hbr's - Rented List

A Parisian bookseller, Lestingois, fishes Boudu, a vagrant, out of the river Seine. He befriends the tramp and puts him up at home, where Boudu causes nothing but trouble. However, events take a different turn when Boudu wins the lottery...

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Victorian London is gripped with fear as a serial killer - dubbed The Limehouse Golem - is on the loose and leaving cryptic messages written in his victims' blood.

With few leads and increasing public pressure, Scotland Yard assigns the case to Inspector Kildare (Bill Nighy) - a seasoned detective with a troubled past and a sneaking suspicion he's being set up to fail. Faced with a list of suspects, including music hall star Dan Leno (Douglas Booth), Kildare must discover which one is the killer before the Golem strikes again.

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Train engineer Johnny Gray (Buster Keaton) is turned down when he tries to enlist in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War as his occupation is deemed too important.

When his train (The General) is stolen by Union soldiers so that it can be used to attack Confederate forces, only Johnny and his girl Annabelle Lee can save the train and warn the Confederates about an impending attack.

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Melville's most personal film, rooted in his wartime experiences in the French Resistance, Army Of Shadows is a hard, tense drama, depicting man's capacity for both bravery and evil. In the winter of 1942-1943, as France exist s under German occupation, an underground cell operates in the shadows.

In the clandestine world of the Resistance, the freedom fighters work against their enemies under the constant risk of betrayal, ordinary men and women in an extraordinary situation. Suffused throughout with a mood of foreboding, the suspense, heightened with directorial mastery, reaches its peak as the Resistance attempt to free a prisoner from the Gestapo headquarters, in one of Melville's trademark set-pieces of iconic action.

Join the "practically perfect" Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews) as she magically turns every chore into a game and every day into a whimsical adventure. Along the way, you'll be enchanted by unforgettable characters such as the multitalented chimney sweep Bert (Dick Van Dyke).

"The Secret of Kells" is a magical animated classic that tells the story of Brendan (voice of Evan McGuire), a young monk whose life is changed forever when he is initiated into the secrets of the Book of Kells and embarks on an extraordinary adventure, meeting fearsome monsters, Vikings, and a serpent god along the way!

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Emil Jennings, the quintessential German expressionist actor, stars as Professor Immanuel Rath, the sexually-repressed instructor of a boys prep school.

After learning of the pupils' infatuation with French postcards depicting a local nightclub songstress, he decides to personally investigate the source of such indecency. But as soon as he enters the shadowy Blue Angel nightclub and steals one glimpse of the smoldering Lola-Lola (Marlene Dietrich), commanding the stage in a top hot, stockings and bare thighs, Rath's self-righteous piety is crushed. He finds himself fatefully seduced by the throaty voice of the vulgar siren, singing, "Falling in Love Again". Consumed by desire and tormented by his rigid propriety, Professor Rath allows himself to be dragged down a path of personal degradation. Lola's unrestrained sexuality was a revelation to turn-of-the-decade moviegoers, thrusting Dietrich to the forefront of the sultry international leading ladies, such as Greta Garbo, who were challenging the limits of screen sexuality.

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"Patrick Melrose" is a new kind of family saga which takes a scathing and sardonic view of the upper-classes, shining an unforgiving light on the privilege, greed, cruelty and vulnerabilities that lie within their ranks.

Played to perfection by Benedict Cumberbatch, Patrick himself is many things: an aristocratic addict, a rakish and outrageously funny playboy, but he is also a man living as a victim of the sins of his parents (Hugo Weaving and Jennifer Jason Leigh). Based on the celebrated novels by Edward St. Aubyn, this intelligent, beautifully told series, follows Patrick as he embarks on a harrowing yet humorous decades-spanning odyssey to come to terms with the effects of childhood trauma.

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Originally composed on music sheets by director Mike Figgis and shot in one continuous 93-minute take on four digital cameras all running simultaneously, Timecode offers one of contemporary cinema's most audacious and exhilarating experiences.

Utilising a quartered screen format to dazzling effect, Figgis' multi-narrative drama plays out against the backdrop of an important casting session at Red Mullet Films - the name of Figgis' own company. During the course of the session, which provides a hugely entertaining insight into the shallow mores of various LA types, an affair will unfold and a murder will be committed.
Working without a script and relying upon improvisation from an impressively assembled array of acting talent (Salma Hayek, Kyle MacLachlan, Saffron Burrows, Jeanne Tripplehom and Stellan Skarsgard are just a few of those who feature), Figgis walks a creative tightrope, juggling overlapping audio and visual elements from the parallel narrative strands. Encouraging the viewer to fully participate and in effect act as his or her own editor, Timecode is symptomatic of the increasingly experimental path that Figgis has pursued and offers evidence of an uncompromising, maverick approach to film-making.

In an epic adventure directed by Jon Favreau (Iron Man), Mowgli, a man-cub raised in the jungle by a family of wolves, embarks on a captivating journey of self-discovery when he's forced to abandon the only home he's ever known.

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Catherine (Elisabeth Moss) has entered a particularly dark phase in her life: her father, a famous artist whose affairs she managed, has recently died, and she's been dumped by her boyfriend James (Kentucker Audley).

Needing a fresh location to relax and regroup, Catherine heads to her friend Virginia's (Katherine Waterston) lake house for some much needed rest. However, once Catherine arrives, relaxation proves impossible to find, as she is overcome with memories of time spent at the same house with James the year before. As cracks in the relationship between the two women begin to appear, Catherine soon starts descending into a downward spiral of delusion and madness.

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In the early 1950s Sweden's Home Research Institute is conducting studies into domestic habits. Armed with clipboards, a Swedish delegation arrives in a Norwegian rural district, with the aim of observing the kitchen routines of single men.

One hapless observer, Nilsson (Tomas Nostrom) is assigned a particularly reluctant farmer, the cantankerous old Isak (Joachim Calmeyer), who at first won't even let him into the house. Soon, though, Nilsson takes up his vantage point on a wooden platform perched ludicrously in the corner of the kitchen - only to find that Isak is watching him, through a hole in the kitchen ceiling. Slowly, however, relations begin to thaw.

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"The BFG" is the exciting tale of a young girl named Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) and the mysterious Giant - The BFG (Oscat Winner Mark Rylance) - who introduces her to the wonders and perils of Giant Country.

Two of the world's greatest storytellers - Roald Dahl and Steven Spielberg - unite to bring Dahl's beloved classic to life

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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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The last thing expected of Bruno Dumont was a comedy, yet with this absurdist policier set in his usual Northern France, he has achieved just that. Originally conceived as a four-part serial for TV, P'tit Quinquin is simultaneously slapstick, metaphysical and at times genuinely disturbing.

Two spectacularly incompetent policemen investigate a series of grisly killings after the victims start to turn up stuffed inside farm animals. Observing their efforts is a band of young scamps, led by P'tit Quinquin, dedicated to causing havoc and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Dumont plays with the conventions of the genre - sensational death, red herrings, weird locals, and of course the two cops with their philosophical musings and catch phrases. The film has been much compared to Twin Peaks, though Dumont says he's never seen it, and to True Detective, but it is notwithstanding very much a work belonging to Dumont's unique universe.