humilityprim's - Rented List

Show moreShow less

Gaspar Noe, director of the hugely controversial 'Irreversible', 'Enter the Void' and 'Love', makes a triumphant return with 'Climax' - a visually dazzling feast of music and mayhem, and perhaps his most critically acclaimed work to date.

Following a successful rehearsal, a dance troupe set about celebrating with a party. But when it becomes apparent that someone has spiked the sangria, the joyous atmosphere soon transforms into a nightmarish hellscape of violence and twisted carnality as the dancers begin to turn on each other in an orgiastic frenzy. Inspired equally by the worlds of modern dance and esoteric arthouse-horror (chief among them, Dario Argento's Suspiria and Andrzej Zutawski's Possession), 'Climax' - which pulses towards its astonishing conclusion with a thumping score by the likes of Daft Punk, Aphex Twin and Gary Numan - illustrates a director at the height of his hallucinatory filmmaking powers.

Show moreShow less

With the Godfather Don Pietro murdered, there is a void to be filled in the underworld of Naples. His son Genny takes control, using the opportunity to settle old scores.

The survivors of the remaining factions, exhausted by the warring and massive police pressure, have suffered drastic financial losses and make peace. And with Avitabile in prison for another year, Genny now has to reign over North Naples and Rome. Ciro, on the other hand, has had his revenge but his dreams and his family have been destroyed. He decides to leave everything behind, travels to Bulgaria and goes to work for the big-time drug dealer Valentin. But when Ciro has to return to Naples, he forms a new powerful partnership with the young and ambitious Enzo; a light that was once extinguished in Ciro's eyes reappears. Enzo, with Ciro's help, learns how to be a real boss and to take what he is entitled to. It is a time of drastic change for all of them. Once they started out as street-level drug dealers. Now they are casting their net way beyond the city of Naples and the borders of Italy.

After a number of millionaires die in suspicious circumstances soon after marrying, FBI investigator Alexandra Barnes (Debra Winger) becomes obsessed with proving glamorous socialite Catharine Petersen (Theresa Russell) is the murderer, but finds that she too is falling under her spell.

Show moreShow less

Wilhelm (Rüdiger Vogler) embarks on a journey across Germany in order to find his voice as a writer. Introspective and seemingly without personality, he encounters a series of eccentric characters, including a beautiful and enigmatic actress and a mute girl, who draw Wilhelm into their worlds.

Loosely based on Goethe's landmark novel, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Wim Wenders once again shows his mastery over the road movie genre and creates a brilliant character study of one man's alienation from the world around him.

Show moreShow less

Drawn from his own family memories, 'Distant Voices, Still Lives' is a strikingly intimate portrait of working class life in 1940's and 1950's Liverpool.

Focusing on the real-life experiences of his mother, sisters and brother whose lives are thwarted by their brutal, sadistic father (a chilling performance by Pete Postlethwaite), the film shows us beauty and terror in equal measure. Davies uses the traditional family gatherings of births, marriages and deaths to paint a lyrical portrait of family life - of love, grief, and the highs and lows of being human, a 'poetry of the everyday' that is at once deeply autobiographical and universally resonant.

Show moreShow less

A team of local TV reporters are following a squad of firemen on night duty. The footage is completely live and their task is to make show about on the life of these professionals who work while we are sleeping.

The first job of the night is to rescue an old lady who is trapped inside her apartment but the routine rescue soon takes a sinister turn. Something evil is spreading throughout the building, out of control. Trapped inside, the firemen and the TV crew have to confront an unknown and lethal horror. Now, the only thing that matters is hiding, surviving and trying desperately to escape. They must keep on recording. No matter what happens. Until the very last moment.

Show moreShow less

It is November 1932. Gosford Park is the magnificent country estate to which Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) and his wife, Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas), gather relations and friends for a weekend shooting party. They have invited an eclectic group.

As the guests assemble in the gilded drawing rooms above their personal maids and valets swell the ranks of the house servants in the teeming kitchens and corridors below-stairs. But all is not as it seems: neither amongst the bejeweled guests lunching and dining at their enormous leisure, nor in the attic bedrooms and stark work stations where the servants labour for the comfort of their employers. Part comedy of manners and part mystery, the film is finally a moving portrait of events that bridge generations, class, sex, tragic personal history - and culminate in a murder. Or is it two murders…?

Show moreShow less

"Beauty and the Beast " is a landmark feat of cinematic fantasy in which master filmmaker Jean Cocteau conjures spectacular visions of enchantment, desire and death that have never been equalled.

Josette Day is luminous yet feisty as Beauty, and Jean Marais gives one of his best performances as the Beast, at once brutal and gentle, rapacious and vulnerable, shamed and repelled by his own bloodlust. Henri Alekan's subtle black and white cinematography combine with Christian Berard's masterly costumes and set designs to create a magical piece of cinema, a children's fairytale refashioned into a stylised and highly sophisticated dream.

Show moreShow less

Fast food chefs Thomas (Jackie Chan) and David (Yuen Biao) find themselves cooking up trouble when detective Moby (Sammo Hung) involves them in the case of a missing heiress.

The three friends need all of their daring and physical dexterity when they find themselves facing a triple helping of danger.

Show moreShow less

"Lucky" follows the spiritual journey of Harry Dean Stanton's character 'Lucky', a cantankerous, self-reliant 90 year old atheist, and the quirky characters that inhabit the Arizona town where he lives.

Having out-lived and out-smoked all of his contemporaries, the fiercely independent Lucky finds himself at the precipice of life, thrust into a journey of self-exploration, leading towards that which is so often unattainable: enlightenment. Released in the US just days after Stanton's death at age 91, 'Lucky', is at once a love letter to the life and career of Harry Dean Stanton as well as a meditation on mortality, loneliness, spirituality, and human connection.

Show moreShow less

Fourteen-year-old Joe (Ed Oxenbould) is the only child of Jeanette (Carey Mulligan) and Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) - a housewife and a golf pro - living a seemingly idyllic life in 1960's Montana.

His family's carefully constructed façade is about to come crashing spectacularly down, however, when Jerry loses his job - and his sense of purpose. In an attempt to restore his pride, Jerry takes off for the summer to help fight the wildfires raging near the Canadian border, a life-threatening job, for very little pay. An angry and bereft Jeanette must quickly learn to fend for herself, and does so with gusty, challenging cultural expectations and taking a quietly bewildered Joe along for the ride.

Show moreShow less

Jacques Tati's last - and least known - film, Parade, sees his return to the boisterous music hall world in which he began his career as a mime artist in the 1930s.

Ostensibly nothing more than a series of circus acts hosted by Tati and preformed for a family audience, Parade is in fact a brilliantly conceived spectacle which blurs all distinctions between performers and audience, accomplished acrobats and children at play. Offering gloriously funny visual gags that flow beautifully from one act to another - including several of his most famous pantomimes - Parade is the perfect stage for Tati's comic genius.

Show moreShow less

Regarded by many as a masterpiece, Bresson's film tells the story of a young man living in Paris who desires more from life than the glib, superficial truths and material things that are on offer to him. He reaches out to his friends and psychiatrist to provide him with the great answers in life.

But his spiritual deliverance remains beyond his grasp until he reaches a bizarre arrangement with a fellow drifter.

Show moreShow less

It's been eleven years since the downfall of arch-criminal and master-of-disguise Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), now sequestered in an asylum under the watchful eye of one Professor Baum (Oskar Beregi).

Mabuse exists in a state of "catatonic graphomania", his only action the irrepressible scribbling of blueprints that would realise a seemingly theoretical "Empire of Crime". But when a series of violent events courses through the city, police and populace alike start asking themselves with increasing panic: "Who is behind all this?!" The answer borders on the realm of the impossible...

Show moreShow less

Maria and Hermann Braun marry in Germany close to the end of World War II but are shortly separated.

Just after being sent to the Russian Front, Hermann is reported missing and, although Maria believes he is still alive, her brother in law, just returned from a POW camp in Russia, confirms his death. Alone, Maria uses her beauty and ambition to prosper in Germany's "economic miracle" of the 1950s. 'The Marriage of Maria Braun' is heartbreaking study of a woman picking herself up from the ruins of her own life, as well as a pointed metaphorical attack on a society determined to forget its past.