paul-b's - Rented List

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Mr. Lazarescu is a 63 year old man who shares his apartment with his three cats. Suffering from pains in his head and stomach he calls an ambulance and whilst he waits, asks his neighbours for some pills.

Though they disapprove of his heavy drinking and the state of his home, they try their best to help. Hindered by a major bus accident the medics eventually arrive and so begins a long and increasingly frustrating night. Shuffled from pillar to post he becomes wearier and weaker in the face of the medical professions bureaucracy and casual inefficiency. A succession of colourful characters permeates the film and the combination of dry humour and 'scalpel sharp' satire make this one of the year's most deeply affecting films.

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Witty and provocative look at the battle of the sexes. Four men gather at a country retreat to prepare a gourmet supper, while in the city their female companions are working out at a health club.

Both groups discuss their sex lives, affairs and seduction techniques and when they finally meet for dinner, the knives are out, revelations are made and an uncomfortable night is in store for all.

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Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) prowls the steel-and-microchip jungle of 21st century Los Angeles. He's a "Blade Runner" stalking genetically made criminal replicants. His assignment: kill them. Their crime: wanting to be human.

A visual stunner, remastered for improved home presentation, director Ridley Scott's vision of this sci-fi cinema classic intriguingly differs from what 1982 moviegoers saw. This version omits Deckard's voiceover narration, develops in greater detail the romance between Deckard and Rachael (Sean Young) and removes the "uplifting" finale. Most intriguing of all is a newly included unicorn vision that suggests Deckard may be a humanoid. The result is a heightened emotional impact a great film made greater.

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A sizzling underground dance culture collides with a world of wealth and privilege in this story of hot moves, fiery passions and sexual intrigue.

With its steamy, expertly choreographed dance sequences, Lambada takes dirty dancing farther than it has ever gone before! By day, Kevin Laird teaches at a chic Beverly Hills high school... but by night, he sets the dance floor on fire at an East L.A. lambada club. Kevin's sexy moves earn him the respect of the tough barrio dropouts attending his high school equivalency classes. But when a seductive student exposes Kevin's secret double life, she threatens to bring down everything he's worked for.

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One of the great films by Stanley Donen after the studio era had come to a close, 'Two for the Road' was a break-off with the old system, one which allowed Donen to further stretch his art, aided by screenwriter Frederic Raphael (Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, John Schlesinger's Darling), in

this tale of a couple voluntarily stretching themselves through the long period of their relationship. Portrayed in fragments that span the couple's time together in marriage, 'Two for the Road' runs the course of a relationship (between Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney) that finds a circumstantial come-together escalate into newlywed-status and, through a series of travails, into the serious situation of bearing a daughter. The disturbance of marriage, and/or life, is chronicled from here on.

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Susan (Amy Adams) is living through an unfulfilling marriage when she receives a package containing a novel manuscript from her ex-husband, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). The novel is dedicated to her but its content is violent and devastating.

Susan cannot help but reminisce over her past love story with the author. Increasingly she interprets the book as a tale of revenge, a tale that forces her to re-evaluate the choices that she has made, and reawakens a love that she feared was lost.

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Fresh from an unceremonious dumping by her boyfriend of 10 years, Paula (Laetitia Dosch) finds herself wandering the streets of Paris - jobless, homeless, and single - who no idea of what life holds for her next.

At 31 years old, with little to show for it but a kidnapped cat and a sense of adventure, she sets out to reinvent herself - new job, new friends, new life - and finds that these things never do come easily.

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Michael Stone (David Thewlis), a husband, father and successful motivation speaker, is crippled by the mundanity of his life. On yet another business trip he checks into a clinically commonplace hotel once more.

But this time a chance meeting with Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), an unassuming, small-town sales rep, throws the dullness into disarry and Michael feels he may have actually met someone who can make a change. From the mind of Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and animation master Duke Johnson comes "Anomalisa", a tender, touching and achingly funny black comedy, filmed entirely in extraordinary stop motion animation.

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Philip Kaufman's brilliant film explores the erotic life of two individuals who became 20th Century literary giants.

Upon meeting American author Henry Miller (Fred Ward) in Paris, 1931, a young writer named Anais Nin (Maria De Medeiros) embarks on a voyage of self-discoverv, and faithfully records every experience in her diary. In their search for new truths, Anais and Henry are tantalised by Henry's hauntingly sensual wife, June (Uma Thurman).

Seven Oscar nominations were the result as celebrated director Martin Ritt guided Paul Newman to an Academy Award-nominated performance as Hud Bannon, the rebellious son of a respectable rancher who's continually at odds with his aging father.

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The story is told through the eyes of Yuichi, a teenage boy in love with pop music and pop stars. Particularly beholden to Yuichi is the ethereal star Lily Chou Chou, the subject of her own website where a loyal coterie of 'Lilyphiles' trade gossip, information, and speculation.

Yuichi takes increasing solace in her fictional world, gradually using it as a weapon with which to fight his crippling shyness and the harsh realities of the outside world.

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Four teenagers in detention discover an old video game console with a game they've never heard of. When they decide to play, they are immediately sucked into the jungle world of Jumanji in the bodies of their avatars (Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, and Karen Gillan).

They'll have to complete the adventure of their lives filled with fun, thrills and danger or be stuck in the game forever!

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Sometime during the afternoon of June 12. Sandro di Nascimento, a disenfranchised young man who had survived a harsh and brutal childhood in the favellas of Rio boarded a bus on route 174 and took its passengers hostage.

For 4 and a half hours, a tense stand off played out between the police and what was thought to be merely a drugged up street kid. In the devastating aftermath, filmmaker Jose Padilha meticulously wove together Sandra's story from hours of live television footage and testimony from the hijack survivors, police rescue teams, acquaintances and members of Sandra's family. Padilha's multi award winning documentary traces two parallel and equally devastating stories. The dramatic hijacking unfolds as it had in front of 35 million Brazilians who witnessed the police try and fail to handle the rapidly escalating situation. And then there is the even more tragic story of Sandra. In his youth, a survivor one of the most dreadful instances of urban violence in Brazil, Sandra's legacy of personal failure and the failure of his country to help those like him, collided with a restless social and economic climate that one fateful day, bringing to a bloody end his unexpected journey from the streets to the eyes of the world.

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French director, screenwriter, actor and producer Bertrand Tavernier looks at the rich history of French cinema and its impact on his life, from his youth as a movie buff to his own career as a filmmaker.

Along the way, he explores the works of acclaimed French directors such as Jacques Becker, Jean-Pierre Melville, Claude Sautet, Frangois Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard.

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A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a brief, passionate affair in post war Hiroshima.

Their deeply intense connection brings out scarred but fading memories of love and suffering, which Resnais communicates with the use of flashback techniques innovative to the time.