dspc's - Rented List

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Perhaps the crowning achievement of Bunuel's career, the film centres on an idealistic young nun named Viridiana (Silvia Pinal).

Before she is allowed to take her final vows, the Mother Superior requests that she visit her uncle Don Jaime (Fernando Rey), who has "selflessly" provided for the girl over the years. Having always considered him an unspeakable beast, she is surprised when he graciously welcomes her into his home. Just as graciously, he sets about to corrupt Viridiana beyond redemption - all because the girl resembles the wife that died on their wedding day.

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A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a brief, passionate affair in post war Hiroshima.

Their deeply intense connection brings out scarred but fading memories of love and suffering, which Resnais communicates with the use of flashback techniques innovative to the time.

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Recounted in flashback to a group of railway travellers, the story wryly details the romantic perils of Mathieu, a wealthy, middle-aged French sophisticate who falls desperately in love with his 19-year-old former chambermaid Conchita.

Thus begins a surreal game of sexual cat-and-mouse, with Mathieu obsessively attempting to win the girl's affections as she manipulates his carnal desires, each vying to gain absolute control of the other.

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Episodic in structure, the film is a series of anarchic and frequently surreal series of events through which the director ravages a complacent European culture and the various sexual hang-ups and historical and cultural disconnects of its inhabitants.

A man sells postcards of French tourist attractions, calling them "pornographic". A sniper in Montparnasse is hailed as a hero for killing passers-by. A missing child helps the police fill out the report on her. A group of monks play poker, using religious medallions as chips, and in the most infamous sequence, a formally dressed social group gathers at toilets around a table, occasionally excusing themselves to go into little stalls in a private room to eat. Best approached as a literal comedy of manners - the film is perversely funny and punctuated with a series of quite brilliant sight gags - 'The Phantom of Liberty' argues against the acceptance of strict moral codes, suggesting that the only way to live freely is to embrace the coincidences of the world.

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Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) has not slept for a year. Wracked by exhaustion, his weary mind increasingly plays tricks on him. Then one fateful day at the machine shop where he works, he's involved in an accident and a fellow worker loses an arm.

Reznik's guilt turns to paranoia when he discovers cryptic notes in his apartment and a ghostly apparition haunts his every move. Is it someone out to exact revenge for the gruesome accident? In a desperate attempt to save his sanity, Reznik must uncover the truth... but the more he learns, the more terrifying his sleepless nightmare becomes.

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Two childhood friends are reunited after years without seeing one another. Separated by the Atlantic Ocean, the two friends have made their lives on different continents, but when they meet again it feels like they've never been apart.

Julian (Ricardo Darín) and Tomas (Javier Cámara) will spend a few unforgettable days together; laughing, reminiscing; crying... because their reunion is also their last goodbye. "Truman" is a tale about friendship and love. A humorous and honest portrait of the courage it takes to accept that death is just another part of life.

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"Montparnasse 19", a film about the tragic final years in the life of Italian painter and sculptor Amadeo Modigliani, was itself beset by tragedy.

Max Ophuls, the famed director of 'Letter from an Unknown Woman' and 'Le Plaisir', died during its production, leaving his friend Jacques Becker to complete the picture. Its lead performer too, the great French actor Gerard Philipe, would succumb to cancer just over a year after its release. In tracing the latter part of Modigliani's life, 'Montparnasse 19', focuses on the key figures during his time in Paris - his patron Leopold Zborowski (played by Gerard Sety) and two muses, Beatrice Hastings (Lilli Palmer) and Jeanne Hebuterne (Anouk Aimee) - and his gradual descent into alcoholism and drug addiction. The end results, both hauntingly beautiful and savagely ironic, are really quite remarkable. A fitting tribute to the outstanding careers of Ophuls and Philippe, and another excellent entry in the equally superb filmography of Becker, a filmmaker who is finally getting his due.

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Georges Manda (Serge Reggiani), an honest woodworker, falls in love with Marie (Simone Signoret), the moll of minor crook Roland (William Sabatier). Gangster boss Felix Leca (Claude Dauphin) orders Georges and Roland to fight a duel to the death over the girl.

Felix then pins the blame for Roland's death on Georges' boyhood chum, Raymond (Raymond Bussieres), knowing that the woodworker will nobly accept the blame; this will leave Marie alone, which is what lustful Felix has wanted all along. When Georges learns he's been set up as a dupe, he plots his revenge. Based on the true-life Leca-Manda scandal, 'Casque D'Or' brilliantly mixes violence with tenderness to capture the brutality of the French underworld and the tragedy of doomed love.

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Lucia is a young waitress working in a restaurant in the centre of Madrid. After the loss of her long-term boyfriend, a writer, she seeks refuge on a quiet, secluded Mediterranean island.

There, bathed in an atmosphere of fresh air and dazzling sun, Lucia begins to discover the dark corners of her past relationship, experienced as if through the forbidden passages of a novel which the author allows her to read from afar.

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Based on Peter Rock's novel 'My Abandonment', 'Leave No Trace' revolves around a teenage girl (Thomasin McKenzie) and her father (Ben Foster) who have lived undetected for years in Forest Park, a vast wood on the edge of Portland, Oregon.

A chance encounter leads to their discovery and removal from the park and into the charge of a social service agency. They try to adapt to their new surroundings until a sudden decision sets them on a perilous journey into the wilderness seeking complete independence and forcing them to confront their conflicting desire to be part of a community or a fierce need to live apart.

The story begins in Rome, 1938. Marcello (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a young fascist who takes on the job of assassinating his former professor who has fled to Paris. With his girlfriend (Stefania Sandrelli) in tow he meets the professor and his young wife (Dominique Sanda)...

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A tight-knit family moves from Italy's rural south to metropolitan Milan. The shock of the new is violent and immediate. A mother meddles. A whore beguiles. Brother faces brother. Blood-ties come undone.

We pity beatific Rocco (played by the immortal Alain Delon in a role specially written for him) and Nadia the harlot (Annie Girardot, capricious and scintillating) - the modern condition has shattered their lives.

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Sergeant Jonny Gallagher (Gene Hackman) thinks he's been given a routine assignment: to escort a rebellious American soldier (Tommy Lee Jones) from Europe to the U.S. for a military court martial.

Gallagher soon learns, however, that the assignment is anything but routine, when he uncovers a terrifying military conspiracy. The clock is ticking down to a historic superpower summit, and Gallagher must stop the deadly plot before it's too late... for him and his country.

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Stanley Yelnats (Shia LaBeouf), dogged by bad luck from an old family curse, is in for the adventure of his life, when he's sent to Camp Green Lake.

At camp, he and his campmates - Squid, Armpit, ZigZag, Magnet, X-Ray and Zero - are mysteriously forced by "The Warden" (Sigourney Weaver) and her two henchmen to dig hole after hole after hole for no apparent reason. But there is a reason, and Stanley and his campmates must stick together as they try to discover what's really hidden and break the Yelnats family curse forever.

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The film is directly based on the director, Carla Simon's, own childhood. Following the death of her parents, 6 years old Frida (Laia Artigas) moves from Barcelona to the Catalan countryside to live with her aunt and uncle, her new legal guardians.

She now has a new little sister whom she has to take care of, and has to deal with new feelings, such as jealousy. Often, Frida is naively convinced that running away would be the best solution to her problems. Slowly, Frida realizes that she is there to stay. Before the summer is over, she has to cope with her emotions and her new parents have to learn to love her as their own daughter.