craigie's - Rented List

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Two icons from the golden age of Hollywood, Oscar winners Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, take their famous feud onscreen in Robert Aldrich's newly restored thriller.

In fierce, no-holds-barred performances, Bette Davis portrays aging ex-child star Baby Jane Hudson while Joan Crawford plays Blanche, the crippled sister Jane torments psychologically. As the sisters descend into madness, the tension builds to a shocking ending...

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Sergei Paradjanov's celebrated, dreamlike masterpiece paints an astonishing portrait of the 18th century Armenian poet Sayat Nova, the 'King of Song'. Paradjanov's aim was not a conventional biography but a cinematic expression of his work, resulting in an extraordinary visual poem.

Key moments in his subject's life are illustrated through a series of exquisitely orchestrated tableaux filled with rich colour and stunning iconography, each scene a celluloid painting alive with stylised movement. One of cinema's most revered and beautiful films, The Colour of Pomegranates is a unique and rewarding experience that haunts the memory long after viewing.

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The plot concerns a yachting trip by a small group of jaded socialites, including Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), an aging architect who sold out for easy money long ago, his mistress Anna (Lea Massari), and her friend Claudia (Monica Vitti), who doesn't fit in with the wealthy jet-setters' dissolute

ethics. When Anna disappears during a tour of a volcanic island, Claudia initially blames Sandro's emotionally barren behavior toward her. As they search the island, however, Claudia and Sandro grow closer and - when it is apparent that Anna is gone forever - become lovers. Unfortunately, Sandro cannot find anything decent inside himself and betrays Claudia with a local prostitute. Caught in the act, Sandro has a heartrending breakdown on a desolate beach, but Claudia silently forgives him.

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Malle's a debut feature, made when he was only 25 is a tense thriller starring Jeanne Moreau as Florence and Julian Tavernier as Maurice, a pair of lovers who conspire to murder Florence's husband in the most ingenious manner. However, not everything goes quite as planned.

Lift to the Scaffold is arguably the first film of the French New Wave with its arresting camerawork by cinematographer Henri Decae, who also shot the debut film of Truffaut and Chabrol. With its sultry black and white palate, Paris locations and an improvised jazz score by the legendary Miles Davis, Lift to the Scaffold is an unforgettable slice of 50s French cool.

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Run by Max (Paul Rogers) and his brother Sam (Cyril Cusack), a sinister, bare violently male house in North London is where Pinter's dark vision of familial cruelty and power games unfolds.

When Teddy (Michael Jayston) brings his wife Ruth (Vivien Merchant) home to meet his family for the first time, murky secrets are revealed and old wounds are reopened. Ian Holm gives one of the finest performances of his career as vicious thug Lenny. The screenplay differs little from the original play, but Sir Peter Hall uses the camera to create unique imagery and symbolism based on his original Royal Shakespeare Company stage triumph. Malevolent, chilling and with the blackest of humour, The Homecoming is one of the lost gems of 70's cinema, and one of the most important pieces of drama from the last fifty years.

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Bogie's on the run and Bacall's at his side in Delmer Daves' stylish film-noir thriller that's the third of four films Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made together. Bogart is Vincent Parry, a prison escapee framed for murder who emerges from plastic surgery with a new face.

Bacall is Irene Jansen, his lone ally. In sharp support, Agnes Moorehead plays a venomous harpy finding pleasure in the unhappiness of others. The leads' chemistry is undeniable, augmented here with exceptional tenderness. Exceptional too are San Francisco locations and creative camerawork that shows Vincent's point of view - but not his face - until bandages are removed. Lest Irene get ideas, post-surgery Vincent tells her: "Don't change yours. I like it just as it is". So do we.

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Widely regarded as Tarkovsky's finest film, 'Andrei Rublev' charts the life of the great icon painter through a turbulent period of 15th Century Russian history, a period marked by endless fighting between rival Princes and Tatar invastions.

Made on an epic scale, it does not flinch from portraying the savagery of the time, from which, almost inexplicably, the serenity of Rublev's art arose. The great set-pieces - the sack of Vladimir, the casting of the bell, the pagan ceremonies of St. John's night and the Russian crucifixion are tours-de-force of visceral film-making.

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In the not-so-distant future, Earth is barren of all flora and fauna, with what remains of the planet's former ecosystems preserved aboard a fleet of greenhouses orbiting in space.

When the crews are ordered to destroy the remaining specimens, one botanist, Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern), rebels and flees towards Saturn in a desperate bid to preserve his own little piece of Earth that was, accompanied only by the ship's three service robots.

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'Beat' Takeshi -Japan's most popular and charismatic star plays the lead role in this very original tale of the last days of a tough Tokyo gangster.

'Beat' Takeshi plays Murakawa , an established and ruthless Yakuza, sent outside his usual turf to intervene in gang war on the tropical island of Okinawa. Things go badly wrong and he and his gang get caught into the crossfire. Forced to retreat to seaside hideaway they kill time and fool around on the beach, but then their enemies start to pick them off. Takeshi decides to go on the offensive for a final and breathtaking showdown...

Armed with only one word - Tenet - and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.

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Melville's most personal film, rooted in his wartime experiences in the French Resistance, Army Of Shadows is a hard, tense drama, depicting man's capacity for both bravery and evil. In the winter of 1942-1943, as France exist s under German occupation, an underground cell operates in the shadows.

In the clandestine world of the Resistance, the freedom fighters work against their enemies under the constant risk of betrayal, ordinary men and women in an extraordinary situation. Suffused throughout with a mood of foreboding, the suspense, heightened with directorial mastery, reaches its peak as the Resistance attempt to free a prisoner from the Gestapo headquarters, in one of Melville's trademark set-pieces of iconic action.

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The year is 2293.

Society as we know it has broken down centuries ago with the Earth's population split into three classes: the Brutals, who work the land and are forbidden from reproducing; their overseers, the Executioners; and the highly civilised Eternals, who are protected from the outside world by a force-field. But when an Executioner, Zed (Sean Connery), smuggles himself into their isolated paradise, he risks unbalancing the system and threatening the status quo...

Marcel and Arletty's quiet, economically but emotionally rich life is disrupted when she is diagnosed with a serious disease. At the same time, Marcel takes a young illegal immigrant under his wing.

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As the private eye of private eyes, Steve Martin is Rigby Reardon. He's tough, rough and ready to take on anything when Juliet Forrest appears on the scene with a case: her father, a noted scientist, philanthropist and cheesemarker has died mysteriously.

Reardon immediately smells a rat and follows a complex maze of clues that lead to the 'Carlotta Lists'. With a little help from his 'friends' Alan Ladd, Barbara Stanwyck, Ray Milland, Burt Lancaster, Humphrey Bogart, Charles Laughton, and others, Reardon gets his man.

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Former Police officer Nishi (Takeshi Kitano) feels responsible for the shattered lives of his loved ones. His partner Horibe (Ren Ôsugi) has been crippled in a disastrous stakeout, a colleague is shot dead by the same villain, and his own wife has a terminal illness.

In debt to a yakuza loanshark, Nishi conceives a bank robbery to provide for his partner, help the dead cop's widow, and take one last holiday throughout Japan with his wife and share a final taste of happiness...