ajb's - Rented List

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Atom Egoyan himself stars as a Canadian photographer sent to Armenia to document historic churches for a calendar commission in this haunting, beguiling and poignant romantic drama.

Taking his Armenian wife with him as a translator, the couple's relationship begins to unravel as she becomes more and more drawn to her ethnic roots and to their local guide. A bold, precise and sometimes painfully honest depiction of love, loss and the strange twists of fate that life can throw our way, 'Calendar' is one of Egoyan's most accomplished and celebrated works.

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Ellen Barkin, who plays the trailer-trash, beer-swilling mother of Amber (Kirsten Dunst), and the homicidally ambitious mother (Kirstie Alley) of spoilt rich bitch Becky (Denise Richards) will stop at nothing to ensure their daughters win the Mount Rose teen beauty pageant.

Underneath the fresh-faced all-American faade of Mount Rose's contest to find the best, brightest and most beautiful, lie two roads to greatness: high hopes and homicide. In this game there can only be one survivor and it's all out war.

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"All Is True" explores the human story behind a dark and little known period in the life of William Shakespeare (Kenneth Branagh). The year is 1613, Shakespeare is the greatest writer of the age.

When his beloved Globe Theatre is burned to the ground, he decides to return to his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon. There he faces his neglected family. Still haunted by the death of his only son, Hamnet, he struggles to mend broken relationships with his wife, Anne (Judi Dench) and daughters. In so doing, he is ruthlessly forced to examine his own failings as an absent husband and father. In the search for peace, he must also finally confront the dark heart of his family's secrets and lies.

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"I, Tonya" tells the outrageous and at times hilarious true story of one of the biggest scandals in sporting history. Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) was a champion figure skater who's rebel attitude pushed the sport to new heights.

However, as Olympic pressure mounted, her life began to unravel - culminating in an alleged attack on her fiercest rival, un-paralleled press attention and a legacy no one would wish for.

Melissa McCarthy is masterful in the captivating account - based on a true story - of a down-and-out writer who resorts to lies, deceit and outright crime to get back on top.

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Set in Berlin, 1945, this powerful and provocative war drama retells the final days of the Second World War as recorded in the diaries of Adolf Hitler's private secretary, Traudl Junge, while barricaded with Hitler and his closest confidants in the Fuhrer's secret bunker.

Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel with an astonishing performance by Bruno Ganz as history's most notorious figure, this unprecedented and controversial insider's perspective is a gripping insight into the madness and desperation of Hitler in the final hours of the war as the Russian Army closes a ring around Berlin.

In 1947, Dalton Trumbo was Hollywood's top screenwriter until he was blacklisted for his political beliefs. Trumbo recounts how Dalton used words and wit to expose the injustice under the blacklist, which entangled everyone from gossip columnist Hedda Hopper to John Wayne and Kirk Douglas.

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"The Idiots" is about a group of people who confront the conventions of middle-class society by exploring their 'inner idiot'.

Liberated by fully experiencing their excessive feelings, aggression and primitive egotistical sexuality, members of the group must also deal with the aftermath of their idiocy.

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"Lucky" follows the spiritual journey of Harry Dean Stanton's character 'Lucky', a cantankerous, self-reliant 90 year old atheist, and the quirky characters that inhabit the Arizona town where he lives.

Having out-lived and out-smoked all of his contemporaries, the fiercely independent Lucky finds himself at the precipice of life, thrust into a journey of self-exploration, leading towards that which is so often unattainable: enlightenment. Released in the US just days after Stanton's death at age 91, 'Lucky', is at once a love letter to the life and career of Harry Dean Stanton as well as a meditation on mortality, loneliness, spirituality, and human connection.

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When Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), a bouncer from an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx, is hired to drive Dr.

Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a world-class Black pianist, on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South, they must rely on "The Green Book" to guide them to the few establishments that were then safe for African-Americans. Confronted with racism, danger as well as unexpected humanity and humor - they are forced to set aside differences to survive and thrive on the journey of a lifetime.

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In early 18th-century England, a frail Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) occupies the throne, and her closest friend, Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), governs the country while tending to Anne's ill health and volatile temper.

When new servant Abigail (Emma Stone) arrives, Sarah takes Abigail under her wing as she cunningly schemes to return to her aristocratic roots, setting off an outrageous rivalry to become the Queen's favourite.

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Clara (Sonia Braga), a 65 year old widow and retired music critic, was born into a wealthy and traditional family in Recife, Brazil. She is the last resident of the Aquarius, an original two-story building, constructed in the 1940s, in the upper-class, seaside Avenida Boa Viagem, Recife.

All the neighbouring apartments have already been acquired by a company which has other plans for that plot. Clara has pledged to only leave her place upon her death, and will engage in a cold war of sorts, a confrontation which is both mysterious, frightening and nerve-wracking. This tension both disturbs Clara and gives her that edge on her daily routine. It also gets her thinking about her loved ones, her past and her future.

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"The Widow" tells an ambitious, timely story about one woman's quest for the truth in one of the most volatile and lawless areas of the world.

Ever since the love of her life, Will, died in a plane crash in the Democratic Republic of Congo three years ago - Georgia (Kate Beckinsale) has lived as a recluse in the Welsh countryside - away from civilization and the comforts of 21st-century living. Now, she's flown to Kinshasa in the belief that Will didn't die after all…

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From Oscar winning writer/director Adam McKay (The Big Short) comes 'Vice', an audacious and darkly comedic look at former US Vice President Dick Cheney's stealthy rise from Washington intern to the most powerful man on the planet.

Oscar winner Christian Bale leads an all-star cast that includes Oscar nominees Steve Carell as the affable, yet steely Donald Rumsfeld, Amy Adams as Cheney's ambitious wife, and Oscar winner Sam Rockwell as the malleable George W. Bush. Spanning a half-century, Cheney's journey from rural Wyoming electrical worker to de facto President of the United States is a hilariously terrifying true tale of the use and misuse of institutional power.

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Chile, 1948: Senator Pablo Neruda, diplomat and future Nobel Prize-winning poet, accuses the government of betraying the Communist Party and is swiftly impeached. Pursued by the police, Neruda and his artist wife are forced into hiding and an intimate game of cat and mouse begins.

In Europe, the legend of the poet hounded by the policeman grows - and artists, led by Picasso, call for his freedom. Neruda, meanwhile, inspired by his transformative new life as a fugitive, writes his epic collection of poems, Canto General, capturing the turmoil of a Latin America in crisis. Paying homage to a mercurial creator who is impossible to pin down in conventional biography, this playful, inventive feature by acclaimed director Pablo Larrain (Jackie and Oscar-nominated NO) is the story of the escape, the investigation and the literary legend of a man once hailed as 'the greatest poet of the 20th century'. Starring Luis Gnecco and Gael Garcia Bernal, the film plays out like a road movie, inviting us to soar alongside Neruda in his poetry, his memory, and his deeply held - sometimes paradoxical - political ideals.