cato's - Rented List

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"Fantomas", the mysterious arch-criminal who holds Paris in the grip of terror, was first brought to the screen in this legendary serial by celebrated French cinema pioneer Louis Feuillade.

The creation of authors Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, 'Fantomas' perpetrated the most appalling crimes in 32 hugely popular pulp novels and became a cult favourite of the avante garde, including the painters Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali. Feuillade's serial was one of cinema's earliest and most strikingly original crime dramas, starring Rene Navarre as Fantomas, the master of disguise and leader of a vast army of street thugs, and Edmond Breon as his nemesis, Inspector Juve.

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Rang De Basanti is a story about the youth of India today. A young, London based film maker chances upon the diaries of her grandfather, who served in the British police force in India during the freedom struggle.

Excited about these memoirs, she makes plans to shoot a film on the Indian revolutionaries mentioned in the diaries. She comes down to Delhi, and casts a group of five friends to play the pivotal roles of these revolutionaries. However, products of modern India, the five youngsters initially refuse to be part of the project, as they don't identify with these characters from the past. Not surprising, considering that they're part of a generation of Indians that believes in consumerism. To them issues like patriotism and giving one's life for one's beliefs is the stuff stuffy text books are made of. They would rather party than be patriots. In the film both the 1930's British India and the India today run parallel and intersect with each other at crucial points. As the film reaches its resolution the line between past and present blur's, as they become one in spirit.

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The Glass Key is based on the popular Dashiell Hammett novel. The Glass Key follows the story of Paul Madvig - a cone-corrupt politician who's decided to give up his past and join forces with Ralph Henry, a respectable candidate in an upcoming election.

However, Madvig's crooked history is hard to forget when he finds himself at the centre of a murder plot. In this early collaboration between Donlevy, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, unforgettable performances and masterful directing by Stuart Heislen make this a truly classic film noir.

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Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme direct this French documentary exploring life in Paris in May 1962. Following the end of the Algerian War, it was the first spring in 23 years that the country had not been engaged in conflict.

The footage includes interviews with members of the public who discuss their own lives as well as wider social and political topics.

The spell of an enchantress opens this classic fairy tale, turning a cruel prince into a hideous beast. to break the spell, the Beast must win the love of beautiful, book-loving Belle before the last petal falls from an enchanted rose.

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Hard-bitten air force major Frank Cross (Dolph Lundgren) has become the people's hero and his superior's villain by defying orders in order to fly a mercy mission to help starving Kurds.

Unable to punish him, the Pentagon assigns him to the President (Roy Scheider) as the guardian of his 'black bag' - a high-tech briefcase containing the 'go-codes' for launching America's nuclear arsenal. In a violent ambush, terrorist grab the briefcase and hurl Cross off a 10th floor balcony, but you can't kill Cross that easily! Following an explosive chase across land, sea and air, the heavily armed terrorists stage a vicious takeover of a Baltic missile factory. Unleashing a catastrophic warning shot, they launch a Peacekeeper nuclear missile that destroys Mount Rushmore. Then their chilling demands are made - unless the President kills himself on live TV, more nuclear strikes will be targeted on Washington DC! The odds are overwhelming... The countdown has started...

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A swiftly paced satire that incorporates Godard's advocacy of Maoist principles, La Chinoise largely eschews a linear narrative in favour of a collage of slogans and conversations.

The plot centres around a small group of Parisian students who discus the implications of the cultural revolution in China and how it may be possible to effect, by means of terrorism, a similar political and cultural upheaval in the West. Featuring the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen and the cinematography of Godard's nouvelle vague counterpart Raoul Coutard, La Chinoise also pays meticulous detail to design so as to include all the traditional accoutrements of Maoism.

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Marziyeh Meshkini's compelling and poignant study of the elementary problems faced by women in Eastern societies looks at three different generations in a triptych of subtle, bittersweet and surreal episodes.

In the first, a little girl, Hava, has reached her ninth birthday and finds that she must put away her childhood and accept the responsibilities of becoming a woman. The second focuses on a girls' cycling race and on Ahoo, the young woman leading the way, who is hounded by her husband and family to give up her simple sport. The final episode concerns an old woman, determined to acquire all the material possessions she has never had in her life to create her final, perfect home. Ultimately, The Day I Became A Woman is an eloquent and poetic celebration of the spirit and dignity of women.

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Directed by Anthony Asquith (The Browning Version, The Way to the Stars) 'A Cottage on Dartmoor' is an embroiled melodrama, a tale of love and revenge, set on the bleak landscape of Dartmoor.

Overlooked by critics eager to heap praise upon his contemporary, Hitchcock, and the much lauded Blackmail (released the same year), 'A Cottage on Dartmoor' is a thoughtful distillation of the best of European silent film techniques from a director steeped in the work of the Soviet avant-garde and German expressionism. One of the last silent films to be made in Britain before the talkies revolutionized cinema, Asquith's film is a virtuoso piece of filmmaking, a final passionate cry in defence of an art form soon to be obsolete. The film is presented here with an original piano score composed and performed by Stephen Horne.

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Jeremiah is just a kid. But his childhood is slipping away, lost on the road with a mother who works as a truck-stop prostitute in the southern states of America.

Briefly escaping the seedy world of fleapit motels and strip joints, Jeremiah is bounced between his foster parents and his god-fearing grandparents. But inevitably he always ends up back with his mom and the lowlifes and junkies that surround her. Watching his mother’s descent into drug-fuelled madness, the young boy is forced into a desperate struggle to survive and grow. His only hope? To cling on to his childish innocence…

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They double-crossed Walker, took his $93,000 cut of the heist and left him for dead, but they didn't finish the job. Big mistake. He - someday, somehow - is going to finish them.

Lee Marvin is in full antihero mode as remorseless Walker, talking the talk and walking the walk in John Boorman's (Deliverance) edgy neo-noir classic filled with imaginative New Wave style, blunt dialogue and Walker's relentless quest that, one by one, smashes into the corporate pecking order of a crime group called the Organisation. Angie Dickinson plays the accomplice who uses her seductive wiles to ensnare one of Walker's prey.

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Stephen Dillane plays Jakob Beer, a man whose life is haunted by his childhood experiences during WWII. As a child in Poland he is orphaned during wartime then saved by a compassionate Greek archaeologist.

Years later, having moved to Canada, the grown up Jakob has become a writer struggling to articulate his childhood horrors, haunted by the mystery of his sister's fate. But after his troubled emotions lead to the break-up of his marriage to the free-spirited Alex, played by Rosamund Pike, Jakob must exorcise the ghosts of his past if he is to close a traumatic chapter of his life and find beauty in the present. Based on the beloved best-selling novel by award winning writer Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces is a touching testimony to the power of remembrance and redemption.

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From visionary director Chris Marker comes 'Level Five' the story of Laura, a computer game designer.

Whilst working on a new World War II game following the epic battle of Okinawa, Japan she searches the internet for background information and finds harrowing eye witness accounts, disturbing pictures and upsetting interviews. This discovery leads her to look deeper into the reasoning behind the war and in-turn allows her to look at her own life in a new way.

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An army lieutenant (Dean Harens), recently jilted by his fiancee, finds himself introduced to a New Orleans bordello by a drinking companion. Here he meets singer Jackie Lamont (Deanna Durbin) - a woman with a dark past and an even darker secret...

Her real name is Abigail Manette and her husband, Robert Manette (Gene Kelly), is a convicted murderer serving life in prison - or so she believes. Unknown to her, Robert has broken out of jail and is intent on tracking her down. He's consumed with jealousy, obsessed with the idea she's been unfaithful to him - and has already decided that the hapless army lieutenant is really her secret lover....

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While awaiting her husband's return from war, Grace (Nicole Kidman) and her two young children live an unusually isolated existence behind the locked doors and drawn curtains of a secluded island mansion.

Then, after three mysterious servants arrive and it becomes chillingly clear that there is far more to this house than can be seen, Grace finds herself in a terrifying fight to save her children and keep her sanity.