sjj's - Rented List

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After shaking the world with his hugely controversial epic 'The Birth of a Nation', pioneer filmmaker D. W.

Griffith spared no expense in putting together his next project: a powerful examination of intolerance as it has persisted throughout civilisation, set across four parallel storylines that span 2500 years. There is the Babylonian story, depicting nothing less than the fall of Babylon; the Judean story, which revolves around the crucifixion of Christ; the French story, which presents the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in all its horror; and a modern American story of class struggle, crime, and the plight of life in the early 20th century set within urban slums and the prison system. Starring such luminaries as Lillian Gish, Constance Talmadge, and Miriam Cooper, who share screentime with an enormous main cast and some 3,000 extras, Griffith's film - the most expensive motion picture ever produced at the time - went on to become a critical success whose influence has only grown in the decades since.

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'Do we get stupider as we grow up?' In his wildly popular Broadway show 'American Utopia', David Byrne reflects on human connections, life and how on earth we work through it. He joins the dots with his music and it all starts making sense.

Spike Lee here transforms the production into immersive, dynamic cinema that radiates with astounding performances, inventive contemporary dance and political urgency. 'American Utopia' flows like an iridescent dream vision. Work by James Baldwin, Janelle Monáe and Kurt Schwitters is highlighted among exhilarating renditions of Byrne's solo work, as well as Talking Heads classics. According to the multi-hyphenate, we love looking at humans more than anything else. Anti-fascist and anti-racist, Byrne illuminates our responsibility to care for one another as he and his co-performers burn down the house.

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Three classic films starring and directing Buster Keaton.

Our Hospitality (1923)

Keaton is luckless William McKay, who must journey down South to view his lacklustre inheritance, only to be seduced along the way by one of the Canfields, Virginia, who lures him to her family's house so that the men of the clan can shoot him down. But William knows that the Canfield men won't kill him as long as he's in their house, so he endeavours to stay put there, against all obstacles.
Go West (1925)
Friendless abandons city life to ride the rails to an Arizona ranch, where his ineptitude at almost everything only makes his nickname even more accurate. But when his one beloved companion, a cow named Brown Eyes, seems to be headed to a slaughterhouse fate, Friendless intervenes, and the resulting cattle stampede through the streets of Los Angeles is one of Keaton's most understandably famous and acclaimed sequences.
College (1927)
Keaton is bookworm Ronald; whose high school girl Mary ditches him for someone with the athletic prowess that Ronald lacks. Determined to win her back, Ronald enters college with an eye on sports, but two left feet.

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In 1970, the Miss World competition took place in London, hosted by US comedy legend, Bob Hope (Greg Kinnear). At the time, Miss World was the most-watched TV show on the planet with over 100 million viewers.

Claiming that beauty competitions demeaned women, the newly formed Women's Liberation Movement achieved overnight fame by invading the stage and disrupting the live broadcast of the competition. Not only that, when the show resumed, the result caused uproar: the winner was not the Swedish favourite but Miss Grenada, the first black woman to be crowned Miss World. In a matter of hours, a global audience had witnessed the patriarchy driven from the stage and the Western ideal of beauty turned on its head.

Inspired by a shocking true story, a tenacious attorney (Mark Ruffalo) uncovers a dark secret that connects a growing number of unexplained deaths to one of the world's largest corporations. In the process, he risks everything - his career, his livelihood, and his family - to expose the truth.

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Buster Keaton (1895-1966) is one of the greatest artists in cinema history. After a very early start in vaudeville with his parents (as The Human Mop), Keaton was as old as the cinema when he began his career in film at the age of twenty-one with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.

Burlesque yet sensitive, Keaton inspired European surrealists and created the funniest and most astonishing character of the silent era. His short films were whirlwinds of precisely choreographed humour and nonsense, and have been rarely screened in recent years. A new generation are now able to rediscover the timeless appeal of Keaton's comic marvels with this complete collection of short films from 1917-1923.

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During a manned mission to Mars, American astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is presumed dead and left behind by his crew.

But Watney is still alive, and he must now find a way to contact Earth - and survive on a barren planet with meagre supplies - in the hope that an international team of scientists can devise a near-impossible rescue plan to bring him home!

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Emil Jennings, the quintessential German expressionist actor, stars as Professor Immanuel Rath, the sexually-repressed instructor of a boys prep school.

After learning of the pupils' infatuation with French postcards depicting a local nightclub songstress, he decides to personally investigate the source of such indecency. But as soon as he enters the shadowy Blue Angel nightclub and steals one glimpse of the smoldering Lola-Lola (Marlene Dietrich), commanding the stage in a top hot, stockings and bare thighs, Rath's self-righteous piety is crushed. He finds himself fatefully seduced by the throaty voice of the vulgar siren, singing, "Falling in Love Again". Consumed by desire and tormented by his rigid propriety, Professor Rath allows himself to be dragged down a path of personal degradation. Lola's unrestrained sexuality was a revelation to turn-of-the-decade moviegoers, thrusting Dietrich to the forefront of the sultry international leading ladies, such as Greta Garbo, who were challenging the limits of screen sexuality.

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Herschel Greenbaum (Seth Rogen), a struggling laborer who immigrates to America in 1919, falls into a vat of pickles at his factory job and is preserved in brine for 100 years. He emerges in present-day Brooklyn to find that he hasn't aged a day.

But when he seeks out his family, he learns that his only surviving relative is his great-grandson, Ben Greenbaum (also played by Rogen), a mild-mannered computer coder whom Herschel can't even begin to understand.

A rich, spoiled dandy (Buster Keaton) pretends to be a champion boxer, "Battling Butler", to impress the family of the girl he loves. When the real Butler shows up, he decided to humiliate the imposter by having him fight the "Alabama Murderer"!

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A film projectionist (and amateur detective) offers to solve the case of a missing watch, but is instead framed for the crime himself. Desperate to clear his name, the projectionist dreams of being the great Sherlock Jr.

(Buster Keaton), and in one of cinemas most iconic sequences, literally steps into the screen to bring his fantasies to life.

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Between 1920 and 1929, Buster Keaton created a peerless run of feature films that established him as "arguably the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies".

Sherlock Jr. (1924)

A film projectionist (and amateur detective) offers to solve the case of a missing watch, but is instead framed for the crime himself. Desperate to clear his name, the projectionist dreams of being the great Sherlock Jr., and in one of cinemas most iconic sequences, literally steps into the screen to bring his fantasies to life.
The General (1926)
When union spies steal his locomotive (along with his girlfriend), a plucky railway engineer pursues them doggedly across enemy lines. Containing one of the most memorable chase sequences in the history of filmmaking, 'The General' is widely considered to be Keaton's masterpiece.
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
A steamboat captain receives a telegram informing him that his son who he has not seen for many years will be coming to visit. Eagerly expecting a strapping young lad who will help him compete with his arch-rival, he is disappointed with the effete progeny that instead shows up. Best remembered for its climactic cyclone sequence in which Keaton performs a number of death-defying stunts whilst an entire town is destroyed around him, 'Steamboat Bill, Jr.' was Buster Keaton's last independent silent comedy and also one of his finest.

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Determined to fulfil her late mother's dream of opening a bakery in charming Notting Hill, 19-year-old Clarissa (Shannon Tarbet) enlists the help of her mother's best friend Isabella (Shelley Conn) and her eccentric estranged grandmother Mimi (Celia Imrie).

Three generations of women will need to overcome grief, doubts and differences to honour the memory of their beloved Sarah (Candice Brown) while embarking on a journey to establish a London bakery filled with love, hope and colourful pastries from all over the world.

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Jimmy Shannon (Buster Keaton) learns he is to inherit seven million dollars, with a catch.

He will only get the money if he is married by 7pm on his 27th birthday, which happens to be that same day! What follows is an incredible series of escalating set-pieces that could only have come from the genius of Buster Keaton.

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Told over 40 years, 'Life in Squares' centres on the complex relationship between sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, and Vanessa's sexually tangled alliance with gay artist Duncan Grant.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Vanessa, Virginia and Duncan are at the vanguard of a radical new movement. Surrounded by the finest progressive minds of the day - including the renowned writer Lytton Strachey, urbane art critic Clive Bell, and pioneering economist Maynard Keynes - they are determined to shake off the shackles of Victorian England. As the narrative shifts between the decades, their earlier and later lives intertwine; by the 1930s, Vanessa has settled into marriage and motherhood, and Virginia is enjoying huge public acclaim. But the emotional entanglements of their past have taken their toll - can the sisters escape the pall cast by their repressive parents, or will they inflict the same mistakes on generations to come?