hpb's - Rented List
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"Jackie" is a searing and intimate portrait of one of the most important and tragic moments in American history, seen through the eyes of the iconic First Lady, Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman). 'Jackie' places us in her world during the days immediately following her husband's assassination. Known for her extraordinary dignity and poise, here we see a psychological portrait of the First Lady as she struggles to maintain her husband's legacy and the world of "Camelot" that they created and loved so well. - Director:
- Pablo Larraín
- Cast:
- Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig
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The Age of Shadows (2016)Secret Agent
During the Japanese occupation, a group of freedom fighters smuggle explosives to destroy facilities controlled by the Japanese forces. A group of resistance fighters led by the leader's second in command try to bring in explosives from Shanghai to destroy key Japanese facilities in Seoul. It's a game of cat-and-mouse as it's up to a Korean-born Japanese police officer to infiltrate the resistance at all costs by befriending an antique dealer who's involved in the plot but never exposed. - Director:
- Jee-woon Kim
- Cast:
- Byung-hun Lee, Yoo Gong, Kang-ho Song
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Edward Yang's multi-award-winning film looks at several turbulent weeks in the life of the Jian family. Husband and father NJ (Nien-Jen Wu) is a partner in a failing software company, which might just save itself by teaming up with an innovative Japanese games designer. Meanwhile his wife Min-Min (Elaine Jin) has gone off to a mountain retreat with a dubious guru, his teenage daughter Ting Ting (Kelly Lee) is getting her first, rough lessons in love, his young son Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang) is asking difficult questions and getting into trouble at school - and his mother-in-law has suffered a stroke and lies in a coma. In the middle of all the confusion NJ runs into his childhood sweetheart Sherry, the girl he jilted twenty years earlier, and starts to wonder about starting over. - Director:
- Edward Yang
- Cast:
- Nien-Jen Wu, Ray Fan, Elaine Jin
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Jackie (Kate Dickie) works as a CCTV operator in Glasgow. Each day she watches over a small part of the world, protecting the people living their lives under her gaze. One day a man appears on her monitor, whom she thought she would never see again, whom she never wanted to see again. Now that she has no choice, she is compelled to confront him. - Director:
- Andrea Arnold
- Cast:
- Kate Dickie, Tony Curran, Martin Compston
- Formats:
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From acclaimed filmmaker Terence Davies, 'A Quiet Passion' is a powerful study of' 19th Century poet Emily Dickinson that features a stunning performance from Cynthia Nixon. Spanning a rebellious schoolgirl youth to her later years as a reclusive writer, Davies elegantly explores the hopes, dreams and desires of a woman who wrote some of the most important poems in American literature that still resonate today. - Director:
- Terence Davies
- Cast:
- Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Ehle, Duncan Duff
- Formats:
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From acclaimed director Ken Loach comes this astonishing story of triumph and adversity in modern day Britain. Daniel Blake (Dave Johns) has worked as a joiner for most of his life in Newcastle. Now, for the first time ever, he needs help from the State. He crosses paths with single mother Katie (Hayley Squires) who is battling to keep her two young children fed. Daniel and Katie find themselves in a no-man's land, striving to pull themselves out of the welfare bureaucracy of modern day Britain. - Director:
- Ken Loach
- Cast:
- Dave Johns, Hayley Squires, Sharon Percy
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Six years after the violent death of her husband, Amelia (Essie Davis) and her 6 year-old son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman) are still suffering from their loss. When a disturbing storybook called 'The Babadook' lurns up at their house, Samuel is convinced that the creature in the book is coming to kill them both. As he becomes more unpredictable and violent, Amelia is genuinely frightened by her son's behaviour. But when Amelia begins to see glimpses of a sinister presence all around her, she fears that The Babadook may be real after all. - Director:
- Jennifer Kent
- Cast:
- Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall
- Formats:
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"Toni Erdmann" is a touching and remarkably funny portrait of an offbeat father-daughter relationship. Sandra Huller plays Ines, a highly-strung career woman whose life in corporate Bucharest takes a turn for the bizarre with the arrival of her estranged father Winfried (Peter Simonischek). An incessant practical joker, Winfried attempts to reconnect with Ines by introducing the titular eccentric alter ego to catch her off guard, unaware of how capable she is of rising to the challenge... This breakout German comedy, which has been met with universal critical acclaim, is as humanist as it is absurdist - a film about the importance of celebrating the humour of the everyday. - Director:
- Maren Ade
- Cast:
- Sandra Hüller, Peter Simonischek, Michael Wittenborn
- Formats:
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Set in a military hospital during World War I, the film tells of a real life encounter between army psychologist Dr William Rivers and the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who has been institutionalised in an attempt to undermine his public disapproval of the war. It also concerns young poet Wilfred Owen who, with support from Sassoon, begins to write his great war poems. Rivers, whose duty it is to return shell-shocked officers to the trenches, is tormented by the morality of what is being done in the name of medicine, especially the treatment of working-class officer Billy Prior who has been struck dumb by the carnage he has witnessed. - Director:
- Gillies MacKinnon
- Cast:
- Jonathan Pryce, James Wilby, Jonny Lee Miller
- Formats:
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Howards End (1992)Howards End
A dying woman's impulsive wish marks a turning point in the relationship between the cosmopolitan Schlegel sisters, Margaret (Emma Thompson) and Helen (Helena Bonham Carter), and the wealthy Wilcox family when Ruth Wilcox (Vanessa Redgrave) bequeaths her idyllic country house, Howards End, to Margaret. Convinced that he is acting in the best interests of his family, the patriarchal Henry Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins) destroys his wife's "unofficial" will. But, as the lonely repressed Henry falls in love with Margaret, and Helen's willful attacks on class and convention strike at the very heart of the Wilcox family, fate decrees that Henry must pay dearly for his deceit. - Director:
- James Ivory
- Cast:
- Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave
- Formats:
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Anne and Pierre have been together for several years and have a young son. One night, Anne announces that she is in love with someone else. Surprisingly, Pierre is not angry and he avoids asking her the questions that are obviously burning inside him. Pierre outwardly appears to accept her affair, but as they attempt to carry on as normal, tensions begin to build. Soon Pierre is unable to hide his now violent emotions. - Director:
- Christian Vincent
- Cast:
- Isabelle Huppert, Daniel Auteuil, Jérôme Deschamps
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