agpw's - Rented List

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For twenty-five years Brenda Myers-Poweli called herself 'Breezy' and she dominated her world, or that's what she thought. It was a world that had turned her into a teenage, drug-addicted prostitute.

After a violent encounter with a 'john', Brenda woke up in the hospital and decided to change her life. Today she is a beacon of hope and a pillar of strength for hundreds of women and girls as young as fourteen who want to change their own lives. 'Dreamcatcher' explores the cycle of neglect, violence and exploitation which each year leaves thousands upon thousands of girls and women feeling that prostitution is their only option to survive. By following the very charming, charismatic and truly empathic Brenda, we enter the lives of young women and see in verite footage their realities from their points of view. While the world may overlook these women and men, thankfully Brenda has not, providing an unflinching expose which contrasts seeming hopelessness against the difference that one person can make in the lives of many.

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Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning star as Joan Jett and Cherie Currie in The Runaways, the music-fuelled coming of age story of the groundbreaking all-girl rock band that paved the way for future generations of female musicians.

Plucked from obscurity by rock impresario Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon), raven-haired rocker Joan, the rebellious Cherie and their band become an outrageous sensation thanks to their tough image and raw talent. But their fast, drug-fuelled lifestyle soon catches up with the teenage girls as success starts to cloud their judgments...

Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), naive insurance man. Falls for the seductive charms of his beautiful client Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) Together they plot to get rid of her dull husband and collect on the "double indemnity" life policy.

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Marking a new chapter in the history of one of the world's greatest films, the release of Abel Gance's "Napoleon" is the culmination of a project spanning 50 years.

Digitally restored by the BFI National Archive and Academy Award-winning film historian Kevin Brownlow, this cinematic triumph is available to experience on video for the very first time. Originally conceived by Gance as the first of six films about Napoleon, this five-and-a-half-hour epic features full-scale historical recreations of episodes from his personal and political life, that see Bonaparte overcome fierce rivals and political machinations to seal his imperial destiny. Utilising a number of groundbreaking cinematic techniques, 'Napoleon' is accompanied by Carl Davis' monumental score, and offers one of the most thrilling experiences in the entire the history of film.

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Every night while the city sleeps, Ahmad, a Pakistani immigrant, struggles to drag his heavy cart along the streets of New York to his corner in Midtown Manhattan. And every morning, from inside his cart he sells coffee and donuts to a city he cannot call his own.

He is a man who wonders if he will ever escape his fate.

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"On the Basis of Sex" is inspired by the powerful and timely true story of US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Felicity Jones) who led the fight against gender discrimination and blazed an unprecedented trail for equality.

From being one of only a few women accepted at Harvard Law to co-founding the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU, Bader Ginsburg overcame all odds to become one of the most influential figures in the battle for equal rights, passionately arguing ground-breaking landmark cases and giving a voice to those unable to be heard.

Having experienced the horror of the First World War, idealistic poet Jean Diaz (Victor Francen) turns to technology in a bid to prevent further barbarity. But a meddling and unscrupulous bureaucracy allows Jean's plans to be hijacked as Europe slides towards another great conflict.

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Marcel Ophuls' four-and-a-half hour portrait of the French town of Clermont-Ferrand under German occupation from 1940-44 is one of the greatest documentaries ever made, as important as Claude Lanzmann's 'Shoah' in its value not just as a film but as an essential historical record in its own right -

not least since its interviewees are all long dead. Describing the fall of France and the rise of the Resistance, with the aid of newly-shot interviews and eye-opening archive footage including newsreels and propaganda films, Ophuls painstakingly crafts a complex, nuanced picture of what really happened in France over this period. He also demolishes numerous self-serving national myths to such an extent that, although he made the film for French television, they wouldn't show it for over a decade. But, as he demonstrates again and again, the overwhelming majority of French citizens during this period weren't heroes, villains or cowards, but simply ordinary people trying to make the best of an impossible situation. And it's Ophuls' portrayal of these people, their hopes, their fears and their appalling moral quandaries, that remains unmatched in film history.

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Alfie is not really a bad sort. It's just that he has this overwhelming desire for the opposite sex. You might say that "birds" are irresistible to him, sort of second nature. With Michael Caine in the title role. Alfie is a ribald and wild comedy, filled with sex and sin.

For those who want to be entertained, Alfie is charming, delightful and quick-moving. For those who want more, there is, beneath the surface, a lingering tragedy, simply and poignantly told about the taker and the taken.

"This is Spinal Tap" is Rob Reiner's directorial debut that is often named as one of the funniest films ever made. A fly-on-the-wall look at the comeback tour of the world's loudest heavy metal band.

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Adapted from three short stories by Guy de Maupassant, each tells a tale of pleasure.

The first tells the story of an old man who regains his youth with the aid of a magic mask, in the second a prostitute has a romantic encounter and the final story concerns two young lovers, an artist and his model. 'Le Plaisir' is a delicate portrait of love and desire.

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1940, Paulette (Brigitte Fossey), a young French girl, is orphaned in a Nazi air attack during the battle of France. She is befriended by Michel (Georges Poujouly), the son of a poor farmer whose family take her in to their home to care for her.

Together the two children forge a tight bond, attempting to come to terms with the realities of the death and destruction that surrounds them by creating their own reality, building their own small graveyard to bury dead animals they find. In this sealed universe they have created, Paulette and Michel experience their first and most wonderful love story.

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Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Ruth (Keira Knightley) and Tommy (Andrew Garfield) are best friends who grow up together at an English boarding school with a chilling secret.

When they learn the shocking truth - that they are genetically engineered clones raised to be organ donors - they embrace their fleeting chance to live and love.

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Melville's most personal film, rooted in his wartime experiences in the French Resistance, Army Of Shadows is a hard, tense drama, depicting man's capacity for both bravery and evil. In the winter of 1942-1943, as France exist s under German occupation, an underground cell operates in the shadows.

In the clandestine world of the Resistance, the freedom fighters work against their enemies under the constant risk of betrayal, ordinary men and women in an extraordinary situation. Suffused throughout with a mood of foreboding, the suspense, heightened with directorial mastery, reaches its peak as the Resistance attempt to free a prisoner from the Gestapo headquarters, in one of Melville's trademark set-pieces of iconic action.

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South Africa, 1976. The police ruled Gordan Ngubene's death a suicide. But when Afrikaans schoolteacher Ben du Toit (Donald Sutherland) saw the body he knew his friend of 15 years was the victim of police torture.

Seeking justice, Ben hires barrister Ian McKenzie (Marlon Brando) to represent the Ngubene family at the inquest, but the judge ignores the evidence and exonerates the police. Refusing to "give it up", Ben risks his family and career as he takes on a system run by racists, thugs and murderers. For if you're not with the Afrikaners, you're against them. And choosing the wrong side could get you killed.