daniel-phillips's - Rented List

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Regarded by many as a masterpiece, Bresson's film tells the story of a young man Chales (Antoine Monnier) living in Paris who desires more from life than the glib, superficial truths and material things that are on offer to him.

He reaches out to his friends and psychiatrist to provide him with the great answers in life. But his spiritual deliverance remains beyond his grasp until he reaches a bizarre arrangement with a fellow drifter.

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The film is essentially a rites of passage story involving a group of friends growing up together in a small provincial town.

This seemingly aimless fraternity is led by Fausto in their daily routine of hanging around in bars and wasting their days whilst dreaming of breaking free of their parochial chains to taste the adventure the world has to offer. Events force the womanising Fausto to choose between responsibility and freedom which in turn prompts the other members of the group to look at their own futures in a new light.

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Live-in nurse Maud (Morfydd Clark) arrives to help Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a famous dancer now frail from illness in her grand, isolated house.

Amanda is intrigued by the religious young woman, distracting her from her failing health, and Maud is bewitched by her patient, but she is not what she seems...Tormented by a violent secret from her past and ecstatic messages she believes are from God, Maud becomes convinced she was sent to Amanda not as a nurse, but as a divine saviour. As her grip on reality weakens, Maud is determined to save Amanda's soul, by any means necessary.

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Pacific Northwest. 1983 AD. Outsiders Red Miller (Nicolas Cage) and Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough) lead a loving and peaceful existence.

When their pine-scented haven is savagely destroyed by a cult led by the sadistic Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache), Red is catapulted into a phantasmagoric journey filled with bloody vengeance and laced with fire.

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Full of flash, style and grit, this raw tale of corruption and revenge features one of the most harrowing car chases ever caught on film and a shockingly explosive ending. Federal Agent Richard Chance (William Petersen) has a score to settle, and he's through playing by the rules.

Whether that means blackmailing a beautiful parolee, disobeying direct orders or hurtling the wrong way down a crowded freeway, he vows to take down a murderous counterfeiter (Willem Dafoe) by any means necessary. But as the stakes grow higher, will chance's obsession with vengeance ultimately destroy him?

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From writer-director Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) comes a unique film starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.

Although Padraic (Farrell) and CoIm (Gleeson) have been lifelong friends, they find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, bringing alarming consequences for both of them.

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When a provincial Italian couple arrives in Rome for a honeymoon, the wife sets off in search of her photo-romance magazine idol, the "White Sheik" (Alberto Sordi), and leaves her husband to wander the streets of the city alone.

When she finds the Sheik and then finds herself alone on a yacht with him, the newlyweds' weekend takes a definite turn for the worse.

Of the 80,000 native Irish speakers, 6,000 live in the North of Ireland and three of them became a rap group called Kneecap. This is the real-life story of how this anarchic Belfast trio became the unlikely figureheads of a civil rights movement to save and reinvigorate their mother tongue.

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Winner of the International Critics' Prize at Cannes in 1974, Bresson's masterpiece has lost none of its power and continues to cast a mystical spell.

In this compelling and hypnotic film about the Arthurian legend, the Knights of the Round Table, their numbers depleted by their bloody and fruitless quest for the Holy Grail, return to King Arthur's court. Once there, Lancelot's passionate relationship with Queen Guinevere causes the Knights to fall out amongst themselves, eventually leading to their downfall.

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In a rural community of grinding economic and spiritual poverty, where poaching and delivering bootleg liquor supplement meagre incomes and love is absent, Mouchette is endlessly abused.

She cares selflessly and without thanks for her family as her mother slowly dies, whilst she is humiliated by a teacher for singing out of tune, is called a slut by a shopkeeper and even, as she is about to speak to a young man who smiled at her on the dodgems, is slapped by her harsh, judgemental father. Finally, having sought to help the epileptic poacher Arsene, she is raped by him. Even then, she later protects him. Mouchette may not understand all that she experiences but nor is she a helpless victim. She cares for her mother and especially for her infant sibling. Ostracised by her cruel classmates, she retaliates, throwing mud at them. She also avenges herself against the woman who speaks with pious reverence of the dead and who offers Mouchette a funeral shroud for her mother and a dress for herself.

This high-octane fuelled East-End gangster comedy thriller is a journey into London's seedy underworld with brilliant street-wise dialogue and razor sharp black comedy.

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Through a bizarre chain of events, a jazz musician (Bill Pullman) and a young mechanic (Balthazar Getty) find their lives mysteriously entwined. On eis accused of his wife's murder, the other is drawn into a web of deceit by a temptress who is cheating on her gangster boyfriend.

These two tales are bound by the fact that both women are played by the same actress (Patricia Arquette).

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French cinema master Robert Bresson brings his trademark cinematic minimalism to this powerful re-telling of the story of Joan of Arc.

Adapted from historical records of the trial and featuring a remarkable cast of non-professional actors, led by Florence Carrez in the title role, the film relays Joan's relentless interrogation and persecution by her captors in a direct, almost documentary-like manner. Bresson transforms Joan's oppression and human suffering into an unforgettable testament to her purity and spiritual liberation. The final images of the charred remains of the stake are among the most horrifying and moving in all cinema.

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Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

A strange man known only as the "metal fetishist", who seems to have an insane compulsion to stick scrap metal into his body, is hit and possibly killed by a Japanese "salaryman", out for a drive with his girlfriend. The salaryman then notices that he is being slowly overtaken by some kind of disease that is turning his body into scrap metal, and that his nemesis is not in fact dead but is somehow masterminding and guiding his rage and frustration-fueled transformation.
Tetsuo II: Body Hummer (1992)
More of a companion piece to Tetsuo: The Iron Man than a sequel, Tetsuo II: Body Hammer sees Tsukamoto's disturbing vision of a world populated by man-machines explode into a stunning colour interpretation.

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The colossally popular Zatoichi films make up the longest-running action series in Japanese history and created one of the screen's great heroes: an itinerant blind masseur who also happens to be a lightning-fast swordsman.

As this iconic figure, the charismatic and earthy Shintaro Katsu became an instant superstar, lending a larger-than-life presence to the thrilling adventures of a man who lives staunchly by a code of honour and delivers justice in every town and village he enters. The films that feature him are variously pulse pounding, hilarious, stirring, and completely off-the-wall. This deluxe set features the string of twenty-five Zatoichi films made between 1962 and 1973.