griggs's - Rented List

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Claude Lanzmann's landmark documentary about the holocaust, Shoah. Lanzmann spent twelve years spanning the globe for surviving camp inmates, SS commandants, and eyewitnesses of the "Final Solution".

Without dramatic re-enactment or archival footage - but with extraordinary testimonies - Shoah renders the step-by-step machinery of extermination, and through haunted landscapes and human voices, makes the past come brilliantly alive. "Shoah", is a work of genius, an heroic endeavour to humanise the inhuman, to tell the untellable, and to explore in unprecedented detail the horrors of the past. It is an immensely disturbing experience, yet in its solemnity and beauty not a morbid or disheartening one. There are few works of art which leave one with such a deep appreciation for the preciousness and meaning of life. For these reasons, Shoah is one of the most powerful and important films of all time.

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Cool and sophisticated Tolen (Ray Brooks) has a monopoly on womanizing - with a long line of conquests to prove it - while the naive and awkward Colin (Michael Crawford) desperately wants a piece of it.

But when Colin falls for an innocent country girl, it's not long before the self-assured Tolen moves in for the kill. Is all fair in love and war, or can Colin get the knack and beat Tolen at his own game?

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"Gervaise" is a 1956 French film directed by Rene Clement and based on the novel L'Assommoir by Emile Zola.

Gervaise Macquart, (Maria Schell) a young crippled laundress, is left alone with two young children when her lover, Auguste Lantier decides to leave. Despite many struggles she works hard to turn her life around and marries Henri Coupeau, a roofer and fulfils her dream of buying her own laundry, however things takes a turn for the worse as her old lover returns and her husband starts drinking heavily.

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Violence begets violence in this explosive western that pits marauding Apaches against weary Indian fighters and native U.S. cavalrymen. Burt Lancaster stars in this sharply written, fact-based story as a scout assigned to aid the cavalry in tracking down Ulzana and his band of renegade Indians.

As the trail gets hotter, Lancaster attempts to teach an idealistic young lieutenant that the only way to fight the Apaches' escalating brutality and violence is with even stronger force. Robert Aldrich directs this gritty action epic sure to excite both sense and the intellect.

Introduced as a 'story of ordinary workaday people', Anthony Asquith's 'Underground' masterfully balances the light and dark sides of city life to evoke the daily existence of the average Londoner better than any other film from Britain's silent canon.

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Based on the best-selling horror action game, Silent Hill stars Radha Mitchell (Man on Fire) as Rose, a desperate mother who takes her adopted daughter, Sharon, to the town of Silent Hill in an attempt to cure her of her ailment.

After a violent car crash, Sharon disappears and Rose begins her desperate search to get her back. She descends into a fog of smoldering ash and into the center of the twisted reality of a town's terrible secret. Pursued by grotesquely deformed creatures and a townspeople stuck in permanent purgatory, Rose begins to uncover the truth behind the apocalyptic disaster that burned the town 30 years back.

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Growing up in the sheltered society of 1920s England, Gudrun (Jackson) and Ursula (Jennie Linden) know little about the ways of love.

So when they pursue thrilling, torrid affairs with a notorious playboy (Alan Bates) and a brooding philanderer (Oliver Reed), what they discover about their lovers, and themselves, may be all consuming - and dangerously volatile - than they ever dared imagine.

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When a bus is violently hijacked in a small Japanese town, only three people survive: the guilt wracked driver Makoto (Koji Yakusho), and young brother and sister, Kozue (Aoi Miyazaki) and Naoki (Masaru Miyazaki).

Two years on, each of them, still traumatised by their ordeal, struggle to reengage with life. But then one day Makoto impulsively buys a bus, and sets off with Kozue and Naoki on a long journey across Japan, which becomes a cathartic odyssey of spiritual self-discovery. Shinji Aoyama's beautifully shot drama is a serene and resonant mediation on the psychological scars wrought upon the victims of terror and violence and of the courage and inner strength they must find to survive.

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Flo Zeigfeld's midway attraction isn't drawing flies. "How's business, Ziggy?" a rival taunts. This winner of 3 Academy Awards including Best Picture provides the career-chronicling answer. Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.

's business was good (with Broadway's legendary Follies and more), bad (including times the showman could scarcely rub two nickels together) and rarely lacking optimistic excess.

She loves him when he goes away for months. She loves him when he refuses to marry her. But when callow David Sutton (Van Heflin) chooses to marry someone else, Louise Howell's (Joan Crawford) love for him takes a darker turn. Give her a gun and she'll love him to death.

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No matter what rolled in on the tides of time, California surfing buddies Matt (Jan-Michael Vincent), Jack (William Katt), and Leroy (Gary Busey) knew they'd stick together. And that they'd be ready when a rare 20 foot swell hit the coast at last...

'Big Wednesday' celebrates surfing as much as the most dedicated kid who ever waxed a board. It's also a fascinating 1962-1974 chronicle of friendships and lifestyles in transition. John Millius directs and co-scripts with a passion for the ultimate ride and a truthful feel for those turbulent times.

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Two children, Voula (Tania Palaiologou) and her young brother Alexander (Michalis Zeke), run away from their Athens home to search for their father, whom their mother has told them lives in Germany.

Boarding an express train, the children begin an epic journey into the chaos of the world and away from the innocence of childhood. Beautifully photographed by Giorgios Arvanitis and referencing several of Angelopoulos' earlier works, this extraordinary coming of age tale paints a dark portrait of Greece in the eighties - a country caught between its past and present, struggling to find a place in the future.

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Edinburgh, 1932. The world is on the cusp of change and at the forefront, leading the charge is the estimable Miss Brodie (Maggie Smith), teacher at the Marcia Blaine School for girls. As a new term begins for Miss Brodie, she is fully prepared.

For whatever the subject, Miss Brodie is adept at bringing it around to the experiences girls should look forward to when they too are in their prime. Meanwhile Miss Brodies personal life is not so clear cut, torn as she is between the passionate advances of a young married artist, and the more conservative desires of a mature associate, she nevertheless manages to walk a strident path somewhere between the two. But Miss Brodies philosophy for living rubs up against the schools rigid moral standards, and when one of her young charges is inspired into a tragic act of foolhardy bravery, an act of almost religious betrayal follows that will shake the firm convictions of Miss Brodie to the core.

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John Cummings (Richard Todd) is one of life's near failures. A toiletry salesman, he buys a flash car he cannot afford to insure. When it is stolen by a gang running a car theft racket, he vows to retrieve it whatever the cost - hi job, his family and his dignity.

He begins to delve into a sinister criminal underworld with potentially lethal consequences.

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Robbing 36 banks was a breeze!! Watch what happens when they hit the 37th. Wonderfully directed by acclaimed director Robert Altman, 'Thieves Like Us' delves into the lives of Depression-era on-the-lam bank robbers.

In 1930s Mississippi, convicted murderer Bowie (Keith Carradine) and his two buddies make a daring escape from prison. With jobs scarce, they turn to the only thing they will know: robbing banks. Armed and dangerous, they leave a trail of empty banks and gun smoke in their wake through the Midwest, as the newspapers report their exploits to a rapt public. While holed up in a rural farmhouse, Bowie finds love with a simple young woman named Keechie (Shelley Duvall). Though they dream of a future together, Bowie knows it's only a matter of time before the authorities will move in - with their guns blazing!