# Best films/documentaries based on true events



## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Been meaning to start this topic for a while and saw a neat film last night called "Engima". 
While the plot is fictional it's the first time I've seen the "Great Secret" that won the war for the Allies and spawned warnings from Orwell about "history rewritten".
Very well cast, it was featured in theToronto film festival.
I enjoyed the film and it was fascinating to see the early machines and brilliant minds and a brief look at the kind of agonizing decisions Enigma engendered.
If anyone hasn't read about Enigma and Magic the excellent book "Bodyguard of Lies" will completely overturn your"classroom learned" view of WWII and you'll see why Orwell was concerned enough to write 1984 s a warning.
Anyway I'm getting off topic








Here's my list of "based on true events" movies I found informative and/or enjoyable. No particular order.

Chariots of Fire - Ivory Merchant Films always seem wonderful but I loved this film and it's score and couldn't have been more pleased when it won Best Picture at the Academy awards - lift my respect the Academy immensely - an almost perfect film with those subtle twits only true events can bring to a story.

"From the Earth to the Moon" - I've raved about this set before - wonderful 

"Ghandi" - very well cast and acted

atton" - every time I here that haunting few bars when he "remembers" old battles in another life I get serious shivers.

"Into Thin Air" - the documentary was well done - the book was mind bending. Highly recommended.

The Horse Whisperer - the fictional account " The Man Who talked to Horses both the documentary and especially the book of the true story the movie was based on. Once in a while someone truly unique comes along. Simpy amazing
 

"Enigma" as mentioned

"Out of Africa" - another top movie in the awards, score, imagery casting...superb.

"The Insider" - surely showed Russell Crowe's range. Fascinating, well acted and TRUE!

" A Beautiful Mind" - again well cast and acted. I was so disgusted with the Star for a two star rating on this  and then vindicated with the big score at the Academy.  

"Braveheart" - my idea of a real movie spectacular made even better by it's roots in history

"Lawrence of Arabia" - David Lean's eye, a great true story and a manical leading man...what more could you ask.

"Titanic" - spectacle writ large. 

"The Ghost and the Darkness" both the movie and book. If you aren't scared witless by the end of this movie you have ice water in your veins. You really can't believe this is a true story. BUT IT IS!


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## timmer (Aug 10, 2002)

Great thread







How about the Avro Arrow. Lenny. It's about Lenny Bruce. 
The Doors. Good flick. 
Truth and Lies of 911.


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

Time for a shameless plug for a friend's documentary about Canadian Writer Ernest Buckler. The doc is titled "Inner Mountains, Inner Valleys". Runs only about 40 minutes, but features a great cast, including a lead actor whose name escapes me at the moment...

If anyone out there is a Canadian Lit. teacher, this is a great little doc for your class. Director s Chuck Lapp, Halifax, N.S. mailto:[email protected] 

Chuck has also been making documentaries for years about the east coast fishery... his latest debuts at Saint Mary's University on November 28th.

M.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Never seen Avro but heard about it.

The Doors was fantastic. Same lead as Ghost and the Darkness. Val Kilmer is one of my favorite actors.

Several in the same vein 
"American Hot Wax" about the beginnings of rock & roll - the reference to hot wax is great - they would literally "cut" a record right in the radio studio and get it on air. Tells the story of Alan Freed. Very enjoyable picture. The first edge of "boomer generation" starts to make it's independence flet. Wow the fifties were grim  

"Buddy Holly " - extremely well acted and performed

"La Bamba" - Ritchie Valens - what a heartbreak that kid died so young - very very well acted, great music

I forgot "Ali" - thought it was well done and well acted as was "Malcom X." I was "informed" by both.

Oh and "Pirates of Silicon Valley" The lead gets Jobs down pat. Must see for all Mac heads.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Gotta go to bed, spelling is going to hell and gone


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## coyote (Jul 7, 2002)

How about The Great Escape. I also enjoyed Remember the Titans and the IMAX movie Everest about the climbing disaster on the mountain. 

Macdoc, if you like Into Thin Air, you ought to read Into the Wild. It's by the same author, Jon Krakauer, and it's truly a heart-wrenching story.


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## PosterBoy (Jan 22, 2002)

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by macdoc:
*
Oh and "Pirates of Silicon Valley" The lead gets Jobs down pat. Must see for all Mac heads.*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Noah Wylie, of ER fame played Steve Jobs in that one. If you watch the MacWorld Keynotes, you may remember the one immediatly after the movie came out where Noah Wylie walked out and started the keynote...

"We have some really cool stuff today, REALLY cool, REALLY GREAT STUFF!"

And then the real steve jobs came out and took over.

The Ghost and the Darkness was a good movie, Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas. Good stuff.

--PB


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## PosterBoy (Jan 22, 2002)

Schindlers List. Very good movie.

Amistad was good, although not as good as I would have hoped being a Spielberg movie starring Anthony Hopkins.

--PB


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Was "Schindlers List" and "Amistad" based on actual specific events or more period compilations with a good stories wrapped into them??
                 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
How about The Great Escape. I also enjoyed Remember the Titans and the IMAX movie Everest about the climbing disaster on the mountain. 

Macdoc, if you like Into Thin Air, you ought to read Into the Wild. It's by the same author, Jon Krakauer, and it's truly a heart-wrenching story. "

"Remember the Titans" was terrific and well acted - excellent choice  Denzil's very good.

The iMax team was actually involved in the rescue apparently. How those guys lugged that big equipment around Everest blows me away.
That entire event was just so emotionally loaded. Jon Krakauer is an excellent writer - that's an unusual combination as the immediacy of his own involvement in the disaster lends far more credibility to the emotions.
The team leader staying up in the death zone by choice and talking to his wife by satellite phone as he was dying..oh my  
Dr. Beck Weathers stumbling into camp and his unbelievable sense of humour about the entire thing.
I'd forgotten about the followup book by Beck "Left for Dead".
I mean the guy was my age, couldn't see because of his corrective eye surgery, is left for dead out in the storm in the death zone for the entire night and WALKS INTO CAMP!!!  Talk about life force.  

It's these kind of "true" events that makes me prefer this category. You simply could not write either the Everest story or the Ghost and the Darkness story and make it believable - yet they both happened!
A screen writer trying to pass either story off to a studio would be laughed out of the room as someone with an over-active imagination









It's neat when you can get various perspectives on the same event.... in movie, documentary and book. Each sheds light and detail.


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## Chealion (Jan 16, 2001)

Question about Enigma, that is the portable encrypted radio the Germans used in WWII right? Which was broken by British and Polish mathemeticians under the Code Name Ultra allowing the Allies to know everything the Germans were doing as the Germans did everything on the Enigma as they felt it was fool proof?
My friend did a historical analysis on it, and its quite an interesting story considering no one knew about Ultra until something like 50 years after... Its kind of interesting reading the handwritten accounts by the people involved...


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## icemakk (May 12, 2000)

Timmer wrote <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>*How about the Avro Arrow*
Actually , the movie is called " The Arrow" starring Dan Akroyd.
A great flick of Canada's first supersonic jet fighter that was ditched due to bad politics and a dumb PM who was snowed, by bad info, into scrapping it. It was shot in Winnipeg, (my old home town) and if you know what I look like you may spot me in a few scenes. I did several days of background in that.  
A similar style movie is "Tucker- a man and his dreams" a story of a great car that was also scrubbed thru politics.
Another fav of mine would be "The insider"


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## PosterBoy (Jan 22, 2002)

Amistad and Schindlers List were both based on actual events, as far as I remember. I can;t speak for schindlers list so much, but I think that "loosely based" might be a better term for Amistad.

Speaking of Enigma, you know what U571 (or whatever it was called) was another film incredibly loosely based on actual events, to do with the capture of an Enigma device. If you can get past the fact that the Americans had virtually nothing to do with anything of the actions that happen in the movie (pretty much all British thankyouverymuch) in real life, it isn;t that bad. 
It would have been better if they had said it was fiction, because that is basically what it was anyway.

--PB


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Yes Enigma, Ultra, Magic all parts of the same info. The first machine was actually recovered prior to WWII at a from a fire in Poland I think - the Germans did not know it survived.
The 5 rotor machine and code books were recovered from subs - the subject of a couple of recent movies.
Churchill wrote his memoirs to cover the existence of the intelligence - hence Orwell's 1984 "The Ministry of Information" whose task was to rewrite history which is exactly what Winston did.
The Allies did not want the Russians to know the extent of their code breaking.
Doenitz the German Navy head suspected that the machine was compromised and added a 5th coding wheel and for a long time the Allies were blind to the submarine code traffic. ( That's where the movie Enigma centres )

It was said that at one point only 8 people in the world knew the entire picture. Complete armies and fictional histories were created to keep the Germans guessing. They thought a million man army was still in England waiting to attack Calais under Patton even up to a WEEK after D-Day.
The Allies went so far as to publish stories in local newspapers in the US about such and such Sargeant Smith of 10th Army based in England married local beauty..etc. Total fiction.
The 8 people had total control of the "Free World" press. Again to Orwell's horror. Barred from revealing what he knew by the same laws that kept it all secret until 1983, he could only warn us in his fiction.
But what a horrible responsibility - the Allied High Command knew which cities the Germans were going to bomb but could not warn specific areas for fear of giving the secret away.
They killed Yamamoto based on Magic intel and called it luck.  There just happened







to be two American fighters right in his flight path....yeah right.
Bodyguard of Lies amongst others is fascinating and it shows how close the Allies were to losing the war.
Many feel that the German spy head Canaris actually knew or suspected far more than he let the Nazi's know about and facilitated Hitlers fall.
Good reading.......

Yes Virginia there really IS a conspiracy


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Haven't seen the Arrow.   Sad thing for Canada

Tucker was well done and quite a story. Never knew about him unti I caught the movie.

Crowe rules  So does the guy that he portrayed...lot of guts to take on those bastards in the tobacco industry.


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## Nick (Aug 24, 2002)

I have seen about 2/3 of the movies posted and they were all very good.

I have to agree in that true stories are always the best.


Two movies that come to mind that were not mentioned are:
"Return to paradise" - True Story
"The Red Violin" - Fictional

Both are very good movies.


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## lotus (Jun 29, 2002)

Some excellent choices!There are a few docs that come to mind, two directed by Alan King (not the comedian) Warrendale that was produced for CBC but was rejected and didn't air until 30 years later and Eye of the Dragon, about the Estonians and Russians joining forces to build a community centre after WWII. Also BP pushing the boundries - this is about B. P. Nichols, Canada's convention-shattering voice of poetry. It was shot partially in Barrie, Toronto, Vancouver and Galliano Island. This one got Special Mention at the Toronto International Film Festival for Best Canadian Short Film (1997) and nominated for a Genie in 1999. These have all been on Bravo in the past couple of years, but doubt if you can find them in your local video store.


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