promessi's - Rented List

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"Toni Erdmann" is a touching and remarkably funny portrait of an offbeat father-daughter relationship. Sandra Huller plays Ines, a highly-strung career woman whose life in corporate Bucharest takes a turn for the bizarre with the arrival of her estranged father Winfried (Peter Simonischek).

An incessant practical joker, Winfried attempts to reconnect with Ines by introducing the titular eccentric alter ego to catch her off guard, unaware of how capable she is of rising to the challenge... This breakout German comedy, which has been met with universal critical acclaim, is as humanist as it is absurdist - a film about the importance of celebrating the humour of the everyday.

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A global byword for cinematic quality of a quintessentially British nature, Ealing Studios made more than 150 films over a three-decade period.

A cherished and significant part of British film history, only selected films from both the Ealing and Associated Talking Pictures strands have previously been made available on home-video format - with some remaining unseen since their original theatrical release. 'The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection' redresses this imbalance. Featuring new transfers from the best available elements, in their correct aspect ratio, this multi-volume collection showcases a range of scarce films from both Basil Dean's and Michael Balcon's tenure as studio head, making them available once more to the general public.

Escape! (1930)
A study of punitive justice: the fate of a man who has been shut up in Dartmoor Prison and socially ruined. What treatment awaits him when he turns fugitive?
West of Zanzibar (1954)
An African tribe must seek new pastures. Can game warden Bob Payton persuade them to choose fertile soil and peaceful living over the many temptations of the city?
Penny Paradise (1938)
Liverpool tugboat captain Joe spends a weekly sixpence on the pools. When his first mate forgets to post the coupon as a winning line is drawn, comic chaos is the result!
Cheer Up! (1936)
Countless comic situations and spectacular dance routines punctuate a tale of two struggling composers trying to gain backing for their musical comedy.

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An incisive exploration of the disintegration of a bourgeois marriage, 'Faces' traces the shifting character dynamics as Richard (John Marley) and Maria's (Lynn Carlin) fourteen-year marriage implodes.

Maria joins her friends looking for romantic satisfaction elsewhere and has an unfulfilling fling with a young swinger (Seymour Cassel). Richard meanwhile secures the services of a prostitute (Gena Rowlands) for a night. Both find their liaisons to be no more satisfying than their dead-end marriage.

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During Napoleon's invasion of Spain, two soldiers discover a strange manuscript at an Inn. The book chronicles the adventures of Alfonso van Worden (Zbigniew Cybulski).

Alfonso's passage through the dangerous Sierra Morena mountains is repeatedly interrupted by seemingly random encounters with an assortment of larger than life figures. Tunisian princesses inform Alfonso that he is their cousin and their betrothed; an occult scholar ensnares Alfonso with confounding stories about feuds between Merchants and hardships faced by gypsies. And of course, Alfonso never did expect the Spanish Inquisition.

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The Friedmans are a respectable middle-class Long Island family, addicted to recording their daily lives - on super-8 in the early days, then later on videotape.

But their world crumbles when the father, a respected teacher, is accused - along with the youngest of his three sons - of molesting schoolchildren. Unbelievably, the arrest, trial and its horrifying aftermath are all chronicled in the family's own home movies, and the result is a remarkable tangle of contradictions that will haunt you long after the end-credits roll.

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Hell's Angels is one of the inspirations behind Martin Scorsese's highly acclaimed Howard Hughes biopic, The Aviator. Billionaire Howard Hughes produced and directed Hell's Angels, the most expensive film ever made during its time.

Hughes spared no expense in capturing an exciting dogfight between RAF and German fighter planes, using 133 pilots in all. Hell's Angels is perhaps most notable for introducing Jean Harlow to the screen in her first major film role. Set during World War I, Hell's Angels is the story of three Oxford buddies: two brothers and the German. When all three are conscripted to fight on opposing sides of the war, each is torn between obedience to his country and that of his country and that of his conscience. Jean Harlow is the woman who comes between the three men in this lavish period adventure.

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Written and directed by Godard, 'Alphaville' is the strangely beautiful futuristic tale of Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine), an American private eye sent to a planet ruled by Von Braun (Anna Karina), a malevolent scientist who has outlawed human emotions in favour of logic.

The film deals with the fight between individualism in the face of inhumanity and blind conformity...

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From the Maysles brothers, comes this landmark American documentary - a fascinating, non-narrated account of four Boston bible hawkers as they struggle to stay afloat in the cutthroat world of door-to-door sales.

Capturing the remarkable detail of a bygone era, the film documents their carefully delivered spiel to bored housewives, widows, immigrants, and distracted blue-collar workers. The salesmen wheedle, connive, and cajole their way toward the Holy Grail, but as the pressure of the job bears down, one of the salesmen begins to crack, exposing the dark and lonely underside of the American Dream. In a society saturated with reality TV, soundbite analysis, and slickly produced docu-tainment, Salesman stands tall as one of the first non-fiction films to show the lives of ordinary people indepth, without judgement or narration.

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Gillo Pontecorvo's multi-award winning picture 'The Battle of Algiers' has perhaps never been as pertinent as it is now. Set from 1954 to 1962, the movie uses documentary-style black and white photography to recreate real events.

Algerian liberation fighters use terrorist techniques against the French colonial occupiers; the French retaliate with brutal military force. Brilliantly directed set-pieces and remarkable crowd scenes make the film a masterpiece; the ominous familiarity of its subject makes it a must-see" - The Times How to win battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point blank range. Women plant bombs in Cafes. Sounds familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film.'' - Pentagon tlyer for their in-house screening of Battle Of Algiers All the armies of the world - including the Pentagon - will never, but never, be able to conquer a country which wants to control its own destiny" - Saadi Yacef

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Onibaba is set during a brutal period in history, a Japan ravaged by civil war between rival shogunates.

Weary from combat, samurai are drawn towards the seven-foot-high susuku grass fields to hide and rest themselves, only to be ambushed and murdered by a ruthless team of mother (Nobuko Otowa) and daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura). When Hachi (Kei Sato), a neighbour returning from the wars, brings bad news, he threatens the women's partnership.

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The story starts just before the Civil War, showing Fisk, Boyd, and Luke conning Southern townsfolk into buying bars of soap that, might, have a $10 gold piece inside. Found out, they're chased out of town and escape across the Mason-Dixon Line just as the war starts.

Fisk hatches a plan for him and Boyd to return to the South and buy cotton then smuggle it to the North where Luke is to sell it to the Northern textile mills. By the end of the war they have made millions, only to find out that Luke had been re-investing their money into Confederate Bonds. This fact-based movie shows Jim Fisk as one of the greatest con-men and entrepreneur's in history. It concludes with his involvement in "Black Friday", the Financial Panic of 1869, with fellow financier Jay Gould (who's not represented in the movie) and their attempt to corner the U.S. gold market. There's a love triangle between Fisk, Boyd and Mansfield, which is also based on historical accounts.

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"I Clowns (The Clowns)" has been revered by Fellini enthusiasts since its release as among the Maestro's finest works - one in a register all its own.

The film plays out in dazzling colour and in episodic cascade: as the circus rolls into town, and the big-tent is erected, the clowns execute their acts with feverish bravado. It's all true - and yet not a "documentary" per se; rather, something inbetween a portrayal of gags-at-play and of all that makes the spark for childhood inspiration ignite into creative virtuosity.

Set within a Gutsul community in the Ukranian Carpathian mountains, this visually stunning and richly detailed tale of a young man who yearns for a lost love is a beguiling mix of folklore, sorcery and religious symbolism, which brought Paradjanov to prominence and won numerous awards.

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A marvellous rediscovery from the golden age of French cinema, Jacques Feyder's 'Le Grand jeu' is a tragic dopplegänger romance, steered by the fate of the tarot card, and set against the dizzying exoticism of 1930s Morocco.

When scandalous Parisian playboy Pierre Martel is forced by his family to leave France and his adored lover Florence (Marie Bell), he begins a new life in the Foreign Legion as Pierre Muller. Drowning his regrets in camaraderie, whores, and hell-raising, he is astonished at meeting Irma (also Marie Bell), a prostitute with an uncanny resemblance to his beloved, and begins a fitful scheme to allow her escape.

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"It was an evil house from the beginning, a house that was born bad". The place is the 90-year-old mansion called Hill House. No one lives there. Or so it seems. But please do come in. Because even if you don't believe in ghosts, there's no denying the terror of 'The Haunting'.

Robert Wise returned to psychological horror for this much admired, first screen adaptation of Shirley Jackson's 'The Haunting of Hill House'. Four people come to the house to study its supernatural phenomena. Or has the house drawn at least one of them to it?