has Fallen .

Victoria And Abdul (2017)

Queen Victoria ( Judy Dench ) takes a liking to Abdul ( ).

127 Hours (2010)

James Franco ( Your Highness ) goes hiking, and gets his arm trapped under a boulder. As hours drag onto into days, he gets increasingly desperate to escape.

Ali (2001)

Cassius X (Will Smith - Independence Day ), a successful boxer, has a good thing going with his entourage - Drew Bundini Brown (Jamie Foxx - Django Unchained ) and Howard Bingham (Jeffrey Wright - Casino Royale ). He impetuously marries Sonji ( Jada Pinkett ), the first of many wives.

Cassius' friendship with Malcolm X (Mario Van Peebles - ) comes to an end when Elijah Muhammad suspends Malcolm from the Nation of Islam. Elijah also grants Cassius the Muslim name, Muhammed Ali, which he is known by for the rest of his life. This is portrayed a proud stand for Black American culture.

Ali's father, Cassius Clay Senior (Giancarlo Esposito - ), is less than happy at Ali for abandoning his actual roots. Yes, Ali ignored his Southern Baptist heritage in favour of the Northern Muslim culture he adopted.

When Ali is drafted to serve in the Vietnam war, he objects on principle. While he later states that he does not want to oppress poor people, his initial objection is because he was dead-named. Yes, whenever he adopted his new Muslim name he neglected to change his legal name too. This situation escalates when he is suspended by his sport's governing body. He engages a Lawyer, Chauncey Eskridge (Joe Morton - Terminator 2 ), an associate of Martin Luther King Jr (LeVar Burton - Star Trek: TNG ).

Eventually, it is Ali's friendship with caucasian sports newscaster Howard Cosell (Jon Voight - Lara Croft: Tomb Raider ) that gets his career back on track. Finally, Ali is roped in by Don King (Mykelti Williamson - ) as a competitor in the Rumble in the Jungle. This boxing contest, in the African country Zaire, is the climactic third act of the story.

Michael Mann delivers an impressive movie, telling the story of the turbulent 1960s from the perspective of the African-American community far better than later films like The Butler and Hidden Figures . Those films try to squeeze everything in, while in this story everything is organic.

Battle Of The Sexes (2017)

It is the 1970s, and women are forcing their way into traditionally male areas. The next step for them is mens' sports. Steve Carrell ( ) seeks to prove himself better than the female competitors by defeating them at their own game. Can Emma Stone prove him wrong?

Catcher Was A Spy, The (2018)

Concussion (2015)

Eddie The Eagle (2016)

This is based on the true story of Eddie Edwards (Taron Egerton - Kingsman ), a young Briton who wants to compete in the Olympics. His father Terry (Keith Allen - Robin Hood ) has no faith in him, and wants Eddie to give up his dream. Nevertheless, Eddie perseveres.

Eddie teams up with Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman - The Greatest Showman ), a drunken snowplough driver, who reluctantly acts as Eddies trainer. It turns out that Bronson is a former Olympian, expelled from the American team by his own former mentor Warren Sharp (Christopher Walken - View To A Kill ). Together they overcome the cynicism of the Norwegian team, and get Eddie qualified to enter the Winter Olympics.

The British Olympic committee, led by Dustin Target (Tim McInerney - ), are adept at gatekeeping. They are a bunch of bureaucrats who take it upon themselves to keep the amateurs out of the Olympics. The Norwegian team had the same attitude, but at least they are willing to get hands-on with the sport.

The climax is set at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada. Eddie still has to overcome jealous rivals and obstructive bureaucrats. Finally, he decides to compete on an event he has not trained on - thus putting himself out of his depth in a sport where crippling injury and even death are ever-present possibilities.

The result is a heart-warming tale of a real-life underdog, overcoming the odds. The nearest comparison would be to Cool Running, and a mention is even made to the Jamaican bobsled team.

Ferrari (2023)

In 1947, former race-car driver Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver - Star Wars: TFA ) starts a car manufacturing firm. A decade later, he is sleeping with Lina Lordi ( Shailene Woodbury ) which makes his wife Laura ( Penelope Cruz ) violently jealous. Since Laura controls half the company, she can pretty much hold Ferrari to ransom. To pay her, Enzo needs to make a deal with Henry Ford. Yes, this touches on the events of Ford Vs Ferrari but from the Italian perspective instead of the American one.

This was directed by Michael Mann from a script written by Troy Kennedy Martin , although the result lacks the flair of either. What really sets it apart is its focus on the car crashes. Yes, this not only portrays the car-racing as exciting and fast-paced, but incredibly dangerous, The result is one of the few films that actually shows consequences, with one of the most brutal car crash scenes in film history.

Foxcatcher (2014)

John Du Pont (Steve Carell - Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World ), a lonely man insulated from reality by his inherited wealth, lives in a mansion with his mother Jean ( Vanessa Redgrave ) and his henchman Jack (Anthony Michael Hall - Halloween Kills ). When John takes it upon himself to start a wrestling team, he hires gold-medal-winning wrestler Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum - GI Joe ) as team-leader. He also wants Mark's brother David (Mark Ruffalo - Avengers ), who is reluctant to move house because of his wife Nancy ( Sienna Miller ) and their children.

This is basically an Oscar-bait drama, based on a true story, and equipped with a impressive cast. Carell and Tatum, best known for comedy and action movies respectively, deliver solid performances. That said, the film is slow and even tedious in a way that makes Lost in Translation seem like The Fast and the Furious . It does not even pass the Bechdel test. In fact, Miller as Nancy does not even get any dialogue! Instead, the story concentrates on DuPont and Mark - a pair of emotionally isolated loners who have a lot in common. However, they eventually have a falling out. The climax comes out of nowhere, as the story turns to unprovoked violence.

Gran Turismo: Based On A True Story (2023)

Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom - Lord of the Rings ) convinces the bosses at Nissan, the Japanese car manufacturer, to sponsor a team of video-game players to compete as top-level drivers in real racing cars. Jack Salter (David Harbour - Hellboy ), a former Formula One driver, is hired to train the team.

Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe - ) is a tweenage gamer who lives with his mother ( Geri Halliwell Horner ) and father Steve (Djimpon Hounsou - Guardians of the Galaxy ). He wins a place in the training scheme, but has to work hard and prove himself as a real driver. Eventually he gets the chance to race at Le Mans ...

Neil Blomkamp delivers a good movie based, as the title says, on a true story. However, it does not really have anything new to say. The story beats have all been used before, the formula is Hollywood standard, it is just not as good as the modern classic Le Mans '66 .

I, Tonya (2017)

This is reconstructed from a series of real-life interviews with the people involved: Tonya Harding ( Margot Robbie ), her first husband (Sebastian Stan - Captain America: Winter Soldier ) and her abusive mother ( Allison Janney ). Each gives their version of events, so this is reconstructed from their differing perspectives.

Tonya was an ice skater. When she was a child (played by Mackenna Grace ) she took professional lessons, until she became a world-class talent. Unfortunately it takes more than talent to win when it comes to the Olympic committee. She came up against the same kind of snobbery that Eddie The Eagle (2016) faced against in England.

Tonya gets stereotyped as being trailer-trash because she is a working-class blue-collar American. In contrast, her middle-class white-collar rival Nancy Kerrigan is given favourable treatment. Unfortunately Tonya's abusive husband has an idiotic friend with delusions of grandeur. He takes it upon himself to arrange an attack on Kerrigan. Of course, this becomes a Federal case and the FBI try to implicate as many people as possible.

King Richard (2021)

Richard Williams (Will Smith - Wild Wild West ) raises his two daughters, Venus and Serena, to be tennis proteges. This is in spite of not having the benefits of upper-class wealth or luxuries.

The whole point of the movie is that the Williams family came from a working-class blue-collar neighbourhood, they did not have the privileges associated with the middle class, and yet the girls still succeeded as world-class players. However, Richard gets upset whenever any of the white characters actually acknowledge this on-screen.

Lamborghini: The Man Behind The Legend (2022)

This starts with the middle-aged Lamborghini (Frank Grillo - Captain America: Winter Soldier ) in a race against his rival, the elderly Ferrari (Gabriel Byrne - Excalibur ). That sort of sets the tone on this, as a sort of light-weight prequel to Ford Vs Ferrari .

In the main storyline, we follow the young Lambo after his demobilisation from the Italian army after the end of World War 2. He returns to the family farm, where he uses his skills as an army mechanic to design and eventually build a better tractor. However, his ambitions to not cease when his company becomes a best-selling tractor manufacturer. Instead, he approaches Ferrari with the offer of a partnership in the manufacture of sports cars. When Ferrari predictably rejects this, Lambo sets himself up as a rival.

The middle-aged Lambo's wife is Annita ( Mira Sorvino ). She does not have much to do, except to point out his obsession with his work and his neglect of her and of his son. Valid points, perhaps, but the tiny role was probably given to such a big-name actress because of the lack of recognisable names and faces. With the exception of Byrne and the two Italian-Americans, the cast was all Italian. After all, this was written and directed in Italy.

Le Mans 66 (2019) AKA Ford Vs Ferrari

Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal - The Punisher ) recruits Carol Shelby (Matt Damon - Jason Bourne ) and Ken Miles (Christian Bale - Batman Begins ) to design and drive the Ford entry in the Le Mans race.

The title indicates that this is about the race, or about the cars that were in that contest. In reality, it is a moving and human story about the men who designed, built and drove those cars. The cast delivers strong performances, especially Catriona Balfe as Mrs Miles - the token woman.

The Mercy (2018)

Yachtsman Donald Crowhurst (Colin Firth - Kingsman ) attempts to win the 1968 Golden Globe race.

Moneyball (2012)

Ride Like A Girl (2019)

Rush (2013)

This is a bio-pic of two of the greatest Formula One race-car drivers of the 1970s. Set a decade after the events of Le Mans 66 AKA Ford Vs Ferrari , it focuses on the rivalry between English driver James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth - Thor ) and the German, Niki Lauder (Daniel Bruhl - Captain America: Civil War ).

Hunt is a hedonist who marries supermodel Olivia Wilde . Conversely, Lauda is a brain-box who spends his spare time designing his own race-car. The movie starts with Hunt as the protagonist and Lauda as the antagonist, but as we see more of the story from the German's perspective he becomes a lot more empathetic.

Seabiscuit (2003)

This is named after the race-horse that is central to the plot, but it is really a drama about the three men on the racing team. Like the horse, they have all been battered by life

Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges - Iron Man ) is a car salesman who loses his son in a car crash. He tries to start his life again with his second wife, Marcella ( Elizabeth Banks ). To move on from the car industry, he hires Tom Smith (Chris Cooper - Where The Wild Things Are ) to help him get started in the sport of horse-racing.

Smith has an eye for potential. He selects a broken-down horse named Seabiscuit, and a broken-down jockey named Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire - Spider-Man ). Before long they are an unbeatable team, facing off against every prize-winning racehorse in Calfornia.

To add some stakes to retain the audience's interest, the movie switches to a story of rivalry between Seabiscuit and his East Coast relative, War Admiral. Well, technically the rivalry is between their owners, Howard and Samuel Riddle (Eddie - Lois and Clark ). In this version, to make things more dramatic, War Admiral is portrayed as much larger than Seabiscuit. In reality, they were far more evenly matched - but reality is rarely cinematic.

The final product is a true, if embelished, story of how a broken-down horse helped heal some broken men.

World's Fastest Indian, The (2005)

Burt (Anthony Hopkins - Silence of the Lambs ) is a hobbyist engineer in Invercargill, New Zealand. He has spent his life modifying a 1920-model Indian motorcycle. By the 1960s, he has perfected it as much as he can. He takes it to the next level, having it shipped to Bonneville salt flats in Utah so he can compete for the World Land-Speed record.

This is a classic underdog story. Burt is the last of the world's garden shed tinkerers, pitted against the most powerful teams that Corporate America can throw against him. This puts him in the same category as Eddie the Eagle , who faced gate-keeping in his attempt to represent his country in the Winter Olympics. Luckily, Burt finds his rival competitors are relatively accepting. Perhaps they do not see him as a real threat, since he is a genial old man in his sixties. However, he turns out to be a world-class performer in his field.

Deepwater Horizon (2016)

The movie is named after an oil rig off the coast of Dixieland USA. It was run by tough blue-collar workers like the supervisor Mr Jimmy (Kurt Russell - Guardians of the Galaxy 2 ) and the electrician (Mark Wahlberg - The Departed ). The Corporate manager (John Malkovitch - Being John Malkovitch ) is cast as the nearest thing to a villain, since he represents the rich owners and the white-collar elites.

While the electrician is being heroic and saving lives, his wife ( Kate Hudson ) is stuck at home not knowing if he is dead or alive.

The Impossible (2012)

This is an unusual disaster movie, insofar as it is based on true-life events that happened less than a decade earlier. As a result, it skips a lot of the usual genre tropes. It was filmed on location with a mostly Spanish crew and production team, although the main speaking parts are filled by English-speaking performers.

Ewan MacGregor ( Star Wars: Phantom Menace ) and his wife ( Naomi Watts ) take their three sons on vacation to a resort in Thailand. Unfortunately it is New Year's Day, 2004, and the resort is hit by a devastating tsunami.

Despite the big-name stars playing the parents, most of the movie is actually from the perspective of their eldest son (Tom Holland - Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) ). He certainly pulls his weight when it comes to carrying this story.

The survivors of the initial tsunami are spread out by the impact. Once they get help from the first responders, the authorities' next step seems to be to further spread out the survivors.

The climax of the movie is incredibly contrived. It relies on three different groups of survivors all winding up in the same place at the same time, and artificially generates tension by teasing whether or not they will meet up again.

The Perfect Storm (2000)

Billy Tyne (George Clooney - Ocean's Eleven ) is Captain of the Andrea Gale, a fishing vessel that plies its trade in the North Atlantic. Not only does he work in a dangerous environment, but his crew bring their own dangers with them. Murph (John C Reilly - Gangs of New York ) and Sully (William Fichtner - ) have a deep-seeted mutual emnity. Bobby Shatford (Mark Wahlberg - The Happening ), the rookie, grumbles because he will not be able to earn enough money to please his woman, Christina Cotter ( Diane Lane ). Bugsy (John Hawkes - ) is along to make up the numbers.

The fishermen sail off to make the last catch of the Season. Unfortunately they sail into a super-storm, made from a collision of three regular storms. Elsewhere, US Coastguard Sgt Jeremy Mitchell (Dash Mihok - ) and his team have to rescue Alexander McNally III (Bob Gunton - ) when he sails his pleasure yacht into the storm. But the Andrea Gale is too far out ...

Captain Tyne is made to look somewhat greedy, risking his boat and his men to earn a bigger pay-day. However, he is a commission-paid employee of Bob Brown (Michael Ironside - Total Recall ). In a world without a social safety net, the blue-collar working class has no option but to risk their lives to bring home the bacon.

This is a big-budget adventure movie directed by Wolfgang Peterson , best known for action movies. Despite being based on a real-life story, it has more than its fair share of phony-looking Hollywood heroics. Since none of the Andrea Gale's crew were available for comment, this version of events must be left to stand. However, this does mark something of a low spot in the Hollywood action-adventure genre. Over a decade since the end of the Cold War, this pre-9/11 movie shows how desperate the audience was for a story that featured some excitement.

Sully (2016)

World Trade Centre (2006)

John McLaughlin (Nicholas Cage - ) is in charge of a unit of New York's Port Authority police. On 11th September 2001, after the Twin Towers are hit by hijacked jetliners, McLaughlin leads his ream - including Will Jimeno (Michael Pena - Ant Man ) and Christopher Amoroso (Jon Bernthal - The Punisher ) - into the buildings in order to evacuate civilians there. Then the buildings collapse ...

Back home, the families are given word that their men are missing in action. The movie's focus shifts to the wives, Donna McLaughlin ( Maria Bello ) and Allison Jimeno ( Maggie Gyllenhall ), as they are stuck in an emotional limbo. Without knowing for certain if their husbands are alive, They cannot even begin the grieving process.

After the dust has settled, Second Responders like Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon - ) search the rubble in the hope that some of the First Responders survived. And when they do eventually find someone, paramedics like Scott Strauss (Stephen Dorff - Blade ) and Chuck Sereika (Frank Whalley - Broken Arrow ) have to extract the victims.

Oliver Stone delivers a heart-rending piece that focuses on the wives and families as much as on the heroic men themselves. This is in part due to his decision to have a female screenwriter, rather than just be an auteur and do it himself. This diversity of experience certainly comes across, and makes this a much stronger film than it might otherwise have been.

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