agpw's - Rented List

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"Beauty and the Beast " is a landmark feat of cinematic fantasy in which master filmmaker Jean Cocteau conjures spectacular visions of enchantment, desire and death that have never been equalled.

Josette Day is luminous yet feisty as Beauty, and Jean Marais gives one of his best performances as the Beast, at once brutal and gentle, rapacious and vulnerable, shamed and repelled by his own bloodlust. Henri Alekan's subtle black and white cinematography combine with Christian Berard's masterly costumes and set designs to create a magical piece of cinema, a children's fairytale refashioned into a stylised and highly sophisticated dream.

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Martin Scorsese directs this true story of New York stockbroker Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio). From the American dream to corporate greed, Belfort goes from penny stocks and righteousness to IPOs and a life of corruption in the late 80s - earning him the title "The Wolf of Wall Street". Money.

Power. Women. Drugs. Temptations were for the taking and the threat of authority was irrelevant. For Jordan and his wolf pack, more was never enough.

Jean Renoir's intoxicating first colour feature - shot entirely on location in India - is a lyrical adaptation of Rumer Godden's autobiographical coming-of-age tale of an adolescent girl living with her English family on the banks of West Bengal during the waning years of British colonial life.

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In her remarkable portrayal that won her the 1974 Best Actress Academy Award, Ellen Burstyn stars as widow Alice Hyatt, travelling in a packed station wagon with her son along a bumpy road to a new life.

With Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, director Martin Scorsese is as much at home in the semi-rural Southwest as he is in the urban environs of his signature movies. He guides the "live a little, learn a lot" of Alice's odyssey with affection unmarred by sentiment and draws pitch-perfect performances from co-stars Kris Kristofferson, Alfred Lutter, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Vic Tayback and Oscar nominee Diane Ladd. It's a slice of life as real, funny and thought-provoking as any you've ever seen. Or lived.

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Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) has just been appointed to a key ministerial position in the shadow cabinet the crowning achievement of her political career. She and her husband Bill (Timothy Spall) plan to celebrate this with a few close friends.

As the guests arrive at their home in London the party takes an unexpected turn when Bill suddenly makes some explosive revelations that take everyone present by surprise. Love, friendships and political convictions are soon called into question in this hilarious comedy of tragic proportions

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Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel star as Johnny Boy and Charlie; Italian-American cousins and small time criminals hustling, fighting and carousing, doing whatever it takes to survive in the mean streets of New York.

Johnny Boy spends his life getting into trouble, leaving Charlie to get him out of it. Charlie wants to rise up in the local mafia, but when Johnny Boy reneges on a debt, the local loan shark seeks revenge.

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Professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjostrom) travels with his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) to receive an honorary doctorate for his lifelong contribution to medicine.

Soon his journey becomes one of introspection, as the people he meets - from a hitch-hiking girl to a quarrelling married couple - remind him of past relationships and cause him to contemplate his own failings. Victor Sjostrom, a celebrated film director in his own right, best know for his silent work including the Hollywood masterpiece The Wind, gives a remarkably moving performance as the aged academic. Bergman's smiles and tears on a summer's day make for his most overtly symbolic work, shifting skillfully between the past and the present, dream and reality. Filled with richly observed characters and a real feeling for the joys of nature and youth, 'Wild Strawberries' is one of Bergman's warmest and finest films.

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An exiled Russian general turned Hollywood extra (Emil Jannings) is chosen by a former adversary (William Powell) to play a role that resembles his former self and gradually loses his grip on reality.

Equally a sharp witted satire of the Hollywood machine and a heartbreaking drama about one man's emotional downfall, Josef von Sternberg's 'The Last Command' (his second major Hollywood picture) is one of the finest and most significant films of its era.

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One decision, one night, one road taken, one wrong turning. It doesn't take much to change the rest of your life - but by the time you realise that, it's far too late.

When Ben Gundelach comes across the body of a murdered four year old boy, it sets off a chain of events that will tear him apart, devastate his family, rock a community and punish the guilty and innocent without reason. The boy, son of a neighbour and single-mother, was also a friend of Ben's family. As homicide detective Ian Cornielle begins his investigation, and the cameras of the press begin invading their lives, they start squeezing the life out of Ben Gundelach, leaving him shocked, confused and very much accused. Everybody has secrets that are safely locked away. But when secrets are unleashed, the truth can scar - and the truth can kill.

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When a daydreaming but discontented young teacher is posted to a school in Lunana, a remote village high in the Himalayan mountains, he is disheartened to find a simple yak herding community lacking basic amenities such as electricity or even a blackboard in the classroom.

But the enthusiasm of his young students and the unassuming warmth of the village folk buoy his spirits and he must decide whether to return to the city before the gruelling winter sets in or remain in this strange and captivating land. Beautifully photographed in extraordinary mountain locations, this poetic and enchanting drama earned Bhutan the country's first ever Oscar nomination and gives a fascinating insight into a region largely uncharted on screen.

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Hollywood's hottest director Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs) assembles an all-star cast for a skillfully woven tale of small-time gangster life in a most ambitious and provocative film, 'Pulp Fiction'.

Bruce Willis (Die Hard) and Oscar Nominees John Travolta (Best Actor) and Samuel L Jackson (Best Supporting Actor) deliver career performances as petty thugs in LA's criminal underworld - where gritty confrontations, fast talk and perverse humour are all part of the daily grind. Nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award 1995, this boldly inventive and expertly orchestrated crime sage is hailed by critics as a landmark achievement in modern filmmaking!

Jefferies (James Stewart), a photographer with a broken leg, takes up the fine art of spying on his Greenwich Village neighbours during a summer heat wave. But things really hot up when he suspects one neighbour (Raymond Burr) of murdering his invalid wife and burying the body in a flower garden.

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The film is directly based on the director, Carla Simon's, own childhood. Following the death of her parents, 6 years old Frida (Laia Artigas) moves from Barcelona to the Catalan countryside to live with her aunt and uncle, her new legal guardians.

She now has a new little sister whom she has to take care of, and has to deal with new feelings, such as jealousy. Often, Frida is naively convinced that running away would be the best solution to her problems. Slowly, Frida realizes that she is there to stay. Before the summer is over, she has to cope with her emotions and her new parents have to learn to love her as their own daughter.

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"Triumph of the Will" may be the most enduringly controversial film ever made, justly both despised and admired. Is it disgusting propaganda? Absolutely. Is it a documentary record of a critical historical moment? Yes...but also no.

Perhaps the only thing on which everyone could agree is that it is one of the most terrifying horror movies of all time. A shamelessly biased, unabashedly subjective rendering of the infamous 1934 Nuremberg rallies of the Nazi part, 'Triumph of the Will' was commissioned by Hitler from his favourite actress turned director Leni Riefenstahl. The power and purity of Reifenstahl's artistry is such that this incredibly perverse and corrupt film has its own kind of demented integrity. An essential document of Hitler the Orator and mesmerizer of the masses, this programme revels in the monumental architecture of Albert Speer, the formal precision of the marching cadres, and above all, the almost religious exaltation of Hitler as the mystical personofication of the dreams and ideals of his people, captured kinetically with a mastery of technique that is both breathtaking and revolting. It is a film no one who sees can ever forget.

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23-year-old Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting) is determined to do anything to live the American Dream, and 12-year-old Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder) can't wait to grow up, but a series of destructive decisions put them into a corner - and force them to deal with the realities of the world around them.

A powerful tale of hope and belonging, "War Pony" is the acclaimed and utterly compelling directorial debut from Riley Keough and Gina Gammell.