mg-watched's - Rented List

Show moreShow less

Academy Award nominee Agnieszka Holland brings to the screen the extraordinary and powerful story of the real-life Welsh journalist who uncovered Stalin's genocidal famine in Ukraine, which killed almost 10 million during The Holodomor of 1932 and 1933.

Gareth Jones (James Norton) is an ambitious Welsh journalist, who gained fame after his report on being the first foreign journalist to fly with Hitler. On leaving a government role, Jones decides to travel to Moscow in an attempt to get an interview with Stalin himself. Hearing murmurs of government-induced famine, Jones travels clandestinely to Ukraine, where he witnesses the atrocities of man-made starvation. Deported back to London, Jones publishes an article revealing the horrors he witnessed, but is accused of being a liar by those who have an interest in silencing him. As the death count mounts, Jones has to fight for the truth.

Show moreShow less

One man's truth is another man's mystery and that is where Dr Douglas Monaghan and his team come to the fore. They make up the fictional Parapsychology Unit at Clyde University that is at the heart of Sea of Souls, a fascinating and compelling BBC1 drama which looks at the power of the paranormal.

From Voodoo to cult rituals, past life experiences to telepathic twins, the trio of bewitching storylines featured in Sea of Souls tap into the fascination with all things paranormal as Douglas Monaghan's team of parapsychologists endeavour to explain the inexplicable.

Show moreShow less

One of the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made and a mind-bending free-form travelogue, 'La Jetee' and 'Sans Soleil' couldn't seem more different - but they're the twin pillars of an unparalleled and uncompromising career in cinema.

Filmmaker, poet, novelist, photographer, editor, videographer, and digital multimedia artist, Chris Marker challenged moviegoers, philosophers, and himself for years with his investigations of time, memory, and the rapid advancement of life on this planet. These two films - a tale of time travel told in still images and a journey to Africa and Japan - remain his best-loved and most widely seen.

La Jetee (1962)
This unique film was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's 'Twelve Monkeys'. It is a cinematic landmark using black and white stills almost entirely to narrate the story. Set in Paris destroyed by a third world war, the survivors have been forced to retreat underground where scientists conduct strange time travel experiments to escape from a terrible present to a better past or future...
Sans Soleil (1983)
Director Chris Marker takes the viewer into a different dimension, weaving footage from Japan, Africa, Iceland, France and the USA to produce a study of 'the dreams of the human race'. He is particularly attracted to the two extremes of Japan and Africa, and discusses the images that he creates with the woman, ever mindful of the astonishing store of memory he has created.

Show moreShow less

Nobody knows where love and colonic irrigation goes. Terence Gross' bizarre and satiric dark comedy follows the peculiar travails of chef Kath (Toni Collette) and her former lover Ronald (Daniel Craig).

He's been running decaying resort and spa, the Hotel Splendide, just the way his parents did years before. Bad food and regular enemas are included in the price. After five years away, Kath returns to work with Ronald, with unexpected results.

Show moreShow less

The award-winning drama "Stuart A Life Backwards" details the friendship between a reclusive writer and illustrator (Alexander) and a chaotic homeless man (Stuart), whom he gets to know during a campaign to release two charity workers from prison.

As Alexander learns more about Stuart’s complicated life and traumatic childhood, he asks if he can write his story and Stuart advises him to write the story backwards, so that it’s more exciting like a Tom Clancy murder-mystery. As their remarkable alliance develops, Stuart gradually recounts his life story in reverse, his resilient personality and dry sense of humour giving the story an almost tragi-comic edge. Through post-office heists, attempts at suicide and spells inside various institutions, Alexander is given a glimpse into a totally Alien World and begins to understand how Stuart's life spiralled so badly out of control.

When a mysterious life-threatening event strikes Earth, astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) goes on a dangerous mission across an unforgiving solar system to uncover the truth about his missing father (Tommy Lee Jones) and his doomed expedition that now, 30 years later, threatens the universe.

Show moreShow less

Inspired by a true story... Set in 1950s New York and starring Elijah Wood as John Malcolm Brinnin, the aspiring young American poet who finds his ordered world shaken when he embarks on a week-long retreat to save his hell raising hero, Dylan Thomas, played by Celyn Jones.

Directed by BAFTA-nominated director, Andy Goddard this visually stunning film, shot entirely in black and white, is a cautionary tale about meeting your heroes, the dirty business of celebrity and about what may have happened in an East Coast boathouse when an earnest ingenue shared cabin space with his idol, the greatest living poet of the twentieth century.

Show moreShow less

The Time of Your Life is a gripping emotional thriller about the pain and confusion one woman faces after waking from a 18-year long coma, to a world where nothing is the same. Meet Kate (Genevieve O'Reilly) who at the age of 36 has spent half her life lying motionless in her childhood bedroom.

Kate discovers that everything around her has changed: her parents, Eileen (Geraldine James) and Toby (Robert Pugh) look like her grandparents; her friends have succumbed to the jobs and the families they swore they'd never have; and her boyfriend Pete (Mark Bazeley) is in love with someone else. Her miraculous re-awakening sends shock waves around her family and friends to whom Kate is a reminder of their own lost youth; of their failed dreams and plans for their own futures. Her initial re-emergence into society is a painful one, but as she embarks on an accelerated rites of passage, Kate learns to deal with her extraordinary situation and attempts to make up for her lost time by living life to the full.

Show moreShow less

Based on the true story of Edwin Boyd, a notorious bank robber and leader of the infamous Boyd Gang. Disillusioned with his life after returning from WWII, Edwin Boyd is determined to follow his dream of becoming a Hollywood star.

However, with the need to provide for his young family and jobs in short supply, his dream seems destined to remain just that. He decides the best way to achieve his goal is to rob banks - Hollywood style. But his actions lead him down a path to danger, tragedy and prison.

Show moreShow less

Gaspar Noe, director of the hugely controversial 'Irreversible', 'Enter the Void' and 'Love', makes a triumphant return with 'Climax' - a visually dazzling feast of music and mayhem, and perhaps his most critically acclaimed work to date.

Following a successful rehearsal, a dance troupe set about celebrating with a party. But when it becomes apparent that someone has spiked the sangria, the joyous atmosphere soon transforms into a nightmarish hellscape of violence and twisted carnality as the dancers begin to turn on each other in an orgiastic frenzy. Inspired equally by the worlds of modern dance and esoteric arthouse-horror (chief among them, Dario Argento's Suspiria and Andrzej Zutawski's Possession), 'Climax' - which pulses towards its astonishing conclusion with a thumping score by the likes of Daft Punk, Aphex Twin and Gary Numan - illustrates a director at the height of his hallucinatory filmmaking powers.

Show moreShow less

Britannia begins in 43AD as the Roman Army, determined and terrified in equal measure, returns to crush the Celtic heart of Britannia - a mysterious land ruled by wild warrior women and powerful druids who can channel the mysterious forces of the Underworld.

Arch Celtic rivals Kerra (Kelly Reilly) and Antedia (Zoë Wanamaker) must face the Roman invasion led by the towering figure of Aulus Plautius (David Morrissey) as it cuts a swathe through the Celtic Resistance.

Show moreShow less

Betrayed by the Romans, forced into slavery, reborn as a Gladiator. The classic tale of the Republic's most infamous rebel comes alive in the graphic and visceral new series Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

Torn from his homeland and the woman he loves, Spartacus is condemned to the brutal world of the arena where blood and death are primetime entertainment. But not all battles are fought upon the sands. Treachery, corruption and the allure of sensual pleasures will constantly test Spartacus. To survive, he must become more than a man, more than a gladiator. He must become a legend.

Show moreShow less

Long past the secrets that brought them together and tore their lives apart, Noah, Alison, Helen and Cole are on separate journeys with the promise of new relationships and a fresh start.

But as the past continues to surface, they question what they're holding on to as their lives keep crashing back into one another.

Show moreShow less

Series 3 of "The Affair" picks up three years after Noah's (Dominic West) shocking admission of guilt at the murder trial of Scott Lockhart. Noah attempts to restart his life, but the damage wrought by his past decisions has made him a ghost of his former self.

Alison (Ruth Wilson) has been raising daughter Joanie alongside Cole (Joshua Jackson) and Luisa (Catalina Sandino Moreno) in Montauk, but Alison's past continues to rear its ugly head as Cole and Luisa attempt to build their own future. For Helen, life appears to continue on, but just below the surface of a successful business and a bustling home lies uncertainty with her boyfriend Vik, instability amongst her children, and an unshakable feeling of guilt.

Show moreShow less

Charlize Theron stars as elite MI6's most lethal assassin and the crown jewel of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, Lorraine Broughton.

When she's sent on a covert mission into Cold War Berlin, she must use all of the spy-craft, sensuality and savagery she has to stay alive in the ticking time bomb of a city simmering with revolution and double-crossing hives of traitors. Broughton must navigate her way through a deadly game of spies to recover a priceless dossier while fighting ferocious killers along the way...