1) Schindler’s List:
Taking place during World War II, Schindler’s list offers the perspective of Oskar Schindler as he makes his fortunes in Krakow, Poland by running a factory that produces enamelware whose personnel working are Jews. A member of the Nazi Party enjoying a lavish lifestyle filled with bribery toward the Wehrmacht and SS, Schindler is profoundly disturbed after witnessing the massacre of Jews as the ghetto is being liquidated, and those remaining are forced into the newly built Plaszow concentration camp.
2) The Pianist:
The pianist explains the troubling life of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish-Jewish pianist renowned for his skills in music, beginning with the bombardment of Poland at the start of World War II as Nazi Germany and the USSR invade. Forced into a Jewish ghetto alongside his family and sent to the concentration camp Treblinka, he is separated from them as he is recognized by a friend in the Jewish Ghetto Police and forced into slave laboring, as he secretly makes weapons and ammunition to aid the Warsaw Uprising.
3) Saving Private Ryan:
As America lands on Omaha beach during D-Day, after the battle among the corpses is shown one in particular wearing a pack labeled Ryan, S. The U.S War Department quickly learns that three out of four brothers in the Ryan family are killed in action, with the last one missing in action, and gives the order to a squad of soldiers to find and rescue him, returning him safely home. As Miller and his squad begin their search Neuville, they find a private by the name of James Ryan who is not the one they are looking for, but learn from him that the one they seek is station to defend an important bridge in Ramelle.
4) The Last Samurai:
Former U.S Army Captain Nathan Algren is an alcoholic coping with the atrocities he had witnessed during the American Indian Wars, and is approached by his former commanding officer Colonel Bagley to journey into Japan where he is tasked with training the newly formed Imperial Army, that are intended to be used to suppress a samurai driven rebellion waging war against the new Japanese Emperor. Nathan takes the job only because he is impoverished and in dire need for money, and as he arrives he is greeted not with a standard army, but rather peasants conscripted to fight with no prior knowledge of firearms nor military discipline. Although he protests that they need to be trained first before being sent to battle, the army is sent to protect the businessman Omura’s railroads that are being attacked by the samurai, and the battle ends up being a disaster as the army panics and routs.
5) The Last of the Mohicans:
The story takes place in 1757 as the war between the French and Indians rages on in the Adirondack Mountains in the British colony of New York. The newly arrived British Army Major Duncan Heyward is given the task of escorting a family friends family, including his two daughters, one of whom he is deeply in love with and proposes but is not given an immediate answer before they begin by the name of Cora. Accompanying them is a Huron warrior named Magua, who knows the lands they traverse, but instead leads them into a trap where most of the entourage are killed except Heyward and the women who are saved by the timely intervention by Mohican chieftain Chingachgook, his son Uncas, and his white adopted son by the name of Hawkeye.
6) The Killing Fields:
In May 1973 in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, the Cambodian army is fighting the insurgent Khmer Rouge in a civil war as a result of the Vietnam War spilling into the country’s borders. The film follows Dith Pran, a Cambodian journalist reporting for the New York Times as he awaits the arrival of a reporter by the name of Sydney Schanberg, who safely lands and takes a cab to his hotel to meat photojournalist Al Rockoff. Meeting with Pran afterwards, the three are headed to Neak Leung, a town that was allegedly bombed by an American B-52 bomber plane. Arriving at the bombed town, they are imprisoned as they take pictures of the devastation of the sight, and of the execution of two Khmer Rouge operatives by the Cambodian army.
7) Mongol:
The film begins with the year of the Black Rat 1192 with Temujin being imprisoned by the Tangut Kingdom, that have him in a cave cage, where he is humiliated for being a Mongol by the populace, as he remembers his earlier life in a series of flashbacks. The first one begins when he was a little boy aged 9 in 1172, twenty years before, as he accompanied by his father Yesugei to select a wife for his arranged future marriage, as Temujin choses Borte, despite his father wishing he had chosen a mate from the Merkit tribe. As they begin to return home, his father is poisoned by a rival tribe, and on his last breath tells the young Temujin that he now inherited his title of Khan, although this falls on deaf ears as one of his father’s warriors named Targutai as he orders the belongings of the former Khan looted, yet spares Temujin declaring that no Mongol has ever killed a child, and intends not do so as well, beginning the saga of the future Genghis Khan.
8) Kingdom of Heaven:
Haunted by his wife’s recent suicide, Balian a blacksmith based in France decides to join the Crusade toward the Holy Land, accompanying his father after he had killed his half-brother for explaining that he had his wife beheaded in order to prevent her from ascending to heaven before her burial, in an attempt to convince Balian to join the noble cause. As he is ordered to be arrested, Godfrey, the man that previously passed Balians village searching for new recruits for the Crusade does not give him up, and in the fight that begins for his refusal to do so, is shot by an arrow in the body, fatally wounding him. Before he succumbs to his injury, he knights Balian and orders him to serve the King of Jerusalem, protecting the weak and poor, and driving out the Muslim Saracen invaders from the Holy Land. On his journey, the boat carrying his fellow crusaders is run aground by a raving storm that leaves only Balian alive to continue his sacred duty.
9) The King’s Speech:
At the closing of the British Empire Exhibition that partook in Wembley Stadium, Prince Albert the Duke of York, second son to King George V addresses the crowd with a strong stammer. Discouraged, and without hope of finding treatment, his wife the Duchess of York Elizabeth, persuades him to seek out Lionel Logue, who lacks medical expertise but is a Harley Street speech therapist. Although the first session goes poorly according to the Prince, Lionel believes that his new patient can be cured after having him recite an acetate recording of Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” soliloquy sublimely all the while hearing piped-in classical music on a pair of head phones. Disappointed that he couldn’t progress further, the Prince is then given the recording as a souvenir.
10) Hotel Rwanda:
As tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi reach a boiling point, it leads to a civil war between the peoples in Rwanda, sparking a genocide never before seen on African soil. The perspective of the film follows Paul Rusesabagina as the manager of the Sabena owned Hotel des Milles Collines who is Hutu, but his wife Tatiana is a Tutsi, as their marriage is a source of friction with Hutu extremists especially o Georges Rutaganda under his guise of a friendly goods supplier to the hotel, but is actually a local leader of Interahamwe a savage and brutal Hutu militia. As the political situation worsens in the country following the assassination of the president on the 6th of April 1994, Paul alongside his family observe as neighbors are being culled like rabid animals as the early phase of the genocide begins.