A true story of the cruelty of the Japanese takeover in 1937 of Nanjing, the then-Chinese capital, where perhaps 300,000 to half a million people were slaughtered and the women were raped by the Japanese. The war scenes are all too real, as well as the cruelty. Director Chuan Lu. Mandarin, English, Japanese, and German with English subtitles.

This is a film you should not go to see if you want a happy ending. As a matter a fact, this film could be best picture if it weren't for the ending.You would think that a film production company would want the rights to rewrite the endings of stories they accept to produce.  In this case, if they didn't have that right, they shouldn't have made the picture, because the ending blew it for me and many others based on the comments I heard from film-goers as they were ...
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Ed Harris, Diane Kruger

A very well-done film about the life of Beethoven in his older years and the admiration of a young female student, who becomes his first assistant. His passion for life and his great music he explains are his connection with God and the music he hears is the various voices of God. The scene of Beethoven conducting the Ninth Symphony is breathtaking. Ed Harris could get the Academy Award for best actor. Then again, the Academy Awards have been fixed for more ...
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Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon demonstrates to the entire film industry that great films can be made–films that have honor, dignity, culture, cinematography, great acting, good theme, and entertaining as well.  

  I did wish, however, that the master did not have to die and the young female master could have repented, found God, and lived.  Those changes would have resulted in an even better film.  One of the main problems with ...
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I don't know why this film did not even come to the Tucson area (possibly because it was made overseas), but it is a great film about the beginning of the oil industry in the early 1900s in Arabia. Oil was found by an American company out of Houston, Texas, on a piece of land that the tribes had designated common area after many wars. Two main chieftains—one played by Antonio Banderas (the more greedy and less noble Emir) and the very noble Sultan chieftain (played by Mark Strong)—have ...
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This is a beautiful family movie that takes place by the ocean and goes from the present to the past, involving a special young woman who is in touch with the ocean in her soul, like some people are in touch with animals and the desert and the mountains. She falls in love with a dashing young man who sails in on a military vessel, and his family thinks that she is not of his class, but he sees her spiritual depth and inner beauty. There are no unnecessary sex scenes, and the movie is done ...
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Drama

Maybe the movie James Bond made Daniel Craig a star, but Defiance proves he is truly a good actor. This film shows the tragedy of war and the necessity of strong leadership and true Father-circuited men in times of turmoil, when decision-making and leadership is a matter of life and death. Thousands of lives were saved because of this kind of leadership, where a leader has to think in terms of the whole and the lives of many, over misplaced compassion or the concern for one. ...
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