A Society Scandal is a 1924 American silent drama film directed by Allan Dwan, and starring Gloria Swanson and Rod La Rocque. Distributed by Paramount Pictures, the film is based on a 1922 play The Laughing Lady, by Alfred Sutro which starred Ethel Barrymore in 1923 on Broadway and originally in 1922 with Edith Evans in UK.
Paramount remade the story in 1929 as The Laughing Lady an early talkie for Ruth Chatterton.
Escape from Alcatraz is a 1979 American prison drama film directed and produced by Don Siegel, that depicts the June 1962 prisoner escape from the federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island. The screenplay, written by Richard Tuggle, is based on the 1963 nonfiction book of the same name by J. Campbell Bruce, and stars Clint Eastwood as escape ringleader Frank Lee Morris, alongside Patrick McGoohan, Fred Ward, Jack Thibeau, and Larry Hankin, with Danny Glover appearing in his film debut.
Shot on location at Alcatraz, the film marks the fifth and final collaboration between Siegel and Eastwood, following Coogan's Bluff (1968), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), The Beguiled (1971), and Dirty Harry (1971). Released by Paramount Pictures on June 22, 1979, Escape from Alcatraz received critical acclaim from audiences and critics and was a financial success, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of 1979.
Gran Torino is a 2008 drama film produced and directed by Clint Eastwood, who also stars in the lead role. It features a significant Hmong American cast, a first for mainstream American films. The score was composed by Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens, with Jamie Cullum and Clint Eastwood providing the lead track.
Set in Highland Park, Michigan, the story follows Walt Kowalski (Eastwood), a recently widowed Korean War veteran alienated from his family. When Kowalski's neighbor Thao Vang Lor is pressured by his cousin into stealing Walt's prized Ford Torino for his initiation into a gang, Walt thwarts the theft and develops a relationship with the boy and his family.
Cry Macho is a 2021 American neo-Western drama film directed, produced by and starring Clint Eastwood and written by Nick Schenk and N. Richard Nash, based on Nash's 1975 novel. Set in 1979, it stars Eastwood as a former rodeo star hired to reunite a young boy (Eduardo Minett) in Mexico with his father (Dwight Yoakam) in the United States. There were many attempts to adapt Nash's novel into a film over the years. Arnold Schwarzenegger came on board to star in 2011, but canceled after a scandal. In 2020, Eastwood's adaptation was announced; he produced the film with Albert S. Ruddy (in his final film before his death), Tim Moore, and Jessica Meier.
Cry Macho was filmed from November to December 2020 in the state of New Mexico; Ben Davis was the cinematographer, Mark Mancina was the composer, and Joel and David Cox were the editors. It was theatrically released in the United States on September 17, 2021, by Warner Bros. Pictures with a simultaneous 31-day release on the HBO Max streaming service. The film underperformed at the box office, grossing $16 million against a $33 million budget. It received mixed reviews, with its cinematography and calm style of storytelling and score receiving praise while the screenplay was targeted for criticism; Eastwood's performance drew polarized responses.
Bambi is a 1942 American animated coming-of-age drama film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures, loosely based on Felix Salten's 1923 novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods. It was directed by David D. Hand, and a team of six sequence directors.
The main characters are Bambi, a white-tailed deer; his parents (the Great Prince of the forest and his unnamed mother); his friends Thumper (a pink-nosed cottontail rabbit); and Flower (a skunk); and his childhood friend and future mate, Faline. In the original book, Bambi was a roe deer, a species native to Europe; but Disney decided to base the character on a mule deer from Arrowhead, California. Illustrator Maurice "Jake" Day convinced Disney that the mule deer had large "mule-like" ears and were more common to western North America; but that the white-tail deer was more recognized throughout the United States. The film received three Academy Award nominations: Best Sound (Sam Slyfield), Best Song (for "Love Is a Song" sung by Donald Novis) and Original Music Score.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a 1977 American science fiction drama film written and directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, Cary Guffey, and François Truffaut. The film depicts the story of Roy Neary, an everyday blue-collar worker in Indiana, whose life changes after an encounter with an unidentified flying object (UFO), and Jillian Guiler, a single mother whose three-year-old son Barry is abducted during the same UFO manifestation.
Close Encounters was a long-cherished project for Spielberg. In late 1973, he developed a deal with Columbia Pictures for a science-fiction film. Though Spielberg received sole credit for the script, he was assisted by Paul Schrader, John Hill, David Giler, Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins, and Jerry Belson, all of whom contributed to the screenplay in varying degrees. The title is derived from Ufologist J. Allen Hynek's classification of close encounters with extraterrestrials, in which the third kind denotes human observations of extraterrestrials or "animate beings". Douglas Trumbull served as the visual effects supervisor, while Carlo Rambaldi designed the aliens.
Empire of the Sun is a 1987 American epic coming-of-age war drama film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Tom Stoppard, based on J. G. Ballard's semi-autobiographical 1984 novel of the same name. The film tells the story of Jamie "Jim" Graham (Christian Bale), a young boy who goes from living with his wealthy British family in Shanghai to becoming a prisoner of war in an internment camp operated by the Japanese during World War II. The film also stars John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson, Nigel Havers, Joe Pantoliano, Masatō Ibu, Leslie Phillips, Ben Stiller, and Robert Stephens.
Harold Becker and David Lean were originally to direct before Spielberg came on board, initially as a producer for Lean. Spielberg was attracted to directing the film because of a personal connection to Lean's films and World War II topics. He considers it to be his most profound work on "the loss of innocence". The film received positive reviews, with praise towards Bale's performance, the cinematography, the visuals, Williams's score and Spielberg's direction. However, the film was not initially a commercial success, earning only $22 million at the US box office, although it eventually more than recouped its budget through revenues in foreign markets, home video, and television.
The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American part-talkie musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland and produced by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music and lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolated sequences). Its release heralded the commercial ascendance of sound films and effectively marked the end of the silent film era with the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system, featuring six songs performed by Al Jolson. Based on the 1925 play of the same title by Samson Raphaelson, the plot was adapted from his short story "The Day of Atonement".
The film depicts the fictional story of Jakie Rabinowitz, a young man who defies the traditions of his devout Jewish family. After singing popular tunes in a beer garden, he is punished by his father, a hazzan (cantor), prompting Jakie to run away from home. Some years later, now calling himself Jack Robin, he has become a talented jazz singer, performing in blackface. He attempts to build a career as an entertainer, but his professional ambitions ultimately come into conflict with the demands of his home and heritage.
Oliver Twist is a 1912 British silent drama film directed by Thomas Bentley and starring Ivy Millais, Alma Taylor and Harry Royston. It is an adaptation of the 1838 novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. It was the directorial debut of Bentley who went on to become a leading British director. It was the first in a series of Dickens adaptations by Bentley.
Hugo is a 2011 American adventure drama film directed and produced by Martin Scorsese, and adapted for the screen by John Logan. Based on Brian Selznick's 2007 book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, it tells the story of a boy who lives alone in the Gare Montparnasse railway station in Paris in the 1930s, only to become embroiled in a mystery surrounding his late father's automaton and the pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès.
Hugo is Scorsese's first film shot in 3D, about which the filmmaker remarked, "I found 3D to be really interesting, because the actors were more upfront emotionally. Their slightest move, their slightest intention is picked up much more precisely." The film was released in the United States on November 23, 2011.