monsieurk's - Rented List

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Perhaps his most famous film, La Dolce Vita slices into the decadent amoral core of Roman society with Fellini's trademark attention to detail and spectacular photography.

Marcello Mastroianni plays a gossip columnist (the term 'paparazzi' derives from the in a film) who aspires to be a more serious writer but knows he never will be, because like society, he is fascinated by the decadent hedonist pursuits which are seemingly everywhere. The Vatican was appalled by the film, but the public adored it, relishing the images Fellini fed them, most notably the now infamous scene of Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg frolicking in the Trevi Fountain.

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"Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound" reveals the hidden power of sound in cinema - and our lives.

Through film clips, interviews and verite footage, the film captures the history, impact and creative process of this overlooked art form through the insights and stories of legendary directors such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, David Lynch, Barbra Streisand, Ang Lee, Christopher Nolan, Sofia Coppola and Ryan Coogler, and the sound men and women with whom they collaborate. Few have "ears to hear" or comprehend the emotional storytelling impact sound plays in so-called visual media. Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas have both declared that "sound is 50% of the movie" with Spielberg saying, "our ears lead our eyes to where the story lives". In 'Making Waves', we see and hear from the key players of sound design - including multi-Oscar winners Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now), Ben Burtt (Star Wars) and Gary Rydstrom (Saving Private Ryan) - who, in pursuing their art and desire to push the medium, are the very people who will go down in the history of cinema as developing sound into the immersive storytelling force it is today. Audiences will discover many unsung collaborators for the key creative artists they are, in a domain that has for too long been characterised as "technical".

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In this sweeping epic that swings from high comedy to drama, Dustin Hoffman gives a "virtuoso performance" (Hollywood Reporter) as the 121-year-old sole survivor of Custer's Last Stand.

Narrating his colorful life story, he tells about everything from his adoption by Cheyenne Indians to his marriages and friendship with Wild Bill Hickok. His tall tales indicate he just may be one of the biggest liars who roamed' the West.

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Tarkovsky's unforgettably haunting film, his first to be made outside Russia, explores the melancholy of the expatriate through the film's protagonist, Gorchakov, a Russian poet researching in Italy.

Arriving at a Tuscan village spa with Eugenia, his beautiful Italian interpreter, Gorchakov is visited by memories of Russia and of his wife and children, and he encounters the local mystic, who sets him a challenging task. The film is filled with a series of mysterious and extraordinary images, all of which coalesce into a miraculous whole in the film's final shot. As in all Tarkovsky's films, nature, the elements of fire and water, music, painting and poetry all play a major role.

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In an absorbing performance Ben Gazzara plays small-time Sunset Strip entrepreneur Cosmo Vittelli, owner of the Crazy Horse West night spot.

An obsessive showman, Cosmo navigates a murky world of loan sharks and crooks to keep his club afloat, but when a gambling debt spirals out of control he is blackmailed into accepting a murderous commission.
Featuring stand-out turns by Seymour Cassel and Timothy Carey as the underworld racketeers out to fleece Cosmo, John Cassavetes' portrayal of one man's hubristic descent subverts the conventions of its genre to explore the darker side of the American dream.

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Onibaba is set during a brutal period in history, a Japan ravaged by civil war between rival shogunates.

Weary from combat, samurai are drawn towards the seven-foot-high susuku grass fields to hide and rest themselves, only to be ambushed and murdered by a ruthless team of mother (Nobuko Otowa) and daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura). When Hachi (Kei Sato), a neighbour returning from the wars, brings bad news, he threatens the women's partnership.

Desperate to be a star, struggling stand-up comedian Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) enlists the aid of his fanatical friend Masha (Sandra Bernhard) to kidnap talk show host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis). The ransom? A guest spot for Pupkin. The results? Outrageous!

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A profound masterpiece from one of the most revered filmmakers in the history of cinema, Robert Bresson's 'Au Hasard Balthazar' follows the donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding.

Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie (Anne Wiazemsky), is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly. Through Bresson's unconventional approach to composition, sound, and narrative, this simple story becomes a moving parable about purity and transcendence.

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Montana Badlands rancher David Braxton (John McLiam) is a self-made man. Through years of tireless effort and determination, he has transformed his vast and rugged land into a thriving, prosperous empire.

So when his livestock, his fortune - and even his family - are threatened by a ruthless horse thief (Jack Nicholson), Braxton takes matters into his own hands. Hiring a sadistic 'regulator' (Marlon Brando), to track down the outlaw, Braxton intends to liberate the territory from crime..but what he initiates instead is a complex series of events that results in brutality and savagery far beyond anything he even thought possible.

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A tale of miraculous resurrection brought about by human love, Ordet is an extraordinary expression of spiritual optimism without being either sentimental or pious.

Religious intolerance and family tensions lie at the heart of the film, which explores the clash between orthodox religions and true faith. Dreyer achieves its powerful effects in deceptively simple ways, and has produced, in its closing moments, one of the most extraordinary scenes in all cinema.

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Recent widower Shigeharu Aoyama is advised by his son to find a new wife, so he seeks the advice of a colleague having been out of the dating scene for many years. They take advantage of their position in a film company by staging an audition to find the perfect woman.

Interviewing a series of women, Shigeharu becomes enchanted by Asami, a quiet, 24-year-old woman, who is immediately responsive to his charms. But soon things take a very dark and twisted turn as we find that Asami isn't what she seems to be...

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This frightening, but extremely moving and romantic horror film stars Jeff Goldblum as an over-ambitious scientist who accidentally merges with a housefly while conducting a bizarre teleporting experiment.

A journalist (Geena Davis) who has fallen in love with him while covering his scientific endeavours suddenly finds herself caring for a horrifying creature whose insect half gradually begins to take over.

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Adrift in the Depression-era Southwest, Clyde Barrow(Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) embark on a life of crime. They mean no harm. They crave adventure - and each other. Soon we start to love them too. But nothing in film history has prepared us for the cascading violence to follow.

Bonnie And Clyde turns brutal. We learn they can be hurt - and dread they can be killed.

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Hong Kong, 1962. Chow (Tony Leung) is a junior newspaper editor with an elusive wife. His new neighbour Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) is a secretary whose husband seems to spend all his time on business trips. They become friends, making the lonely evenings more bearable.

As their relationship develops they make a discovery that changes their lives forever...

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A handsome, enigmatic stranger (Terence Stamp) arrives at a bourgeois household in Milan and successively seduces each family member, not forgetting the maid. Then, as abruptly and mysteriously as he arrived, he departs.

Unable to endure the void left in their lives, the father (Massimo Girotti) hands over his factory to the workers, the son abandons his vocation as a painter, the mother (Silvana Mangano) abandons herself to random sexual encounters, and the daughter sinks into catatonia. The maid (Laura Betti), however, becomes a saint. In this cool, richly complex and provocative political allegory Pasolini uses his schematic plot to explore family dynamics, the intersection of class and sex, and the nature of different sexualities. After winning a prize at Venice Festival, Theorem was subsequently banned on an obscenity charge, but Pasolini later won an acquittal on ground of the film's 'high artistic value'. Theorem is visually ravishing, with superb performances from all the cast and a brilliantly eclectic soundtrack - with music ranging from Mozart and Morricone to the natural sound of chirping birds.