paul-b's - Rented List

Show moreShow less

Abbas Kiarostami is indubitably one of the most important film-makers in the world, and this, his second made outside Iran, is set in Japan.

A student moonlighting as an escort goes to visit a client who is more interested in talking, and who the next day takes on the role of her grandfather when confronted by her jealous boyfriend.
It pays homage to the tradition of Ozu, but is very much a typical Kiarostami work with its oblique narrative, mistaken and assumed identies, and masterful sleights-of-hand upending the audience's assumptions.

Show moreShow less

In one of Agnes Varda's more provocative films she presents us with the dilemma faced by husband and father Francois (Jean-Claude Crouot) who finds himself falling in love with an attractive postal worker.

What follows is a detailed study of adult fidelity and happiness, which will ultimately end with major repercussions for all parties involved.

Show moreShow less

Weaving present day sequences with photography, scenes from her own films and portraits of her friends and family, the legendary French auteur Agnes Varda takes us on a memorable voyage through her life, during which she confronts the joys of creation and artistic success and the pain of personal

loss and ageing. It is a singular and stirring trip through events of the second half of the 20th Century: China and Cuba Revolutions, Women's Movement, New Wave cinema history and so on...

Show moreShow less

Starring Simone Signoret, Simone Simon and Anton Walbrook as the enigmatic master of ceremonies who guides us through a series of amorous encounters in 1900's Vienna.

A soldier (Serge Reggiani) meets an eager young lady of the night and later has an affair with a young lady, who becomes a maid who then has an affair with the young master of the house. The young man then seduces a married woman and on and on spins on the gay carousel of romantic life...

Show moreShow less

Cynical and rebellious ex-army sergeant Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) has been blackmailed into working for Britain's security service.

Hot on the trail of a kidnapped scientist, Palmer finds himself enmeshed in a sinister conspiracy involving horrifying brainwashing techniques, murder and treachery that reaches up to the highest levels of the security service itself.

Show moreShow less

In London, a gang of criminals from Australia led by Jack Coombes (Bill Kerr) impersonate policemen to carry out robberies.

Local gang leader "Pearly" Gates (Peter Sellers), who operates from the cover of a French couturier, finds his takings cut severely, and blames rival crook "Nervous" O'Toole (Bernard Cribbins). When it emerges they are both being scammed by the same gang, they join forces, along with Lionel Jeffries' Police Inspector "Nosey" Parker, to bring the so-called "I.P.O. mob" (I.P.O. - Impersonating a Police Officer) to justice.

Show moreShow less

From Golden Globe Nominee Director Paul Schrader, 'First Reformed' is a brooding, thriller-drama centred around Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke), a troubled priest of a small, historical church in upstate New York, who starts to spiral out of control after a soul-shaking encounter with Mary (Amanda

Seyfried) and her husband Michael, an unstable environmental activist. Consumed by thoughts that the world is in danger and motivated by the church's lack of action, Toller embarks on a perilous self-assigned undertaking with the hope that he may finally restore the faith and purpose he's been longing for in his mission to right the wrongs done to so many.

Show moreShow less

Neil Simon has a special genius for finding great hilarity in ordinary people doing everyday things. Like two divorced men who decide to share a New York apartment.

That's the premise of The Odd Couple, although there's nothing odd in the casting of two Oscar-winning talents like Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. The two veteran funnymen work together with the precision timing of a vaudeville team, but always with bright spontaneity. Lemmon plays fussy Felix, fastidious to a fault. He proves that cleanliness is next to insanity. Matthau is Oscar, who wreaks havoc on a tidy room with the speed and thoroughness of a tornado. An enduring and endearing picture with the intelligence one usually misses in comedies.

Show moreShow less

When ex-con Tom Yately (Stanley Baker) signs up as a driver for Hawlett's, he uncovers shady dealings between the manager and the viciously ambitious head driver - the drivers are paid per trip, with a bonus system encouraging them to drive at reckless speeds and take dangerous risks.

The stakes are raised when a fatal accident claims the life of Tom's only workplace ally, and he vows to take revenge.

Show moreShow less

Alan Ladd plays the titular gunslinger, the archetypal "man alone" who wanders into town and shortly afterward becomes embroiled in a conflict between a group of Wyoming homesteaders and the nefarious cattle baron who has designs to wrest away their land.

As the conflict escalates, and a romance develops between Shane and homesteader Marian Starrett (Jean Arthur, in her last screen role), a who's-who of studio system character talent revolves through the production - Van Heflin, Jack Palance, Elisha Cook, Jr. - before one of cinema's most famous, unforgettable endings.

Show moreShow less

5150 Elm's Way is located at the end of a quiet street in a small town. When Yannick fell off his bike, he knocked at the door of the Beaulieu residence so he could clean the blood off his hands. But Jack Beaulieu and his family had other plans for Ian.

Beaulieu is a righteous psychopath and fanatic chess player who wants to rid the world of evil. And even though Ian has done nothing wrong, he is beaten, tortured and tormented before Beaulieu makes him an offer: win at chess and he is free to go. And so Ian is now a pawn in Beaulieu's game. A game in which he will either lose his mind or his life.

Show moreShow less

When Harry (Anthony Edwards) meets Julie (Mare Winningham) at the La Brea Tar Pits, it's love at first sight. But when Harry's alarm clock fails to go off, he misses their scheduled date by several hours.

Alone on a street corner at four in the morning, he answers a ringing pay phone and picks up a garbled message that all-out nuclear war is set to begin in an hour's time. With the clock ticking and the city spiralling into chaos, can Harry somehow track down Julie and get them both to safety before Armageddon?

Erik (Espen Klouman Hoiner) and Philip (Anders Danielsen Lie) have been best friends since childhood and both want to become writers. While Erik's manuscript is refused by the publishers as lacking in talent, Philip is eagerly welcomed and overnight becomes a young star in Norway's literary scene. Soon, their young dreams clash with reality.

Show moreShow less

Anne (Betty Schneider), a student in Paris, becomes involved with a group of her brother's arty friends and gets sucked into a mystery involving Philip (Daniel Crohem), an expatriate American escaping McCathyism; Terry (Françoise Prévost), a self-destuctive femme fatale; theatre director Gerard

(Giani Esposito); and Juan, a Spanish activist who apparently committed suicide. Philip warns Anne that the forces that killed Juan will soon d the same to Gerard, who is struggling to rehearse Shakespeare's Pericles. Anne takes a part in the play in an attempt to help him and also discover why Juan died.

Show moreShow less

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.