elasticpiriformis's - Rented List

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Cited by Ray as one of his best films, this tale of a neglected housewife in Victorian-era Calcutta is adapted from a story by Rabindranath Tagore.

Sailen Mukherjee stars as a newspaper journalist who is driven more by professional ambition than the needs of his cultured and intelligent wife Charaulata (Madhabi Mukherjee). Sensing her loneliness, he enlists the help of his cousin Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee), a sensitive would-be writer, to keep her company. Charu and Amal hit it off and, almost inevitably, their feelings for each other begin to deepen...

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A young girl named Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley) is found brutally murdered. The FBI agents leading the investigation are drawn into a bizarre and dangerous world, and then disappear. The case is handed to Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan).

He knows it is only a matter of time before the killer strikes again. Welcome to Twin Peaks, an idyllic part of small-town America, one year later. A picture postcard setting, but hiding beneath the surface of this tranquil town lies an evil force. One that is praying on the towns most popular and beautiful student. Her name is Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee).

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In Taipei City, a cavernous old picture palace is about to close its doors forever. A meagre audience, the remaining few staff, and perhaps even a ghost or two, watch King Hu's wuxia classic Dragon Inn - each haunted by memories and desires evoked by cinema itself.

An exquisite, wryly funny and tender tribute to the experience of movie-going, Tsai Ming-Liang's poignant love letter to cinema is one of the most beguiling and beloved dramas of modern times and is now widely regarded as a classic.

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Struggling poet Vijay (Guru Dutt) is ridiculed by his brothers and scorned by publishers. Vijay finds encouragement in a sweet prostitute Gulabo (Waheeda Rehman). One day he meets his exgirlfriend Meena (Mala Sinha) and gets hired as servant by her husband Mr.Ghosh (Rehman) who is a publisher.

In a train mishap, the beggar clad in Vijay's coat dies while Vijay gets injured. Gulabo convinces Ghosh to print Vijay's poems, believing him to be dead. After recovering from injuries, Vijay's close friends and brothers refuse to recognize him for their ulterior motives and he is confined to mental asylum for claiming to be someone who is dead. He escapes from the mental asylum and arrives at the function held to honour him. There he denounces this corrupt and hypocrite world and declares that he is not Vijay.

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Joan Crawford plays Vienna, a saloon owner with a sordid past. Persecuted by the townspeople, Vienna must protect her life and her property when a lynch mob led by her sexually repressed rival, Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge), attempts to frame her for a string of robberies she did not commit.

Enter Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), a guitar-strumming ex-gunfighter who has a history with Vienna.

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Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche), an aged former playboy, has died and gone to hell. But the ruler of the realm of darkness, His Excellency, isn't convinced Van Cleve's come to the right place.

Henry proceeds to recount his life story, from his first real stirrings of passion with a French governess, to the wooing and winning of his beautiful wife, Martha (Gene Tierney). Yet, though deeply in love, he found it impossible to remain completely faithful, and is convinced his punishment will be an eternity of damnation. As his story unfolds, and a lifetime of love fills the screen, it's up to His Excellency to pass final judgement on Henry. Set in a beautifully rendered turn-of-the-century world of high society, the timeless theme of love vs. lust is handled with wit, taste and sophistication.

After being ensnared in a death trap, an unconventional team of antiheroes embarks on a dangerous mission. Forced to confront the darkest corners of their pasts, will the group tear themselves apart, or find redemption and prevail?

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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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On the brink of Civil War, King Henry IV (John Gielgud) attempts to consolidate his reign while fretting with unease over his son's seeming neglect of his royal duties.

Hal (Keith Baxter), the young Prince, openly consorts with Sir John Falstaff (Orson Welles) and his company of "Diana's foresters, Gentlemen of the shade, Minions of the moon". Hal's friendship with the fat knight substitutes for his estrangement from his father. Both Falstaff and the King are old and tired; both rely on Hal for comfort in their final years, while the young Prince, the future Henry V, nurtures his own ambitions.

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Academy Award-winning director Andrea Arnold (American Honey, Fish Tank) returns with 'Cow', a compelling portrait of the life of a dairy cow called Luma that marks her first foray into feature-length documentary film-making.

This intimate and observational work chronicles its subject's daily life, from grazing in green fields to giving birth, making milk and everything in between. A profoundly empathetic and unexpectedly moving contemplation of life and our relationship with animals, this is pure cinema shot through with Arnold's typically vivacious energy.

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Pasolini's final and most controversial film has been banned censored and reviled the world over since it's first release. The film is based on the Marquis de Sade's novel '120 Days of Sodom', with the setting transposed to Mussolini's miniature Fascist Republic of Salo, Italy in 1944.

The film's content and imagery is extreme, and it retains the power to shock, repel and distress a quarter of a century on. 'Salo' remains a cinematic milestone - culturally significant, politically vital and visually stunning.

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They say crime doesn't pay. Private detective Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell) knows better.

The fat wad of folding money warming his breast pocket is the kind of thing that keeps him going through thick and thicker as he wades chin deep into a mystery involving a missing necklace and a missing hoodlum's moll named Velma.

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Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Deliriously entertaining and ruthlessly satirical, Coralie Fargeat's Cannes sensation turns toxic beauty culture inside out with a be-careful-what-you-wish-for fable for the ages.

Demi Moore gives a career-best performance as Elisabeth Sparkle, a former A-lister past her prime and suddenly fired from her fitness TV show by repellent studio head Harvey (Dennis Quaid). She is then drawn to the opportunity presented by a mysterious new drug: The Substance. All it takes is one injection and she is reborn - temporarily - as the gorgeous, twentysomething Sue (Margaret Qualley). The only rule? Time needs to be split: exactly one week in one body, then one week in the other. No exceptions. A perfect balance. What could go wrong? Explosive, provocative and twisted, 'The Substance' marks the arrival of a thrillingly visionary filmmaker.

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Based on the Japanese manga of the same name, the film tells the horrific tale of Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), a businessman who is inexplicably kidnapped and imprisoned in a grim hotel room-like cell for 15 years, without knowing his captor or the reason for his incarceration.

Eventually released, he learns of his wife's murder and embarks on a quest for revenge whilst also striking up a romance with a young, attractive sushi chef, Mi-do (Kang Hye-jung). He eventually finds his tormentor, but their final encounter will yield yet more unimaginable horrors...

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This sparkling comedy was Oscar nominated for its script in which Polly Parrish (Ginger Rogers) a clerk at Merlin's Department Store, is mistakenly presumed to be the mother of a young child who is not looked after by the hardworking mother.

Outraged at Polly's unmotherly conduct, David Merlin (David Niven) becomes determined to keep the single woman and 'her' baby together in this wonderful comedy of errors. Ginger Rogers, David Niven and Charles Coburn achieve intense comic chemistry under the direction of Garson Kanin with hardly a dull moment in this stylish and breezy 'department store' romance in which Ginger gives as good as she gets!