del's - Favourites List

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Leo (Albert Finney), a likeable Irish gangster boss, rules an Eastern city along with Tom (Gabriel Byrne), his trusted lieutenant and counsellor. But just as their authority is challenged by an Italian underboss and his ruthless henchman Leo and Tom also fall for the same woman (Marcia Gay Harden).

Tom, caught in the jaws of a gangland power struggle, walks a deadly tightrope as he tries to control and manipulate its violent outcome.

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Jerry (William H. Macy), a small-town Minnesota car salesman is bursting at the seams with debt... but he's got a plan. He's going to hire two thugs (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife in a scheme to collect a hefty ransom from his wealthy father-in-law.

It's going to be a snap and nobody's going to get hurt... until people start dying. Enter Police Chief Marge (Frances McDormand), a coffee-drinking, parka-wearing - and extremely pregnant -investigator who'll stop at nothing to get her man. And if you think her small-time investigative skills will give the crooks a run for their ransom... you betcha!

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'Paris, Texas' is probably Wim Wenders' most well known, critically acclaimed, and successful movie, winning a number of international prizes including the Cannes Palm D'Or for best film in 1984.

This unusual road movie, with screenplay by acclaimed playwright Sam Shepard, tells the tale of Travis, a man lost in his own private hell. Presumed dead for four years, he reappears from the desert on the Mexico border, world-weary and an amnesiac. He traces his brother Walt who is bringing up Hunter, his seven-year-old son, his ex-wife Jane having abandoned him at Walt's door several years before. As virtual strangers, Hunter and Travis begin to build a wary friendship and conspire to find Jane and bring her back to be a real family. With extraordinary performances from Harry Dean Stanton as Travis and Nastassja Kinski as Jane, the film also boasts a soundtrack by Ry Cooder, ideally suited to the film's sunbleached landscapes and melancholy undertones.

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"In This Corner of the World" follows a young lady named Suzu Urano, who in 1944 moves to the small town of Kure in Hiroshima to live with her husband's family. Suzu's life is thrown into chaos when her town is bombed during World War II.

Her perseverance and courage underpin this heart-warming and inspirational tale of the everyday challenges faced by the Japanese in the midst of a violent, war-torn country. This beautiful yet poignant tale shows that even in the face of adversity and loss, people can come together and rebuild their lives.

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British filmmaking showed much of its potential in this marvellous production chronicling the boyhood experiences of Billy (David Bradley), whose expectations lead no further than following his father into the pits when he reaches manhood.

Everything changes when he finds Kes, an injured Kestrel, whom he nurses and cherishes back to health. Their relationship becomes symbolic of a doomed attempt to escape the drudgery of the industrial North.

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London. The '60s. Two unemployed actors-acerbic, elegantly wasted Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and the anxiety-ridden "I" (Paul McGann) - drown their frustrations in booze, pills and lighter fluid.

When Withnails's Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) offers his cottage, they escape the squalor of their flat for a week in the country, but soon realise they've gone on holiday by mistake when their wits - and friendship - are sorely tested by violent downpours, less-than-hospitable locals and empty cupboards.

In 1959, Kit (Martin Sheen) who has killed several people, and his new girlfriend Holly (Sissy Spacek), who watched him do it, are adrift in a double fantasy of crime and punishment across South Dakota and Montana. They're playing make-believe but the bullets and bloodshed are very real...

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Four ordinary men in two canoes navigate a river they only know as a line on a map, taking on a wilderness they only think they understand.

Deliverance, written by James Dickey based on his novel, surges with the urgency of masterful storytelling, like Georgia's Chattooga River along which it was shot. Equally masterful is the portrayal of each man's change of character under stress, harrowingly enacted by award winners Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox. Director John Boorman sets us on the knife-edge of survival - and draws us in with the irresistible force of a raging current.

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In the blistering heat of the Mexican sierra, a village trembles in fear - waiting for the savage onslaught from Calvera and his bandidos. Terrorised, robbed, humiliated, the villagers are desperate to hit back and set off for the American border to buy guns.

But in their quest they come across seven awesome weapons of destruction: a group of hard-riding, mercenary Western gunmen who will ride with them to the village and take out the bandidos. Led by Chris Adams (Yul Brynner), the seven find themselves plunged into a fight for the life of the village. In this classic Western inspired by the Seven Samurai of Japan, Brynner - together with a cast of the caliber of Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and Horst Buchholz - fire the first bullets in a fight to the death.

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Francis Ford Coppola's stunning vision of man's heart of darkness revealed through the madness of the Vietnam War. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) receives orders to seek out a renegade military outpost led by the mysterious Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando).

Willard's mission: "Terminate with extreme prejudice".

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A superb ensemble cast falls in for action in Stanley Kubrick's brilliant saga about the Vietnam War and the dehumanizing process that turns people into trained killers.

Joker (Matthew Modine), Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin), Gomer (Vincent D'Onofrio), Eightball (Dorian Harewood), Cowboy (Arliss Howard) and more - all are plunged into a boot-camp hell pitbulled by a leatherlung D.I. (Lee Ermey) who views the would-be devil dogs as grunts, maggots or something less. The action is savage, the story unsparing, the dialogue spiked with scathing humor. 'Full Metal Jacket', from its rigors of basic training to its nightmare of combat in Hue City, scores a cinematic direct hit.

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Written and Directed by John Sayles this 1920's set drama based on real events, details the brutal battle between miners, strikebreakers and a corrupt coal mining company in a tense and emotional story of small-town poverty, bitterness and exploitation.

When union man Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper) arrives in the backwater town of Matewan, West Virginia to organise a workforce to stand up against the Stone Mountain Coal company, he finds that instead of the men presenting a united force against their real enemy, they are embroiled in disputes between themselves as tensions rise between white miners and black workers. Despite all good intentions, the situation spirals out of all control and a bloody fight for livelihoods and dignity ensues.

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When notorious white supremacist, Craig Cobb, moves into the tiny prairie town of Leith, the local residents have no idea of the man's reputation and intentions for their sleepy town.

As Cobb quietly snaps up large plots of land in and around the town, his plan to take over the local government democratically and establish Leith as a haven for white-supremacists becomes apparent. As Cobb's behaviour becomes increasingly threatening, the local residents resort to desperate measures to expel their unwanted neighbour.

A murdered girl's defiant mother (Frances McDormand) boldly paints three local billboards, each with a controversial message, igniting a furious battle with a volatile cop (Sam Rockwell) and the town's revered chief of police (Woody Harrelson).

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Unlike most "message" films which date themselves almost immediately, Lewis Milestone's low-key unpolished and deeply-felt screen adaptation of the Erich Maria Remarque anti-war novel has lost little of its original impact.

Years after its release it was still being banned in countries mobilizing for war.
The plot follows a group of young German recruits in World War I through their passage from idealism to disillusionment. As the central character Paul Baumer declares, "We live in the trenches and we fight. We try not to be killed - that's all". All Quiet is an anthology of now famous scenes: Ayres trapped in a shell crater with a man he has killed; the first meeting of the recruits and the veterans; infantrymen being mowed down to machine-gun visual rhythms; a moonlight swim with French farm girls; Ayres' pacifist speech to his astonished schoolmates; and the final shot of the soldier's hand reaching for a fatal butterfly.