maggs's - Rented List

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Few true stories tread the thin line between good and evil as precariously as that of Jan Mikolašek, a 20th century Czech herbal healer whose great success masked the grimmest of secrets.

Mikolašek won fame and fortune treating celebrities of the interwar, Nazi, and Communist eras with his uncanny knack for "urinary diagnosis". But his passion for healing welled up from the same source as a lust for cruelty, sadism, and an incapacity for love that only one person could ever quell - his assistant, František. As a show trial threatens to pry open these secrets and undo him, Jan's dichotomies are put to a final test, with the fate of his life's only love in the balance. A personal tale as replete with twists as the century itself, and a reflection on the price one pays for single-mindedly following one's calling.

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Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson, and Lena Horne star in this classic musical which was a showcase for the best black talent of the 40's.

Having just made 'Cabin In The Sky' Lena Horne shines again and makes the title song one of the great moments in the history of musicals, Fats Waller performs a rousing rendition of his signature tune, 'Ain't Misbehavin', Cab Calloway does 'The Jumping Jive' and joining Bill Robinson on the dance floor the Nicholas Brothers perform a jaw-dropping routine at the finale that has to be seen to be believed.

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"Hemingway" examines the visionary work and turbulent life of one of the greatest and most influential American writers - Ernest Hemingway. Intimate and insightful, the series weaves together Hemingway's biography with excerpts from his work.

The film penetrates the myth of Hemingway to reveal a deeply troubled and ultimately tragic figure.

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Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos.

K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.

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Mustafa (Akhtem Seitablayev) and his college-aged son, Alim, have set out to a morgue in Kyiv to recover the body of Alim's older brother, Nazim, yet another casualty of the war with Russia.

Although Nazim had been living in Kyiv with his Orthodox wife, Olesya, Mustafa is insistent that his son is given a traditional Muslim burial beside his mother's grave in Crimea. City life has exacerbated the generational gap between Mustafa and Alim. However, one commonality unites them - their shared language of Crimean Tatar. Along the way, they face many obstacles, and Alim is hard-pressed to accept his father's determination to uphold tradition at all costs. However, the on-going challenges encourage the pair to better understand each other and profoundly impacts their relationship.

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In 1917, outside the parish of Fatima, Portugal, a 10-year-old girl and her two younger cousins witness multiple visitations of the Virgin Mary, who tells them that only prayer and suffering will bring an end to World War I.

As secularist government officials and Church leaders try to force the children to recant their story, word of the sighting spreads across the country, inspiring religious pilgrims to flock to the site in hopes of witnessing a miracle. What they experience will transform their quiet lives and bring the attention of a world yearning for peace.

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Sonya (Aimee Lou Wood) and her Uncle Vanya (Toby Jones) throw their lives into maintaining the crumbling family estate, only visited occasionally by the radical and inspiring local doctor Astrov (Richard Armitage).

However, when Sonya's father, Professor Serebryakov (Roger Allam), suddenly returns with his restless, alluring, new wife Yelena (Rosalind Eleazar), long-hidden truths start to emerge.

Paul Hogan a retired actor who is constantly overshadowed by his character Crocodile Dundee, is reluctantly thrust back into the spotlight as he desperately attempts to restore his sullied reputation on the eve of being awarded a knighthood by the Queen of England.

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Based on a true story of bravery and courage! The year was 1918. Aníbal Milhais (João Nunes Monteiro) was one of 75,000 Portuguese soldiers sent to Flanders in defense of the Western Front.

During the Battle of La Lys, when his beleaguered unit was forced into retreat, Milhais ignored superior orders and stood his ground in the trenches. Armed only with his Lewis light machine gun, he single-handedly fought off successive waves of German attack, saving the lives of countless Allied troops. Twenty-five years later, still haunted by the memories of war, Milhais recalls the stories that led to his fame as the soldier "worth a million men".

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Against the sunny landscape of a Bosnian summer, two enemy soldiers are trapped in a trench in no man's land. The world's press watch as a French UN sergeant battles with a British colonel to negotiate their safety.

And the only people who speak the same language are the men fighting each other for survival in the trench. Surprisingly funny, strikingly moving, No Man's Land is a portrait of the petty normality, not only of one particular war, but of all conflicts everywhere.

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Following the closure of a gypsum mine in the Nevada town she calls home, Fern (Frances McDormand) packs her van and sets off on the road in this "exquisite film" (Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal).

Exploring an unconventional life as a modern-day nomad, Fern discovers a resilience and resourcefulness unlike any she's known before long the way, she meets other nomads who become mentors in the vast landscape of the American West.

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The film is a continuation of the story of Maciej Tomczyk, the protagonist of Wajda's earlier film, Man of Marble.

Here, Maciej is a young worker involved in the anti-Communist labour movement, described as "the man who started the Gdansk Shipyard strike", and a journalist working for the Communist regime's radio station, who is given a task of slandering Maciej. The young man is clearly intended as a parallel to Lech Walesa (who appears as himself in the movie). Their narrations become flashbacks using actual news footage of 1968 and 1970 protests and of the later birth of free unions and solidarity.

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The Peninsular War: 27th September 1810, General Wellington (John Malkovich) leading an Anglo-Portuguese army, defeated the French troops of Marshal Massena in the Serra do Bugaco.

Despite the victory, the Portuguese and British are forced to retreat from the enemy's numerical superiority, in order to attract them to Torres Vedras, where Wellington has built fortified lines. Wellington organizes the evacuation of the entire territory between the battlefield and the lines of Torres Vedras, a gigantic burned land operation, which prevents the French from collecting supplies. The film follows the journey through hills, valleys, between ruined villages, charred forests and devastated crops to the lines of Torres where Wellington and his troops stage the final battle.

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A couple floats over a war-town Cologne; on the way to a birthday party, a father stops to tie his daughter's shoelaces in the pouring rain; teenage girls dance outside a cafe, 'About Endlessness' is a beautiful work which Andersson presents as his final film, a kaleidoscope of all that is

eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.

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Critically acclaimed drama 'Das Boot' returns with a new season, pairing three tension-fuelled storylines with intensive character studies exploring how the human soul can become twisted by war. U-boat ace Von Reinhartz (Clemens Schick) is chased across the Atlantic after his loyalty is questioned.

Hoffmann (Rick Okon) finds shelter with Sam (Vincent Kartheiser) in New York, but is desperate to get home. In La Rochelle, Margot (Fleur Geffrier) battles to save a Jewish family as Forster (Tom Wlaschiha) closes in.