jnk's - Favourites List

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Featuring a career defining performance from Vincent Cassel, the two part saga follows the incredible series of hold-ups, prison breaks and kidnappings throughout the 70's and 80's across several continents.

Part 1: Killing Instincts

Mesrine: Killer Instinct introduces us to Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel), a loyal son and dedicated soldier back home and living with his parents after serving in the Algeria! War. Handsome and charming, he is soon seduced by the neon glamour of sixties Paris and easy money if presents. Mentored by Guido (Gerard Depardieu) Mesrine soon moves swiftly up the criminal ladder, choosing the high risk life of a gangster over the honest life of th hard working family. After pulling off an audacious heist he and his lover Jeanne (Ceciie France), flee to Canada where the opportunity of one big payout lures him out of hiding and propels him towards international notoriety.
Part 2: Public Enemy Number One
The incredible and brutal story of Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) continues in Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1. Now back in France, Mesrine is finally in police custody and facing justice for his crimes but he is soon on the run once again. After escaping a courtroom and kidnapping the judge at gunpoint, Mesrine is declared Public Enemy Number One and is eventually condemned to a maximum security prison where he writes his first memoirs, establishing himself as a household name and anti-hero across France. Mesrine stages another daring escape and disappears into the lawless underworld, taunting the police and reinventing himself as a celebrity criminal through his savvy manipulation of the media. After such a monumental rise, comes the inevitable fall as the detectives close in, bringing the life of Jacques Mesrine to a full bloody circle.

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This debut feature from Gideon Koppel was greeted with huge critical acclaim. A poetic lover-letter to Trefeurig, a farming community in mid-Wales where Koppel grew up, the films shows both the great beauty of the landscape, and the vanishing way of life that it contains.

Koppel’s patient observation reveals moments of great humour and humanity, even the mystical, in the apparently everyday life of the village: the visits of the mobile library; dog shows; the threat to the village school; sheep-shearing, cake making and the plight of a stuffed owl.

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Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) was risking everything to find a better life in America with her family. Tough gang member Casper (Edgar Flores) was caught up in a world of violence and brutality. When he tried to escape, his gang put a price on his head.

Then he met the one person who would change his life forever...

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This is the inside story of Street Art - a brutal and revealing account of what happens when fame, money and vandalism collide.

Exit Through the Gift Shop follows an eccentric shop-keeper turned amateur film-maker as he attempts to capture many of the world's most infamous vandals on camera, only to have a British stencil artist named Banksy turn the camcorder back on its owner with wildly unexpected results. One of the most provocative films about art ever made, Exit Through the Gift Shop is a chaotic study of low-level criminality, comradeship and incompetence. By turns shocking, hilarious and absurd, this is an enthralling modern-day fairytale... with bolt cutters.

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The new film from Paolo Sorrentino, the acclaimed director of The Consequences of Love and The Family Friend, is a riveting talk of political intrigue and organised crime, based n the extraordinary life of Guilio Andreotti.

Italian Prime Minister no less than seven times, Andreotti's long career was dogged by persistent accusations of conspiracy, Mafia connections and state-sponsored terror. Epic in scope and featuring a commanding performance from Toni Servillo (Gomorrah) as the chillingly enigmatic Andreotti, this compelling and visually dazzling film explores the labyrinthine political machinations and shady criminal underworld surrounding this fascinating and controversial figure.

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It is 1997 and hundreds of thousands live in Rio’s notorious favelas. Drug trafficking militias have complete control within the slums while the police run their criminal enterprises outside.

The elite Bope force fights to combat drug trafficking, but kiiping order has its price and their actions blur the line between right and wrong, justice and revenge. Two of the force's newest recruits, Neto (Caio Junqueira) and Matias (Andr Ramiro), are childhood friends: one is quick on the trigger to maintain order and the other refuses to compromise his ideals. Together they are the perfect replacement. Alone they may not have what it takes to survive.

Based on the bestselling exposé of the Neapolitan mafia, by award-winning journalist Roberto Saviano, Gomorrah is an unforgettable and compelling story of power, money and blood. Five stories are woven together in modern day Naples, set in a brutal world from which there is no escape and no mercy.

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A spellbinding account of the woman best known as Hitler's moviemaker and recently hailed by The New York Times as "one of the greatest woman filmmakers ever". In this remarkable documentary, Leni Riefenstahl addresses her past for the first time on camera.

While she never actually joined the Nazi Party, as the creator of the single most effective propaganda film ever made, Triumph Of The Will, Riefenstahl has spent much of her life trying to live down her association with the Third Reich. Her personal relationship with Hitler is still in question. Feisty and charismatic at 91, Riefenstahl revisits the landmarks of her turbulent life - from her beginnings as a dare-devil actress in German "mountain films" to her direction of such stunning narratives as 'The Blue Light' (1932) and 'Tiefland' (1940's, released in 1954), to her infamous, brilliant documentaries 'Triumph of the Will' (1935) and 'Olympia' (1938) to her anthropological photographs of the now extinct Nuba tribes of Africa. The film brings out the story of Riefenstahl right up to her current passion - scuba diving and shooting films of exotic aquatic life. Altogether, a riveting story that leaves the viewer in total awe of its controversial subject.

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"Triumph of the Will" may be the most enduringly controversial film ever made, justly both despised and admired. Is it disgusting propaganda? Absolutely. Is it a documentary record of a critical historical moment? Yes...but also no.

Perhaps the only thing on which everyone could agree is that it is one of the most terrifying horror movies of all time. A shamelessly biased, unabashedly subjective rendering of the infamous 1934 Nuremberg rallies of the Nazi part, 'Triumph of the Will' was commissioned by Hitler from his favourite actress turned director Leni Riefenstahl. The power and purity of Reifenstahl's artistry is such that this incredibly perverse and corrupt film has its own kind of demented integrity. An essential document of Hitler the Orator and mesmerizer of the masses, this programme revels in the monumental architecture of Albert Speer, the formal precision of the marching cadres, and above all, the almost religious exaltation of Hitler as the mystical personofication of the dreams and ideals of his people, captured kinetically with a mastery of technique that is both breathtaking and revolting. It is a film no one who sees can ever forget.

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Relentless edge-of-your-seat suspense, jaw-dropping, high-octane action and a powerful love story combine in what has been hailed by many critics as the best film of the year. 'Tell No One' follows one man's frantic race against time when his tragic past is suddenly and unexpectedly unearthed. Dr.

Alex Beck (François Cluzet) is left unconscious after his wife, and childhood sweetheart, Margot (Marie-Josée Croze) is brutally murdered. 8 years on and still unaware of the truth, Alex receives an anonymous e-mail. Clicking on the link he sees a woman's face in a crowd - Margot's face...But before this can sink in, Alex is thrown headlong into a deadly chase - running from both the Police and a team of killers who will stop at nothing to keep the truth hidden.

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The Hurt Locker is an intense portrayal of elite soldiers who have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world: disarming bombs in the heat of combat.

When renegade Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) takes command of a highly trained bomb disposal unit, he frequently risks the lives of himself and those around him with his suicidal methods and a complete disregard for danger. Caught in the middle are his subordinates Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), who can only watch as their leader descends further into addiction: an addiction to war.

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At 14, school friends Steve 'Lips' Kudlow and Rob Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, went on to become the 'demigods of Canadian metal', releasing one of the heaviest albums in metal history, 1982's Metal on Metal.

The album influenced a musical generaton including Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax, that went on to sell millions of records. But Anvil's career took a different path - straight to obscurity. Anvil The Story of Anvil is a timeless, and at times hilarious, feel good tale of survival and the unadulterated passion it takes to follow your dream. Directed by Sasha Gervasi, we follow the band as they attempt one last shot at the big time with their thirteenth album 'This is Thirteen' and a calamitous European tour. You don't have to be a metal head to love Anvil. This is an inspirational, heart warming and uplifting tale of two best friends who refuse to give up on their dream. Metal on Metal forever!

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Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is nearing the completion of his 3-year-long contract with Lunar Industries, mining Earth's primary source of energy on the dark side of the moon. Alone with only the base's vigilant computer Gerty as his sole companion, Bell's extended isolation has taken its toll.

His only link with outside world comes via satellite messages from his wife and young daughter. He longs to return home, but a terrible accident on lunar surfaces leads to disturbing discovery that contributes to his growing sense of paranoia and dislocation so many miles away from home.

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On August 7th 1974, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between New York's twin towers, then the world’s tallest buildings.

After nearly an hour dancing on the wire, he was arrested, taken for psychological evaluation, and brought to jail before he was finally released. Following six and a half years of dreaming of the towers, Petit spent eight months in New York City planning the execution of the coup. Aided by a team of friends and accomplices, Petit was faced with numerous extraordinary challenges: he had to find a way to bypass the WTC’s security; smuggle the heavy steel cable and rigging equipment into the towers; pass the wire between the two rooftops; anchor the wire and tension it to withstand the winds and the swaying of the buildings.

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"The Damned United" tells the confrontational and darkly humorous story of Brian Clough (Michael Sheen) and his doomed 44 day tenure as manager of the reigning champions of English football; Leeds United.

Taking the job without trusty lieutenant Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall) by his side, and with a changing room full of what in his mind were players loyal to his bitter rival Don Revie (Colm Meaney), would lead to an unheralded examination of Clough's belligerence and brilliance over 44 days. This is that story. The story of The Damned United.