atm's - Favourites List

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The enigmatic samurai in Yojimbo is played by the great Toshiro Mifune as a scruffy, scratching, itinerant warrior who wanders into a strange town and right into the middle of two warring clans.

Showing his skills with the samurai sword within minutes of his arrival, he soon has the town's rival factions competing for his services.Kurosawa's genius for storytelling combines with thrilling swordplay, a healthy dose of black humour, a soundtrack every bit as atmospheric and amusing as Ennio Morricone's, and a towering performance from Mifune, to make Yojimbo an irresistible widescreen action movie.

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In one of cinemas most influential, and gripping, roles, James Dean plays Jim Stark, the new kid in town whose loneliness, frustration and anger mirrored those of most postwar teens - and reverberates more than 40 years later.

Natalie Wood (as Jim's girlfriend Judy) and Sal Mineo (in his screen debut as Jim's tag-along pal Plato) were Academy Award nominees for their achingly true performances.

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In Jean Beckers, Conversations With My Gardener a middle-aged landscape painter, played by Daniel Auteuil, recently separated, who has lived for many years in Paris, returns to the house in Provence where he grew up.

He hires a local gardener, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, and soon discovers they were best friends at school together. Based on a book by Henri Cueco, the film is simplicity itself, providing a vehicle for the talents of two fine actors. The old friends spend a lot of time talking, philosophising, and reminiscing. The artist, who, like the gardener, is never given a name, has a girlfriend who stays for a while. His daughter visits with her fiancé, who is about the same age as her father and the gardener falls ill. There isn't much more to it than that but this relaxed and in some ways quintessential French film is appealing simply because it's content to explore, in a gentle, meandering fashion, a long-standing friendship.

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Frank Agnew is a law abiding detective at Blackmoss CID in Edinburgh. However, when his girlfriend Sinada goes missing, his colleague Joe Geddes informs him that his corrupt partner Brendan McCann has murdered her and so Agnew, with Geddes' help, takes revenge.

As the plot thickens, it occurs to Agnew that Geddes may have had his own reasons to want McCann dead. And when another body is discovered horribly mutilated in the boot of McCann's car, Agnew soon finds himself leading an investigation into a spate of murders, one of which he himself committed ... Agnew then receives a phonecall from his "dead" girlfriend's mobile and he realises that she may not actually be dead and begins to try and track her down ... Will he ever find Sinada?

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Based on a true story. When Stebbi, a student struggling through his final days of college, is arrested for a violent attack on a stranger an old friend offers his help.

Stebbi quickly finds himself embroiled in a dangerous gang where his eagerness to impress means involvement in bank robberies and the world of drugs. As the body count rises and the stakes spiral out of control, he looks for his chance to escape the violence once and for all, with devastating consequences...

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Living on social security in the protected environment of his mothers home, Hilmir has never felt the urge to venture beyond the confines of his neighbourhood, 101 Reykjavik, and is determined to resist adulthood at all cost.

However he soon finds out that life is busy making other plans for him when he discovers that the woman he had just been to bed with happens to be his mother's lesbian lover, and may be carrying his child.

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French director Claude Berri's stunning adaptation of the acclaimed Marcel Pagnol novel is the winner of numerous international awards and is the world's most popular foreign language film ever.

City-dweller Jean de Florette moves his family to the Provence countryside in the 1920s to forge a new life as a farmer. But his proud, cocky neighbouring rival Le Ppet schemes with his simple-minded nephew Ugolin to acquire some nearby land ensuring the novice owner never discovers an all-important natural spring on the property.

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In the year 2044 time travel has not yet been invented. But in 30 years it will have been... Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) works as a looper, a futuristic assassin who eliminates targets sent back in time by a criminal organisation.

The only rule is that you do not let your target escape -even if that target is you. The rules are put to the test when Joe is called upon to "close his loop" and assassinate his future self (Bruce Willis). In failing to pull the trigger, so begins a desperate race against the clock as Joe begins to unravel his own future and older Joe's past.

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Ken Watanabe stars in the leading role as Jubei a relic of the Tokugawa Shogunate and an infamous and feared samurai. After the fall of the Shogunate regime, Jubei fought in a series of vicious battles slaying all men in his path and then vanished without a trace.

More than 10 quiet years pass but the return of an old friend and poverty leads Jubei to abandon his peaceful life with his family, as he finds himself ensnared in the life of violence he thought he left behind. With his former comrade-in-arms, he confronts the hypocrites who profess to represent justice. Again in this new era, a vicious circle of violence begins.

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LAPD police officers Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala are bonded by friendship and a crusade to clean up the violent streets of South Central, Los Angeles.

Their mission is to serve and protect, their objective is to survive until the end of watch, that last moment in an officer's patrol when he's finally off duty. But when a routine traffic enquiry results in them seizing a large cache of weapons, Brian and Mike are marked for death by a notorious drugs cartel. Thrown into a world of mayhem and carnage, both officers are forced to risk their lives in the name of the law.

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Following on from the success of The Lives of Others and The Counterfeiters, the award winning Four Minutes sees wrongfully imprisoned piano prodigy Jenny, a molotov cocktail of suppressed emotions and uncontrollable rage, locked in a constant battle with those around her.

Together with Traude, a professional musician who wants to expose Jenny's talents at a national competition, the pair develop a volatile teacher-pupil relationship. As the duo plan their intent to make it to the finals, it soon becomes apparent that, once there, Jenny will have only four minutes to prove herself, and no guarantee of freedom afterwards.

Dwight Evans is a mysterious outsider whose quiet life on the margins is turned upside down when he returns to his childhood home to carry out an act of vengeance. Proving himself an amateur assassin, he winds up in a brutal fight to protect his estranged family.

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Danish Academy Award Winner Ulrich Thomsen stars as Michael, a man who has everything under control; a successful military career, a beautiful wife and two loving daughters. His younger brother Jannik is a drifter, living on the edge of the law.

When Michael is sent to Afghanistan on a UN peacekeeping mission, it is not long before events turn dramatic and he is missing in action - presumed dead. Sarah is comforted by Jannik who against all the odds takes responsibility for himself and his brother's family. It soon becomes clear that Jannik and Sarah's feelings have developed beyond mutual sympathy - the fragility of their emotions is constantly under threat as the balance between husband and wife and the two brothers changes forever.

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The year is 1959. A young boy, Ingemar (Anton Glanzelius), is obsessed by two things - his namesake fighting for the World Heavyweight boxing title and the fate of Laika, the dog sent in to space by Russia.

As his mother's health deteriorates and she no longer has the strength to cope with him, Ingemar is sent to stay with relatives in the country, much like Laika's journey into the unknown.

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When charismatic English professor John Keating (Robin Williams) arrives at a strict boys academy, his unconventional teaching methods breathe new life into the curriculum steeped in tradition.

With his wit and wisdom, Keating inspires his students to pursue individual passions and make their lives extraordinary.