elasticpiriformis's - Rented List

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Among the most highly praised titles in all contemporary film, this singular masterpiece of Taiwanese cinema, directed by Edward Yang, was unavailable for years and much sought after. Set in the early 1960s, 'A Brighter Summer Day' is based on the true story of a crime that rocked Taiwan.

A film of both sprawling scope and tender intimacy, this novelistic, patiently observed epic centers on the gradual but inexorable fall of a young teenager (Chang Chen, in his first role) from innocence to delinquency, and is set against a simmering backdrop of restless youth, rock and roll, and political turmoil.

Their re-working of Chaucer's epic fourteenth century tale, largely set in wartime Kent, centres on American army sergeant John Smith, British soldier Dennis Price and landgirl Shiela Sim who, before making a modern-day pilgrimage to Canterbury, solve the bizarre mystery of a man who pours glue over the hair of village girls at night.

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An incisive exploration of the disintegration of a bourgeois marriage, 'Faces' traces the shifting character dynamics as Richard (John Marley) and Maria's (Lynn Carlin) fourteen-year marriage implodes.

Maria joins her friends looking for romantic satisfaction elsewhere and has an unfulfilling fling with a young swinger (Seymour Cassel). Richard meanwhile secures the services of a prostitute (Gena Rowlands) for a night. Both find their liaisons to be no more satisfying than their dead-end marriage.

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Dita Parlo stars as a young bride who begins married life aboard her husband's barge on the Seine. But within the boat's cramped confines, shared with a small crew (including the eccentric Pere Jules, memorably played by Michel Simon) and an abundance of cats, the relationship begins to founder.

Vigo imbues this simple tale, beautifully shot by Boris Kaufman, with social realism, lyrical romance and sensual eroticism to create a unique and enduring classic.

L'Atalante (1934)
This intoxicatingly inventive masterpiece is one of the world's great films. A simple and engaging plot is transformed into a kaleidoscope of dazzling digressions and offbeat characterizations complete with tour-de-force scenes that still seem fresh and startling.
À Propos de Nice (1930)
What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Cote d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.
Taris (1931)
An Inventive short portrait of a swimming champion.
Zero de Conduite (1933)
A radical, delightful tale of boarding-school rebellion that has influenced countless film-makers.

To live in Barbie Land is to be a perfect being in a perfect place. Unless you have a full-on existential crisis. Or you're a Ken (Ryan Gosling).

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Tell bickering Budapest gift-shop workers Alfred (James Stewart) and Klara (Margaret Sullavan) that they love each other and they might call you crazy. No lover can compare to the romantic, secret pen pal each knows only as Dear Friend.

What Alfred and Klara don't know, of course, is that they are each other's Dear Friend.

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'Pather Panchali' tells the story of a family living in the grip of poverty in a small Bengali village, focusing on the experiences of a young boy, Apu (Subir Banerjee), and paying careful attention to a series of ordinary events: Apu's father sets off to the city in search of work, leaving his

wife to take care of the children and an elderly aunt; a frugal meal is prepared; rains flatten the landscape; a train passes by; someone dies.

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Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Bela Tarr's epic rendering of Laszlo Krasznahorkai's novel, about the decline of Communism in Eastern Europe, is a unique and visionary masterpiece that defies classification and transcends genre.

Set in a struggling Hungarian agricultural collective, a group of lost souls reeling from the collapse of their Communist utopia face an uncertain future, until the arrival of a charismatic stranger in whom they believe lies their salvation. The collective's individual experiences and fates are gradually revealed in Tarr's immaculately composed, brilliantly photographed and bleakly comic tour-de-force, which confirmed his place as one of contemporary cinema's few genuine auteurs.

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Sandrine Bonnaire won a Best Actress Cesar for her portrayal as Mona - a young and defiant drifter in this tragic story. Using a largely non-professional cast Varda recollects Mona's story through flashbacks of those who encountered her, producing a splintered portrait of an enigmatic woman.

She's not a kind girl but courageous while wandering in the winter. She announces in 1984 the collective conciousness of homeless people dying from the cold.

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Set in the harsh environment of post war Rome, Vittorio De Sica's masterpiece examines society's indifference toward the poor and downtrodden. An old age pensioner, receiving a totally inadequate pension, struggles to survive and is driven to desperation and the contemplation of suicide.

Set in real locations with a non professional cast, 'Umberto D.' conveys the harshness and wretchedness of old age in a simple but devastatingly realistic way, avoiding sentimentality but evoking great emotion.

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After reuniting with Gwen Stacy, Brooklyn's full-time, friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man is catapulted across the Multiverse, where he encounters a team of Spider-People charged with protecting its very existence.

But when the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles finds himself pitted against the other Spiders and must redefine what it means to be a hero so he can save the people he loves most.

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Power, politics, money...it's all in the family in this Emmy-winning series. With aging media patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) on the precipice of retirement, each of his four grown children angles to position themselves for a post-Logan world.

Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook, Matthew Macfadyen, Nicholas Braun and Alan Ruck head up a stellar cast.

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One of the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made and a mind-bending free-form travelogue, 'La Jetee' and 'Sans Soleil' couldn't seem more different - but they're the twin pillars of an unparalleled and uncompromising career in cinema.

Filmmaker, poet, novelist, photographer, editor, videographer, and digital multimedia artist, Chris Marker challenged moviegoers, philosophers, and himself for years with his investigations of time, memory, and the rapid advancement of life on this planet. These two films - a tale of time travel told in still images and a journey to Africa and Japan - remain his best-loved and most widely seen.

La Jetee (1962)
This unique film was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's 'Twelve Monkeys'. It is a cinematic landmark using black and white stills almost entirely to narrate the story. Set in Paris destroyed by a third world war, the survivors have been forced to retreat underground where scientists conduct strange time travel experiments to escape from a terrible present to a better past or future...
Sans Soleil (1983)
Director Chris Marker takes the viewer into a different dimension, weaving footage from Japan, Africa, Iceland, France and the USA to produce a study of 'the dreams of the human race'. He is particularly attracted to the two extremes of Japan and Africa, and discusses the images that he creates with the woman, ever mindful of the astonishing store of memory he has created.

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In this long-awaited film adaptation of Judy Blume's classic, groundbreaking novel, eleven-year-old Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) is uprooted from her life in New York City to the suburbs of New Jersey, going through the messy and tumultuous throes of puberty with new friends in a new school.

She relies on her mother, Barbara (Rachel McAdams), who is also struggling to adjust to life outside the big city, and her adoring grandmother, Sylvia (Kathy Bates). A timeless coming-of-age story, 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.' sparkles with insightful humour while candidly exploring life's biggest questions.

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Davy Chou's 'Return to Seoul', which premiered in Cannes 2022's Un Certain Regard, is an unpredictable and refreshingly authentic story of a young woman's search for identity. Park Ji-Min delivers a revelatory performance as Freddie, an adoptee who was born in South Korea and raised in France.

Freddie is magnetic, spirited and hard to pin down; never in one place, or with one person, for long enough to get attached. At 25 years old, she visits Seoul for the first time since her adoption, in an attempt to reconnect with her biological parents and the culture she had to leave behind.