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DVDs : Feature Films, 1970s-present
This guide highlights DVDs in the SUNY Old Westbury Library. View trailers and synopses for selected, recently acquired DVDs in the "Documentaries" and "Feature Films" sections. Click on "All DVDs" for a list of all our DVDs.
Fences by Produced by Scott Rudin, Denzel Washington, Todd Black; screenplay by August Wilson; directed by Denzel Washington
Call Number: DVD-812
Publication Date: Originally produced as a motion picture 2016
139 min.
Synopsis:
Set in 1950s Pittsburgh, the film takes a passionate look at former Negro-league baseball player Troy Maxson (Washington) as he fights to provide for those he loves in a world that threatens to push him down. Washington's directorial triumph “connects with people on a deep, emotional level and pulses with the universal truths of love and forgiveness, despite what lies beyond your own fence.
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 2016.
111 mins.
Snyopsis:
"A timeless story of human connection and self-discovery, Moonlight, chronicles three defining chapters in the life of a young black man growing up in a rough neighborhood of Miami. Anchored by extraordinary performances from a tremendous ensemble cast, Moonlight is a profoundly moving portrayal of the moments, people, and unknowable forces that shape our lives and make us who we are."
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 2015.
147 mins.
Synopsis:
In 1987, five young men, using brutally honest rhymes and hardcore beats, put their frustration and anger about life in the most dangerous place in America into the most powerful weapon they had: their music. Taking viewers back to where it all began, the film tells the true story of how these cultural rebels-armed only with their lyrics, swagger, bravado and raw talent-stood up to the authorities that meant to keep them down and formed the world’s most dangerous group, N.W.A.
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 1998.
85 mins.
Synopsis:
A brilliant mathematician teeters on the brink of insanity as he searches for an elusive numerical code that will allow him to predict patterns in the stock market, while being pursued by an aggressive Wall Street firm set on financial domination and a Kaballah sect intent on unlocking the secrets behind their ancient holy texts.
134 min.
Synopsis:
12 YEARS A SLAVE is based on an incredible true story of one man's fight for survival and freedom. In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. Facing cruelty (personified by a malevolent slave owner, portrayed by Michael Fassbender) as well as unexpected kindnesses, Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. In the twelfth year of his unforgettable odyssey, Solomon's chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist (Brad Pitt) forever alters his life.
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 2014.
119 mins.
Synopsis:
Michael Keaton joins Emma Stone, Edward Norton, Zach Galifianakis and Naomi Watts in this riveting story about fame, fantasy and second chances. When a former superhero film star (Keaton) sets out to make a comeback on Broadway, he grapples with self-doubt, harsh critics, and his estranged daughter (Stone) in this imaginative, wickedly funny film from writer/director Alejandro González Iñárritu.
2013
Originally produced as a motion picture in 2001.
Synopsis:
Three grown prodigies, all with a unique genius of some kind, and their mother are staying at the family household. Their father, Royal, had left them long ago, but now returns to make things right with his family.
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 2012
120 mins.
Synopsis:
As the Iranian Revolution takes over the US Embassy in Tehran, six Americans escape. Now only one man can get them out from behind enemy lines. Tony Mendes is a brilliant CIA agent who specializes in impossible escapes, but his new plan is as daring as it is desperate. Disguised as a film crew, Tony and the fugitives must hide in plain sight, where the slightest slipup could end in instant death.
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 2011.
80 mins.
Synopsis:
Two pairs of parents, one of whose child has hurt the other at a public park, meet to discuss the matter in a civilized manner. However, the evening becomes quite chaotic as the parents become increasingly childish.
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 2014.
109 mins.
Synopsis:
A sharp and funny comedy about a group of African-American students as they navigate campus life and racial boundaries at a predominately white college. A sly, provocative satire about being a black face in a white place.
120 mins.
Synopsis:
Set in 19th-century China, two master warriors are faced with their greatest challenge when the treasured Green Destiny sword is stolen. A young aristocratic woman prepares for an arranged marriage, but soon reveals her superior fighting talents and her romantic past. As each warrior battles for justice, they come face-to-face with their worst enemy, and the enduring power of love.
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 2003.
126 mins.
Synopsis:
Academy Award® winners Sir Ben Kingsley ("Gandhi") and Jennifer Connelly ("A Beautiful Mind") star in the drama "House of Sand and Fog," based on the acclaimed bestseller by Andre Dubus III. Massoud Amir Behrani (Sir Ben Kingsley) is living a lie to fulfill a dream. Once a member of the Shah of Iran's elite inner circle, he has brought his family to America to build a new life. Despite a pretense of continued affluence, he is barely making ends meet until he sees his opportunity in the auction of a house being sold for back taxes. It is a terrible mistake. Through a bureaucratic snafu, the house had been improperly seized from its rightful owner, Kathy Lazaro (Jennifer Connelly). The loss of her home tears away Kathy's last hope of a stable life - a life that had been nearly destroyed by addiction - and Kathy decides to fight to recover her home ... at any cost. "House of Sand and Fog" exposes the unsettling truth that it is sometimes our hopes and not our hatreds that drive us to ruin, in a devastating exploration of the American Dream gone terribly awry.
Publication Date: Originally produced as a motion picture in 1973.
114 mins.
Symopsis:
American Graffiti is a classic coming-of-age story set against the 1960s backdrop of hot rods, drive-ins and rock 'n' roll. Starring Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Cindy Williams, Mackenzie Phillips and Suzanne Somers in their breakout roles, this nostalgic look back follows a group of teenagers as they cruise the streets on their last summer night before college.
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 2006
152 mins.
Synopsis:
In South Boston, the state police force are waging a war on Irish-American organized crime. Undercover cop Billy Costigan is assigned to infiltrate the mob syndicate, which is run by gangland chief Frank Costello. Billy quickly gains Costello’s confidence. But when it becomes clear to both the mob and the police that there are moles in their midst, Billy and the other mole are suddenly thrust into danger. Afraid of being caught and exposed to the enemy, each must race to uncover the identity of the other man in time to save himself.
100 mins.
Synopsis:
The Grand Budapest Hotel recounts the adventures of Gustave H., a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wards; and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting; a raging battle for an enormous family fortune; a desperate chase on motorcycles, trains, sleds, and skis; and the sweetest confection of a love affair--all against the brackdrop of a suddenly and dramatically changing continent.
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 2014.
124 mins.
Synopsis:
Starring Eddie Redmayne (“Les Misérables”) and Felicity Jones (“The Amazing Spider-Man 2”), THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING is the extraordinary story of one of the world’s greatest living minds, the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde. Once a healthy, active young man, Hawking received an earth-shattering diagnosis at 21 years of age. With Jane fighting tirelessly by his side, Stephen embarks on his most ambitious scientific work, studying the very thing he now has precious little of – time. Together, they defy impossible odds, breaking new ground in medicine and science, and achieving more than they could ever have dreamed. The film is based on the memoir "Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen," by Jane Hawking, and is directed by Academy Award winner James Marsh (“Man on Wire”)
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 2014.
Language: French, Arabic, and English with English subtitles
97 mins.
Synopsis:
Not far from Timbuktu, now ruled by religious fundamentalists, Kidane lives peacefully in the dunes with his wife Satima, his daughter Toya, and Issan, their shepherd. In town, the people suffer, powerless, from the regime of terror imposed by Jihadists. Music, laughter, cigarettes, even soccer have been banned. The women have become shadows but resist with dignity. Every day, the new improvised courts issue tragic and absurd sentences. Kidane and his family had been spared the chaos that prevails in Timbuktu, but when their destiny changes abruptly, Kidane must face the new laws of the foreign occupants.
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 1982.
123 mins.
Synopsis:
This political thriller has its origins in an actual event--the disappearance of a young American writer and filmmaker, Charles Horman (John Shea), during the US backed Chilean military coup of 1973. Jack Lemmon stars as Charles' father, Ed Horman, a prominent NY businessman, who comes to the aid of Charles' wife, Beth (Sissy Spacek), in her desperate search for her missing husband. They are led in circles, up blind alleys and are confronted with lies and false hopes from both US and foreign officials. But they frantically trudge on together, overcoming their past differences until the painful, shattering conclusion.
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 2013.
104 mins.
Synopsis:
Follows a week in the life of a young folk singer as he navigates the Greenwich Village folk scene of 1961. He is at a crossroads. Guitar in tow, huddled against the unforgiving New York winter, he is struggling to make it as a musician against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, some of them of his own making.
129 mins.
Synopsis:
Harvey Milk is a middle-aged New Yorker who, after moving to San Francisco, becomes a Gay Rights activist and city politician. On his third attempt, he is elected to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors in 1977, the first openly-gay man to be elected to public office in the United States. The following year, both he and the city’s mayor, George Moscone, are shot to death by former city supervisor, Dan White, who blames his former colleagues for denying White’s attempt to rescind his resignation from the board. Based on the true story of Harvey Milk.
Publication Date: Originally produced as a motion picture in 2016.
2 hrs. 15 mins.
Synopsis:
Jesse Owens’ quest to become the greatest track and field athlete in history launches him onto the world stage of the 1936 Olympics, where he faces off against Adolf Hitler’s vision of Aryan supremacy.
Publication Date: Originally produced as a motion picture in 1995
2hrs. 10 mins.
Synopsis:
Cole (Bruce Willis is sent back in time to save the human race from a deadly virus that has forced mankind into dank underground communities in the future. Along his travels, he encounters a psychiatrist (Madeleine Stowe) and a mental patient, brilliantly portrayed by Brad Pitt, who may hold the key to the mysterious rogue group, the Army of 12 Monkeys, thought to be responsible for unleashing the killer disease. Believing he can obtain a pure virus sample in order to find a cure in the future, he is met with one riddle after another that puts him in a race with time.
146 mins.
Synopsis:
In 1960s Mississippi, Skeeter, a southern society girl, returns from college determined to become a writer but turns her friends’ lives and a small Mississippi town upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families. Aibileen, Skeeter’s best friend’s housekeeper, is the first to open up, to the dismay of her friends in the tight-knit black community.
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 2010.
263 mins.
Synopsis:
The stunning tale of a new breed of cultural insurgent: a punk genius who sparked a revolution and changed the face of human interaction for a generation, and perhaps forever. Shot through with emotional brutality and unexpected humour, this film chronicles the formation of Facebook and the battles over ownership that followed upon the website’s unfathomable success.
Publication Date: Originally produced as a motion picture in 2002.
2 hrs. 30 mins.
Synopsis:
The Pianist was adapted by U.K. playwright/screenwriter Ronald Harwood (The Dresser) from the autobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew who detailed his survival during World War II. A celebrated composer and pianist, he played the last live music heard over Polish radio airwaves before Nazi artillery hit. During the brutal occupation, he eluded deportation and remained in the devastated Warsaw Ghetto. There, he struggled to stay alive even when cast away from those he loved. He would eventually reclaim his artistic gifts, and confront his fears, with aid from the unlikeliest source — a German officer who helped him hide in the final days of the war.
Roman Polanski himself escaped the Cracow Ghetto, at the age of 7, through a hole in a barbed-wire fence. The Pianist marks the first time that he has made a movie in Poland in 40 years.
121 mins.
Synopsis:
The latest in Spike Lee’s Chronicles of Brooklyn series, RED HOOK SUMMER tells the story of Flik Royale, a young boy from Atlanta who has come to spend the summer with his religious grandfather, Bishop Enoch Rouse, in the housing projects of Red Hook. Between his grandfather’s preaching and the culture shock of city life, Flik’s summer appears to be a total disaster, until he meets Chazz Morningstar, a girl his age, who shows Flik the brighter side of Brooklyn.
Publication Date: DVD release of the 2014 motion picture.
128 mins.
Synopsis:
SELMA is the story of a movement. The film chronicles the tumultuous three-month period in 1965, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a dangerous campaign to secure equal voting rights in the face of violent opposition. The epic march from Selma to Montgomery culminated in President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant victories for the civil rights movement. Director Ava DuVernay’s SELMA tells the real story of how the revered leader and visionary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo) and his brothers and sisters in the movement prompted change that forever altered history.
Publication Date: Originally produced as a motion picture in 2006.
119 mins.
Synopsis:
Spain, 1944. Officially, the Civil War has been over for five years, but a small group of rebels fights on in the northern mountains of Navarra. Dreamy 10-year-old Ofelia and her pregnant mother Carmen move to Navarra, joining her new stepfather, Captain Vidal. A Fascist officer, he is under orders to destroy the rebels. Ofelia discovers an overgrown, tumbledown labyrinth and meets an ancient faun who claims to know her true identity and secret destiny. She can learn them if she completes three tasks before the full moon. But no one must know: not her ailing mother or her new friend Mercedes. Time is running out, and both Ofelia and the rebels will have to battle hardship and cruelty in order to gain their freedom. Who can be trusted in a time of lies and danger? Is the faun telling the truth ...? If not, who is?
129 mins.
Synopsis:
Academy Award® winner Denzel Washington, Academy Award® nominee Clive Owen and Academy Award® winner Jodie Foster star in this intense and explosive crime thriller. The perfect bank robbery quickly spirals into an unstable and deadly game of cat-and-mouse between a criminal mastermind (Owen), a determined detective (Washington), and a power broker with a hidden agenda (Foster). As the minutes tick by and the situation becomes increasingly tense, one wrong move could mean disaster for any one of them. From acclaimed director Spike Lee comes the edge-of-your-seat, action-packed thriller that The Wall Street Journal calls "a heist film that's right on the money."
150 mins.
Synopsis
Steven Spielberg directs two-time Academy Award® winner Daniel Day-Lewis in “Lincoln,” a revealing drama that focuses on the 16th President’s tumultuous final months in office. In a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of generations to come.
164 mins.
Synopsis:
Richard Linklater's BOYHOOD -- a fictional drama made with the same group of actors over a 12-year period from 2002-2013 -- takes a one-of-a-kind trip, at once epic and intimate, through the exhilaration of childhood, the seismic shifts of a modern family and the very passage of time.
The film tracks 6 year-old Mason (Ellar Coltrane) over life's most radically fluctuating decade, through a familiar whirl of family moves, family controversies, faltering marriages, re-marriages, new schools, first loves, lost loves, good times, scary times and a constantly unfolding mix of heartbreak and wonder. But the results are unpredictable, as one moment braids into the next, entwining into a deeply personal experience of the incidents that shape us as we grow up and the ever-changing nature of our lives.
As the story begins, dreamy-eyed grade-schooler Mason faces upheaval: his devoted, struggling single mom Olivia (Patricia Arquette) has decided to move him and older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) to Houston -- just as their long-absent father Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) returns from Alaska to re-enter their world. Thus begins life's non-stop flux. Yet through a tide of parents and stepparents, girls, teachers and bosses, dangers, yearnings and creative passions, Mason emerges to head down his own road.
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 2014.
109 mins.
Russian, French, English dialogue; English or French subtitles.
Synopsis:
In a small coastal town in Russia lives an ordinary family: Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov), his wife Lilya and their teenage son Roma. The family is haunted by a local corrupt mayor who is trying to take away Kolya's business, house and precious land. Kolya calls in an old friend, now an authoritative attorney, for help. Together they fight back and collect dirt on the mayor, but fate does not seem to be on Kolya's side.
Publication Date: Originally released as a motion picture in 1994.
142 mins.
Synopsis:
Nominated for seven Academy Awards, including "Best Picture," internationally acclaimed actors Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman star in this compelling drama of hope, friendship and atonement behind the walls of a maximum security prison in The Shawshank Redemption. From a novella by best-selling author Stephen King comes a poignant tale of the human spirit.
Red (Freeman), serving a life sentence, and Andy Dufresne (Robbins), a mild-mannered banker wrongly convicted of murder, forge an unlikely bond that will span more than twenty years in the Shawshank prison. Together they discover hope as the ultimate means of survival. Under horrifying conditions and the ever-present threat of violence, two lifers reclaim their souls and find freedom within their hearts in The Shawshank Redemption.
Publication Date: Originally produced as a motion picture in 1992.
3 hrs. 22 mins.
Synopsis:
Biographical epic of the controversial and influential Black Nationalist leader, from his early life as a small-time gangster, to his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam, his pilgrimage to Mecca and his assassination in 1965.