Movies tagged with the "based-on-true-story" keyword

Genres: Drama | Actors: Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Aaron Yoo, Jacob Pitts, Laurence Fishburne, Jack McGee, Josh Gad, Sam Golzari, Jack Gilpin, Butch Williams, Jeffrey Ma, Frank Patton, Steven Richard Vezina, Chaska T. Werner, Kyle Morris, Directors: Plot Summary: Ben Campbell is a young, highly intelligent, student at M.I.T. in Boston who strives to succeed. Wanting a scholarship to transfer to Harvard School of Medicine with the desire to become a doctor, Ben learns that he cannot afford the $300,000 for the four to five years of school since he comes from a poor, working-class background. But one evening, Ben is introduced by his unorthodox math professor Micky Rosa into a small but secretive club of five students, Jill, Choi, Kianna, and Jimmy whom are being trained by Professor Rosa of the skill of card counting at blackjack. Intriged by the desire to make money, Ben joins his new friends on secret weekend trips to Las Vegas where, using their skills of code talk and hand signals, they have Ben make hundreds of thousands of dollars in winning blackjack at casino after casino. Ben only wants to make enough money for the tuition to Harvard and then back out. But as fellow card counter, Jill Taylor, predicts, Ben becomes corrupted by greed and his arrogance at winning which lets his feelings get in the way, and it also puts Professor Rosa, as well as the group, on the radar of a brutal casino security enforcer, named Cole Williams, who holds a personal grudge of some kind against Rosa which threatens to undo everything the students have learned and earned.

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Genres: Drama | Sport | Actors: Meg Ryan, Omar Epps, Charles S. Dutton, Tony Shalhoub, Timothy Daly, Joseph Cortese, Kerry Washington, Sean Bell, Dean McDermott, Skye McCole Bartusiak, Juan Carlos Hernández, Holt McCallany, Tory Kittles, Gene Mack, Beau Starr, Directors: Charles S. Dutton,  Plot Summary: A Jewish woman from Detroit who became a boxing manager, guiding several major careers. This film focuses on her relationship with one boxer (Epps), who's reportedly a composite of several including Toney, McKart and Hearns. Kallen eventually left her husband of 30 years, and moved to Los Angeles, becoming the commissioner of the International Female Boxers Association...

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Genres: Drama | History | War | Western | Actors: Craig Erickson, Dennis Quaid, Billy Bob Thornton, Jason Patric, Patrick Wilson, Emilio Echevarría, Jordi Mollà, Leon Rippy, Tom Davidson, Marc Blucas, Robert Prentiss, Kevin Page, Joe Stevens, Stephen Bruton, Laura Clifton, Ricardo Chavira, Directors: John Lee Hancock,  Plot Summary: Historical drama detailing the 1835-36 Texas revolution before, during, and after the famous siege of the Alamo (February 23-March 6, 1836) where 183 Texans (American-born Texans) and Tejanos (Mexican-born Texans) commanded by Colonel Travis, along with Davey Crockett and Jim Bowie, were besieged in an abandoned mission outside San Antonio by a Mexican army of nearly 2,000 men under the personal command of the dictator of Mexico, General Santa Anna, as well as detailing the Battle of San Jacinto (April 21, 1836) where General Sam Houston's rag-tag army of Texans took on and defeated Santa Anna's army which led to the indepedence of Texas.

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Genres: Crime | Drama | Actors: Bruce Willis, Matthew Barry, Emile Hirsch, Fernando Vargas, Vincent Kartheiser, Justin Timberlake, Shawn Hatosy, Heather Wahlquist, Alex Solowitz, Alec Vigil, Harry Dean Stanton, Frank Cassavetes, Nicole Dubos, Regina Rice, Laura Nativo, Directors: Nick Cassavetes,  Plot Summary: In 1999, in Claremont, California, the violent Jake Mazursky owes US$ 1,200.00 to the coward drug dealer Johnny Truelove, who is son of the powerful criminal Sonny Truelove. They fight and start a personal war, with Jake breaking into the house of Johnny with his friends, stealing the TV and leaving excrement in the living room. Johnny kidnaps Jake's fifteen year old brother Zach Mazurka, who has just had an argument with his parents, and brings him to the upper class house of his friend Frankie Ballenbacher. Along a couple of days, Zach meets the friends of Frankie, goes to parties, drinks boozes, smokes pot and has sex with other teenagers. When Johnny realizes that kidnapping means life sentence, he asks the servile scum Elvis Schmidt to kill the boy.

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Genres: Drama | Horror | Mystery | Thriller | Actors: Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, James D'Arcy, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Matthew Marsh, Thom Fell, Zoe Thorne, Gaye Brown, Sam Alexander, Miquel Brown, Vernon Dobtcheff, Shauna Shim, Madalina Stan, Philip Hurdwood, Vlad Cruceru, Directors: Courtney Solomon,  Plot Summary: In 2006, in Red River, Tennessee, a teenager has frequent nightmares. Her mother reads an old letter from 1817 written by her ancestor, Lucy Bell. After a dispute of lands judged by the church, her husband John Bell is cursed by his opponent Kathe Batts, who has a fame of being a witch. From this moment on, an entity threatens John and her daughter Betsy Bell, attacking the girl during the nights. With the support of Betsy's school teacher Richard Powell, who tries to find rational explanations for the manifestation; her brother John Bell Jr.; and their friend James Johnston, who unsuccessfully tries to exorcize the entity from the house, the family does their best to protect Betsy in the haunted house.

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Genres: Drama | History | Mystery | Actors: Morgan Freeman, Nigel Hawthorne, Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou, Matthew McConaughey, David Paymer, Pete Postlethwaite, Stellan Skarsgård, Razaaq Adoti, Abu Bakaar Fofanah, Anna Paquin, Tomas Milian, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Derrick N. Ashong, Geno Silva, Directors: Steven Spielberg,  Plot Summary: AMISTAD is about a 1839 mutiny onboard a slave ship that is traveling towards the Northeast Coast of America. Much of the story involves a court-room drama about the slave who led the revolt.

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Genres: Drama | Horror | Thriller | Actors: Ryan Reynolds, Melissa George, Jesse James, Jimmy Bennett, Chloe Moretz, Rachel Nichols, Philip Baker Hall, Isabel Conner, Brendan Donaldson, Annabel Armour, Rich Komenich, David Gee, Danny McCarthy, Nancy Lollar, José Taitano, Directors: ,  Plot Summary: George & Kathy Lutz and Kathy's 3 children are moving into an elegant Long Island home. What they don't know is that 6 gruesome murders were committed there the year before - Ronald DeFeo Jr., the oldest son in the family, murdered his parents, his 2 brothers & 2 sisters by shooting them with a .35 caliber in November of 1974. No sooner are the Lutzes moved into the house than they begin seeing horrible things - the ghost of Jodie DeFeo, horribly disfigured bodies - and hearing ghostly voices throughout the house. George seems to notice it the most, and it isn't long before he becomes a danger to those around him. When the local priest, called in to bless the house, comes charging out in horror after being swarmed by flies, he issues a dire warning to Kathy - 'Leave that house'. But will they be able to escape before the house and its vengeful spirits take control of George - and make him into a deadly menace?

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Genres: Biography | Crime | Drama | Western | Actors: Brad Pitt, Mary-Louise Parker, Brooklynn Proulx, Dustin Bollinger, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, Jeremy Renner, Sam Shepard, Garret Dillahunt, Paul Schneider, Joel McNichol, James Defelice, J.C. Roberts, Darrell Orydzuk, Jonathan Erich Drachenberg, Directors: Andrew Dominik,  Plot Summary: Robert Ford, who's idolized Jesse James since childhood, tries hard to join the reforming gang of the Missouri outlaw, but gradually becomes resentful of the bandit leader.

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Genres: Drama | Actors: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Don Cheadle, Jack Thompson, Brad William Henke, Nick Searcy, Michael Wincott, Mykelti Williamson, April Grace, Lily Knight, Jared Dorrance, Jenna Milton, Mariah Massa, Eileen Ryan, Derek Greene, Directors: Niels Mueller,  Plot Summary: Fact-based story about a disturbed office furniture salesman (Sean Penn) who in 1972 concocted a plot to kill then-President Nixon by hi-jacking a plane to fly over the White House to drop a gas bomb. At the start of the movie, the man is separated from his wife and stressed in his job where he is made the butt of jokes and is an under-performer. Attempts to get his brother's old tire business resurrected with a black partner is rejected by the banks. When he is officially served with divorce papers, everything comes apart and Richard Nixon's broken promises comes to represent all the evils that have come down on him. A news story about a pilot that landed a helicopter on the White House lawn gives him the idea for his attack. Bolting onto a Baltimore plane, he attempts the hi-jacking.

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Genres: Biography | Drama | Actors: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Alan Alda, Ian Holm, Danny Huston, Gwen Stefani, Jude Law, Adam Scott, Matt Ross, Kelli Garner, Frances Conroy, Brent Spiner, Directors: Martin Scorsese,  Plot Summary: The script begins as a young Hughes directs one of Scorsese's favorite films, Hell's Angels. Hughes was so obsessed with perfection in the aerial sequences that he waits forever for perfect conditions, right down to cloud formations. The Aviator ends in 1946, when Hughes was still a dashing young man and romancing actresses like Ava Gardner and Katharine Hepburn.

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Genres: Thriller | Actors: Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Stephen Campbell Moore, Daniel Mays, James Faulkner, Alki David, Michael Jibson, Richard Lintern, Don Gallagher, David Suchet, Peter Bowles, Andrew Brooke, Trevor Byfield, Peter De Jersey, Rufus Dean, Directors: Roger Donaldson,  Plot Summary: In September 1971, thieves tunneled into the vault of a bank in London's Baker Street and looted safe deposit boxes of cash and jewelry worth over three million pounds. None of it was recovered. Nobody was ever arrested. The robbery made headlines for a few days and then disappeared - the result of a 'D' Notice, gagging the press. This film reveals what was hidden for the first time. The story involves murder, corruption and a sex scandal with links to the Royal Family - a story in which the thieves were the most innocent people involved.

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Genres: Biography | Crime | Drama | Sport | Actors: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lorraine Bracco, Marilyn Sokol, James Madio, Patrick McGaw, Mark Wahlberg, Roy Cooper, Bruno Kirby, Jimmy Papiris, Nick Gaetani, Alexander Chaplin, Ben Jorgensen, Josh Mostel, Juliette Lewis, Michael Imperioli, Directors: Scott Kalvert,  Plot Summary: Film adaptation of street tough Jim Carroll's epistle about his kaleidoscopic free fall into the harrowing world of drug addiction. As a member of a seemingly unbeatable high school basketball squad, Jim's life centers around the basketball court and the court becomes a metaphor for the world in his mind. A best friend who is dying of leukemia, a coach ("Swifty") who takes unacceptable liberties with the boys on his team, teenage sexual angst, and an unhealthy appetite for heroin — all of these begin to encroach on young Jim's dream of becoming a basketball star. Soon, the dark streets of New York become a refuge from his mother's mounting concern for her son. He can't go home and his only escape from the reality of the streets is heroin for which he steals, robs and prostitutes himself. Only with the help of Reggie, an older neighborhood friend with whom Jim "picked up a game" now and then, is he able to begin the long journey back to sanity.

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