River Queen
★ 5.7 · 2005 · 114m · Adventure · War
In 1860s New Zealand, a young Irish woman desperately trying to find her son finds herself caught on both sides of the lines during the wars between Māori tribes and the British colonial army.
More Like This
Rewi's Last Stand
1940 · ★ 4
Star-crossed lovers, Robert and Ariana, are caught up in the New Zealand wars of the 1860s. Ariana is claimed by the Maniapoto people as one of their own and, despite Robert's chivalrous defence, is taken by them and must help them prepare for war. Robert likewise must do his patriotic duty and enlists to fight on the other side. He volunteers to ride despatch, thinking it may give him an opportunity to see Ariana again, which it does, but their joy is short-lived; Maniapoto women fight beside their men, and furthermore she is a Rangitira (noble) and will not let her people down. The climax is the siege of Oraku Pa where 300 Maori hold off 2000 troops for three days. The Maniapoto are defeated, but Ariana, although wounded, survives to be reunited with Robert.
More info →
Walker
1987 · ★ 6.5
William Walker and his mercenary corps enter Nicaragua in the middle of the 19th century in order to install a new government by a coup d'etat.
More info →
The Mark of Zorro
1940 · ★ 7.2
Returning from Spain, the son of a California nobleman comes home to find his native land under a villainous dictatorship. On one hand, he plays the useless fop, while on the other, he is the masked avenger Zorro.
More info →
Under the Mountain
2009 · ★ 4.5
Teenage twins battle dark forces hidden beneath Auckland's volcanoes.
More info →
Waterloo
1970 · ★ 7.1
After defeating France and imprisoning Napoleon on Elba, ending two decades of war, Europe is shocked to find Napoleon has escaped and has caused the French Army to defect from the King back to him. The best of the British generals, the Duke of Wellington, beat Napolean's best generals in Spain and Portugal, but now must beat Napoleon himself with an Anglo Allied army.
More info →
Khartoum
1966 · ★ 6.4
English General Charles George Gordon is appointed military governor of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan by the Prime Minister. Ordered to evacuate Egyptians from the Sudan, Gordon stays on to protect the people of Khartoum, who are under threat of being conquered by a Muslim army.
More info →
The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey
1988 · ★ 6.2
Cumberland, 1348. The plague is spreading in medieval England. The remote village of little Griffin is also threatened. But the 9-year-old boy has a recurring dream that holds the key to a tiny hope of survival: a lake with a coffin floating on it. A white church with an iron cross. A falling glove. A falling silhouette. A torch tumble through a dark shaft into infinity. With his brother he recognizes in it a prophecy to escape the Black Death. So they embark with a few men on a journey to a distant cathedral, where they want to set up an iron cross as an offering to God. Her path leads them through a deep and dark mine shaft into an unknown land and completely outlandish time - into the present-day New Zealand of the 1980s.
More info →
First Men in the Moon
1964 · ★ 6.3
The world is delighted when a spacecraft containing a crew comprised of the world's astronauts lands on the moon, but are shocked when the astronauts discover an old British flag and a document declaring that the moon is taken for Queen Victoria, proving that the astronauts were not the first men on the moon.
More info →
The Water Babies
1978 · ★ 6.2
Grimes, an amoral chimney sweep, occasionally likes to steal valuables from his clients. One day, on the verge of being caught, he frames his young apprentice, Tom, for the crime. Tom runs away and jumps into a river where, instead of drowning, he finds himself transformed into a mystical aquatic creature. Swimming and breathing effortlessly, he discovers a colorful underwater world replete with creatures both cruel and kind.
More info →
Mountains of the Moon
1990 · ★ 6.6
The story of Captain Richard Francis Burton's and Lt. John Hanning Speke's expedition to find the source of the Nile river in the name of Queen Victoria's British Empire.
More info →
Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
2001 · ★ 7.3
The year is 1893 and India is under British occupation. In a small village, the tyrannical Captain Russell has imposed an unprecedented land tax on its citizens. Outraged, Bhuvan, a rebellious farmer, rallies the villagers to publicly oppose the tax. Russell offers a novel way to settle the dispute: he challenges Bhuvan and his men to a game of cricket, a sport completely foreign to India. If Bhuvan and his men can defeat Russell's team, the tax will be repealed.
More info →
The Fabulous World of Jules Verne
1958 · ★ 7.2
As the world progresses into the industrial age, a professor studying the "nature of pure matter" is spirited away by a would-be dictator and connived into building a super-bomb, as a young reporter and a girl rescued from the sea attempt to warn him of their mutual kidnapper's intentions to dominate the world with a new and more-deadly-yet weapon.
More info →