elasticpiriformis's - Rented List
-
Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1966)2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle
Inspired by a real article on housewife prostitution, the film examines Godard's theory that if you lived in Paris, at that time, one had to prostitute oneself to survive. This 'sociological fable' is shot through the eyes of Juliette (Marina Vlady), a housewife who spends one day a week in central Paris selling her body on the street in the hope that she will be able to escape the high rise suburban drudgery, in which she lives with her family, and find happiness. - Director:
- Jean-Luc Godard
- Cast:
- Jean-Luc Godard, Joseph Gehrard, Marina Vlady
- Formats:
-
-
Marilyn Monroe sizzles in this tense, masterful thriller. While the seductive Rose Loomis (Monroe) and her husband George (Joseph Cotten) vacation in a charming guest cabin at spectacular Niagara Falls, Rose and her lover plot to kill George. But things go terribly wrong, and soon, an innocent honeymooning couple find themselves swept up in the crime. - Director:
- Henry Hathaway
- Cast:
- Marilyn Monroe, Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters
- Formats:
-
-
In 1958, 14-year old Robert James "Bobby" Fischer stunned the chess world by becoming the youngest Grand Master in history, launching a career that would make him a legend. Raised by his mother in Brooklyn, he taught himself to play chess at the age of six and started beating seasoned adult chess players at eight. Throughout the sixties, as his star rose, Bobby would appear regularly on TV and tour the world resoundingly beating all. His career highlight came in 1972 when he played the Russian Grand Master and reigning champion Boris Spassky - a series that was equally tied in with the Cold War as it was with chess. After his victory Bobby became the most famous person on the planet, and his already erratic behaviour began spiralling out of control, turning this genius into an unrecognisable recluse and pariah. - Director:
- Liz Garbus
- Cast:
- Bobby Fischer, David Edmonds, Anthony Saidy
- Formats:
-
-
Spring in a Small Town (1948)Xiao cheng zhi chun
Regarded as the finest work from the first great era of Chinese filmmaking, Fei Mu's quiet, piercingly poignant study of adulterous desire and guilt-ridden despair is a remarkable rediscovery, often compared to David Lean's 'Brief Encounter'. After eight years of marriage to Liyan (Yu Shi) - once rich but now a shadow of his former self following a long, ruinous war - Yuwen (Wei Wei) does little except deliver his daily medication. A surprise visit from Liyan's friend Zhang (Wei Li) re-energises the household, but also stirs up dangerously suppressed longings and resentments. Director Fei Mu's deft use of locations, dissolves and camera movements makes for a fraught, febrile mood of hesitant passion, entrapment and ennui. - Director:
- Mu Fei
- Cast:
- Chaoming Cui, Wei Li, Yu Shi
- Formats:
-
-
Following a prison term he served for manslaughter, Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) returns to find his family homestead overwhelmed by the weather and the greed of the banking industry. With little work potential on the horizon of Oklahoma dust bowls, the entire family packs up heads for the promised land - California. But the arduous trip and harsh living conditions they encounter offer little hope, and family unity proves as daunting a challenge as any other they face. - Director:
- John Ford
- Cast:
- Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine
- Formats:
-
-
Dune: Part Two (2024)Dune 2 / Dune: Part 2
"Dune: Part Two" explores the mythic journey of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) as he unites with Chani (Zendaya) and the Fremen while on a warpath of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, he endeavors to prevent a terrible future only he can foresee. - Director:
- Denis Villeneuve
- Cast:
- Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson
- Formats:
-
-
Voted the best Czech film of all time, 'Marketa Lazarová' is a powerful and passionate medieval epic set in the mid-13th Century. Based on avant-garde writer Vladislav Vancura's novel, it follows the rivalry between two warring clans, the Kozlíks and the Lazars, and the doomed love affair of Mikolá Kozlík (Frantisek Velecký) and Marketa Lazarová (Magda Vásáryová). Vlacil draws upon remote historical sources to recreate an authentic primitive world and fashion a film with surprising contemporary impact. Owing as much to the stylistic vigour of Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai' as it does to the rich tapestry of Czech fiction, this ambitious and poetically extraordinary film is the crowning achievement of Vlacil's career and an undiscovered cornerstone of world cinema. - Director:
- František Vlácil
- Cast:
- Josef Kemr, Antonie Hegerlíková, Magda Vásáryová
- Formats:
-
-
The Ascent (1977)Voskhozhdeniye
In the darkest days of World War II, two partisans, Sotnikov (Boris Plotnikov) and Rybak (Vladimir Gostyukhin) set out for supplies to sustain their beleaguered outfit, braving the blizzard swept landscape of Nazi occupied Belorussia. When they fall into the hands of German forces and come face-to-face with death, each must choose between martyrdom and betrayal, in a spiritual ordeal that lifts the film's earthy drama to the plane of religious allegory. With stark, visceral cinematography that pits blinding white snow against pitch black despair, 'The Ascent' finds poetry and transcendence in the harrowing trials of war. - Director:
- Larisa Shepitko
- Cast:
- Boris Plotnikov, Vladimir Gostyukhin, Sergey Yakovlev
- Formats:
-
-
A Touch of Zen (1971)Xia Nu
An unambitious painter named Gu (Shihjun) lives with his mother in the vicinity of an abandoned mansion rumoured to be haunted. In actuality, the mansion has become a hiding place for the warrior Yang (Hsu Feng) and her own mother, both taking refuge following the assassination of their loyal minister father by the wicked eunuch Wei of East Chamber. After the eunuch sends an army to pursue the escapees, the group fortify the mansion with traps and false intimations of the terrifying ghosts within. But even after, things take yet more unsettling turns... -
What does it mean to film another person? How does it affect the person - and what does it do to the one who films? A boxing match in Brooklyn; life in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina; the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; an intimate family moment at home: these scenes and others are woven into Cameraperson, a tapestry of footage captured over the 25-year career of documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson. Through a series of episodic juxtapositions, Johnson explores the relationships between image makers and their subjects, the tension between the objectivity and intervention of the camera, and the complex interaction of unfiltered reality and crafted narrative. A work that combines documentary, autobiography, and ethical inquiry, Cameraperson is both a moving glimpse into one filmmaker's personal journey and a thoughtful examination of what it means to train a camera on the world. - Director:
- Kirsten Johnson
- Cast:
- Kirsten Johnson
- Formats:
-
-
In Warsaw at the beginning of WWII, Maria Tura (Carole Lombard) and husband Joseph (Jack Benny) perform anti-Nazi plays with their theater troupe until they are forced to switch to Shakespeare's Hamlet. Lt. Stanislav Sobinski (Robert Stack) falls for Maria and meets up with her during Joseph's famous "To Be or Not to Be" speech as Hamlet. When Stanislav is eventually dispatched for war, he implicates Maria with Professor Siletsky (Stanley Ridges), who has a secret plan to destroy the Warsaw resistance. The Polish theater troupe is then forced to use their theatrical skills to ensure their survival. Eventually, they turn to impersonating Nazi officers - and even Hitler himself - in order to outwit the enemy and keep the resistance safe from spies. - Director:
- Ernst Lubitsch
- Cast:
- Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack
- Formats:
-
-
Daisies (1966)Sedmikrásky
A satirical, subversive, surreal and irreverent story of rebellion, Vera Chytilova's classic film is arguably the most adventurous and anarchic Czech movie of the 1960's. Two young women, both named Marie (Ivana Karbanová / Jitka Cerhová), revolt against a degenerate and decayed society by attacking symbols of wealth and bourgeois culture in hilarious and mind-warpingly innovative ways. Defiant feminist statement? Nihilistic, avant-garde comedy? Refreshingly uncompromising, Daisies is a riotous, punk-rock poem of a film that remains a cinematic enigma and continues to provoke, stimulate and entertain audiences and influence filmmakers even today. - Director:
- Vera Chytilová
- Cast:
- Jitka Cerhová, Marie Cesková, Ivana Karbanová
- Formats:
-
-
Anatomy of a Fall (2023)Anatomie d'une chute
When her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) is mysteriously found dead in the snow below their secluded chalet, Sandra (Sandra Hüller) becomes the main suspect when the police begin to question whether he fell or was pushed. The trial soon becomes not just an investigation, but a gripping psychological journey into the depths of Sandra and Samuel's complicated marriage. With conflicting evidence and inconsistent testimony, words are wielded like weapons and shocking truths come to light... - Director:
- Justine Triet
- Cast:
- Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner
- Formats:
-
-
The Roaring Twenties (1939)The World Moves On
The speakeasy era never roared louder than in this gangland chronicle that packs a wallop under action master Raoul Walsh's direction. Against a backdrop of newsreel-like montages and narration, it follows the life of jobless war vetran Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney) who turns bootlegger, dealing in 'bottles instead of battles'. Battles await eddie within and without his growing empire. Outside are territorial feuds and gangland bloodlettings. Inside is the treachery of double-dealing associate (Humphrey Bogart). It would be 10 years before Cagney played another gangster (in White Heat), a time in which gangster movies themselves became rare. 'He used to be a big shot'. Panama Smith (Gladys Goerge) says at the finale, marking Bartlett's demise...and signalling the end of Hollywood's focus on the gangster era. - Director:
- Raoul Walsh
- Cast:
- James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Priscilla Lane
- Formats:
-
-
Alienated war veteran Lucky Gagin (Robert Montgomery) gets off the bus in a town in rural New Mexico with one thing on his mind: revenge. But when he takes on the crime boss (Fred Clark) who killed his friend, Gagin's luck runs out and he finds himself pursued by both an FBI agent (Art Smith) and a strange young girl (Wanda Hendrix), obsessed with a vision of Lucky's death. - Director:
- Robert Montgomery
- Cast:
- Robert Montgomery, Thomas Gomez, Wanda Hendrix
- Formats:
-