jwc's - Rented List
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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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A small but perfectly-formed comedy-drama about Broadway legend Danny Rose (Woody Allen) - not a star but perhaps the most hapless agent ever to work in the profession, whose no-hope clients include piano-playing parrots, blind jugglers, one-legged tap dancers and stuttering ventriloquists. Things change dramatically when an unexpected lounge-music craze threatens to make cheesy crooner Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte) both famous and successful, a situation that natural loser Danny is helplessly ill-equipped to deal with. Fie proves similarly hapless when Lou turns out to have a mistress (an unrecognisable Mia Farrow) whose mobster ex-boyfriend is none too impressed with the company that she's currently keeping and decides to advertise this fact at the worst possible moment. Both laugh-out-loud funny and warmly nostalgic, 'Broadway Danny Rose' is Allen's heartfelt tribute to the days of New York vaudeville that he himself experienced first-hand when starting out as a comedian two decades earlier - underscored by the fact that the Greek chorus of Broadway veterans chuckling over Danny's various mishaps and misfortunes are the real thing. - Director:
- Woody Allen
- Cast:
- Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Nick Apollo Forte
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Secrets and Lies (1996)Secrets & Lies
Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a young, black optometrist whose adoptive parents have recently died. Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) is a sad, unmarried mother who works in a factory and lives in a shabby terraced house with her confrontational daughter, Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook). Cynthia's brother Maurice (Timothy Spall) is a successful wedding photographer who lives comfortably in suburbia with his snooty wife Monica (Phyllis Logan). In a misplaced effort to re-unite the family, Maurice and Monica throw a small barbecue party for Roxanne's 21st birthday. When Cynthia brings along her new friend Hortense, chaos ensues as some painful truths are revealed. - Director:
- Mike Leigh
- Cast:
- Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn, Phyllis Logan
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