jdl's - Rented List

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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.

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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...

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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Six characters pursue solitary pleasures... Mr Pivonka builds a chicken costume and throws rocks at an effigy of his neighbour. She humiliates an effigy of him. Meanwhile, the local postwoman rolls pieces of bread up into small balls, which she sucks up her nose and ears.

Mr Beltinsky constructs rolling pin covered in intriguing textures with which to stroke himself, and his newsreader wife reads the news while having her toes sucked by two giant carp. The newsagent, obsessed with Mrs Beltinsky, builds an extension to his television that will embrace him when she appears on screen. A vision of eroticism that is both wryly comic and ineffably surreal.

Inspired by true events, writer/director Jasmila Zbanic's gripping, Oscar-nominated thriller tells the story of a United Nations translator attempting to save the lives of her family, whilst pandemonium and escalating conflict rages around them.

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A masterful mix of film noir and police thriller set on the sweltering mean streets of occupied Tokyo.

When rookie detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) has his pistol stolen from his pocket while on a bus, his frantic attempts to track down the thief lead him to an illegal weapons market in the Tokyo Underworld. But the gun has already passed from the pickpocket to a young gangster, and Murakami's gun is identified as the weapon in the shooting of a woman. Murakami, overwhelmed with remorse, turns for help to his older and more experienced senior, Sato (a superb performance by Takashi Shimura). The race is on to find the shooter before he can strike again...

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Eleven jurors are convinced that the defendant is guilty of murder. The twelfth has no doubt of his innocence.

How can this one man steer the others toward the same conclusion? It's a case of seemingly overwhelming evidence against a teenager accused of killing his father in "one of the best pictures ever made".

Curiosity develops into voyeuristic fixation as a young writer Bill (Jeremy Theobald) follows strangers around London to research a novel. After following Cobb (Alex Haw), a well-heeled stranger who is actually a thief, Bill's obsession takes a sinister turn as he is led into a dark underworld.

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Opening with a shot of an x-ray, showing the main character's stomach, 'Ikiru' tells the tale of a dedicated, downtrodden civil servant who, diagnosed with a fatal cancer, learns to change his dull, unfulfilled existence, and suddenly discovers a zest for life.

Plunging first into self-pity, then a bout of hedonistic pleasure-seeking on the frenetic streets of post-war Tokyo, Watanable (Takashi Shimura) - the film's hero - finally finds satisfaction through building a children's playground.

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When an unexploded WWII bomb is unexpectedly detonated in Pimlico, it reveals a buried cellar full of treasures, including an ancient document proving that the area is in fact part of Burgundy, France and thus foreign territory.

In an attempt to regain control, the British Government set up borders and cut off all services to the area, but the 'Burgundians' are determined to fight back!

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The stunning debut from Scottish writer-director Charlotte Wells, 'Aftersun' juxtaposes a hopeful coming-of-age story with a poignant, intimate family portrait that leaves an indelible impression.

At a fading vacation resort in the late 1990's, 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) treasures rare time together with her loving and idealistic father, Calum (Paul Mescal). As a world of adolescence creeps into view, beyond her eye Calum struggles under the weight of life outside of fatherhood. Twenty years later, Sophie's tender recollections of their last holiday become a powerful and heartrending portrait of their relationship, as she tries to reconcile the father, she knew with the man she didn't, in Charlotte Wells' superb and searingly emotional debut film.

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This extraordinarily dramatic black tragicomedy is an epic tale of love, friendship and betrayal set against the complex historical backdrop of the former Yugoslavia.

The story follows two likeable crooks - Marko (Miki Manojlovic), a charmer who manipulates everyone within his reach, and the foolish but loveable Blacky (Lazar Ristovski) - and Natalija (Mirjana Jokovic), an actress of easy virtue with whom they are both in love. The three become embroiled in a world of conflict, self-delusion and deceit - but where there are also moments of tenderness and love - in this visionary allegory of Balkan vitality, energy, humour and the will to survive.

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In the vastness of the living world, we share our planet with billions of farm animals. However, in industrialized societies we are conditioned to ignore the sentience of these animals, often regarded as a passive resource.

In 'Gunda', master filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky offers a radically recalibrated moral universe, where encounters with a mother sow (the eponymous Gunda), two ingenious cows, and a scene-stealing, one-legged chicken, remind us of the inherent value of life for all beings. By returning a pig's gaze, listening to a cow's gentle lowing, or observing a chicken find its wings, Kossakovsky voids any pretension that we are unique in our capacity for emotion, consciousness or will. Immersed in these animals' lives, lived to the full in joy and pain, it becomes inescapable that humankind must swiftly undertake the major changes necessary to end mass exploitation of our fellow creatures. 'Gunda' is Kossakovsky's deeply personal attempt to renew our vision of life and meditate on the mystery of all animal consciousness, including our own.

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A landmark movie in the film noir tradition, Roman Polanski's 'Chinatown' stands as a true screen classic. Jack Nicholson is private eye Jake Gittes, living off the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-war Southern California.

Hired by a beautiful socialite (Faye Dunaway) to investigate her husband's extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits, uncovering a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together for one, unforgettable night in...Chinatown.

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Dublin, 1963, Middle-aged bus conductor Alfred Byrne (Albert Finney) passes the day cheerily entertaining his passengers with passionate recitals of Oscar Wilde's poetry.

However Alfie is secretly living a desperately unhappy life - he's gay, deeply closeted and in love with his colleague, bus driver Robbie (Rufus Sewell), whom he adores from a distance. When he meets an enchanting young passenger, Adele (Tara Fitzgerald), Alfie is inspired to mount a production of Wilde's Salome - with Adele as the lead. With the rest of the cast filled out by his regulars, including a guff butcher (Michael Gambon), he sets off to produce Wilde's controversial play - but not everyone is pleased with the choice. With production woes piling on, Alfie is forced to overcome his fears and be happy with who he is.