Catalog Search Results
Summary
With exacting detail, the film re-creates the American siege of the Somalian city of Mogadishu in October 1993, when a 45-minute mission turned into a 16-hour ordeal of bloody urban warfare. Helicopter-borne U.S. Rangers were assigned to capture key lieutenants of Somali warlord Muhammad Farrah Aidid, but when two Black Hawk choppers were felled by rocket-propelled grenades, the U.S. soldiers were forced to fend for themselves in the battle-torn streets...
2) Mary Shelley
Summary
"The real-life story of Mary Shelley, and the creation of her immortal monster, is nearly as fantastical as her fiction. Raised by a renowned philosopher father in eighteenth-century London, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin is a teenage dreamer determined to make her mark on the world, when she meets the dashing and brilliant poet Percy Shelley. So begins a torrid, bohemian love affair marked by both passion and personal tragedy that will transform Mary...
3) Golda
Summary
On October 6th, 1973, under cover of darkness, on Israel's holiest day and during the month of Ramadan, the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan begin a surprise attack on the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Outnumbered and outgunned, Israel's only female Prime Minister, Golda Meir, confronts the immediate, clear, and present danger of a ticking timebomb that she hoped never to face. Surrounded, isolated, and frustrated by the infighting...
4) Martin Eden
Summary
Adapted from a 1909 novel by Jack London yet set in a provocatively unspecified moment in Italy’s history, MARTIN EDEN is a passionate and enthralling narrative fresco in the tradition of the great Italian classics. Martin (played by the marvelously committed Luca Marinelli) is a self-taught proletarian with artistic aspirations who hopes that his dreams of becoming a writer will help him rise above his station and marry a wealthy young university...
5) Curiosa
Author
Summary
Paris 1895. Pierre Louÿs is a Parisian dandy and poet on the verge of fame. Pierre and his friend Henri De Régnier are both madly in love with Marie de Heredia (Noemie Merlant), the cheeky daughter of their mentor. Despite her feelings for Pierre, Marie eventually marries Henri who has a better situation. Badly hurt, Pierre leaves for Algeria where he meets Zohra, a bewitching local girl with whom he shares a tumultuous relationship and a passion...
6) Lady Jane
Series
Summary
In 1553, England's idle rich were anything but idle. With the blessing of the royal family, they plundered the riches of the church, stole the finest farmlands, and generally took all the best things the country had to offer. A cousin to the infamous Henry VII, Lady Jane Grey (Helena Bonham Carter) disapproved of the way her fellow nobles behaved, and disagreed with their religious beliefs. But as a sheltered 16-year-old, there wasn’t much she could...
Series
Summary
In the remote desert of New Mexico, “The Manhattan Project” is materializing – the World War II effort to build the atomic bomb. **Oscar**-winner Paul Newman (*Hud*, *Nobody’s Fool*) stars as General Leslie Groves, the military man in charge of a massive project that will produce two weapons: “Fat Man” and “Little Boy.” Nominated for the Golden Berlin Bear at the **Berlin International Film Festival**. *"A singular, powerful experience."...
Summary
One Eye is a chained prisoner forced to fight to the death for the entertainment of his captors. When One Eye escapes, he stumbles upon a group of warriors headed to the Crusades. But fate has something else in store, as the men drift into the New World, where savages stalk them one by one in increasingly violent ways. Is One Eye an avenging angel or just the guiltiest of them all?
"Mesmerizing ... A trippy nightmare of savage poetry burning slow...
Formats
Summary
Academy Award® winner Julia Roberts heads an all-star cast featuring Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Marcia Gay Harden in MONA LISA SMILE, an uplifting and poignant drama about one woman's desire to enrich the lives of her students. In 1953, a time when women's roles were rigidly defined, novice art history professor Katherine Watson (Roberts) begins teaching at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College, which despite its academic...
10) The Book thief
Summary
The profoundly moving story of a girl who transforms the lives of those around her during World War II, Germany. Although Liesel is illiterate when she is adopted by a German couple, her adoptive father encourages her to learn to read. Ultimately, the power of words helps Liesel and Max, a Jew hiding in the familyb2ss home, escape from the events unfolding around them.
Summary
In this dramatic episode, Charles takes Mary to an eye specialist when she begins to experience difficulty seeing. He is devastated to learn that she will most certainly lose her sight. When Mary does go blind, Charles and Caroline decide it would be best for her to attend a special school in Iowa. At first, Mary is reluctant to participate, but she develops a special bond with her teacher, Adam Kendall.
12) A quiet passion
Summary
Cynthia Nixon delivers a triumphant performance as Emily Dickinson as she personifies the wit, intellectual independence and pathos of the poet whose genius only came to be recognized after her death. Acclaimed British director Terence Davies (*House of Mirth, The Deep Blue Sea*) exquisitely evokes Dickinson’s deep attachment to her close knit family along with the manners, mores and spiritual convictions of her time that she struggled with and...
Summary
Season Two continues to follow Jenny and the other midwives as they deal with all the problems the neighborhood of Poplar has to throw at them. A fascinating portrayal of birth, life, death and a community on the brink of huge social change, Call the Midwife offers a gripping insight into a way of life that is so drastically different from how we live now.
Summary
An arresting medieval epic starring Mads Mikkelsen, Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas explores the high cost of vengeance. With the age of feudalism in decline, Europe rests at a tense crossroads between the old world and the new. Respected, well-to-do horse merchant Michael Kohlhaas is a loving husband and family man leading a peaceful existence, until a ruthless nobleman steals his horses, setting off a chain of irreversible events....
15) Valkyrie
Summary
Tom Cruise stars as the leader of a group of German officers who hatched a plot to assassinate Hitler. The operation was code-named VALKYRIE, for the emergency plan that was meant to be used in case of a revolt against the Nazi government. This plan had been modified by the conspirators to ensure their success, but for various reasons the plot failed when finally carried out on 20 July 1944. The conspirators were shot after a kangaroo trial or sentenced...
16) Little women
Summary
Follow the sisters Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, on their journey from childhood to adulthood. Under the guidance of their mother Marmee, they navigate what it means to be a young woman: from gender roles to sibling rivalry, first love, loss, and marriage. Based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott, this story is as relevant and engaging today as it was on its original publication in 1868.
17) Cold Mountain
Summary
Inman, a young Confederate soldier, who is injured during the explosive 1864 battle of Petersburg, Virginia, is struggling to make his way home to Cold Mountain, NC, where his beloved Ada awaits him. In Inman's absence, Ada befriends Ruby, who helps her keep up her late father's farm. Meanwhile, in his travels, Inman encounters a menagerie of interesting and colorful characters.
19) The Alamo
Summary
Tells the story of the historic battle by 185 men against a 7,000-man Mexican army--a battle that ended in the smaller forces' defeat, but lasted long enough to insure the eventual independence of Texas.
20) The Post
Summary
Determined to uphold the nation's civil liberties, Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, and hard-nosed editor Ben Bradlee join forces to expose a decades-long cover-up. However, the two must risk their careers and their freedom to bring truth to light.
