saj's - Rented List
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Diamonds of the Night (1964)Démanty Noci
Jan Nemec's debut feature, "Diamonds of the Night" is one of the most thrilling and startlingly original works of cinema. Told almost without dialogue, it chronicles the tense and desperate journey of two teenage boys who are trying to stay alive after escaping from a German train bound for a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. With its virtuoso cinematography, inspired editing and brilliantly utilised soundtrack, the film is a landmark of the ill-fated Czech New Wave. Its themes of man's perpetual struggle to preserve human dignity in the face of unimaginable horrors are just as relevant today. - Director:
- Jan Nemec
- Cast:
- Ladislav Jánsky, Antonín Kumbera, Irma Bischofova
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After the Storm (2016)Umi yori mo mada fukaku
Author turned private detective, Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), struggles to make ends meet as he flitters away all the money he earns on gambling, barely able to pay child support for his son. After his father passes away his mother (Kiki Kirin) seems to have moved on, but family tensions are high with both Ryota and his sister believing each other is taking advantage of their mother. When a typhoon hits, holed-up in his mother's house with his estranged wife and son, Ryota attempts to rekindle his relationships with his family. A sensitive and powerful story of family ties remade, 'After the Storm' stands with the best of Kore-eda's work. - Director:
- Hirokazu Koreeda
- Cast:
- Hiroshi Abe, Yôko Maki, Satomi Kobayashi
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Director George Miller, originator of the post-apocalyptic genre and mastermind behind the legendary Mad Max franchise, returns to the world of the Road Warrior. Haunted by his turbulent past. Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) wanders alone until he's swept up with a group, led by Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). fleeing across the Wasteland. In hot pursuit: a warlord who gathers his gangs and pursues the rebels ruthlessly, leading to a high-octane road war. - Director:
- George Miller
- Cast:
- Tom Hardy, Lee Perry, Charlize Theron
- Formats:
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Shoplifters (2018)Manbiki Kazoku
After a successful shoplifting spree, Osamu (Lily Franky) and his son rescue a little girl in the freezing cold and invite her home with them. Osamu's wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) reluctantly agrees to shelter her. Although the family is poor, they live happily together until an unforeseen incident upsets the delicate balance they have created, revealing long-buried secrets... - Director:
- Hirokazu Koreeda
- Cast:
- Rirî Furankî, Sakura Andô, Mayu Matsuoka
- Formats:
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The Shepherd (2017)El Pastor
Anselmo (Miguel Martín), a middle age shepherd, lives a poor but happy life in a small run down house in a middle of the Spain plains, near a small, but growing village. His dog Pillo and his sheep are his only company. A life bucolic enough for him to ignore the offers he receives from a construction company who wants to buy his house and land to build a new residential complex. Conflicting against Anselmo's unwillingness to sell is Julian and Paco's greed, the owners of the neighbouring lands, who only answer to their own interests. A bloody metaphor of the greed to corrodes these who do not answer to reason in their quest to get what they want, and the inevitable, but violent consequences of their actions. - Director:
- Jonathan Cenzual Burley
- Cast:
- Maribel Iglesias, Miguel Martín, Alfonso Mendiguchía
- Formats:
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The Wild Pear Tree (2018)Ahlat Agaci
Sinan (Dogu Demirkol) returns from his studies in the city of Canakkale to his parents' home in the small rural town of Can. He hopes to publish a book of essays and short stories (or what he describes as a "quirky auto-fiction meta-novel"). But his teacher father Idris (Murat Cemcir) is an addictive gambler, so much so that his mother and sister have become reluctantly accustomed to making do without food or electricity. And so Sinan, with his writing dreams, worrying that we will be reduced after army service to teaching in the remote East, wanders around town, visiting his grandparents, encountering old friends, all the while looking for funding for his book. - Director:
- Nuri Bilge Ceylan
- Cast:
- Murat Cemcir, Bennu Yildirimlar, Dogu Demirkol
- Formats:
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Faces Places (2017)Visages, Villages
Iconic film maker Agnes Varda and photographer JR share a passion for images and how they're created, displayed and shared; Varda through cinema. JR through his emotionally arrested outdoor installations. Inspired by this connection, they set out in JR's photo booth-enhanced truck, exploring the villages and small towns of rural France and meeting its humble residents - all the while creating large-scale portraits plastered across unconventional locations. What follows is a heart-warming insight into unnamed communities, documented here in Varda's typically playful and tender manner. A Cannes Film Festival award-winner and Oscar nominee, 'Faces Places' is a deeply charming and life-affirming look at not only the subtle power of community, but the inspiration that comes from the most cross-generational of friendships. - Director:
- Jr.
- Cast:
- Agnès Varda, Jr., Jeannine Carpentier
- Formats:
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Casey (Haley Lu Richardson) lives with her mother, a recovering addict, in a little-known Midwestern town haunted by the promise of modernism. Jin (John Cho), a visitor from the other side of the world, attends to his estranged, dying father. Burdened by the future, they find respite in one another and the architecture that surrounds them. - Director:
- Kogonada
- Cast:
- John Cho, Haley Lu Richardson, Parker Posey
- Formats:
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Maisie Williams leads an all-star cast in 'The Falling', a bewitching supernatural story of friendship, sexual obsession, forbidden knowledge and dark secrets. When a tragedy rocks her school, Lydia finds herself at the centre of a mysterious fainting outbreak. As her power and influence over the school grows she's driven to uncover the truth behind the strange occurrences. But as Lydia begins to ask questions, she forces old secrets into the light, revealing dark truths. - Director:
- Carol Morley
- Cast:
- Maxine Peake, Maisie Williams, Florence Pugh
- Formats:
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Out of the Past (1947)Build My Gallows High
Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas star in this quintessential film noir which catapulted Mitchum into superstardom and set the standard for the genre for years to come. When Kathie Moffett (Greer) shoots her admirer, Whit Sterling (Douglas), a big-time gambler, and absconds with $40,000 of his money, Starling hires private detective Jeff Bailey (Mitchum) to find her. Bailey leaves New York and catches up with Kathie in Mexico. Kathie denies taking the money and after falling for her charms, Bailey notifies Sterling that he could not find her. - Director:
- Jacques Tourneur
- Cast:
- Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas
- Formats:
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Barbara Stanwyck sizzles, Henry Fonda bumbles, and Preston Sturges runs riot in one of the all-time great screwballs, a pitch-perfect blend of comic zing and swoonworthy romance. Aboard a cruise liner sailing up the coast of South America, Stanwyck's conniving card sharp sets her sights on Fonda's nerdy snake researcher, who happens to be the heir to a brewery fortune. But when the con artist falls for her mark, her grift becomes a game of hearts - and she is determined to win it all. One in a string of matchless comedic marvels that Sturges wrote and directed as part of a dazzling 1940s run, this gender-flipped battle-of-wits farce is perhaps his most emotionally satisfying work, tempering its sparkling humor with a streak of tender poignancy supplied by the sensational Stanwyck at her peak. - Director:
- Preston Sturges
- Cast:
- Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn
- Formats:
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Embrace of the Serpent (2015)El abrazo de la serpiente
Karamakate, a warrior shaman and last of his tribe, transcends the worlds of men and seeks truth through their dreams. He alone knows how to find the mysterious and psychedelic Yakruna plant; for some it has life-saving properties, for others it is a commodity waiting to be exploited. Two scientists, in two different times enlist Karamakate on their individual quests in an epic adventure into the heart of the Colombian Amazon to find this mythical plant. This Oscar nominated film is seen through Karamakates eyes and bears witness to the effects of colonialism, religion and the exploitation of rubber on indigenous traditions and the environment to which they arc inextricably linked. - Director:
- Ciro Guerra
- Cast:
- Nilbio Torres, Jan Bijvoet, Antonio Bolivar
- Formats:
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New Grenada is a planned community in the rolling plains west of Denver. It is a soulless oasis of split level homes, coffee mornings and crushing blandness, where the adults strive to attract investment and their neglected kids are left to make their own entertainment. When the youth centre closes at dusk, this means vandalism, drug-taking, theft and general hooliganism, resulting in the accidental shooting of a police officer. When the town's parents gather the next night to discuss the degeneration situation, they soon discover the kids have had all they can take. - Director:
- Jonathan Kaplan
- Cast:
- Matt Dillon, Michael Eric Kramer, Pamela Ludwig
- Formats:
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Johnny Saxby (Josh O'Connor) works long hours on his family's remote farm in the north of England. He numbs the daily frustration of his lonely existence with nightly binge-drinking at the local pub and casual sex. But when a handsome Romanian migrant worker (Alec Secareanu) arrives to take up temporary work on the family farm, Johnny suddenly finds himself having to deal with emotions he has never felt before. As they begin working closely together during lambing season, an intense relationship starts to form which could change Johnny's life forever. - Director:
- Francis Lee
- Cast:
- Josh O'Connor, Alec Secareanu, Gemma Jones
- Formats:
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The Alcohol Years (2000) Carol Morley returns to Manchester, where in the early 1980s, five years of her life were lost in an alcoholic blur. The Alcohol Years is a poetic retrieval of that time, in which rediscovered friends and acquaintances recount tales of her drunken and promiscuous behaviour. In Morley's search for her lost self, conflicting memories and viewpoints weave in and out, revealing a portrait of the city, its pop culture, and the people who lived it.
Everyday Something (2001)
Based on the filmmaker's collection of newspaper cuttings the film presents private moments that give strange glimpses into everyday life
Stalin My Neighbour (2004)
To try and forget her own past Annie becomes ever more obsessed with local history. Filmed in East London.- Director:
- Carol Morley
- Cast:
- Stella Grundy, Douglas Hart, Dave Haslam
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