jwc's - Rented List
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1900 (1976)Novecento
It is turn-of-the-century Italy, and in the summer of 1900 two children are born in the rich agricultural countryside in the region of Emilia. Olmo Dalco (Gerard Depardieu) is the bastard son of a family of farmworkers and Alfredo Berlinghieri (Robert De Niro) is heir to a wealthy family of landowners. Although they come from two different worlds, a friendship develops that will endure the sweeping changes of the 20th century. - Director:
- Bernardo Bertolucci
- Cast:
- Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda
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Goodbye Lenin! (2003)Good Bye Lenin!
The year is 1989 and East and West Germany are still divided. Alex (Daniel Brhl) and his sister Ariane (Maria Simon) live in East Germany with their single mother, Christiane (Katrin Sass) who is a staunch Socialist. When Alex's mother witnesses his arrest on a protest march, she suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma for eight months, just enough time for the Berlin wall to come tumbling down along with all of East Germany's ideals. Eight months later, Christiane wakes up and things have changed. The doctors warn Alex that any shock could bring on a fatal heart attack. He then realises he must convince his mother that her beloved Communism has not been overthrown but is in fact triumphing over Capitalism. Alex then sets out to recreate every detail of the old East inside the four walls of their tiny council flat... what begins as a little white lie, soon turns into a major deception! - Director:
- Wolfgang Becker
- Cast:
- Daniel Brühl, Andreas Thieck, Katrin Sass
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When her mother falls ill under mysterious circumstances, young Eve (Fantine Harduin) is sent to live with her estranged father's wealthy relatives in Calais. But trouble is brewing, as a series of intergenerational back-stabbings threaten to tear the family apart. Meanwhile, distracted by infidelities and betrayals, they fail to notice that their new arrival has a sinister secret of her own. - Director:
- Michael Haneke
- Cast:
- Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Mathieu Kassovitz
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Sully (2016)Sully: Miracle on the Hudson
On January 15, 2009, the world witnessed the 'Miracle on the Hudson' when Captain 'Sully' Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) and his co-pilot (Aaron Eckhart) glided their disabled plane onto the icy waters of the Hudson River, saving the lives of all 155 aboard. However, even as Sully was being heralded by the public and the media for his unprecedented feat of aviation skill, an investigation was unfolding that threatened to destroy his reputation and his career. - Director:
- Clint Eastwood
- Cast:
- Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney
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With the integrity and depth of an epic, Shenandoah tells the dramatic story of a man caught in a dilemma. James Stewart stars as a Virginia farmer during the Civil War. He refuses to support the Confederacy because he is opposed to slavery, yet he will not support the Union because he is deeply opposed to war. When his son is taken prisoner, Stewart goes to search for the boy. Seeing first-hand the horrors of war, he is at last forced to take his stand. - Director:
- Andrew V. McLaglen
- Cast:
- James Stewart, Doug McClure, Glenn Corbett
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Leonard Zelig (Woody Allen) is a man so introverted and insecure that he has developed the ability to blend perfectly into the background of any given situation, regardless of the personality or even ethnicity of the people around him. But when he inadvertently becomes famous as "the human chameleon" after the media takes too keen an interest in his therapy sessions with Dr. Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow), Zelig is faced with an unprecedented challenge: how do you fade into the background when the spotlight is firmly upon you? - Director:
- Woody Allen
- Cast:
- Woody Allen, Ed Herlihy, Mia Farrow
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"Primer" is set in the industrial park/suburban tract-home fringes of an unnamed contemporary city where two young engineers, Abe (David Sullivan) and Aaron (Shane Carruth), are members of a small group of men who work by day for a large corporation while conducting extracurricular experiments on their own time in a garage. While tweaking their current project, a device that reduces the apparent mass of any object placed inside it by blocking gravitational pull, they accidentally discover that it has some highly unexpected capabilities - ones that could enable them to do and to have seemingly anything they want. Taking advantage of this unique opportunity is the first challenge they face. Dealing with the consequences is the next. - Director:
- Shane Carruth
- Cast:
- Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Casey Gooden
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The acclaimed new film tells the startlingly original and brutally honest story of 15 year-old Mia, brilliantly played by winner Katie Jarvis. A feisty and fiercely independent outsider, Mia is ostracised from her friends and lives uneasily with her volatile mother (Kierston Wareing) in a tough Essex estate from which she longs to escape. But the unexpected arrival of her mother's handsome and charismatic new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender) sparks a catalogue of events that threaten to turn Mia's world upside down. - Director:
- Andrea Arnold
- Cast:
- Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, Kierston Wareing
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Lovely, headstrong Rosy (Sarah Miles) cannot forsake her passionate romance with the handsome British officer (Christopher Jones). Yet there is a greater love - the devotion of her reserved schoolteacher husband Charles (Robert Mitchum), who stands by Rosy when her illicit affair leads to a charge of treason. Two honoured alumni of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago - director David Lean and screenwriter Robert Bolt - frame this brooding tale within the expansive beaches, craggy cliffs and heathered hills of Ireland's Dingle Peninsula. - Director:
- David Lean
- Cast:
- Robert Mitchum, Trevor Howard, John Mills
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In his third feature, director Noah Baumbach scores a triumph with an autobiographical coming-of-age story about a teenager whose writer-parents are divorcing. The father (Jeff Daniels) and mother (Laura Linney) duke it out in half-civilized, half-savage fashion, while their two sons adapt in different ways, shifting allegiances between parents. The film is squirmy-funny and nakedly honest about the rationalisations and compensatory snobbisms of artistic failure as wellias the conflicted desires of adolescents for sex and status. In detailing bohemian-bourgeois life in brownstone Brooklyn, Baumbach is spot on; everyone proceeds from good intentions and acts rather badly, in spite or because of their manifest intelligence... - Director:
- Noah Baumbach
- Cast:
- Owen Kline, Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney
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In November, 1959, the shocking murder of a smalltown Kansas family captures the imagination of Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman), famed author of "Breakfast at Tiffany's. " Capote sets out to investigate with his childhood friend Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), winning over the locals despite his flamboyant appearance and style. When he forms a bond with the killers and their execution date nears, the writing of "In Cold Blood," a book that will change the course of American Literature, takes a drastic toll on Capote, changing him in ways he never imagined. - Director:
- Bennett Miller
- Cast:
- Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marina Stephenson Kerr, Clifton Collins Jr.
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Days of Being Wild (1990)A Fei jingjyuhn
Hong Kong 1960: York is a vain, amoral sexual predator abandoned in his childhood. In his youth he drifts through a series of casual friendships and affairs with one purpose, to discover the identity of his natural mother. She has long since moved to the Philippines and his foster mother refuses refuses to tell him. As one of York's lovers courts a policeman and they instigate a passing romance, York travels to the Philippines in search of the truth. - Director:
- Kar-Wai Wong
- Cast:
- Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, Andy Lau
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Kolya (1996)Kolja
Louka, a middle-aged Czech cellist, is a skirt-chasing bachelor who enjoys a lifestyle free of responsibilities. When he finds himself strapped for cash, he agrees to a marriage of convenience. But after his new bride skips town, Louka is left to father her five-year-old Russian son, Kolya. Neither could be more unhappy with their predicament, especially since they don't even speak the same language. It'll take time and patience for the cultural barrier between this unlikely father-son duo to fall, but when it does, an unbreakable bond forms in its place. - Director:
- Jan Sverák
- Cast:
- Zdenek Sverák, Andrei Chalimon, Libuse Safránková
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The Cote d'Azur, 1915. The great painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir is in his twilight years, tormented by the loss of his wife and the news that his son Jean has been wounded in WW1. When a young girl enters his idyllic Mediterranean world, Pierre-Auguste rejuvenates and becomes newly inspired by her beauty and spirit.
But when Jean returns home to convalesce - and in the face of his father's fierce opposition - he falls in love with the muse, and within the battle-shaken Jean, a filmmaker begins to grow.- Director:
- Gilles Bourdos
- Cast:
- Michel Bouquet, Christa Théret, Vincent Rottiers
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The Caretaker (1963)The Guest
Whilst renovating his dilapidated home, Aston (Robert Shaw) invites an irritable and devious vagrant (Donald Pleasence) to stay. But, when his ill-tempered brother Mick (Alan Bates) returns, an ominous yet darkly comic power struggle between the trio commences. A play that changed the face of modern theatre and made Harold Pinter's name, 'The Caretaker' remains one of Pinter's most famous works. - Director:
- Clive Donner
- Cast:
- Alan Bates, Donald Pleasence, Robert Shaw
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