ryan-the-american's - Rented List

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Rex Harrison reprises his signature role of Henry Higgins, the supremely assured phoneticist who wagers that under his tutelage, cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle can pass for a duchess at the Embassy Ball. In one of her best-loved roles, Audrey Hepburn plays Eliza.

If ever there were a face that the professor could grow accustomed to, it's hers. In Hartford, Heresford and Hampshire (and elsewhere) no one's fairer than 'My Fair Lady' on of the most irresistible musicals ever.

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Directed by Alexander Mackendrick "The Maggie" is a heartwarming comedy set in Scotland, about a skipper who tricks a wealthy American into entrusting him to ship valuable cargo on a dilapidated old puffer boat called 'The Maggie'.

The American tycoon realises his mistake and goes up against the scheming crew of the Maggie who are determined to outwit the American and keep the contract.

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A ship sails into the Pool of London, and for the few days it is loading or discharging, it becomes as much a part of the Pool as the wharves and warehouses, as the buildings of the city itself. To the tugmen, the watermen, the customs, the river police, it's just another job -usually.

However, everything changes for two sailors on shore leave when they inadvertently become caught up in a crime as murky as the great river itself. For one of them, Johnny, life is further complicated when he falls in love with Pat, a local ticket seller, forming one of the first inter-racial relationships in British film. Produced by Ealing Studios on location in the City of London itself. 'Pool of London' was filmed on the River Thames and it's wharves, on London Bridge and in the blitzed streets around St. Paul's, and is an authentic and unmissable slice of film history.

Directed by Robert Hamer, it stars Googie Withers as Rose Sandigate, a Bethnal Green housewife whose Sunday is turned upside down by the re-appearance of an old flame who is now an escaped convict seeking protection from the police.

When a ship carrying 50,000 cases of whiskey runs aground, the inhabitants of a Scottish island cannot resist the temptation to replenish their depleted supplies. Only an English Home Guard captain stands in their way.

The courageous story of the Battle of the Atlantic: a story of an ocean, a ship and a handful of men. The brave crew are the heroes. The heroine is the ship. The only villain is the sea that man, and war, have made even more brutal...

Set across a three-year time period, 'Being a Human Person' peeks behind the curtain to reveal Andersson's unique, immersive, and at times arduous method of filmmaking, the personal demons he faces and the legacy of a master storyteller as he calls time on an incredible career.

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Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness), a humble inventor, develops a fabric which never gets dirty or wears out. This would seem to be a boon for mankind, but the established garment manufacturers don't see it that way; they try to suppress it.

Nevertheless, Sidney is determined to put his invention on the market, forcing the clothing factory bigwigs to resort to more desperate measures.

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A couple floats over a war-town Cologne; on the way to a birthday party, a father stops to tie his daughter's shoelaces in the pouring rain; teenage girls dance outside a cafe, 'About Endlessness' is a beautiful work which Andersson presents as his final film, a kaleidoscope of all that is

eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.

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When an unexploded WWII bomb is unexpectedly detonated in Pimlico, it reveals a buried cellar full of treasures, including an ancient document proving that the area is in fact part of Burgundy, France and thus foreign territory.

In an attempt to regain control, the British Government set up borders and cut off all services to the area, but the 'Burgundians' are determined to fight back!

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Based on a semi-autobiographical short story by poet and screenwriter Charles Bukowski and directed by Barbet Schroeder, 'Barfly' offers insight into the world of the alcoholic, where all that matters is the next drink.

Henry Chinaski (Mickey Rourke) is a talented writer of prolific prose; unfortunately he's also a skid-row alcoholic with a violent temper. He picks fights nightly with Eddie (Frank Stallone), the bartender at the local watering hole, the Golden Horn, and lives in a seedy tenement, stealing food and trying to scrape together enough money for booze. Fellow alcoholic WiIla Wilcox (Faye Dunaway) catches Henry's eye at the bar one afternoon and although she has a reputation for being unstable, the two embark on a relationship with each other and the bottle.

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Music icon David Byrne was inspired by tabloid headlines to make his sole foray into feature-film directing, an ode to the extraordinariness of ordinary American life and a distillation of what was in his own idiosyncratic mind.

The Talking Heads front man plays a visitor to Virgil, Texas, who introduces us to the citizens of the town during preparations for its Celebration of Specialness. As shot by cinematographer Ed Lachman, Texas becomes a hyperrealistic late-capitalist landscape of endless vistas, shopping malls, and prefab metal buildings. In 'True Stories', Byrne uses his songs to stitch together pop iconography, voodoo rituals, and a singular variety show - all in the service of uncovering the rich mysteries that lurk under the surface of everyday experience.

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When her best friend and roommate abruptly moves out to get married, Susan (Melanie Mayron), trying to be an artist while making ends meet as a bar mitzvah photographer on Manhattan's Upper West Side, finds herself adrift in both life and love.

A wonder of American independent cinema by Claudia Weill (who, when she was admitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a director in 1981, was one of only four women ever to have received that honor), 'Girlfriends' is a remarkably authentic vision of female relationships that has become a touchstone for makers of an entire subgenre of films and television shows about young women trying to make it in the big city. This 1970's New York time capsule captures the complexities and contradictions of women's lives and relationships with wry humor and refreshing frankness.

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"Topsy-Turvy" casts the spotlight upon the creative partnership of William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, responsible for such classic operettas as The Pirates of Penzance.

After ten consecutive smash hits, Gilbert and Sullivan have a flop on their hands and begin to question the very process that has afforded them a decade of success. Sullivan (Allan Corduner) thinks Gilbert's story lines have become formulaic and a creative deadlock is reached. But when Gilbert (Jim Broadbent) visits a Japanese cultural exhibition he is struck with inspiration and the pair re-unite to create 'The Mikado', a huge hit. Throughout 'Topsy-Turvy' are woven insights into the lives not only of the complex Gilbert, childlessly married to a demoted wife, and the bon-viveur, brothel-visiting Sullivan and his American mistress, but also the working actors, actresses, chorus, musicians and costumiers of the Savoy Theatre, and of D'Oyly carte and his team.

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Kazuo Hara's infamous and audacious documentary follows Kenzo Okuzaki, an ageing Japanese WW2 veteran, on a mission to uncover the truth about atrocities committed as the war in the Pacific reached its bloody end.

Ultimately, Okuzaki blames The Emperor himself for these barbarities, and his obsessive pursuit of those he deems responsible soon escalates. Willing to confront the taboos of Japanese society in his fanatical quest for justice, Okuzaki is driven to unsettling acts of violence. Harrowing and extraordinarily powerful, Hara's film forces us to face the disturbing realities of war and, crucially, to question the complicity between filmmaker, subject and audience.