jill-from-london's - Rented List

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Andrew Dominik's one more time with feeling is a remarkable black and white documentary which chronicles the creation of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds' album 'Skeleton Tree'.

Originally a performance based concept, the film evolved into something much more significant as Dominik delved into the tragic backdrop of the writing and recording of the album. The result is stark, fragile and raw, and a true testament to an artist trying to find his way through the darkness.

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Abbas Kiarostami is indubitably one of the most important film-makers in the world, and this, his second made outside Iran, is set in Japan.

A student moonlighting as an escort goes to visit a client who is more interested in talking, and who the next day takes on the role of her grandfather when confronted by her jealous boyfriend.
It pays homage to the tradition of Ozu, but is very much a typical Kiarostami work with its oblique narrative, mistaken and assumed identies, and masterful sleights-of-hand upending the audience's assumptions.

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'Do we get stupider as we grow up?' In his wildly popular Broadway show 'American Utopia', David Byrne reflects on human connections, life and how on earth we work through it. He joins the dots with his music and it all starts making sense.

Spike Lee here transforms the production into immersive, dynamic cinema that radiates with astounding performances, inventive contemporary dance and political urgency. 'American Utopia' flows like an iridescent dream vision. Work by James Baldwin, Janelle Monáe and Kurt Schwitters is highlighted among exhilarating renditions of Byrne's solo work, as well as Talking Heads classics. According to the multi-hyphenate, we love looking at humans more than anything else. Anti-fascist and anti-racist, Byrne illuminates our responsibility to care for one another as he and his co-performers burn down the house.

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In Upstate New York, Irene (Vera Farmiga) struggles to raise two sons, keep her stale marriage together and manage a secret cocaine habit.

Isolated by the strip malls and dying small towns that define the area, Irene's not sure when she went from high school partying to skimming off the grocery money to supply her growing habit - but it's about to end abruptly. Desperate to alter her life, she puts herself in rehab, hoping that she can turn around the world she has made with her husband, Steve (Clint Jordan). But once she's back home the distance between them seems to have grown and Irene ends up falling into an incendiary affair with Bob (Hugh Dillon), a nurse and former addict that she met at rehab. His attention and affection awakens her pushed aside life, but all too soon she realizes they have more in common than she bargained for.

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Josh has failed at being a musician in NYC. Josh has failed at being a booking agent. Josh's life is pretty much in the toilet. When he tries to figure out where it all went wrong he comes up with an idea that would be a small, yet life-changing victory.

He decides to purchase a 1985 Lazy Boy on EBay, just like the one from his childhood living room, and deliver it cross-country to his father as a surprise birthday gift. Things immediately get complicated when his girlfriend Emily wants to come, especially when she wants to have the "where do we stand" in their relationship conversation. When his pseudo-granola brother, Rhett, begs to join them on their adventure it quickly becomes three very different people and a giant purple puffy chair in a too-small van and one of them has to go before the trip's end. Things immediately get complicated when his girlfriend Emily wants to come, especially when she wants to have the "where do we stand" in their relationship conversation. When his pseudo-granola brother, Rhett, begs to join them on their adventure it quickly becomes three very different people and a giant purple puffy chair in a too-small van and one of them has to go before the trip's end.

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"Old Joy" is the story of two old friends, Kurt and Mark, who reunite for a weekend camping trip in the mountains in Portland, Oregon. The trip signifies different things to them - for Mark a respite from imminent fatherhood, for Kurt a part of along series of adventures.

As the trip progresses and the landscape changes, the friends begin to examine their lives and their friendship.

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"Wendy and Lucy" is the story of Wendy (Oscar-nominated Michelle Williams), who is driving to Alaska in hope of a summer of lucrative work and the start of a new life with her dog, Lucy.

When her car breaks down in Oregon, however, the thin fabric of her financial situation comes apart and she finds herself desperately searching for her only true friend. Starring Kelly Reichardt's own beloved dog as Lucy.

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In an America generations removed from the greatest civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the young mayor of a mid-sized American city is faced with a federal court order that says he must build a small number of low-income housing units in the white neighborhoods of his town.

His attempt to do so tears the entire city apart, paralyzes the municipal government and, ultimately, destroys the mayor and his political future. From creator David Simon (HBO's Treme and The Wire) and director Paul Haggis (Crash), and based on the nonfiction book of the same name by Lisa Belkin, the six-part HBO Miniseries presentation 'Show Me a Hero' explores notions of home, race and community through the lives of elected officials, bureaucrats, activists and ordinary citizens in Yonkers, NY.

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Rosa Luxemburg (Barbara Sukowa), a dedicated Marxist and pacifist, is arrested in 1905 for her political activities. Determined to stick to her principles, she goes on to be repeatedly convicted and imprisoned for her protests and speeches.

In 1915, growing disillusioned with the German Social Democrats when they endorse World War I, she founds the Spartacist League, later the Communist Party of Germany. Despite the many men in her life, Rosa remains focused on social justice.

Starkly shot in black and white, capturing a Paris not seen on any tourist map, the film deals with France's intolerance towards outsiders, following Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Kounde) and Said (Said Taghmaoui), three young men trapped in the Parisian economic, ethnic and social underclass.

Based on Larry McMurty's Pullitzer Prize-winning novel and set in the late nineteenth century, this epic tale of the Old West tells of two former Texas Rangers who leave the small town of Lonesome Dove. They head out west on a daring 2500-mile cattle drive to the lush ranch country of Montana.

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This presentation of the powerful film classic features an additional five minutes of footage cut from the film's original release, plus the original overture and extended soundtrack.

Director Stanley Kubrick tells the tale of Spartacus (Kirk Douglas), the bold gladiator slave and Varinia (Jean Simmons), the woman who believed in his cause. Challenged by the power-hungry General Crassus (Laurence Olivier), Spartacus is forced to face his convictions and the power of the Roman Empire at its glorious height.

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15 million people, 800 cities, all marching as ONE. On February 15th, 2003, over 15 million people marched through the streets of cities on every continent to voice their opposition to the proposed war in Iraq.

Eight years in the making, filmed in seven countries, and including interviews with Damon Albarn, Danny Glover, Mark Rylance, Richard Branson, Hans Blix and Ken Loach amongst others, "We Are Many" charts the birth and rise of the people power movements that are now sweeping the globe. This remarkable and moving true story brings to life the biggest demonstration in human history, and how it forever changed the world.

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Based on Peter Rock's novel 'My Abandonment', 'Leave No Trace' revolves around a teenage girl (Thomasin McKenzie) and her father (Ben Foster) who have lived undetected for years in Forest Park, a vast wood on the edge of Portland, Oregon.

A chance encounter leads to their discovery and removal from the park and into the charge of a social service agency. They try to adapt to their new surroundings until a sudden decision sets them on a perilous journey into the wilderness seeking complete independence and forcing them to confront their conflicting desire to be part of a community or a fierce need to live apart.

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Sinan (Dogu Demirkol) returns from his studies in the city of Canakkale to his parents' home in the small rural town of Can. He hopes to publish a book of essays and short stories (or what he describes as a "quirky auto-fiction meta-novel").

But his teacher father Idris (Murat Cemcir) is an addictive gambler, so much so that his mother and sister have become reluctantly accustomed to making do without food or electricity. And so Sinan, with his writing dreams, worrying that we will be reduced after army service to teaching in the remote East, wanders around town, visiting his grandparents, encountering old friends, all the while looking for funding for his book.