Along with Enrico Guazzoni’s epic Quo Vadis? (1912, It.) - often considered the first successful feature-length motion picture and one of the first films with over two hours running time, the influential three-hour Italian silent film from Giovanni Pastrone, Cabiria (1914, It.), was an early example of spectacular and monumental epic film-making. It laid the pattern and groundwork for future big-budget feature-length films (by the likes of D.W. Griffith - for his Judith of Bethulia (1914), The Birth of a Nation (1915), and later his Babylonian sequences in Intolerance (1916) - and Cecil B. DeMille). Its story of 3rd century BC Ancient Rome included sequences of the eruption of Mt. Etna and Hannibal's crossing of the Alps with elephants (with an early example of tracking shots). The landmark film was shot on location in North Africa, Sicily and the Italian Alps. It was also the first film to be screened at the White House.

Download Two of the Earliest Epics from Italy: Quo Vadis? and Cabiria

any early films in this genre featured similar fanciful special effects and thrilled early audiences. The pioneering science fiction film, a 14-minute ground-breaking masterpiece with 30 separate tableaus (scenes), Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902), was made by imaginative, turn-of-the-century French filmmaker/magician Georges Melies, approximating the contents of the novels by Jules Verne (From the Earth to the Moon) and H.G. Wells (First Men in the Moon). With innovative, illusionary cinematic techniques (trick photography with superimposed images, dissolves and cuts), he depicted many memorable, whimsical old-fashioned images

Download The Earliest Science Fiction Films

In the 1930s, the most popular films were the low-budget, less-serious, space exploration tales portrayed in the popular, cliff-hanger Saturday matinee serials with the first two science-fiction heroes - Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

Flash GordonSpace-explorer hero Flash Gordon was a fanciful adventure character derived from the Alex Raymond comic strip first published in 1934 (from King Features). The serials 'invented' many familiar technological marvels: anti-gravity belts, laser/ray guns, and spaceships. Universal's serialized sci-fi adventures included:

Download Escapist Serials of the 30s: Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers

The action/adventure film first became popular with weekly Saturday serials, running in installments that often had 'cliff-hanging' endings to entice viewers to return for the next show. Heroine Pearl White in the 20-episode The Perils of Pauline (1914) was the first major super-star of the silent serials. Besides Pearl White, there were other queens of the sound serials, including Kay Aldridge (as jungle Queen Nyoka in Nyoka and the Tigermen (1942)) and Linda Stirling (in the 12 part serial Zorro's Black Whip (1944) and as the "Tiger Woman" in another 12-episode serial, Perils of the Darkest Jungle (1944)).

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Other notable, low-budget supernatural/horror films in the late 1950s through the 1970s included:

* Bell, Book, and Candle (1958), a romantic fantasy adapted from the Broadway stage comedy of the same name, with pre-Vertigo James Stewart (as a stodgy book publisher) and Kim Novak as his bewitching Greenwich Village neighbor
* The Innocents - 1961William Castle's ghost-infested B-movie House on Haunted Hill (1959), starring Vincent Price as a wealthy and eccentric man who offers $10,000 to his wife and others to survive one entire night in a ghostly manse; with decapitated heads, vats of lye, crashing chandeliers; inspired the parody Saturday the 14th (1981), and was remade in 1999
* 13 Ghosts (1960), another haunted house thriller from William Castle, memorable for its "Illusion-O" process (viewers were given the option of using ghost-viewing glasses)

Download Recent Ghostly-Supernatural Tales

Starring Andy García
Val Kilmer
Richard Coyle
Emmanuelle Chriqui
Rupert Friend
Johnathon Schaech
Dean Cain
Rade Šerbedžija
Antje Traue
Heather Graham

Review:

This is one proof why I don’t understand the objective of wars in the world. I have seen many movies of this kind where war has really no justification. The Platoon, The Pianist, Enemy at the Gates, or Schindler’s List, the lost of civilian lives is just so unspeakable. 5 Days of War (5 Days of August) is no exception.

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Cast
Jeff Daniels as Richard Dunn
Emma Stone as Abby
Ryan Reynolds as Captain Excellent
Lisa Kudrow as Claire Dunn
Hunter Parrish as Bryce
Kieran Culkin as Christopher
Arabella Field as Lucy

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Cast:

Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon, Selma Blair, Christine Baranski, Joshua Jackson

Download Cruel Intentions

Cast:
Robert De Niro as Jack Byrnes
Ben Stiller as Greg Focker
Owen Wilson as Kevin Rawley
Teri Polo as Pamela Byrnes
Blythe Danner as Dina Byrnes

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