Best History Movies of 2005

A sweeping romantic epic set in Japan in the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.

During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruits a group of Mossad agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.

The story of journalist Edward R. Murrow's stand against Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunts in the early 1950s.

As World War II rages, the elite Sixth Ranger Battalion is given a mission of heroic proportions: push 30 miles behind enemy lines and liberate over 500 American prisoners of war.

A drama about explorer John Smith and the clash between Native Americans and English settlers in the 17th century.

Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life? Jarecki's shrewd and intelligent polemic would seem to give an affirmative answer to each of these questions.

Debra Winger, Oris Erhuero and Idris Elba star in this drama framed by the Rwandan genocide.

HBO miniseries about the the public and private lives of the later years of Queen Elizabeth I.

The Virgin Queen explores the full sweep of Elizabeth's life: from her days of fear as a potential victim of her sister's terror; through her great love affair with Robert Dudley; into her years of triumph over the Armada; and finally her old age and her last, enigmatic relationship with her young protégé, the Earl of Essex.