fmj's - Rented List

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Golden-age Hollywood's humanist master Leo McCarey brings his graceful touch and relaxed naturalism to this sublime romance, one of cinema's most intoxicating tear-wringers. Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer are chic strangers who meet and fall in love aboard an ocean liner bound for New York.

Though they are both involved with other people, they make a pact to reconnect six months later at the top of the Empire State Building - until the hand of fate throws their star-crossed affair tragically off course. Swooning passion and gentle comedy coexist in perfect harmony in the exquisitely tender 'Love Affair' (nominated for six Oscars), a story so timeless that it has been remade by multiple filmmakers over the years - including McCarey himself, who updated it as the no less beloved An Affair to Remember.

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Esther Waters (Kathleen Ryan) is a young woman living in 1880's London. Forced by her abusive father to start work she becomes a servant in an aristocratic household. She falls in love with the handsome footman William Latch (Dirk Bogarde), who seduces and then abandons her.

Esther returns to London and then quite by chance they meet again and while Esther initially rejects William's advances, eventually they marry. However William falls ill and hopes for a big killing on the horses so he can to move his family abroad. Will he succeed and change their lives for the better or will the family face financial ruin and disaster?

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Separated from his wife and embittered by lack of promotion, Harrington Brande is posted to a small port in Spain. With him goes his young son Nicholas, a shy boy forced to lead a quiet life by his domineering father.

At their new home they meet their gardener, José, who strikes up a friendship with the boy. As Nicholas's father realises this, out of jealousy, he bans them from speaking. Things go from bad to worse when Nicholas's watch is stolen and planted on Jose, who is then arrested. Will his father realise the meaning of true friendship before it is too late?

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Bedelia Carrington (Margaret Lockwood) is living happily, it appears, in Monte Carlo with her husband Charlie Carrington (Ian Hunter). But a cultivated young artist, Ben Chaney (Barry K. Barnes), begins probing into her past with curious concern.

Chaney, who is really a detective, learns that Bedelia's obsession for money knows no boundaries, and will kill for it.

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John (Viggo Mortensen) lives with his partner, Eric (Terry Chen), and their daughter, Monica (Gabby Velis), in California, far from the traditional rural life he left behind years ago.

John's father, Willis (Lance Henriksen), a headstrong man from a bygone era, lives alone on the isolated farm where John grew up. Willis is in the early stages of dementia, making running the farm on his own increasingly difficult, so John brings him to stay at his California home so that he and his sister Sarah (Laura Linney) might help him find a place near them to relocate to. Unfortunately, their best intentions ultimately run up against Willis's adamant refusal to change his way of life in the slightest.

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In 1943, two intelligence officers from the Royal Navy (Clifton Webb, Robert Flemyng) attempt to pull off the most daring espionage mission of the Second World War. The Allies are about to invade Sicily - but the Germans must be convinced that their real target is Greece.

A briefcase containing plans for the fake invasion is attached to a body dressed as a British major and given an elaborate false identity. The 'man who never was' is then left at sea for the Germans to find. However, Nazi intelligence believes that the find may be just too good to be true - and a desperate cat-and-mouse game begins in the heart of war torn London...

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Despite losing his job, Michel lives happily with Marie-Claire. They have been in love for more than 30 years... Their children and grand-children delight them... They have plenty of close friends... They are proud of their union and political struggles...

Their conscience is as clear as their view of life. This happiness will be shattered by two young men, armed and masked, who beat them, tie them up, snatch their wedding rings and flee with their credit cards... The shock will be all the more violent when they discover that this brutal attack was organised by one of the young workers laid off at the same time as Michel. Michel and Marie-Claire gradually discover that their attacker, Christophe, only did what he did because he had no choice..

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If there's one person in history who divides opinion like no one else it's Thomas Cromwell. The son of a Putney blacksmith, he came from nowhere to become Henry Vlll's right-hand man.

In this series historian Tracy Borman explores how Cromwell took back control of the Church in England from the Pope, conspired to execute Anne Boleyn and sees new evidence that shows how he secretly edited a manuscript to keep favour with the King. Tracy follows in Cromwell's footsteps to explore each stage of his rise and fall, discovering how his brilliance revolutionised the conventions and norms of the Tudor World.

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Career con man Roy (Ian McKellen) sets his sights on his latest mark, recently widowed Betty (Helen Mirren), who's worth millions. And he means to take it all.

But as the two grow closer, what should have been another simple swindle becomes a high-stakes game of cat and mouse in this suspenseful drama about the secrets people keep and the lies they live.

A Super-Secret Organisation recruits an unrefined but promising street kid into the agency's ultra-competitive training programme just as a dire global threat emerges from a twisted tech genius.

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From producer and director Steven Spielberg, with a script by screenwriter and playwright Tony Kushner, comes 'West Side Story'.

An adaptation of the 1957 musical, the film tells the tale of forbidden love and the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds.

Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) and his young nephew (Woody Norman) forge a tenuous but transformational relationship when they are unexpectedly thrown together in this delicate and deeply moving story about the connections between adults and children, the past and the future, from writer-director Mike Mills.

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The story is set during a workers' strike in Nantes in 1955. Young shipyard worker François Guilbaud (Richard Berry) is one of the strikers, and he rents a room from Madame Langlois (Danielle Darrieux), a widow who sympathizes with the strikers although she is herself upper-class, born a baroness.

His girlfriend Violette Pelletier (Fabienne Guyon), who works in a shop and lives with her mother, wants to get married but he is unwilling, partly because they have no money and nowhere to live. In the street François is accosted by a beautiful woman wearing only a fur coat. This is Édith Leroyer (Dominique Sanda), unhappily married to the owner of a television shop, who has taken to part-time prostitution. The two have a blissful night together in a cheap hotel and fall in love. In the morning Violette comes looking for François because she has learned she is pregnant, but he tells her he loves another woman. Meanwhile, Édith, going back to her husband's shop to collect some things and leave him, has a terrible row with him during which he cuts his throat. She flees back to her mother, who is François' landlady. Next morning, François joins a demonstration which is broken up by the police and is fatally injured. His workmates carry him up to the flat of the baroness, where he dies in the arms of Édith. Unable to live without him, she shoots herself.

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Aharon (Shai Avivi) has devoted his life to raising his son Uri (Noam Imber). They live together in a gentle routine, away from the real world. But Uri is autistic, and now as a young adult it might be time for him to live in a specialized home.

While on their way to the institution, Aharon decides to run away with his son and hits the road, knowing that Uri is not ready for this separation. The journey of the two will change their lives.

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September 1944 - Nazi Occupied Holland. When her temporary safe house is destroyed by a bomb, the beautiful young Jewish chanteuse Rachel Steinn (Carice van Houten) joins fellow refugees in an attempt to reach safe Allied territory by boat.

Tragedy strikes when a Nazi patrol intercepts their escape, ruthlessly killing everybody on-board including Rachel's family; only Rachel escapes the massacre. Embittered and desperate for revenge, she joins the Resistance where, assigned a new identity as the blond Security Service by seducing senior officer Muntze (Sebastian Koch). Without warning she becomes entangled in a deadly web of double-dealing and betrayal...