m-balsara's - Rented List
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The Page Turner (2006)La Tourneuse De Pages
This acclaimed and emotionally fought thriller stars Deborah Francois as Melanie, a young woman whose love of music turns in a passion for revenge. Self-possessed and coolly calculating. Melanie finds work as a nanny to the young son of the well-known concert pianist Ariane Foucherat (Catherine Frot). By contrast fragile and insecure. Ariane is taken by her new employee's professional manner and evident musical sensitivity and soon engages her as her personal page turner. But beneath Melanie's seemingly perfect exterior, lies a secret and terrible grudge against Ariane, based on a thoughtless incident from the past that thwarted Melanie's own musical ambitions. Having patiently bided her time for ten long years, she at last prepares to exact her chilling revenge. - Director:
- Denis Dercourt
- Cast:
- Catherine Frot, Déborah François, Pascal Greggory
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Talk to Her (2002)Hable Con Ella
In this ravishing tale of romantic obsession, loneliness and friendship, Director Pedro Almodovar crafts a life affirming story of two tragic women and the men who love them. After a chance encounter at a theatre, two men, Benigno and Marco, meet at a private clinic where Benigno works. Lydia, Marco's girlfriend and a bullfighter by profession, has been injured and is gravely ill. It so happens that Benigno is looking after another woman in the clinic, Alicia, a young ballet student. The lives of the four characters will flow in all directions, past, present and future, urging them towards an unexpected destiny. - Director:
- Pedro Almodóvar
- Cast:
- Rosario Flores, Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti
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From director Christopher Nolan, a unique and intriguing thriller that begins with the ultimate act of revenge and backtracks through time to reveal the shocking and provocative reasons behind it. Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) remembers everything up to the night his wife was brutally raped and murdered. But since that tragedy, he has suffered from short-term memory loss and cannot recall any event, the places he has just visited or anyone he has met just minutes before. Determined to find out why his wife was killed, the only way he can store evidence is on scraps of paper, by taking Polaroid photos and tattooing vital clues on his body. Throughout his investigation, he appears to have the help of both bartender Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), who may have her own secret agenda and police officer Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) whose friendship is always suspect. As Shelby's fractured memory tries to piece together a chilling jigsaw of deceit and betrayal in reverse, breathtaking twists and surprising turns rapidly occur in the most challenging, original and critically acclaimed thriller in years. - Director:
- Christopher Nolan
- Cast:
- Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano
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The Apartment (1996)L'appartement
L'Appartement is a fanciful and romantic tale of love and obsession. A blend of Gallic romanticism and Hitchcockian style, this film is a delicious pastiche of five people's passions and lives. The story circles around Max (Vincent Cassel), on the verge of getting married, who suddenly overhears the voice of Lisa (Monica Bellucci), his long-lost love, arguing emotionally on the phone outside the men's room. He manages to track down her apartment, but in it he discovers another woman, who claims to be the Lisa he has overheard. She seduces him and manages to become the focus of his attention. However, the story line is only beginning to twist... - Director:
- Gilles Mimouni
- Cast:
- Romane Bohringer, Vincent Cassel, Jean-Philippe Écoffey
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Based on the hilarious best-selling novel, this sinfully funny movie starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway is sensational must see. As assistant to impossibly demanding New York fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly (Streep), young Andy Sachs (Hathaway) has landed a job that a million girls would die for. Unfortunately, her heaven-sent appointment as Miranda's personal whipping girl just might be the death of her! - Director:
- David Frankel
- Cast:
- Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Adrian Grenier
- Formats:
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An exuberant family drama set in Mira Nair's beloved Punjabi culture, where ancient tradition and dot-com modernity combine in unique and perfect harmony. As the romantic monsoon rains loom, the extended Verma family reunites from around the globe for a last-minute arranged marriage in New Delhi. Monsoon Wedding traces five intersecting stories, each navigating different aspects of love as they cross boundaries of class, continent and morality. The film celebrates a contemporary India never seen before. - Director:
- Mira Nair
- Cast:
- Mira Nair, Naseeruddin Shah, Lillete Dubey
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Following the death of Diana the 'People's Princess', the Queen (Helen Mirren) and her family remain hidden behind tradition and the closed doors of Balmoral Castle. whilst the heartbroken public becomes disillusioned with their Queen's absence, an increasingly popular Prime Minister, Tony Blair, must battle to convince the monarchy that its desire for privacy could lead to its ultimate downfall. With an outstanding performance from Helen Mirren, the Queen is Director Stephen Frears' engrossing, intimate and intelligently witty portrait of our monarchy's darkest days in the week following one of the nation's greatest tragedies. - Director:
- Stephen Frears
- Cast:
- Helen Mirren, Martin Bashir, Michael Sheen
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Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is living a happy and quiet life with his lawyer wife (Maria Bello) and their two children in the small town of Millbrook, Indiana, but one night their idyllic existence is shattered when Tom foils a vicious attempted robbery in his diner. Sensing danger, he takes action and saves his customers and friends in the self-defence killings of two-sought-after criminals. Heralded as a hero, Tom's life is changed overnight, attracting a national media circus, which forces him into the spotlight. Uncomfortable with his newfound celebrity, Tom tries to return to the normalcy of his ordinary life only to be confronted by a mysterious and threatening man (Ed Harris) who arrives in town believing Tom is the man who's wronged him in the past. As Tom and his family fight back against this case of mistaken identity and struggle to cope with their changed reality, they are forced to confront their relationships and the divisive issues which surface as a result. - Director:
- David Cronenberg
- Cast:
- Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris
- Formats:
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Oscar winner Jamie Foxx (Collateral, Ali) and Jake Gyllenhaal (The Day After Tomorrow, Donnie Darko) star in this critically acclaimed portrayal of a group of young "Jarheads" during the explosive days of the Gulf War. From the Academy Award winning director of American beauty, Jarhead is a powerful story, told with painful honesty and irreverence, with spectacular cinematography. JARHEAD follows "Swoff" (Gyllenhaal)) from a sobering stint in boot camp to active duty, sporting a sniper's rifle through Middle East deserts with no cover from intolerable heat or from Iraqi soldiers. Swoff and his fellow Marines, who have been trained to kill, find themselves in a brutal situation, fighting a war they don't understand for a cause they don't fully grasp. - Director:
- Sam Mendes
- Cast:
- Jake Gyllenhaal, Jamie Foxx, Lucas Black
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Meet Justin Cobb (Lou Pucci), a teenager who still sucks his thumb. Realising it's totally disrupting his home, love, and school life, he allows his orthodontist (Keanu Reeves) to break him of the habit through hypnosis. Justin begins to experiment with perscription drgus and sex as alternate means to overcome his anxieties and become "normal," never realizing normal is just a state of mind. - Director:
- Mike Mills
- Cast:
- Lou Taylor Pucci, Tilda Swinton, Vincent D'Onofrio
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Neil Simon has a special genius for finding great hilarity in ordinary people doing everyday things. Like two divorced men who decide to share a New York apartment. That's the premise of The Odd Couple, although there's nothing odd in the casting of two Oscar-winning talents like Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. The two veteran funnymen work together with the precision timing of a vaudeville team, but always with bright spontaneity. Lemmon plays fussy Felix, fastidious to a fault. He proves that cleanliness is next to insanity. Matthau is Oscar, who wreaks havoc on a tidy room with the speed and thoroughness of a tornado. An enduring and endearing picture with the intelligence one usually misses in comedies. - Director:
- Gene Saks
- Cast:
- Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, John Fiedler
- Formats:
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The Piano Teacher (2001)La pianiste
Isabelle Huppert gives a performance of astounding emotional intensity as Erika Kohut, a repressed woman in her late thirties who teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory and lives with her tyrannical mother (Annie Girardot), with whom she has a volatile love-hate relationship. But when one of Erika's students, the handsome and assured Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel), attempts to seduce her, the barriers that she has carefully erected around her claustrophobic world are shattered, unleashing a previously inhibited extreme and uncontrollable desire. - Director:
- Michael Haneke
- Cast:
- Isabelle Huppert, Noam Morgensztern, Annie Girardot
- Formats:
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When washed-up, crooked and corrupt department store Santa, Willie T. Stokes isn't making appearances at shopping malls, he's a safecracker who makes an annual big score on Christmas Eve. But when Willie and his midget partner, Marcus (Tony Cox), come to Phoenix for their next heist, they fall under the suspicious eye of Bob (John Ritter), the store manager, and Gin (Bernie Mac), a savvy mall detective. Willie also has to deal with an 8-year-old misfit who believes that the frequently-intoxicated and foul-mouthed Willie is the real Santa. - Director:
- Terry Zwigoff
- Cast:
- Billy Bob Thornton, Bernie Mac, Lauren Graham
- Formats:
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Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is a respected but less-than-perfect surveillance expert who is wracked with self-doubt and carrying a heavy conscience since his work led to the death of two of his subjects. So when he comes to believe that his latest assignment - eavesdropping on a pair of young lovers - may end in murder, Harry can no longer avoid confronting the moral consequences of his chosen profession. - Director:
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Cast:
- Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield
- Formats:
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On September 11 four planes were hijacked. Three hit their target. One did not. Based on the shocking true events of 9/11, United 93 is a powerful and provocative drama honouring the memory of the 40 passengers and crew on United Airlines Flight 93, the fourth hijacked plane of the 11th September 2001. As the hijackers pilot doomed flight to their target, the passengers stand as one and find the courage to fight back. Unfolding in real time and charting the explosive clash of modern day and old world, feature weaves a gripping story from the standpoint of the passengers, crew, flight controllers and military that will live in your memory forever. - Director:
- Paul Greengrass
- Cast:
- David Alan Basche, Olivia Thirlby, Liza Colón-Zayas
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