promessi's - Rented List

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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.

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Linklater's breakout second film is an utterly unique series of loosely interweaved episodes shining a delightfully off-beat light on a parade of socially disconnected, overly educated, and barely motivated citizens in Austin Texas.

In coffeehouses, clubs, bars, apartments, stores, and streets of the college town, life's strange quirks, odd foibles and disruptive inanities come astonishingly to life. Linklater's film remains a cult sensation that launched a thousand imitators. But none of the effusive 20-somethings littering the casts of 1990s US independent cinema can hold a candle to those of this hilarious and vibrant true original.

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As World War II splits Europe, sixteen-year-old German Jew Salomon (Marco Hofschneider) is separated from his family after fleeing with them to Poland, and finds himself reluctantly assuming various ideological identities in order to hide the deadly secret of his Jewishness.

He is bounced from a Soviet orphanage, where he plays a dutiful Stalinist, to the Russian front, where he hides in plain sight as an interpreter for the German army, and back to his home country, where he takes on his most dangerous role: a member of the Hitler Youth. Based on the real-life experiences of Salomon Perel, Agnieszka Holland's wartime tour de force 'Europa Europa' is a breathless survival story told with the verve of a comic adventure, an ironic refutation of the Nazi idea of racial purity, and a complex portrait of a young man caught up in shifting historical calamities and struggling to stay alive.

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After years inside, drug lord Frank White (Christopher Walken) is fresh out of jail and back on the streets of New York City.

Seeing himself as half Scarface, half Robin Hood, Frank and his enforcers brutally take back control of the city, turf by turf - with starry dreams of using the millions to benefit the community and save a local hospital. Before Frank can fulfil his ruthless lust for power, though, he's got to get past the crooked cops determined to take him down, and the criminal competition that won't bend to his will.

Based on a true story, Isabelle Huppert plays Marie, an illegal abortionist who risks the terrible consequences of discovery by the Nazis and Vichy government so that she can save her young family from the oppression of extreme poverty.

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Two children, Voula and her young brother Alexander, run away from their Athens home to search for their father, whom their mother has told them lives in Germany. Boarding an express train, the children begin an epic journey into the chaos of the world and away from the innocence of childhood.

Beautifully photographed by Giorgios Arvanitis and referencing several of Angelopoulos' earlier works, this extraordinary coming of age tale paints a dark portrait of Greece in the eighties - a country caught between its past and present, struggling to find a place in the future.

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Set in the picture-postcard small town environs of Lumberton, Kyle MacLachlan plays the clean cut Jeffrey Beaumont, who, whilst returning from a visit to his hospitalised father, makes the shocking discovery of a severed human ear.

After reporting his discovery to a local police detective, Jeffrey decides to pursue his own line of enquiry, aided by the detective's daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern). This sets Jeffrey on a voyage of discovery that takes him to the very heart of Lumberton's seedy and sinister underworld where he encounters a collection of misfits whose various chronic compulsions to engulf him in their twisted and nightmarish world.

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Winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, director Alice Rohrwacher's film is a beautiful and bittersweet love letter to the disappearing traditions of rural Italy.

On her family's farm in the quiet and beautiful Italian countryside, twelve-year-old Gelsomina divides her time between watching out for her sisters and helping her father with his bee-keeping. One day their peaceful existence is interrupted when television competition 'Countryside Wonders' and its glamorous host (Monica Bellucci) arrive, offering tantalising rewards for the most traditionally-ltalian produce. Gelsomina is eager to enter the family and their pure golden honey, but faces resistance from her father who is more concerned with the bureaucracy threatening to derail their family business.

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It's 1938 and Rome comes to a standstill as Hitler visits Mussolini for the first time. Antonietta is left in her tenement home whilst her fascist husband and the rest of her family leave to attend the historic event.

The whole building is empty apart from one man, Gabriele, a radio announcer sacked because of his homosexuality and his political views. Unaware of this Antonietta flirts with Gabriele as they meet by chance in the empty building. They strike up a conversation and the rather naive housewife is surprised by his opinions and shocked when she finally realises his sexual orientation. As the day progresses they develop a very special relationship that will radically alter both their outlooks on life forever...

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Johnny (David Thewlis) is a frenetic and destructive outsider who tears through the lives of others like an emotional tornado.

On the run from Manchester, he seeks sanctuary with his ex-girlfriend Louise (Lesley Sharp) in London, where he immediately targets her vulnerable housemate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge) with his unique blend of predatory charm. From there he embarks on a nocturnal odyssey across the city, dragging other disaffected souls into his orbit as he spirals towards his own personal apocalypse.

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'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.

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Charlie Croker (Michael Caine) is out of jail and on the make with an ingenious plan for the heist of the century. Aided and abetted by top criminal mastermind Mr.

Bridger (Noël Coward), Charlie sets off with an ace team of villains and three very special minis to lift $4,000,000 from under the noses of the Turin Polizei. The trouble is, with the cops and the Mafia on his tail, Charlie finds that grabbing the money is kid's stuff compared to getting away with it...

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Lambert plays a hipster thief who falls in love with the bored and beautiful wife of the millionaire he just robbed. She wants her stolen papers back and he wants her heart.

With gangsters and Metro police on their tail, the two seek refuge in the wild labyrinth beneath the subway, and team up with the strange characters, including a drummer (Jean Reno) who inhabit this subterranean world. The result is a hilarious, rocking adventure that never slows down.

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Based on the novel by Shichiro Fukazawa, the film recounts the ancient custom of younger inhabitants in a remote Japanese mountain village who are obliged to shepherd those over the age of seventy to the top of Mount Narayama to await their death.

One such elder must first sort out the lives of her three children before she fulfils her duty to the village.