Favourite True Story Film?

Handsome_Chris

Goodfellas.  It runs at about 2½ hours but it doesn't feel like it. It's a film that I've watched quite a few times too.  

relic245

Cool Runnings

Kilgore

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

The follow up, Bogus Journey, just doesn't ring true and is largely fictionalised.

Dopesick

Yep, I'll go for Goodfellas too.

Also...Bronson. One of Tom Hardy's finest performances.

EricTheWeary

Bridge Over the River Kwai, although apparently massively innacurate.

Papillon. Apparently the book is massively innacurate ( as memoirs often are) so the film actually tones it down a bit. Classic film. 

Catch me if you can. One of my favourite films. I've watched several talks on YouTube by Frank Abagnale Jr ( the man on whom the film is based) and he's very interesting. 

fields5069

Are any of the true story films true? So my vote goes to the one which is furthest from the truth.

BigMonka

EricTheWeary said:

Catch me if you can. One of my favourite films. I've watched several talks on YouTube by Frank Abagnale Jr ( the man on whom the film is based) and he's very interesting. 

I couldn't agree more about Catch Me If You Can. It's a great film, a brilliant story, and then to top it off it's also based on a true story!

equalsql

The Straight Story. A brilliant true life story of an old chap is the US who travels across two states to visit his I'll brother on an old lawn tractor mower. David Lynch at his best.

http://moviemezzanine.com/wp-content/uploads/straight-story-6.png

EricTheWeary

fields5069 said:

Are any of the true story films true? So my vote goes to the one which is furthest from the truth.

I think I'd like true story films to be sympathetic to the original story. My sense of Catch Me If You Can from listening to Frank is that the film makers were engaged with the story and made intelligent choices to convey several years into 90 minutes even though it was a long way from the truth ( IIRC the Tom Hanks character was an amalgamation of several real people for example). 

Braveheart is probably the most famously innacurate 'true' movie. Based on the life of William Wallace, a man never known as Braveheart for a start and almost nothing in it appears to be based on fact. It's not an area of history I know but anyone who knows anything about it seems to find the film hugely wrong on almost every count. 

Bluebeard

Goodfellas is probably my favourite. Ray and Walk The Line are both good biopics. 
I also saw "The Social Network" the other day and really enjoyed it.

ESBlonde

Dambusters. It glosses over a few things and also uses dummy bomb mock ups and crude special effects because the bomb remained on the secret list until the 70s iirc. Non the less an absolute gem capturing the era.

nick79

A bridge too far.

fields5069

EricTheWeary said:

fields5069 said:

Are any of the true story films true? So my vote goes to the one which is furthest from the truth.

I think I'd like true story films to be sympathetic to the original story. My sense of Catch Me If You Can from listening to Frank is that the film makers were engaged with the story and made intelligent choices to convey several years into 90 minutes even though it was a long way from the truth ( IIRC the Tom Hanks character was an amalgamation of several real people for example). 

Braveheart is probably the most famously innacurate 'true' movie. Based on the life of William Wallace, a man never known as Braveheart for a start and almost nothing in it appears to be based on fact. It's not an area of history I know but anyone who knows anything about it seems to find the film hugely wrong on almost every count. 

OK, in that case I'm going with the one where the Americans capture the Enigma machine and break the German codes. Or something.

RaymondLin

The Adventures of Sasha Grey.

Philly_Q

fields5069 said:

Are any of the true story films true? So my vote goes to the one which is furthest from the truth.

Adrift (aka Open Water 2: Adrift) is supposedly based on a true story but (SPOILER) everyone dies apart from a baby - who probably didn't make a good witness.

So I am going to go out on a limb and say it's probably pretty inaccurate.

fields5069

Philly_Q said:

fields5069 said:

Are any of the true story films true? So my vote goes to the one which is furthest from the truth.

Adrift (aka Open Water 2: Adrift) is supposedly based on a true story but (SPOILER) everyone dies apart from a baby - who probably didn't make a good witness.

So I am going to go out on a limb and say it's probably pretty inaccurate.

Just like Moby-Dick. How did Ishmael survive? And why did he change his name to Herman?

octatonic

The Empire Strikes Back.

Guitar_Slinger

I'm not a war film fan but two I found riveting were Lone Survivor (although Wiki says it was a dramatised version of an event) and Kajaki, which I couldn't take my eyes off and watched it stood up in front of the TV.

Non-war, I found Man on the Moon interesting and very funny - the story of Andy Kaufman (the odd mechanic in Taxi). It recreated bits of his life, such as scenes from Taxi using the original (much older) cast, and David Letterman in a reconstruction of a scene from his show 17 years earlier.

Philly_Q

The Bridge on the River Kwai

Lawrence of Arabia

Picnic at Hanging Rock (Not true at all, but it's sort of presented as if it is.  And it's brilliant.)

Zodiac

Jalapeno

Hacksaw Ridge, Wolf of Wall St, The Killing Fields