Top 100 History Movies List

#80 History Movie

Quest for Fire (1981) R

This story takes place in prehistoric time when three tribesmen search for a new fire source.

Director:

Jean-Jacques Annaud

Writers:

Gérard Brach, J.H. Rosny Sr.

Stars:

Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Nicholas Kadi

#79 History Movie

Russian Ark (2002)

A 19th century French aristocrat, notorious for his scathing memoirs about life in Russia, travels through the Russian State Hermitage Museum and encounters historical figures from the last 200+ years.

Director:

Aleksandr Sokurov

Writers:

Boris Khaimsky, Anatoli Nikiforov

Stars:

Sergey Dreyden, Mariya Kuznetsova, Leonid Mozgovoy

#78 History Movie

Europa Europa (1990) R

A boy in Nazi Germany, trying to conceal that he is Jewish, joins the Hitler Youth.

Director:

Agnieszka Holland

Writers:

Paul Hengge, Agnieszka Holland

Stars:

Solomon Perel, Marco Hofschneider, René Hofschneider

#77 History Movie

Eight Men Out (1988) PG

A dramatization of the Black Sox scandal when the underpaid Chicago White Sox accepted bribes to deliberately lose the 1919 World Series.

Director:

John Sayles

Writers:

Eliot Asinof, John Sayles

Stars:

John Cusack, Clifton James, Michael Lerner

#76 History Movie

The Madness of King George (1994) PG-13

A meditation on power and the metaphor of the body of state, based on the real episode of dementia experienced by George III. As he loses his senses, he becomes both more alive and more politically marginalized; neither effect desirable to his lieutenants, who jimmy the rules to avoid a challenge to regal authority, raising the question of who is really in charge.

Director:

Nicholas Hytner

Writers:

Alan Bennett

Stars:

Nigel Hawthorne, Helen Mirren, Rupert Graves

#75 History Movie

A Passage to India (1984) PG

Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.

Director:

David Lean

Writers:

E.M. Forster

Stars:

Judy Davis, Victor Banerjee, Peggy Ashcroft

#74 History Movie

Amistad (1997) R

In 1839, the revolt of Mende captives aboard a Spanish owned ship causes a major controversy in the United States when the ship is captured off the coast of Long Island. The courts must decide whether the Mende are slaves or legally free.

Director:

Steven Spielberg

Writers:

David Franzoni

Stars:

Djimon Hounsou, Matthew McConaughey, Anthony Hopkins

#73 History Movie

We Were Soldiers (2002) R

The story of the first major battle of the American phase of the Vietnam War and the soldiers on both sides that fought it, while their wives wait nervously and anxiously at home for the good news or the bad news.

Director:

Randall Wallace

Writers:

Harold G. Moore, Joseph L. Galloway

Stars:

Mel Gibson, Madeleine Stowe, Greg Kinnear

#72 History Movie

Bloody Sunday (2002) R

A dramatization of the Irish civil rights protest march and subsequent massacre by British troops on January 30, 1972.

Director:

Paul Greengrass

Writers:

Paul Greengrass

Stars:

James Nesbitt, Tim Pigott-Smith, Nicholas Farrell

#71 History Movie

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) PG

In 1931, three aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their homes to be trained as domestic staff and set off on a journey across the Outback.

Director:

Phillip Noyce

Writers:

Doris Pilkington, Christine Olsen

Stars:

Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Kenneth Branagh

#70 History Movie

Henry V (1989) PG-13

In the midst of the Hundred Years' War, the young King Henry V of England embarks on the conquest of France in 1415.

Director:

Kenneth Branagh

Writers:

William Shakespeare, Kenneth Branagh

Stars:

Kenneth Branagh, Derek Jacobi, Simon Shepherd

#69 History Movie

Kon-tiki (2012) PG-13

Legendary explorer Thor Heyerdal's epic 4,300-mile crossing of the Pacific on a balsawood raft in 1947, in an effort to prove that it was possible for South Americans to settle in Polynesia in pre-Columbian times.

Director:

Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg

Writers:

Petter Skavlan

Stars:

Pål Sverre Hagen, Anders Baasmo Christiansen, Gustaf Skarsgård

#68 History Movie

The Badder Meinhof Complex (2008) R

A look at Germany's terrorist group, The Red Army Faction (RAF), which organized bombings, robberies, kidnappings and assassinations in the late 1960s and '70s.

Director:

Uli Edel

Writers:

Bernd Eichinger, Uli Edel

Stars:

Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek

#67 History Movie

KageMusha (1980) PG

A petty thief with an utter resemblance to a samurai warlord is hired as the lord's double. When the warlord later dies the thief is forced to take up arms in his place.

Director:

Akira Kurosawa

Writers:

Masato Ide, Akira Kurosawa

Stars:

Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Ken'ichi Hagiwara

#66 History Movie

Gettysburg (1993) PG

In 1863, the Northern and Southern forces fight at Gettysburg in the decisive battle of the American Civil War.

Director:

Ron Maxwell

Writers:

Michael Shaara, Ron Maxwell

Stars:

Tom Berenger, Martin Sheen, Stephen Lang

#65 History Movie

A Man for All Seasons (1966) G

The story of Thomas More, who stood up to King Henry VIII when the King rejected the Roman Catholic Church to obtain a divorce and remarriage.

Director:

Fred Zinnemann

Writers:

Robert Bolt

Stars:

Paul Scofield, Wendy Hiller, Robert Shaw

#64 History Movie

Come and See (1985)

After finding an old rifle, a young boy joins the Soviet resistance movement against ruthless German forces and experiences the horrors of World War II.

Director:

Elem Klimov

Writers:

Ales Adamovich, Ales Adamovich

Stars:

Aleksey Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Laucevicius

#63 History Movie

The Flowers of War (2011) R

A Westerner finds refuge with a group of women in a church during Japan's rape of Nanking in 1937. Posing as a priest, he attempts to lead the women to safety..

Director:

Yimou Zhang

Writers:

Heng Liu, Geling Yan

Stars:

Christian Bale, Ni Ni, Xinyi Zhang

#62 History Movie

Andrei Rublev (1966)

The life, times and afflictions of the fifteenth-century Russian iconographer.

Director:

Andrei Tarkovsky

Writers:

Andrey Konchalovskiy, Andrei Tarkovsky

Stars:

Anatoliy Solonitsyn, Ivan Lapikov, Nikolay Grinko

#61 History Movie

Inherit the Wind (1960)

Based on a real-life case in 1925, two great lawyers argue the case for and against a science teacher accused of the crime of teaching evolution.

Director:

Stanley Kramer

Writers:

Nedrick Young, Harold Jacob Smith

Stars:

Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gene Kelly

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