fmj's - Rented List

A WWII veteran escapes his care home in Northern Ireland and embarks on an arduous but inspirational journey to France to attend the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, finding the courage to face the ghosts of his past.

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Small-town Slovakia 1942. Nazi concentration camp deportations have begun. Tono, a poor carpenter, is appointed 'Aryan controller' of the elderly and frail Jewish widow Rozalia's shop.

Believing Tono is her new assistant, the two develop a friendship in which he maintains that illusion to try and protect her from the encroaching Nazi terror. Wonderfully written and performed, and with an extraordinary Zdenek Liska score, the film becomes a devastating examination of how minor compromises can finally lead to complicity in the horrors of tyranny.

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From acclaimed director Pawel Pawlikowski comes "Ida", a poignant and powerfully told drama about 18-year-old Anna, a sheltered orphan raised in a convent, who is preparing to become a nun when she discovers that her real name is Ida and her Jewish parents were murdered during the Nazi occupation.

This revelation triggers a heart-wrenching journey into the countryside, to the family house and into the secrets of the repressed past, evoking the haunting legacy of the Holocaust and the realities of postwar Communism. Powerfully written and eloquently shot, "Ida" is a masterly evocation of a time, a dilemma, and a defining historical moment.

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"Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office" so outraged a nation that within days of airing, it forced the Prime Minister to change the law to right the damage done.

The series tells the extraordinary story of the greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, created with direct input from the innocent - and indomitable - people caught up in it. When money started to disappear from its local branches, the Post Office wrongly blamed their own sub-postmasters for its loss. For more than a decade, hundreds were accused of theft and fraud, and hundreds were sent to prison. Lives, marriages, and reputations were left in ruins. But the issue was actually caused by errors in the Post Office's own computer system - something it denied for years. Revealing a shocking David vs. Goliath fight for justice, this is the story of the decent ordinary people who were relentlessly pursued, intimidated and punished by a powerful corporation; and their ongoing battle, against seemingly insurmountable odds, to right so many horrific wrongs.

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Desperate to free herself from a loveless marriage, an Israeli woman named Viviane Amsalem files for divorce from her cruel and manipulative husband. But Israeli law and its Rabbinical court dictates that a divorce can only be granted under the husband's consent.

Determined to obtain her dignity and freedom Viviane finds herself fighting an epic and deeply dramatic psychological battle against a profoundly absurd legal system and her cold and calculating estranged husband.

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Hypnotist and magician Dr. Vogler (Max von Sydow) heads a troupe of travelling players, which includes his wife Manda (Ingrid Thulin) dressed as a male assistant. They are examined and humiliated by Dr. Vergerus (Gunnar Bjornstrand), a cynical medical officer.

During a performance convened for the medical officer and his committee, Volger exerts his revenge. When the tables are turned again, the magician perpetrates an incredible illusion on the unbelieving doctor, but is now trapped within his own mystery...

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Vivien Leigh is a young and determined Cleopatra and Claude Rains is Emperor Julius Caesar. Beauty and power collide in this witty, memorably cast and brilliantly designed adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's play.

As Rome invades Egypt, Julius Caesar stumbles across the young princess Cleopatra sheltering in the Sphinx. Impressed by her spirit and intelligence and seduced by her charm he determines to make her Queen.

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When an aging bamboo cutter finds a tiny girl in a glowing stalk of bamboo he and his wife decide to raise her as their daughter.

Growing at a rapid rate, she soon becomes an enchanting and beautiful young lady, but beneath the magic she holds a secret that will affect the lives of all those she encounters and everything she claims to love.

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A landowner's daughter, drawn to nursing by her strong faith, travels to Turkey to care for British soldiers wounded in the Crimea. Appalled by the squalid conditions that are claiming more lives than the fighting itself, she devotes her energies to the drive to improve care and sanitation.

As a woman in the mid-nineteenth century, it is not the only battle she will face - but her tireless campaign of reform will lay the foundation for modern nursing, and make her a national icon.

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As the Black Death continues to wipe out the population of Europe, knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) returns from the Crusades, disillusioned and worn. When suddenly Death (Bengt Ekerot) appears before him, he asks for the chance to live, proposing a game of chess to decide his fate.

The knight takes his squire, a troupe of traveling players and a deaf and dumb girl under his protection as the game is played out. One by one Death exacts his toll, and it is up to Block to stall his opponent for as long as possible if he is to help save the lives of those he is trying to protect. All the while, the villages and towns about them fall further into ruin and religion takes a stranglehold on those desperate for a means of survival.

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When one of his mobsters stages an unauthorised hit, Manhattan crime boss Charlie Lupo (Broderick Crawford) calls in Nick Magellan (Richard Conte) an enforcer from Chicago in order to stamp his authority.

Conte soon cuts through the undisciplined crime syndicate and the widowed Lupo begins to treat him as the son he never had and promotes him to the top rung of the mob. Lupo's hard-drinking, rebellious daughter Kathy (Anne Bancroft) wants nothing to do with her father's business, or with any of his minions but the steely 'torpedo' from Chicago has sent her pulse racing. But when Kathy has to fight for Magellan's affections with her father's platinum blonde mistress (Marilyn Maxwell) the newly formed 'father-son' relationship is set to explode...

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Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Wagner star in this gripping re-enactment of the tragic 1912 sinking of the Titanic in which over 1,500 people lost their lives.

Supposedly an unsinkable ship, the huge British luxury liner met with disaster on its maiden voyage when its captain ignored numerous warnings of impending danger. Though based on facts culled from eyewitnesses, fictional characters depict the men and women, many of them international celebrities, who courageously faced this unexpected tragedy in the icy, bleak waters of the North Atlantic.

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Double feature starring Basil Rathbone as detective Sherlock Holmes

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)

Holmes (Basil Rathbone) faces his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty (George Zucco) in the second film of the scries. The devious Professor attempts to distract Holmes with a series of mysteries until the detective discovers Moriarty's master-plan: an elaborate plot to steal the Crown Jewels. The incomparable Ida Lupino provides excellent support as the woman Holmes must protect.
Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942)
Inspired by Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Dancing Men", Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Watson (Nigel Bruce) are called to protect an inventor, Dr. Franz Tobel (William Post Jr.), from the Nazis. Tobel's invention, a superior bomb-sight, could provide a significant advantage in the war, but is the doctor all he seems? The ever devious Professor Moriarty (Lionel Atwill) is in the employ of the Nazis, who also have their eyes on the weapon.

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Albert, the owner of a small and tawdry circus, arrives at a small town where he attempts to effect a reconciliation with his wife Agda whom he left for the circus many years previous.

She refuses to resume the marriage whilst Albert's lover, Anne, upset at Albert's rejection of her, has a humiliating affair with an actor, Frans. During a performance given by the circus, Frans begins to taunt Albert and, enraged, challenges him to a fight during which he is severely beaten. Deciding that suicide is his only escape he tries to take his own life but fails. As the circus leaves town, the ill-fated couple find themselves reluctantly and miserably committed to each other.

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Cary Grant double bill of classics...

Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)

In Vienna, Baron von Luber (Walter Slezak) is about to marry Katie O'Hara (Ginger Rogers), an American stripper whose pose as a Philadelphia society girl doesn't fool sharp-eyed Pat O'Toole (Cary Grant), an American correspondent Pat is interested in Katie and suspects that the Baron is an advance agent for Hitler, his suspicions are confirmed when Austria falls to the Nazis by that time Katie and the Baron have already wed.
In Name Only (1939)
Alec Walker (Cary Grant) is a wealthy Connecticut squire married to a heartless wife Maida (Kay Francis) who married him for his money and position. Alec meets Julie Eden (Carole Lombard), a widow who works as an artist and lives with her younger daughter. Alec falls in love with Julie and asks his wife to divorce him, she does not. Julie and Alec are forced to part, will they ever get to be together again?