greatest-ever-made's - Rented List
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Ashes and Diamonds (1958)Popiól i Diament
On the last day of World War Two in a small town somewhere in Poland, Polish exiles of war and the occupying Soviet forces confront the beginning of a new day and a new Poland. In this incendiary environment we find Home Army soldier Maciek Chelmicki (Zbigniew Cybulski), who has been ordered to assassinate an incoming commissar. But a mistake stalls his progress and leads him to Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska), a beautiful barmaid who gives him a glimpse of what his life could be. Gorgeously photographed and brilliantly performed, 'Ashes and Diamonds' masterfully interweaves the fate of a nation with that of one man, resulting in one of the most important Polish films of all time. - Director:
- Andrzej Wajda
- Cast:
- Zbigniew Cybulski, Waclaw Zastrzezynski, Adam Pawlikowski
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In a bravura performance, Broderick Crawford won the 1949 Academy Award for Best Actor with his stunning portrayal of bullheaded backwoods lawyer Willie Stark in the powerful drama about political and personal corruption. A somber but realistic chronicle of raw , brutal power in force, 'All The King's Men' is based on Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. It was brought to the screen in 1949 by producer Robert Rossen, who also wrote the screenplay and directed the film. The story was inspired by the rise and fall of southern bigwig Huey Pierce Long - the infamous 'Kingfish' who was Louisiana's governor and one-time senator. 'All The King's Men' remains a hallmark political film with superb performances throughout. - Director:
- Robert Rossen
- Cast:
- Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Joanne Dru
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The Holdovers follows a curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually he forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker (Dominic Sessa) — and with the school's head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam (Da'Vine Joy Randolph). - Director:
- Alexander Payne
- Cast:
- Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa
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High among idiosyncratic auteur Robert Aldrich's most powerful and intense dramas, 'Twilight's Last Gleaming' is a thunderous political thriller and race-against-time doomsday classic. Burt Lancaster stars as the Air Force general Lawrence Dell who seizes control of a stockpile of nuclear missiles to force the US President (Charles Durning) to tell the truth about the Vietnam war. As negotiations get ever more desperate, General MacKenzie (Richard Widmark) leads an elite fighting team into the complex to disable Dell and his team directly. - Director:
- Robert Aldrich
- Cast:
- Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Roscoe Lee Browne
- Formats:
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Kanal (1957)The Sewer
During the last days of the Warsaw Uprising against Poland's Nazi occupiers, a ravaged band of Resistance fighters retreat into the city sewers to avoid capture. In this pit of darkness, engulfed by filth, they desperately strive to hang onto their lives, their hopes and their sanity. Controversial for undermining a national myth of heroic sacrifice, Wajda's second feature is a nightmarish descent into a visceral, claustrophobic struggle for survival. Full of haunting images, 'Kanal' is a harrowing and unforgettable depiction of the horrors of war. - Director:
- Andrzej Wajda
- Cast:
- Teresa Izewska, Tadeusz Janczar, Wienczyslaw Glinski
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Paul Leni (The Man Who Laughs) directs one of the most important and influential films in the early history of American genre cinema, which perfected the 'old dark house' formula and set the stage for the Universal horror cycle of the 1930s. Twenty years after the death of millionaire Cyrus West, his surviving relatives are called together in a decaying mansion on the Hudson River. There, they gather to hear West's lawyer Roger Crosby (Tully Marshall) read his last will and testament and discover that West has left everything to his niece Annabelle (Laura La Plante). That is, at least, on the condition that she is judged to be legally sane. As the family settles in for the evening, tensions rise when they are informed that a murderer nicknamed the Cat has escaped from a nearby asylum and is suspected to be somewhere on the grounds. Crosby soon disappears in mysterious circumstances, which proves to be just the first in a series of horrifying events that will punctuate a long, dark night of terror - during which Annabelle's sanity will be called into question again and again. Based upon the 1922 stage production by John Willard, 'The Cat and the Canary' is a perfect blend of horror and black comedy and stands at the apex of a cycle of films adapted from mystery plays throughout the 1920s. It later inspired James Whale's 'The Old Dark House' and has been remade several times - but never bettered. - Director:
- Paul Leni
- Cast:
- Laura La Plante, Creighton Hale, Forrest Stanley
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A Generation (1955)Pokolenie
Stach (Tadeusz Lomnicki) is a wayward teen living in squalor on the outskirts of Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Guided by an avuncular Communist organizer, he is introduced to the underground resistance - and to the beautiful Dorota (Urszula Modrzynska). Soon he is engaged in a dangerous effort to fight oppression and indignity, maturing as he assumes responsibility for other's lives. A coming-of-age story of survival and shattering loss, 'A Generation' delivers a brutal portrait of the human cost of war. - Director:
- Andrzej Wajda
- Cast:
- Tadeusz Lomnicki, Urszula Modrzynska, Tadeusz Janczar
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Manpower (1941)Hard to Handle
Hank McHenry (Edward G. Robinson) and Johnny Marshall (George Raft) work on a road crew for the power company. In a freak accident Hank is injured and is promoted to foreman of the gang. One night Hank and Johnny meet Fay Duval (Marlene Dietrich) in a clip joint, but tensions start to show in the road crew as rivally between Hank and Johnny increases. - Director:
- Raoul Walsh
- Cast:
- Edward G. Robinson, Marlene Dietrich, George Raft
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Oscar Winners Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward and Maureen Stapleton lead the stellar cast of this Southern gothic "sizzler" based on the Tennessee Williams play Orpheus Descending. Valentine "Snakeskin" Xavier (Brando) is a handsome drifter with a guitar...and a past. Taking a job as a stored clerk in Two Rivers, Mississippi, his strong am silent demeanor attracts not only the local party girl (Woodward), but also the shopkeeper's exotic wife (Magnani). Soon, this explosive love triangle will ignite a powder keg of fury that could rock this small town to its very core. - Director:
- Sidney Lumet
- Cast:
- Marlon Brando, Joanne Woodward, Anna Magnani
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Sidney Poitier stars as Buck, an ex-Union Army Cavalry sergeant who becomes a scout for freed slaves heading to the Colorado frontier. Tagging along with him are his wife (Ruby Dee in a scene-stealing performance) and a Bible-thumping con artist known as the Preacher (Harry Belafonte). Attacked by racist bounty hunters determined to return the former slaves to a life of sharecropping in Louisiana, Buck and his followers must summon all the courage they have in order to reach their destination and help settle the Wild West. - Director:
- Sidney Poitier
- Cast:
- Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee
- Formats:
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One from the Heart (1981)One from the Heart: Reprise
Amidst the neon and glitter of Las Vegas, the tumultuous relationship of two ordinary people, Frannie (Teri Garr) and Hank (Frederic Forrest), flames out on a Fourth of July weekend. Immediately, each flies off on passionate flights of fancy: Frannie with the handsome and romantic Ray (Raul Julia) and Hank with Leila (Nastassja Kinski), a seductive European runaway. But it's not until the dawn of a new day that they will learn where their hearts will truly lead them. - Director:
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Cast:
- Frederic Forrest, Teri Garr, Raul Julia
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Holland (Alec Guinness) is a shy, retiring man who works as a bank transfer agent for the delivery of gold bullion. One day he befriends Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway), a maker of souvenirs. Holland remarks that, with Pendlebury's smelting equipment, one could forge the gold into harmless-looking toy Eiffel Towers and smuggle them into France. Soon after, they gain the services of professional criminals Lackery (Sidney James) and Shorty (Alfie Bass) and the four plot what they believe will be the perfect crime - which turns out to be anything but! - Director:
- Charles Crichton
- Cast:
- Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sidney James
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A tough, womanizing high-stakes gambler known only as Tennessee (John Payne) has an uneasy relationship with Duchess (Rhonda Flemming), madam of a thinly-disguised bordello. He is saved from murder by a lonesome cowpoke (Ronald Reagan) in town to meet his fiancee Goldie (Coleen Gray) on the steamboat. When she arrives, there's a mysterious undercurrent between Goldie and Tennessee, whose newfound friendship with Cowpoke is destined to be severely tried. - Director:
- Allan Dwan
- Cast:
- John Payne, Ronald Reagan, Rhonda Fleming
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After German underground leader Kurt Muller arrives with his family in Washington, DC, he soon finds the tentacles of Nazi terror have a very long reach.
- Director:
- Herman Shumlin
- Cast:
- Bette Davis, Paul Lukas, Geraldine Fitzgerald
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Sierra Nevada Jones (Barbara Stanwyck), a feisty young woman, attempts to stake her claim in the cattle business despite threats from greedy land grabbers and their hired killers. Undercover agent Farrell (Ronald Reagan) comes to her rescue, even though he is in the midst of a separate investigation to find out who's been provoking II the local Indian tribes into attacking the whites. - Director:
- Allan Dwan
- Cast:
- Barbara Stanwyck, Ronald Reagan, Gene Evans
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