Best History Movies of 1999

Upon receiving reports of missing persons at Fort Spencer, a remote Army outpost on the Western frontier, Capt. John Boyd investigates. After arriving at his new post, Boyd and his regiment aid a wounded frontiersman who recounts a horrifying tale of a wagon train murdered by its supposed guide -- a vicious U.S. Army colonel gone rogue. Fearing the worst, the regiment heads out into the wilderness to verify the gruesome claims.

What was a cunning plan from Lord Edmund Blackadder V to fake a time machine on his gullibly incompetent friends, turns out to be the real thing and hurls him and his imbecile underling, Baldrick, through the course of human history.

The story of a Jewish family living in Hungary—through three generations—rising from humble beginnings to positions of wealth and power in the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire. The patriarch becomes a prominent judge but is torn when his government sanctions anti-Jewish persecutions. His son converts to Christianity to advance his career as a champion fencer and Olympic hero, but is caught up in the Holocaust. Finally, the grandson, after surviving war, revolution, loss and betrayal, realizes that his ultimate allegiance must be to himself and his heritage.

A US property developer realises that he has a battle on his hands when he tries to renovate a London building containing a vast photographic collection and discovers that the library employees will resort to anything to thwart him.

Leading statesmen, generals, terrorists and others who made the headlines in one of history's most bitter and enduring struggles tell the story of the Arab-Israeli conflict in The 50 Years War: Israel and the Arabs. Opening with the U.N decision to partition Palestine in 1947, the program charts the ensuing half-century of enmity, warfare, mediation and negotiation. Among the current and former heads of state and prime ministers interviewed or featured in the series are Benjamin Netanyahu, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir of Israel; King Hussein of Jordan; Yasir Arafat of the Palestine Authority; Hafez al-Assad of Syria; Jafaar Numeiry of Sudan; and U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton, George Bush and Jimmy Carter. Also appearing are foreign ministers, defense ministers, commanders in the field, heads of intelligence and guerrilla leaders, as well as high-ranking officials in the United States and the former Soviet Union.

One Man's Hero tells the little-known story of the "St. Patrick's Battalion" or "San Patricios," a group of mostly Irish and other immigrants of the Catholic faith who deserted to Mexico after encountering religious and ethnic prejudice in the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War. The plot centers around the personal story of John Riley, an Irishman who had been a sergeant in the American Army who is commissioned as a captain in the Mexican army and commands the battalion, as he leads his men in battle and struggles with authorities on both sides of the border

A film about the making of Citizen Kane. Orson Welles produces his greatest film, Citizen Kane, despite the opposition of the film's de facto subject, William Randolph Hearst.

Ten years before her death, Joan hears voices. Six years later, from the village of Domremy, she begins her mission to unite France under King Charles. First she leads a defense of Vaucouleurs against the Burgundians, then obtains safe passage to Charles, the Dauphin. He uses her, as the embodiment of the mythical "Maid of Lorraine," to raise an army, and he sends her to the rescue of Orléans. After Charles is crowned, Joan leads a disastrous campaign in Paris, where her brother dies. Then she's the victim of Charles's manipulations: she's captured in Burgundy, sold to the English, examined by Bishop Cauchon, found a heretic by the Inquisition, and burned at the stake.

Palermo, Sicily, 1984. Examining magistrate Giovanni Falcone allies with Tomasso Buscetta, a former mobster, to defeat the clan of Corleone, the ruthless Mafia faction that rules Cosa Nostra with an iron hand, cruelly eliminating all those who dare to oppose its immense power: other criminals, policemen, judges, even innocent civilians. One of them wants revenge, the other wants justice. But only one can survive such an unequal fight.