ryan-the-american's - Rented List

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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.

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A harrowing drama set during the Salvadoran Civil War, 'Salvador' is one of director Oliver Stone's most underrated films, a thrilling and violent look at the chaos of war as seen through the lens of an amoral photojournalist.

In 1980, young men, women and children are being brutally killed in a bloody civil war in El Salvador. A horrific setting, but a perfect one for Richard Boyle (James Woods), a sleazy journalist whose career needs a jumpstart. Armed with his camera, Boyle joins the front lines in an attempt to capture atrocious-but-valuable images of pain and horror. But with each picture he takes, he catches a tragic side of humanity that ignites his long-buried compassion. And he unexpectedly discovers something that will change him forever: his soul.

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A beautiful young woman performs a seductive striptease at the window of her fabulous Hollywood home. A struggling young actor watches, entranced from a house nearby, drawn into her obsession. Suddenly, he becomes a helpless witness to her savage murder.

Compelled to track down the psychopath responsible, his investigations lead him into the stark and perverted world of the body double.

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After the release of Jake Blues (John Belushi) from prison, he and brother Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) go to visit the orphanage where they were raised by nuns. They learn that the church stopped its support and will sell the place unless the tax on the property is paid within 11 days.

The brothers decide to raise money by putting their blues band back together and staging a big gig. They may be on a 'mission from God' but they're making enemies everywhere they go.

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Three ill-fated men - a small-time pimp Jack (John Lurie) an unemployed DJ Zack (Tom Waits) and a strong-willed Italian tourist (Roberto Benigni) - meet in the confined space of New Orleans prison cell.

Undeterred by Jack and Zack's evident disdain, Roberto shares with them his improbable plans of escape, thrusting them into an adventure through the Louisiana bayous.

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With a career spanning over thirty years, Louis Malle was one of the giants of French cinema.

After he burst onto the scene as one of the pioneers of the French New Wave with Lift To The Scaffold, Malle quickly achieved a reputation as a great director who was unafraid to embrace a wide array of subjects - many famously controversial. Working both in Hollywood and his native France, Malle imprinted his films with subtlety, intelligence and a sharp eye for the mores of human behaviour that set him apart from his contemporaries. This collection brings together classics from Malle's later career. Au Revoir Les Enfants, earning Malle a BAFTA for Best Director, and Lucien Lacombe are two very different tales about troubled youth set during the Second World War. Milou en Mai is a chamber comedy set against the backdrop of the 1968 Parisian uprisings and Le Souffle Au Coeur a taboo-breaking coming-of-age satire. Together with the dreamlike Black Moon, these films are proof that age did not dim Malle's humanism or commitment to experimentation.

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Nanni Moretti presents a semi-autobiographical account of his experiences in fatherhood, beginning when his wife Silvia's announces her pregnancy. Family, work and politics mingle in a charming light-hearted tale with a large helping of irony and humour.

Following the general election of 1994, won by the centre-right coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi, Moretti is encouraged by a journalist friend to make a documentary about the current political situation in Italy. Two years pass, another election is held, and he has still made no progress with his documentary. He starts another project, a musical about a Trotskyist pastry chef in the 1950's, but becomes disillusioned and increasingly distracted by the pregnancy. When his son Pietro is born and the centre-left coalition Ulivo wins the election, he continues to try to shoot his documentary, but with the film remaining unfinished he must learn to stop hesitating in order to complete his passion project.

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Middle-aged philosophy professor Marion Post (Gena Rowlands) would appear to have every advantage. After all, she has a rock-solid professional reputation, an equally secure marriage and enough spare cash to be able to rent a separate flat in which to write her latest book without interruption.

But she is interrupted, thanks to an accident of ventilation, by the therapy sessions going on in the psychiatrist's office next door. Voyeuristically fascinated, Marion is particularly struck by the way that the unhappy experiences of his patient Hope (Mia Farrow) mirror her own, and realises that her life is nowhere near as materially and emotionally secure as she's been pretending. And when she decides to rely less on her beloved logic and reason and open herself up to dreams, imagination and passion, the scene is set for a life-changing transformation.

During the filming of The Seven Year Itch, while Hollywood censors kept a careful eye on the notoriously racy production, Marilyn was pure perfection as a sexy, yet innocent, starlet living upstairs from a married man who had just sent his wife and son away for the summer.

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The first Iranian film to win the Palme d'Or, this austere, emotionally complex drama by the great Abbas Kiarostami follows the enigmatic Mr.

Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) as he drives around the hilly outskirts of Tehran looking for someone who will agree to bury him after he commits suicide, a taboo under Islam. Extended conversations with three passengers (a soldier, a seminarian, and a taxidermist) elicit different views on mortality and individual choice. Operating at once as a closely observed, realistic story and a fable populated by archetypal figures, Taste of Cherry challenges the viewer to consider what often goes unexamined in everyday life.

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When Viviane (Bulle Ogier), a chic diplomat's wife, meets an intriguing adventurer (Michael Gothard) and his hippy friends in the wilds of Papua New Guinea different worlds collide.

The group, led by enigmatic visionary Gaetan (Jean-Pierre Kalfon), convince Viviane to join their expedition in search of a mysterious uncharted Valley.