The Secret Garden
Release date: 1993-08-13
Votes: 951
Genres: Drama, Family, Fantasy
A young British girl born and reared in India loses her neglectful parents in an earthquake. She is returned to England to live at her uncle's castle. Her uncle is very distant due to the loss of his wife ten years before. Neglected once again, she begins exploring the estate and discovers a garden that has been locked and forgotten. Aided by one of the servants' boys, she begins restoring the garden, and eventually discovers some other secrets of the manor.
Reviews
Wuchak
_**Beautiful, reverent, awe-inspiring**_ To be honest, I remember seeing previews of this movie way back when it came out (in 1993) and thinking to myself, "WHY would anyone want to see such a film and why would anyone make it?" Well, about five years later it appeared on TV one night and I started watching, fully expecting to turn it off within 20 minutes or so. WOW -- was I ever wrong! What I saw was beautiful and captivating, artistic and entrancing -- filmmaking of the highest order. "The Secret Garden" is a movie of such artistic quality that it ranks up there with the hallowed original "Apocalypse Now" (although they're totally different genres). It's no surprise that Francis Ford Coppola had his hand in both pics -- he was, of course, the director of "Apocalypse Now" and he's the executive producer of "The Secret Garden." In any event, the cinematography is breathtaking and the score is awe-inspiring, ranking with the best in cinematic history. ***PLOT SPOILER*** The story's about a spoiled 10-year old English girl, orphaned in India, who comes home to live on her uncle's vast estate in the early 1900s. The girl, Mary, finds herself trapped in a mysterious, colossal manor -- almost a castle -- tyrannically managed by a life-stifling witch, Mrs. Medlock, in the frequent absence of her uncle, Lord Cravin. Because Mary is intelligent, independent and sly she is able to reconnoiter the manor and learn its forbidding secrets. The biggest secret is that her aunt died ten years earlier and her son, Colin, still lives there, albeit confined to a bed, sickly and unable to walk. Her uncle never healed from this heartbreak. Mary discovers another secret in her explorations, a hidden garden, closed off and neglected since her aunt's death. After meeting the sickly and sad Colin, Mary inevitably finds a way to sneak him into the garden along with her pal Dickon. She senses that Colin isn't as sick as everyone is convinced; she knows the best thing would be to get him out of the dreary castle and the oppressive clutches of Mrs. Medlock. Mary and her secret garden are the keys to restoring health, life and freedom to Colin, Lord Cravin and the gloomy manor. ***END SPOILER*** "The Secret Garden" is sort of a 1990's version of the outstanding "Pollyanna" with Hayley Mills (1960). Both pics involve a young girl restoring a spirit of joy and liberty to a lifeless community. The difference is that Mary is not even remotely the "glad girl" Pollyanna. In fact, look for the hilarious line from the old gardener who responds to Mary's puzzlement concerning her lack of friends. "The Secret Garden" is no doubt labeled a "children's film," which is a shame because it transcends such a limiting category. The ending's too quaint for my tastes but, nevertheless, this is a beautiful work of wonder and deep mystery, which can be enjoyed by people of all ages -- children and adults. The film was shot in England and runs 101 minutes. GRADE: A
Movie Recommendation
The Minimalists: Less Is Now2021-01-01They've built a movement out of minimalism. Longtime friends Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus share how our lives can be better with less.More...
The Secret Garden2020-07-08Mary Lennox is born in India to wealthy British parents who never wanted her. When her parents suddenly die, she is sent back to England to live with her uncle. She meets her sickly cousin, and the two children find a wondrous secret garden lost in the grounds of Misselthwaite Manor.More...
Tough Enough2006-03-09From the youth directed novel of the same name by Greogor Tressnow comes a film by Detlev Buck that is a realistic portrait of life in the section of Berlin called Neukölln. It’s about power and weakness, delinquents and victims, and the difficulties a 15-year-old faces in a poor and criminal environment.More...
D'Artagnan's Daughter1994-08-24It is 1654, in the South of France. When horsemen follow a runaway slave into the convent where he's taken sanctuary and kill both the fugitive and the Mother Superior, they little realise that one of the novices is the spirited daughter of retired musketeer D'Artagnan.More...
Elementary2017-01-04Florence is a school teacher devoted to her students. When she encounters young Sacha, a child with problems, she will do everything she can to help him, even to the point of neglecting her own children, her own life, and of questioning her vocation. Little by little Florence realizes that learning has no age limit.More...
End of the Spear2005-10-24"End of the Spear" is the story of Mincayani, a Waodani tribesman from the jungles of Ecuador. When five young missionaries, among them Jim Elliot and Nate Saint, are speared to death by the Waodani in 1956, a series of events unfold to change the lives of not only the slain missionaries' families, but also Mincayani and his people.More...
Candleshoe1977-12-16When ex-con artist Harry claims that a secret treasure is hidden inside Candleshoe, an English estate, he creates an elaborate plan to find and steal the prize. By convincing a girl named Casey to impersonate the estate owner's long-lost granddaughter, Harry hopes to uncover the treasure's location. But when Casey has a change of heart, she must follow the clues and find the treasure, in order to save Candleshoe and stop Harry before it is too late.More...
The Secret Garden1987-11-30When a spoiled English girl living in 19th century India loses both parents in a cholera epidemic, she is sent back to England to live in a country mansion. The lord is a strange old man-- frail and deformed, immensely kind but so melancholy. She wishes to discover what has caused him so much sorrow and to bring joy back to the household. It all must have something to do with the screams and wails which echo through the house at night and no one wants to talk about.More...
Mardaani 22019-12-12Officer Shivani Shivaji Roy is stationed at Kota where she goes against a ferocious serial killer who rapes and murders women.More...
The Bloody Hundredth2024-03-14Meet the real-life airmen who inspired Masters of the Air as they share the harrowing and transformative events of the 100th Bomb Group.More...
Kadosh1999-06-10The year 2000 approaches in Jerusalem's Orthodox Mea Shearim quarter, where the women work, keep house, and have children so the men can study the Torah and the Talmud. Rivka is happily and passionately married to Meir, but they remain childless. The yeshiva's rabbi, who is Meir's father, wants Meir to divorce Rivka: "a barren woman is no woman." Rivka's sister, Malka, is in love with Yakov, a Jew shunned by the yeshiva as too secular. The rabbi arranges Malka's marriage to Yossef, whose agitation when fulfilling religious duties approaches the grotesque. Can the sisters sort out their hearts' desires within this patriarchal world? If not, have they any other options?More...
Morning Sun2003-09-24The film Morning Sun attempts in the space of a two-hour documentary film to create an inner history of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (c.1964-1976). It provides a multi-perspective view of a tumultuous period as seen through the eyes—and reflected in the hearts and minds—of members of the high-school generation that was born around the time of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and that came of age in the 1960s. Others join them in creating in the film’s conversation about the period and the psycho-emotional topography of high-Maoist China, as well as the enduring legacy of that period.More...
Pluto's Quin-puplets1937-11-26Pluto wants to chase the sausage man, but Fifi convinces him to look after their five rambunctious puppies instead. The puppies end up in the basement, where they tangle with a compressed air tank, paint, a jug of hooch, and other hazards. Fifi returns and finds a drunk Pluto, paint on everyone, and gets very angry.More...
Aperana Street 522012-01-20In his film Rua Aperana 52 Júlio Bressane describes the invention of a landscape, the topology of a corner of Rio de Janeiro. The film consists of a series of photographs taken between 1909 and 1955 by, among others, Bressane's parents at and around the address used as a title. These are interlarded with scenes from films made between 1957 and 2005, bringing the total fictional time the film covers to almost a century; one hundred years in which the winding road featured in almost every shot structures the new landscape behind the Aperana, which means 'wrong road'. Rua Aperana 52 is autobiographical, as it is a landscape from Bressane's youth, but it is also not so; it is more a multi-subjective mythology of a place seen through all those films and photographs. Bressane refers to his editing as an intuitive form of thinking aimed at evoking moods which make the viewer the new witness of the fictional landscape. A fiction about a fiction,More...
Doogal2006-02-24An adorable candy-loving mutt goes on a mission to save the world.More...
A Little Princess1995-05-10When her father enlists to fight for the British in WWI, young Sara Crewe goes to New York to attend the same boarding school her late mother attended. She soon clashes with the severe headmistress, Miss Minchin, who attempts to stifle Sara's creativity and sense of self-worth.More...
A Room with a View1986-03-07When Lucy Honeychurch and chaperon Charlotte Bartlett find themselves in Florence with rooms without views, fellow guests Mr Emerson and son George step in to remedy the situation. Meeting the Emersons could change Lucy's life forever but, once back in England, how will her experiences in Tuscany affect her marriage plans?More...
One Love Manchester2017-06-04Live coverage of the concert set up by Ariana Grande at Old Trafford cricket ground to benefit those affected by the May 2017 Manchester bomb attack. Performers include Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Coldplay, Katy Perry, Take That, Pharrell Williams, Niall Horan, Miley Cyrus, Usher, Robbie Williams, Little Mix and The Black Eyed Peas.More...
Party Monster2003-09-05The New York club scene of the 80s and 90s was a world like no other. Into this candy-colored, mirror ball playground stepped Michael Alig, a wannabe from nowhere special. Under the watchful eye of veteran club kid James St. James, Alig quickly rose to the top... and there was no place to go but down.More...
The Shaggy Dog2006-03-09The tale of a workaholic dad-turned-dog who finds that being man's best friend shows him the most important job - being a great dad.More...
Similar Movies
Becks
2018-02-09After a crushing breakup with her girlfriend, a Brooklyn musician moves back in with her Midwestern mother. As she navigates her hometown, playing for tip money in an old friend's bar, an unexpected relationship begins to take shape.Mavka: The Forest Son...
2023-03-02Mavka, a Soul of the Forest, faces an impossible choice between love and her duty as Guardian of the Heart of the Forest when she falls for a human, a talented young musician named Lukas.Veľké šťastie
1982-12-27There is no descriptionThe Precipice
1984-01-19Boris Pavlovich Raisky, a bored Petersburg aesthet, comes to his family estate in a small town on the Volga. He hoped to find boredom and the faint-hearted provincials there, and did not expect that in the outback he was waiting for real life, dramatic love and serious passions. Boris Raisky’s estate is a blessed corner where everything pleases the eye: a native old house, tender greenery of birches and lindens, a silver strip of the Volga in the distance. And only a mysterious precipice at the end of the garden frightens the inhabitants of the estate. According to legend, at the bottom of it in ancient times, a jealous husband killed his wife and rival. “Precipice” is a symbolic word in the fate of the main character Vera. It fell to her to fall in love with a nihilist and a cynic who preaches "love for a term", painfully choose between feeling and duty, finally, go down to her beloved person in a cliff, cut off everything that connected with her former life...A Dwarf Launches a Li...
1981-10-17A dwarf and his poor, but loving, family who are forced out of their house by a real estate agent.Whale Hunting
1984-03-31A disillusioned student meets a eccentric beggar and a mute prostitute he falls in love with. Together, without money, they cross South Korea to help the girl go home.Our Twisted Hero
1992-08-15Han Byung-tae, who teaches at a private after-school academy in Seoul, receives word that his old teacher has passed away and sets off to the rural village where he attended elementary school. In the train, he reminisces about the tough fights he used to get into back in the day.A Whale for the Killi...
1981-02-01A conservationst, stranded with his family at a Newfoundland coastal resort, flies in the face of custom and fights an entire community to prevent a trapped whale's slaughter with only the support of his wife and one of the locals.Invisible Man
1954-12-29When an invisible man is run down by a car it’s up to an eager young reporter and a strange clown to bring a dangerous gang to justice.The Tree and the Swin...
2013-11-12Coming home to make amends with her estranged father, Eleni finds herself confronted with an unexpected kinship.Tomorrow and Thereaft...
2017-09-27Mathilde is nine years old. Her parents have separated. She lives with her mother, a fragile person who hovers at the edge of madness. It is a story of a unique love between a daughter and her mother.The Nightingale
2027-02-11The lives of two French sisters are torn apart by the onset of World War II.Checker Tobi 3 - Die ...
2026-01-08Tobi revisits an old childhood riddle: Who leaves the deepest traces in the earth? His search takes him to places like Madagascar, Spitsbergen, and Mexico, where he uncovers what connects them and finds the answer he was missing as a child.The Glory of Life
2024-03-14Because of the power of love, the last year of Franz Kafka's life becomes his happiest. The well-known writer has never before been able to allow himself to experience intimacy, he suffers from tuberculosis and is dependent on his overbearing family. In the summer of 1923, he met Dora Diamant in the seaside resort Graal-Müritz on the Baltic Sea coast, where he is convalescing and she is working in a Jewish Volksheim. He is a man of world, the 14 years younger woman is from the deep East, he can write, she can dance. She has both feet firmly on the ground, he is always hovering a little above it. She embraces the indicative, he gets tangled up in the conjunctive. But the worldly wise Dora accepts him as he is. And he accepts her. Together they go to Berlin and when Franz's health deteriorates rapidly, to a sanatorium in Austria. They are granted a single year together until Franz Kafka's health deteriorates incurable. However their year together allows them to feel the glory of life.La tarde del domingo
1957-05-25There is no descriptionThe Night of the Hunt...
1955-07-27In Depression-era West Virginia, a serial-killing preacher hunts two young children who know the whereabouts of a stash of money.Midnight Cowboy
1969-05-25Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.All-Round Appraiser Q...
2014-03-13In this adaptation of the popular eponymous mystery novel by Keisuke Matsuoka, Paris provides the gorgeous backdrop for a grand intrigue involving the world’s most iconic artistic treasure: the Mona Lisa. Minds will be blown, puzzles will be solved, but will a 500-year-old curse be removed?Wood Job!
2014-05-10After failing his university entrance exam, Yuki Hirano sets his eyes on the role of a forestry trainee. Setting off for training he doubts his decision many times, but eventually after passing the training course, he is sent to Kamusari Village for a year of work experience - where he becomes assimilated with the beauty of nature and the warm-hearted people of the village.Cold Blooded
2007-09-14The meeting between a fragile woman and a depressed soldier builds a dangerous alliance.