plastic-teaspoon's - Rented List
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The Night (1961)La Notte
Two of the giants of film-acting come together as a married couple living in crisis: Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau. He is a renowned author and 'public intellectual'; she is 'the wife. ' Over the course of one day and the night into which it inevitably bleeds, the pair will come to re-examine their emotional bonds, and grapple with the question of whether love and communication are even possible in a world built out of profligate idylls and sexual hysteria. - Director:
- Michelangelo Antonioni
- Cast:
- Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Vitti
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The Topham family live a blissfully happy life together in the lovely market town of Dunmow in deepest Essex. Recently married Basil Topham (David Tomlinson) and his beautiful wife Julie (Petula Clark) are patiently waiting for their house to be built by local builders. Until then, they are forced to live with Basil s parents and eccentric grandfather (A.E Matthews). Basil and Julie have been entered into the Dunmow Flitch, a competition for the happiest married couple and all seems idyllic with our newly-weds. That is until a beautiful maid Marta (Sonja Zieman) arrives from Hungary to run the Topham family home and inadvertently throws everything into chaos!! - Director:
- John Paddy Carstairs
- Cast:
- David Tomlinson, Petula Clark, Sonja Ziemann
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With his eighth and most personal film, Alfonso Cuaron recreated the early-1970's Mexico City of his childhood, narrating a tumultuous period in the life of a middle-class family through the experiences of Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio, in a revelatory screen debut), the indigenous domestic worker who keeps the household running. Charged with the care of four small children abandoned by their father, Cleo tends to the family even as her own life is shaken by personal and political upheavals. Written, directed, shot, and coedited by Cuaron, 'Roma' is a labor of love with few parallels in the history of cinema, deploying monumental black-and-white cinematography, an immersive soundtrack, and a mixture of professional and nonprofessional performances to shape its author's memories into a world of enveloping texture, and to pay tribute to the woman who nurtured him. - Director:
- Alfonso Cuarón
- Cast:
- Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey
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A young American man lost in Paris scratches out a living as a Michael Jackson look-alike. During a show in an old people's home Michael Jackson meets Marilyn Monroe and haunted by her angelic beauty he follows her to a commune in the Highlands, a place where everyone is famous and no-one gets old. Here, The Pope, The Queen of England, Madonna, James Dean and other impersonators build a stage in the hope that the world will visit and watch them perform. Everything is beautiful until the world shifts, and reality intrudes on their utopian dream. - Director:
- Harmony Korine
- Cast:
- Diego Luna, Samantha Morton, Denis Lavant
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When inveterate old lag Harry Denton (Edward Rigby) is released from prison he soon returns to his old ways by kidnapping 16 year-old Sheila Farlaine (Petula Clark), the daughter of a well-known actor (Hugh Sinclair). Harry brings her to the home of his grandson Jack (Jimmy Hanley) but soon gets more than he bargained for as Sheila welcomes the adventure of being kidnapped and the attention it receives in the press! As Sheila's father discovers the biggest acting role of his career, playing the distraught father of a daughter being held to ransom; and her childhood friend Jimmy (Anthony Newley) convinces the police that he bravely tried to fight off the kidnappers; Sheila's disappearance becomes a great opportunity for everyone to enjoy their moment in the limelight. All that is bar Jack, who wants his grandfather to concoct some ruse to persuade Sheila to return home so that he doesn't have to serve twenty years in prison with his grandfather for abduction! - Director:
- Arthur Crabtree
- Cast:
- Jimmy Hanley, Petula Clark, Linden Travers
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John J. Bramble (Franchot Tone), the sole survivor of a British tank crew, makes his way to a desolate town where he is given refuge by a hotel owner (Akim Tamiroff) and a French chambermaid (Anne Baxter) as they prepare to receive General Erwin Rommel (Erich Von Stroheim) and his German staff. Posing as a hotel waiter, Bramble attempts to infiltrate Rommel's inner circle and report their battle plans to the Allies... - Director:
- Billy Wilder
- Cast:
- Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter, Akim Tamiroff
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Miller is a middle-aged handyman on a small island off the Carolina coast. His neighbours are a 13-year-old girl, Evalyn (Key Meersman) and her grandfather. After her grandfather dies, Miller looks after the young girl, and they are the only two on the island until the arrival of Traver, a black man fleeing a lynch mob that suspects him of rape. Miller wants to turn him in and remove him from the tryst, but Evalyn likes Traver and protects him. A preacher arrives from the mainland to rescue Evalyn from her situation, and Traver's presence is discovered. Miller is now forced to decide whether to turn him over to the mob and lose standing in the girl's eyes. - Director:
- Luis Buñuel
- Cast:
- Zachary Scott, Bernie Hamilton, Key Meersman
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One of Britain's leading psychiatrists has committed suicide. His teenage daughter (Pamela Franklin) is convinced that her father was murdered - and enlists the help of one of her father's patients, news reporter Alex Stedman (Stephen Boyd) to uncover the truth. As Stedman delves into the lives of his three suspects - a tormented art dealer (Richard Attenborough), a beautiful, lonely woman (Diane Cilento) and one of Britain's most respected judges (Jack Hawkins) - he has to battle with his own, re-emerging psychological terrors - and unravel 'The Third Secret'... - Director:
- Charles Crichton
- Cast:
- Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Richard Attenborough
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Kurosawa's remarkable film - his only produced and financed and survival, based on the memoirs of Russian explorer Vladimir Arseniev (Yuriy Solomin). In the harsh environs of the Siberian frontier, an expedition led by Arseniev encounters the momadic Goldi tribesman Dersu Uzala (Maksim Munzuk), who agrees to guide the men through the vast uncharted wilderness. Although initially considered but the group as little more that a savage, Dersu's skill, courage and spiritual wisdom soon earn their respect and admiration, as well as instilling in them a new-found compassion for the natural world. - Director:
- Akira Kurosawa
- Cast:
- Maksim Munzuk, Yuriy Solomin, Mikhail Bychkov
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A jockey who threw a race is murdered in the locker room. "My, they're strict at this track!" Nora Charles exclaims. With that, she (Myrna Loy) and hubby Nick (William Powell) are off to the races on another case of murder, mirth and perfect martinis. Highlights of this fourth Thin Man include a visit to the arena for the evening's wrasslin' and dinner at Mario's Grotto where, no matter what anyone wants, the waiter insists upon the sea bass. As in all films in the series, the supporting cast is extraordinary, with Sam Levene, Barry Nelson, Donna Reed, Henry O'Neill and Stella Adler among Shadow's heroes and possible villains. Red herrings abound. But we still recommend the sea bass. - Director:
- W.S. Van Dyke
- Cast:
- William Powell, Myrna Loy, Barry Nelson
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If cinema has its equivalents to the master modernists of music, painting, or literature, then one of the tradition's foremost practitioners is undoubtedly Alain Resnais - and "Muriel, ou le Temps d'un retour" represents one of his earliest, and greatest, triumphs. In Resnais' two preceding features, the master filmmaker pioneered new ways of representing inner reality and emotion; but with Muriel, he merged the vicissitudes of his characters' personal pasts, and married them to the traumas of the political present - namely, the French war in Algeria. The story of the middle-aged Helene, an antique dealer located in the provincial port-town of Boulogne-Sur-Mer, who resides amid her wares inside the same flat that serves as her business showroom. An old lover of Helene's comes to visit and soon takes up a more permanent residence within her life, despite the presence of a suspicious, tortured, and sexualised stepson who is haunted by a woman, a name, from his own past: "Muriel". Scripted by Jean Cayrol, the co-writer of Resnais' landmark early short film Night and Fog, Muriel is one of the great family films, and stands like a cinema landmark as one of the most complex and rewarding films of the 1960s. - Director:
- Alain Resnais
- Cast:
- Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien, Nita Klein
- Formats:
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Chungking Express (1994)Chung Hing sam lam
'Chungking Express', cult filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai's hugely influential international breakthrough, is a supremely stylish combination of love story and thriller, set in and around Hong Kong's infamous Chungking Mansions, a vast complex of shabby hostels, bars and clubs. The film tells the stories of two lovelorn cops and the women with whom they become involved: a mysterious drug dealer dressed in a blonde wig and sunglasses, and an impulsive young dreamer. - Director:
- Kar-Wai Wong
- Cast:
- Brigitte Lin, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung Chiu Wai
- Formats:
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The Traitor (2019)Il Traditore
"The Traitor" tells the true story of Tommaso Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino), the man who brought down the Cosa Nostra. In the early 1980's, an all out war rages between Sicilian mafia bosses over the heroin trade. Tommaso Buscetta, a made man, flees to hide out in Brazil. Back home, scores are being settled and Buscetta watches from afar as his sons and brother are killed in Palermo, knowing he may be next. Arrested and extradited to Italy by the Brazilian police, Buscetta makes a decision that will change everything for the Mafia: he decides to meet with Judge Giovanni Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi) and betray the eternal vow he made to the Cosa Nostra. - Director:
- Marco Bellocchio
- Cast:
- Pierfrancesco Favino, Luigi Lo Cascio, Fausto Russo Alesi
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Internationally renowned pianist Glenn Gould had all the marks of genius - blinding talent, a craving for perfection and absolute bullheadedness. In 'Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould', director Francois Girard goes directly to the center of Gould's ideas, his passions and his music. Using thirty-two elegantly constructed vignettes, which span Gould's life from age four until his untimely death at age fifty, the film achieves the rare balance between play and conceptual rigor. Each of the thirty-two selections dramatizes a variation on the theme of Glenn Gould, depicting the many diverse aspects of his life - from artist to financier, humorist to nature lover, recluse to iconoclast - and the result is a powerful impressionistic mosaic of genius. - Director:
- François Girard
- Cast:
- Colm Feore, Derek Keurvorst, Katya Ladan
- Formats:
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It Is a time of arrivals at The Kingdom. The infamous Swedish surgeon Stig Helmer (Ernst-Hugo Järegård) has taken up his new post, much to the distress of his Danish colleagues. The position promises to be an eventful one - while Helmer is inducted into the sinister brotherhood of surgeons and performs surgery on a patient who cannot be anaesthetised, his involvement with a brain-damaged patient leaves him open to legal proceedings and a blackmail plot by the idealistic Dr. Krogshoj (Søren Pilmark). And there are other, less wholesome presences beginning to make themselves known in the labyrinthine hospital. When the imagined illnesses of Mrs Sigrid Drusse (Kirsten Rolffes) lead her to be admitted as a patient, she discovers The Kingdom's resident ghost weeping in the lift shafts and embarks on a supernatural search for the wayward spirit. Dr. Judith (Birgitte Raaberg) is pregnant with a highly unusual baby, ghostly ambulances arrive with neither patients or drivers, Dr. Bondo (Baard Owe) finds himself unable to resist the lure of a dying man's tumour and just what is the lovesick Dr. Mogge (Peter Mygind) doing in the morgue with a hacksaw? - Director:
- Lars Von Trier
- Cast:
- Kirsten Rolffes, Peter Gilsfort, Ruth Junker
- Formats:
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