daniel-phillips's - Rented List

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The films of Karel Zeman, one of the masters of 20th Century fantasy cinema, ingeniously combine live-action and animation.

A joyous adventure that celebrates the wonders of nature, 'Journey to the Beginning of Time' sends four schoolboys on an epic and perilous voyage through prehistory, encountering cavemen, mammoths and dinosaurs along the way. Endlessly imaginative, Zeman uses a huge variety of innovative techniques to bring to life the lost worlds of the distant past, producing one of his most beguiling and magical works.

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Visionary Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman is recognised as one of the great masters of 20th Century fantasy cinema for his innovative combination of live-action and animation, along with the use of ingenious special effects.

Often described as the 'Czech Melies', his work has been a profound influence on generations of filmmakers from Jan Svankmajer to Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam to the Quay Brothers and Wes Anderson. 'A Jester's Tale' is one of Zeman's most celebrated achievements: a bold black comedy following the adventures of a ploughboy press-ganged into service on the battlefields of the devastating Thirty Years' War. Co-scripted by Pavel Juracek (Ikarie XB1, Daisies), this startlingly inventive film emerges as a sharp satire on war and human nature itself.

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Johnny (David Thewlis) is a frenetic and destructive outsider who tears through the lives of others like an emotional tornado.

On the run from Manchester, he seeks sanctuary with his ex-girlfriend Louise (Lesley Sharp) in London, where he immediately targets her vulnerable housemate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge) with his unique blend of predatory charm. From there he embarks on a nocturnal odyssey across the city, dragging other disaffected souls into his orbit as he spirals towards his own personal apocalypse.

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From director Damian Szifron and producer Pedro Almodovar comes six stories, each exploring a different facet of revenge and the various brilliant, mad, toe-curling and hilarious flavours in which it can be dished out.

Whether it's taking out a belligerent crime lord, getting even with officious parking enforcement, retribution for infidelity, or good old fashioned road rage, 'Wild Tales' takes acts of vengeance for infuriating, often all too familiar situations and blows them out to a bitter and hysterical end in this outrageous, tense and ferociously funny dark comedy.

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After aiding in the escape of a revolutionary poet, Cuchillo (Tomas Milian) is given the location for a stash of hidden gold intended to fund the Mexican Revolution.

Pursued by mercenaries, bandits, corrupt officials, an American gunslinger, and even his fiance - Cuchillo will have to use all of his tricks to stay alive.

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From the mind of the legendary cult filmmaker, Alejandro Jodorowsky, comes an epic imaginary autobiography depicting both the wonders and the hardships of existing in the substance we all call reality.

True to form, Jodorowsky takes us on a strange, mystic, fantastic and deeply surreal journey that no one else could, except this time the subject is his own early life, being raised by his strict, Stalin-adoring father who has plans to assassinate the right-wing Chilean president.

Meantime centres on an East End family, the Pollacks - Mavis, Frank and their sons Mark and Colin — and their experience of unemployment, poverty and life in early 1980s Britain. When Colin (Tim Roth) comes under the influence of skinhead Coxy (Gary Oldman), family tensions erupt into conflict-

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The Taliban have just seized power and a widow reluctantly decides to disguise her 12-year-old daughter as a boy - the Osama of the title - so that at least one family member can earn a living.

But the 'boy' is soon dragged off for religious instruction and military training and resultantly the disguise is uncovered, triggering a sharp slide into tragedy.

'Equinox Flower' is Yasujirô Ozu first foray into colour cinema and is a gentle observation of intergenerational conflict between a father and his daughter over her impending unapproved marriage.

'Tokyo Twilight' is film focused on family disintegration; it is also darkest masterpiece. Two adult sisters return to the family home and discover their long missing mother living with another man, leading to a destructive path of despair and isolation.

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Made the year before his career defining masterpiece, 'Tokyo Story', 'The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice' is one of Yasujiro Ozu's most beautiful domestic sagas, a subtly piercing portrait of a marriage coming quietly undone.

Secrets and deceptions strain the already tenuous relationship of a childless, middle aged couple, as the wife's city bred sophistication clashes with the husband's small town simplicity, and a generational sea change in the form of their headstrong, modern niece sweeps over their household. Ozu's expert grasp of family dynamics receives one of its most spirited treatments, with a wry, tender humour and an expansiveness that moves the action from the home, to the baseball stadiums and the shops of post-war Tokyo.

When a travelling kabuki troupe brings their show to a seaside port, Komajuro (Ganjiro Nakamura), an ageing actor, is reunited with his former lover, sake bar owner Oyoshi (Haruki Sugimura), and his illegitimate son Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), to the distress of his current mistress Sumiko (Machiko Kyo).

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Said and Khaled are walking time bombs. With explosives strapped to their bodies, the two young Palestinians slip into Israel, planning a suicide mission in Tel Aviv.

Can anything or anyone change their minds? Paradise Now - sweepingly powerful and intricately detailed, highly acclaimed and widely controversial - tells the story of these two lifelong friends and their mission of doom. Hany Abu-Assad directs, shooting this harrowing thriller in locations made equally harrowing by real-life missile attacks, exploding land mines, suspicious Palestinian factions and Israeli occupied forces, and the kidnapping of a crew member. The result is a film that knows its topic up close and provides no easy answers. Instead, Paradise Now lays bare the humanity and the horror for all to see, to ponder...and perhaps to change.

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In the brutal mountains of the Iran/Iraq border, two nomadic teachers, Reeboir and Said, roam the landscape in search of pupils. They carry their blackboards on their backs, sometimes using them as shelter, camouflage, and as shields from gunfire.

Reeboir encounters a group of young border smugglers for whom education has little meaning, whilst Said becomes involved with some old men seeking a safe route across the border to Iraq.

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Strange things are afoot in Bad City. The Iranian ghost town, home to prostitutes, junkies, pimps and other sordid souls, is a place that reeks of death and hopelessness, where a lonely vampire is stalking the towns most unsavory inhabitants.

But when boy meets girl, an unusual love story begins to blossom... blood red.