In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) accepts his Nobel Peace Prize. Four African-American girls are shown walking down the stairs of the 16th Street Baptist Church until an explosion explosion set by the Ku Klux Klan kills them. In Selma, Alabama, Annie Lee Cooper attempts to register to vote but is prevented by the white registrar. King meets with President Lyndon B. Johnson and asks for federal legislation to allow black citizens to register to vote unencumbered. Johnson says he has more important projects.
Gerry Conlon (Daniel Day-Lewis) is shown in Belfast stripping lead from roofs of houses when security forces home in on the district with armoured cars, and a riot breaks out. Gerry's father, Giuseppe Conlon (Pete Postlethwaite), later saves him from IRA punishment, and he is sent off to London to stay with his aunt, for his own good. Instead, he finds a squat, to explore, as he puts it, "free love and dope". One evening by chance he gains entry to a prostitute's flat and he steals the £700 he finds stashed inside; on that evening in Guildford there is an explosion at a pub that kills four off-duty soldiers and a civilian, and wounds sixty-five others.
À la fin de son règne, lors du Jubilé de 1887, on découvre la reine empêtrée par l'obséquiosité servile de son entourage. Affectivement, elle est seule depuis la mort de son mari trente ans plus tôt, ce que la scène introductive du banquet ne manque pas de souligner : les convives n'y paraissent que comme des pantins sans partager aucun affect ni propos avec la Reine. Lors de ce banquet, un seul invité se distingue : un des deux Indiens dépêchés par les autorités coloniales depuis la cité d'Agra pour présenter une pièce commémorative, et tenus par le protocole de ne jamais dévisager la Reine lorsqu'ils la lui montrent, ainsi que de se retirer le dos courbé à reculons tout le long du hall. Ce dernier ne respecte pas cette règle et tient un regard appuyé vers la Reine, laquelle ne manquera pas de le trouver beau ("handsome") en rapportant ultérieurement ses impressions auprès de son majordome. Elle réclame ensuite à nouveau sa présence, à la stupéfaction des valets.
In early 1920s Copenhagen, the illustrator and artist Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander) asks her husband, Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne), to stand in for a female model. The popularity of the portraits leads to Gerda painting her husband in further pictures as a woman. Einar develops an attraction for a female physical appearance and begins living as a woman named Lili Elbe. Ultimately Elbe becomes the first ever recipient of male to female sex reassignment surgery, and Gerda supports her decision, although their marriage becomes strained when Gerda comes to the realization that Lili is no longer the person she married. A childhood friend of Lili, Hans Axgil (Matthias Schoenaerts), shows up and forms a complex love triangle with the couple.
The film narrates the life of the Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man from the 1930s in Foshan, his flight to Hong Kong after the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the events leading up to his death.
The film begins with a nightmare of Bruce Lee's father (Ric Young), who sees a terrifying phantom (Sven-Ole Thorsen) in black samurai armor that haunts the young Bruce Lee (Sam Hau). Bruce is shown as a child receiving instruction in traditional Chinese martial arts in a montage that passes quickly through his teenage years in Hong Kong. As a young adult, Bruce (Jason Scott Lee) becomes involved in a fight with British sailors (who are harassing a young Chinese woman) and this results in him having to leave Hong Kong because of the incident. His father suggests that Bruce go to the US, since he was actually born in San Francisco when his father was on a tour there and has a US birth certificate. His father asks Bruce to become a success, so big a success that his name will be famous even back in Hong Kong.
In 1973, French street performer Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is trying to make a living in Paris with juggling acts and wire walking, much to the chagrin of his father. During one performance, he eats a hard candy which was given to him by an audience member and hurts his tooth. He visits the dentist and, while in the waiting room, sees a picture in a magazine of the Twin Towers in New York City. He analyzes the photo and decides to make it his mission to walk a tightrope between the two buildings. Meanwhile, he is kicked out of his parents' house by his father, citing his lack of income and the fact that he's a street performer. Philippe returns to the circus that inspired him to wire walk as a child and practices in the big top after hours, but is caught by Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley), whom he impresses with his juggling skills. While performing one day, Philippe meets a beautiful woman and fellow street performer named Annie (Charlotte Le Bon) and they begin a romantic relationship. He also explains that although he didn't know it at the time, she was his first "accomplice". He tells Annie about his dream to walk between the towers of the World Trade Center and she supports him and gives him a perfect place to practice at her music school. Philippe meets a photographer named Jean-Louis (Clément Sibomy) and befriends him, becoming Philippe's official photographer and second accomplice in his "coup".
Physical therapist Dian Fossey (Sigourney Weaver) is inspired by the anthropologist Louis Leakey (Iain Cuthbertson) to devote her life to the study of primates. To this end, she writes ceaselessly to him for a job cataloguing and studying the rare mountain gorillas of Africa. With some effort, she manages to convince Leakey of her conviction and devotion to the cause at hand after personally approaching him following a lecture in Louisville, Kentucky, on his part in 1966. Thereafter, Fossey embarks into the Congo, where Leakey and his foundation equip her with the necessary equipment and housing to achieve personal contact with the gorillas, and introduce her to a local animal tracker, Sembagare (John Omirah Miluwi), to assist her in her endeavors. Settling deep in the jungle, Fossey and Sembagare manage to locate a troop of gorillas, but they are ultimately displaced by the events of the Congo Crisis after being forcibly evicted from their research site by Congolese soldiers, who accuse Fossey of being a foreign spy and agitator.
Fourteen-year-old Maria Antonia Josephina Johanna Habsburg (Kirsten Dunst) is the beautiful, charming, and naive archduchess of Austria, youngest of Empress Maria Theresa's (Marianne Faithfull) daughters. In 1770, the only one left unmarried among her sisters, she is sent by her mother to marry the Dauphin of France, the future Louis XVI of France (Jason Schwartzman), to seal an alliance between the two rival countries. Marie Antoinette travels to France, relinquishing all connections with her home country, including her pet Pug "Mops", and meets the King Louis XV of France (Rip Torn) and her future husband, Louis Auguste. The two arrive at the Palace of Versailles, which was built by the King's great-grandfather. They are married at once, and are encouraged to produce an heir to the throne as soon as possible; but the next day it is reported to the king that "nothing happened" on the wedding night.
After moving from Michigan to Florida, Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute, meets Selby Wall in a gay bar. After initial hostility and declaring that she is not gay, Aileen talks to Selby over beers. Selby takes to Aileen almost immediately, as she likes that she is very protective of her. Selby invites her to spend the night with her. They return to the house where Selby is staying (temporarily exiled by her parents following the accusation from another girl that Selby tried to kiss her). They later agree to meet at a roller skating rink, and they kiss for the first time. Aileen and Selby fall in love, but they have nowhere to go, so Selby goes back to her Aunt's home.
During a prologue that is not directly related to the main plot, CBS producer Lowell Bergman (Pacino) convinces the founder of Hezbollah, Sheikh Fadlallah, to grant an interview to Mike Wallace (Plummer) for 60 Minutes. While preparing for the interview, both Wallace and Bergman firmly stand their ground against the Sheikh's armed and hostile bodyguards' attempted intimidation and disruption.
In 1969, Denver housewife and mother Penny Chenery (Diane Lane) agrees to take over her ailing father, Christopher Chenery's Meadow Stables in Doswell, Virginia, despite her lack of horse-racing knowledge. With the help of veteran trainer Lucien Laurin (Malkovich), Chenery navigates the male-dominated business, ultimately fostering the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years and one of the greatest racehorses of all time.
The film opens on February 26, 1995, with Selena (Jennifer Lopez) performing to a sold-out crowd of 65,000 at the Houston Astrodome in Houston, Texas. The film then flashes back to 1961, where a young Abraham Quintanilla and his band, The Dinos, are rejected for an audition by a restaurant owner due to a whites-only policy. Crushed, Abraham gives up music.
Le film est adapté d'une histoire vraie. En 1983, le couple de navigateurs Tami Oldham et Richard Sharp est pris dans l'ouragan le plus violent qui se soit jamais abattu sur l'océan Pacifique. Alors que Richard est gravement blessé, le bateau étant en ruines, Tami n'a aucun moyen pour communiquer ni pour appeler de l'aide. Seule dans l'océan avec l'homme qu'elle aime, à 2 500 km de la côte la plus proche, elle va devoir se battre pour rester en vie et le sauver en pleine tempête.
La prodigieuse histoire vraie d’une jeune femme surdouée devenue la reine d’un gigantesque empire du jeu clandestin à Hollywood ! En 2004, la jeune Molly Bloom débarque à Los Angeles. Simple assistante, elle épaule son patron qui réunit toutes les semaines des joueurs de poker autour de parties clandestines. Virée sans ménagement, elle décide de monter son propre cercle : la mise d’entrée sera de 250 000 $ ! Très vite, les stars hollywoodiennes, les millionnaires et les grands sportifs accourent. Le succès est immédiat et vertigineux.