fmj's - Rented List

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Melsa Manton (Barbara Stanwyck) is a wealthy Manhattan debutante who is notorious for headline grabbing pranks. One night, Melsa notices a man running out of a supposedly deserted house and goes to investigate.

She discovers a body, but when the police eventually arrive the body has disappeared and Lieutenant Brent (Sam Levene) accuses Melsa of playing one of her jokes. High-flying newspaper reporter, Peter Ames (Henry Fonda), picks up the story and prints an article ridiculing the 'Park Avenue Pranksters'. But Melissa knows there is a killer on the loose and drags Ames all over Manhattan to find him...

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"One Life" tells the true story of Sir Nicholas 'Nicky' Winton (Anthony Hopkins), a young London broker who, in the months leading up to World War II, rescued 669 predominantly Jewish children from the Nazis.

Nicky visited Prague in December 1938 and found families who had fled the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Austria, living in desperate conditions with little or no shelter and food, and under threat of Nazi invasion. He immediately realised it was a race against time. How many children could he and the team rescue before the borders closed? Fifty years later, it's 1988 and Nicky lives haunted by the fate of the children he wasn't able to bring to safety in England; always blaming himself for not doing more. It's not until a live BBC television show, 'That's Life', surprises him by introducing him to some surviving children - now adults - that he finally begins to come to terms with the guilt and grief he had carried for five decades.

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While Constance (Lana Turner) and the other parents in a picture-perfect New Hampshire town strive to keep their teenagers on the straight and narrow, scandals take place around them.

A drunken school caretaker traumatises his stepdaughter, which prompts a murder, a trial and the revelation that nothing is as it seems in this beautifully photographed, spell-binding drama filled with top-notch performances.

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When Oscar Diggs (James Franco), a small-time circus magician with dubious ethics, is hurled away from dusty Kansas to the vibrant Land of Oz, he thinks he's hit the jackpot-fame and fortune are his for the taking-that is until he meets three witches, Theodora (Mila Kunis), Evanora (Rachel Weisz)

and Glinda (Michelle Williams), who are not convinced he is the great wizard everyone's been expecting. Reluctantly drawn into the epic problems facing the Land of Oz and its inhabitants, Oscar must find out who is good and who is evil before it is too late. Putting his magical arts to use through illusion, ingenuity-and even a bit of wizardry-Oscar transforms himself not only into the great wizard but into a better man as well. When small-time magician Oscar Diggs (James Franco) pulls one flimflam too many, he finds himself hurled into the fantastical Land of Oz where he must somehow transform himself into the great wizard-and just maybe into a better man as well.

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Trevor Nunn directs Richard Johnson and Oscar-nominee Janet Suzman in this landmark production of Shakespeare's tragedy of power and passion in Ancient Egypt.

First broadcast in 1974 and based on Nunn's celebrated staging with the Royal Shakespeare Company, its intensity and originality raised the bar for small-screen adaptations of Shakespeare's plays. Emphasising the futility of the protagonists' unworldly love against the coldly calculating might of Octavian, adopted son of Julius Caesar, this intimately staged production earned a BAFTA award for director Jon Scoffield, with Janet Suzman receiving a BAFTA nomination for her mesmerising portrayal of the doomed Egyptian queen. 'Antony and Cleopatra' also features early appearances by Ben Kingsley, Tim Pigott-Smith and Patrick Stewart - who won universal praise in the role of Antony's loyal, agonised confidante, Enobarbus.

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.