monsieurk's - Rented List

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Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas star in this quintessential film noir which catapulted Mitchum into superstardom and set the standard for the genre for years to come.

When Kathie Moffett (Greer) shoots her admirer, Whit Sterling (Douglas), a big-time gambler, and absconds with $40,000 of his money, Starling hires private detective Jeff Bailey (Mitchum) to find her. Bailey leaves New York and catches up with Kathie in Mexico. Kathie denies taking the money and after falling for her charms, Bailey notifies Sterling that he could not find her.

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A young boy, Simon (Simon Iteanu) must deal with the increasing fragility of his mother, the loving yet preoccupied puppeteer Suzanne, played by Academy Award winner Juliette Binoche.

Overwhelmed by the demands of her chaotic existence, Suzanne hires Song (Song Fan), a Taiwanese film student, to help care for Simon. With Song, a unique extended family is formed, utterly interdependent yet lost in their separate thoughts and dreams; all this is mirrored by a delicate, shiny red balloon that hovers above the Paris streets.

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Penniless husband, Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) looks like he is losing his scatterbrained wife, Gerry (Claudette Colbert) to multi-millionaire John D. Hackensacker (Rudy Vallee) when she walks out on him and heads for fun and sun in Palm Beach, Florida.

They become involved with any number of outrageous characters, played by many of the Sturges regulars in hilarious cameos. The witty, sparkling dialogue, poking merciless fun at, amongst other targets, money and sex, is unforgettable.

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Dekalog, from the acclaimed director of the 'Three Colours' trilogy, was premiered to unanimous glowing critical praise at the 1989 Venice Film Festival and its reputation as a cinematic masterpiece remains undiminished. The Ten Commandments, are equally captivating and powerful.

The storied are set around the same Warsaw apartment block and focus on the complexities of human relationships. The themes are the universal ones of love, marriage, infidelity, parenthood, guilt, faith and compassion. The result is a unique and life enhancing look at various moral dilemmas faced by ordinary people in their daily lives.

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Parisian police commissioner Coleman (Alain Delon) is not a happy man, but he does what he can to get through each day. Coleman finds solace in his affair with Cathy (Catherine Deneuve), who also happens to be the girlfriend of Coleman's friend Simon, the head of a gang of daring criminals.

As the commissioner's pursuit of the gang intensifies, so does the rivalry between the two men.

Rex Harrison is the orchestra conductor who believes his wife has been having an affair. While conducting, he plans various forms of revenge, each played out with the greatest of precision and skill. When it comes to putting his plans into action things run a little less smoothly.

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This, the last film Preston Sturges made for Paramount, is another great satire on the American penchant for hero worship. It stars Eddie Bracken as Woodrow Truesmith, a soldier who, due to an unfortunate misunderstanding, never actually went to war.

His attempts to keep his secret are scuppered when his home town has him repatriated for a civic celebration of his exploits. In this sentimental comedy, many of Sturge's regular repertory of character actors give the performances of their lives.

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Stefan (Stefan Gota), a Romanian construction worker living in Brussels, is on the verge of moving back home. He cooks up a big pot of soup with leftovers in his fridge, to hand out as a goodbye gift to friends and family.

As he is ready to go, he meets a Belgian-Chinese young woman (Liyo Gong) who works in a little restaurant while preparing a doctorate on mosses. Her attention for the near-invisible stops him in his tracks. It's a film about connections in nature and in those of the people observing it, that has entranced anyone who has allowed the film to slowly take them over.

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Barbara Stanwyck sizzles, Henry Fonda bumbles, and Preston Sturges runs riot in one of the all-time great screwballs, a pitch-perfect blend of comic zing and swoonworthy romance.

Aboard a cruise liner sailing up the coast of South America, Stanwyck's conniving card sharp sets her sights on Fonda's nerdy snake researcher, who happens to be the heir to a brewery fortune. But when the con artist falls for her mark, her grift becomes a game of hearts - and she is determined to win it all. One in a string of matchless comedic marvels that Sturges wrote and directed as part of a dazzling 1940s run, this gender-flipped battle-of-wits farce is perhaps his most emotionally satisfying work, tempering its sparkling humor with a streak of tender poignancy supplied by the sensational Stanwyck at her peak.

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Yasujiro Ozu's elegiac final film, 'An Autumn Afternoon', charts the inevitable eclipse of older generations by irreverent youth. Revisiting the story of his earlier masterpiece Late Spring (1949), Ozu once again casts Chishu Ryu in the role of Hirayama, the concerned father to unmarried Michiko.

Harangued on all sides to marry off Michiko, Hirayama reluctantly prepares to bid his old life farewell. A cast of tragi-comic characters weaves seamlessly through this gently satirical portrayal of life's inevitable, endless cycle.

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This presentation of the powerful film classic features an additional five minutes of footage cut from the film's original release, plus the original overture and extended soundtrack.

Director Stanley Kubrick tells the tale of Spartacus (Kirk Douglas), the bold gladiator slave and Varinia (Jean Simmons), the woman who believed in his cause. Challenged by the power-hungry General Crassus (Laurence Olivier), Spartacus is forced to face his convictions and the power of the Roman Empire at its glorious height.

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The final part of Pasolini's Trilogy of 'Life' series is rich with exotic tales of slaves and kings, potions, betrayals, demons and, most of all, love and lovemaking in all its myriad forms.

Mysterious and liberating, this is an exquisitely dreamlike and adult interpretation of the original folk tales...

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Domenico (Marcello Mastroianni) first meets 17-year-old prostitute Filumena (Sophia Loren) in a Neapolitan brothel in the 2nd World War. After the war they become lovers on and off for 22 years.

Domenico eventually rents an apartment for Filumena and even lets her run his shop but is always chasing other women. Finally Filumena asks Domenico to marry her on her deathbed, just before he had planned to marry his young cashier, and admits she had his legitimate child. Dominico uses different subterfuges trying to find which teenager might be his son...

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Film Director Preston Sturges applied his talents to a dramatic, but not without some humour, biography of an American dental surgeon, WTG Morton (Joel McCrea) who was one of the pioneers in the use of anaesthetics in dentistry, but who gained little reward for his endeavours.

McCrea, by now a Sturges regular, again demonstrates the quality of his acting, which enabled him to remain at the top of his profession until well into the 1970s. The doctor's great contributions to humanity and later tribulations as he shares his knowledge rather than hording it for monetary reward, are laced with typical Preston Sturges humour and insight.

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Lia (Mzia Arabuli), a retired school teacher living in Georgia, hears from a young neighbour Achi (Lucas Kankava) that her long lost niece Tekla (Tako Kurdovanidze), a transgender woman, has crossed the border into Turkey.

Hoping to bring Tekla home after a period of estrangement, Lia travels to Istanbul with the unpredictable Achi to find her. Exploring the hidden depths of the city, they cross paths with a transgender lawyer called Evrim (Deniz Dumanli), who helps them in their search.