agpw's - Rented List

Show moreShow less

When mysterious spacecraft touch down across the globe, an elite team - led by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) - are brought together to investigate.

As nations struggle to coordinate a response, mankind teeters on the verge of global war, leaving Banks and the team in a race against time for answers - and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity's very existence.

Show moreShow less

Spanning two decades at the start of the 20th century, "Jules and Jim" follows the lives of two inseparable friends - timid German, Jules (Oskar Werner), and gregarious Parisian, Jim (Henri Serre) - and their shared love of the beautiful, capricious Catherine, played in mesmerising, luminous style

by Jeanne Moreau. Overcoming the destructive rift of World War I the trio create a new life for themselves, away from the structures imposed by society. But as the idyllic menage a trois begins to succumb to jealousy and rivalry their idealised existence finds itself slowly buckling under pressure. Frequently hailed as one of the greatest films ever made, "Jules and Jim" is a dazzling, boldly original tale of love, friendship and the vagaries of history that combines romance, comedy and tragedy in breathtaking, near-perfect dramatic harmony.

Show moreShow less

16th century France: Michael Kohlhaas, a horse dealer and loving father, lives a happy and prosperous life in the peaceful countryside.

But when a cruel, rapacious baron seizes his livelihood and defiles his family's honour he will take up arms and set out on a mission for vengeance that will send the kingdom up in flames...

Show moreShow less

Set amidst the glittering theatre world of 19th century Paris, the story revoles around the beautiful and free-spirted courtesan, Garanace, and the four men who compete for her affections; a mime-artist, an actor, an aristocrat and a criminal.

As the melodrama unfolds, we are treated to one of cinema's greatest love stories, a captivating tale of passion, deception and murder.

Show moreShow less

Set in a five-story guesthouse in the middle of a Parisian working class neighbourhood, "Daybreak" opens on the top floor of the building with shouts and a gunshot. A door opens and the body of a man tumbles down the stairs.

As the police start to besiege the building and a crowd gathers, the killer, Francois (Jean Gabin), flees the crime scene and locks himself in his room. After failing to shoot their way into his room the police climb on top of the roof, and Francois, starts to recall previous events... His love for Frangoise (Jacqueline Laurent), the beautiful florist, and her love for Valentin (Jules Berry), the attractive dog trainer. Also starring the renowned Arletty as Clara, Valentin's assistant and suggested lover.

Show moreShow less

A Way Of Life centres on teenage mother Leigh-Anne Williams (Stephanie James); her brother Gavin (Nathan Jones), a seventeen year old desperately chasing love, and her two friends Robbie (Gary Sheppeard), a seventeen year old determined to move beyond his dead-end community and Stephen (Dean Wong),

a fifteen year old yearning for a Welsh identity. All of them function along the margins of society... until one day, paranoia, boredom, frustration and anger form a lethal combination. When her baby girl's future appears threatened, Leigh-Anne's Turkish Muslim neighbour becomes the target of pent up anger and humiliation. A ferocious murder takes place which is seemingly driven by racial hatred and in a moment, the four teenagers seal their fate. A violent yet powerful story of a young mother and her child; of teenage romance and friendship. A Way Of Life draws you into a world of poverty, love, tenderness hurt... a world which will challenge the way you look at life.

Show moreShow less

Denigrated by the public, vilified by the critics, re-cut at the insistence of its producers, and finally banned by the French government as 'demoralising' and unpatriotic, La Regle du jeu was a commercial disaster at the time of its original release.

On the surface, a series of interlinked romantic intrigues taking place at a weekend shooting party in a country chateau, the film is in fact a study of the corruption and decay within French society on the eve of the outbreak of World War II.

A murdered girl's defiant mother (Frances McDormand) boldly paints three local billboards, each with a controversial message, igniting a furious battle with a volatile cop (Sam Rockwell) and the town's revered chief of police (Woody Harrelson).

Show moreShow less

Detective Andreas' (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) perfect life is thrown into chaos when he is called out to a domestic dispute between a junkie couple only to find their infant son neglected and crying in a closet.

With red tape stopping him from intervening, Andreas is shaken to the core and finds himself powerless in protecting the child from his violent father. Slowly losing his grip on right and wrong he decides to take justice into his own hands with devastating consequences.

Show moreShow less

Having left behind his life as a gifted concert pianist, Charlie (Charles Aznavour) sees out his downcast days tinkling the ivories in a dingy Parisian jazz bar. One day his brother Chico (Albert Rémy) arrives, searching for sanctuary from a gang of crooks that he's double-crossed.

Charlie offers to help but soon finds his murky past catching up with him and before long is embroiled in an affair that he can no longer control.

Show moreShow less

Based on Lionel White's novel 'Obsession', 'Pierrot le Fou' transforms a story about a couple on the run into an entertaining, existential romance. Tired of his bourgeois life, Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo) leaves his wife and elopes with his former baby sitter, Marianne (Anna Karina).

When a dead body is found in Marianne's apartment, the two lovers flee to the South of France in a futile bid to escape Marianne's dangerous past.

Show moreShow less

From acclaimed filmmaker Terence Davies, 'A Quiet Passion' is a powerful study of' 19th Century poet Emily Dickinson that features a stunning performance from Cynthia Nixon.

Spanning a rebellious schoolgirl youth to her later years as a reclusive writer, Davies elegantly explores the hopes, dreams and desires of a woman who wrote some of the most important poems in American literature that still resonate today.

Show moreShow less

Summer in the GDR, 1980. Barbara, a young doctor, is exiled to a provincial hospital, seemingly punished for attempting to leave East Germany.

Confined to a claustrophobic small town and under a constant veil of suspicion, she befriends no one, waiting patiently for the opportunity to resume her mission. When her new boss appears to confide in Barbara, she is thrown. Hers is a life in which the fear of surveillance is embedded in all personal relationships, and she doesn't know who to trust. Why has he covered for her and one of her patients? Torn between her instinct and her duty, the characteristically hyper-controlled Barbara begins to lose her grip on herself, her obligations and her heart.

Show moreShow less

In a place almost untouched by time and in an age still blessed by innocence, a father and his two sons struggle to make sense of their changing relationships. The Reverend Maclean is head of his family; a stern man shaped by hard times in a land still largely wilderness.

His sons are Norman, serious and scholarly, and Paul, a hothead with a weakness for pretty girls and gambling. They are different but devoted and on the Big Blackfoot river they are in perfect harmony, bound by a passion for fly-fishing - the gentle, sometimes mystical art that slowly comes to symbolise their hopes and fears.

Show moreShow less

Oscar winner Denzel Washington and Oscar winner Viola Davis deliver the 'performance-driven masterpiece' of the year in the film adaptation of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

Set in 1950s Pittsburgh, the film takes a passionate look at former Negro-league baseball player Troy Maxson (Washington) as he fights to provide for those he loves in a world that threatens to push him down. Washington's directorial triumph 'connects with people on a deep, emotional level' and pulses with the universal truths of love and forgiveness, despite what lies beyond your own fence.