promessi's - Rented List

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Adapted from a novel by Ermano Cavazzoni, 'The Voice of the Moon' concerns itself with Ivo Salvini (Roberto Benigni, Life Is Beautiful), recently released from a mental hospital and in love with Aldini (Nadia Ottaviani).

As he attempts to win her heart, he wanders a strange, dreamlike landscape and encounters various oddball characters, including Gonnella (Paolo Villagio, Fantozzi), a paranoid old man prone to conspiracytheories.

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This powerful biography of the notorious American racketeer Charles 'Lucky' Luciano (Gian Maria Volontè) covers the events in his life after he was extradited to Italy by the US Government in 1946.

Luciano organizes 'hits' on 40 other mafia bosses, closely watched by his nemesis Charles Siragusa former federal narcotics agent (playing himself) in an attempt to gather enough evidence to jail him forever, when he is taken off the case Luciano believes he has beaten the system, but does fate have something else in store for him.

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Bresson's classic film, adapted from a story by Tolstoy, tells of the tragic chain of events which ensue when two schoolboys pass a forged banknote in a photography shop. The note is transferred to the unwitting Yvon (Christian Patey), a delivery driver, who is arrested for possessing it.

Despite being cleared by the court, Yvon loses his job and becomes trapped in a disastrous spiral of theft, imprisonment and murder. Considered to be the last masterpiece of his

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"Terms of Endearment" dazzled critics and audiences alike with its believable, insightful story of two captivating people, mother and daughter, unforgettably played Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger.

Jack Nicholson turns in a great comic performance as MacLaine's neighbour, a boozy, womanizing former astronaut.

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The sky is raining fish. Skyscrapers sit in mountains of sand. Bandits sleep in trunks of used cars. It's a world of the future. A world called Planet Earth. And he's one man just trying to survive.

In Besson's haunting, beautifully realised vision of a post-apocalyptic world, few have held onto life, and fewer still to humanity. An unknown trauma has robbed mankind of their ability to speak, and they remain, mute, in the unexplained wreckage of what once was. The Man (Pierre Jolivet) is an isolated survivor wandering the hostile streets of a collapsed civilization. He lives in a long-abandoned office building, fighting off attacks from nearby thugs and gathering together disused car parts for a makeshift airplane, hoping to fly away from his sombre prison. Escape, however, offers little respite, as he leaves one dead city for another. In the midst of this new wasteland, "The Man" encounters his nemesis, "The Brute" (Jean Reno); a violent aggressor who becomes determined to destroy him. By chance he stumbles into a derelict hospital, and finds there an old doctor who is hiding from The Brute. Together, the two seek sanctuary from The Brute, and gradually, in the grey and sterile world, a friendship begins to grow.

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When a man is murdered all the clues point to Julien Vercel as the prime suspect. He knew him, his fingerprints are on his car and, as the police eventually discover, he was having an affair with Julien's wife.

However, Julien's secretary Barbara Becker is sure something is not quite right with this state of affairs and begins her own investigation into the matter.

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Julie (Jeanne Moreau), a beautiful young bride, has just married her childhood sweetheart and love of her life. But just moments after the ceremony, her beloved is murdered on the steps of the church.

Emotionally distraught, Julie becomes obsessed with her bridegroom's death and begins a descent into madness as she relentlessly pursues the men responsible. One by one, Julie sees to their demises, and, with each murder more bone-chilling and diabolically clever than the last, the question is now who will be next - but rather how they will meet their ghastly end.

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Widely regarded as one of Alan Resnais' finest films, Stavisky attempts to shed some light on the eponymous, enigmatic and yet comparatively unknown Russian emigre who scandalised France.

Stavisky (Jean-Paul Belmondo) built an empire through a combination of subterfuge, fraud and false identity, becoming, as the more respectably titled Serge Alexandre, one of the most influential and powerful men in France in the period between the wars. As the investigations of Inspector Bonny (Claude Rich) reveal, Stavisky's life was the perfect sham, which took in businessmen, financiers and politicians of all persuasions. Eschewing a straight historical biopic, Resnais and writer Jorge Semprun (Z) restrict the scope of the film to the last few months of Stavisky's eventful life, covering his spectacular fall from grace. A work of rare technical brilliance in which the period detail is impeccable, Stavisky'S score is courtesy of Stephen Sondheim.

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A sweeping tale of ill-fated romance and cross-channel relationships. Jean-Pierre Leaud plays Claude, a young Parisian who meets two English girls - Anne, a sculptress, and Muriel, a schoolteacher - on a turn-of-the-century trip to Wales.

This meeting will spark a menage-a-trois spanning over 20 years, during which time alliances will be formed, broken, rearranged and reassembled in a tumultuous yet humorous portrait of human interconnectivity.

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Velma (Courtney Love), a young newly wed, shares a working honeymoon with Norwood (Sy Richardson), a hit-man and bank robber. Norwood and his parents Sims (Joe Strummer) and Willy (Dick Rude) fail in the murder they have been hired to commit, pull a bank heist instead, and flee town.

When their misfueled car breaks down, they bury the stolen loot and hike into an almost deserted oilfield settlement. Unfortunately, this nameless village is a hideout of the coffee-addicted McMahon Bandit gang (Kathy Burke, Elvis Costello, Bif Yeager and The Pogues). Tension, fuelled by copious amounts of coffee, mounts as the bank robbers try to keep a low profile and the sultry Velma falls for two of the McMahons. Norwood tries to keep his cool and almost manages... until Dr Farben (Dennis Hopper) and his bodyguard (Grace Jones) arrive...

As ace "Repo Men", the duo are out to beat ruthless government agents, UFO cultists, hired thugs, a lobotomised nuclear scientist and the infamous Rodriguez Brothers to an incredibly valuable '64 Chevy containing a secret that can change the course of civilisation overnight!

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Marianne (Catherine Deneuve) is at a terrible crossroads in her life, following the shock of her husband Vincent's apparent suicide and the revelation that his prestigious jewellery business is riddled with crippling debt.

Once a promising young jeweller herself, Marianne has gradually sunk into alcoholism since her marriage, but the discovery of seven magnificent diamonds, secretly stashed away by Vincent, rekindles her forgotten ambition. Resolving to sell them, she unwittingly enters the shady underworld of the diamond trade, uncovering a sinister web of intrigue that will lead to a mysterious former lover and a dangerous struggle for her own survival.

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Adventurous Camille and married Odile are sisters living in Paris.

Through her part-time job as a tour guide Camille meets Simon, a radio playwright, who by pure coincidence works for the estate agent from whom Odile is buying her dream apartment It's when Simon's boss, Marc, sees Camille and falls hopelessly in love and Odile's ex-boyfriend Nicolas suddenly turns up that affairs for the sisters get hilariously complicated.

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Gene Hackman portrays Colonel Jason Rhodes, a man obsessed, in this powerful, action-packed adventure. For over ten years, Rhodes has been living a nightmare searching for his son who is listed as "missing in action" in Vietnam.

After useless appeals to the government for information, Rhodes takes matters into his own hands. With the financial backing of a Texas oil tycoon (Robert Stack) and the help of his son's five Marine buddies, Rhodes prepares to carry out a daring mission. After weeks of gruelling training, the courageous veterans leave for Laos. The final battle of the Vietnam conflict is about to begin.

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"Fanny and Alexander" is Bergman's dreamlike family chronicle. The Ekdahl's are an upper-middle-class theatrical family sheltered by their own theatrics from the deepening chaos of the outside world.

One tumultuous year in the life of the Ekdahl family is viewed through the eyes of ten-year-old Alexander (Bertil Guve), whose imagination fuels the magical goings-on leading up to and following the death of his father. His mother's remarriage to a stern prelate banishes Alexander and his sister Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) from all known joys, and thrusts them and the movie into a kind of gothic horror. The bishop is a Bergmanesque character whose severity has gone awry - he has become sinister - and the film's round rejection of him in favour of "kindness, affection and goodness" may be Bergman's fondest farewell to cinema.