john-t's - Rented List

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"2001: A Space Odyssey" is a countdown to tomorrow, a road map to human destiny, a quest for the infinite. It is a dazzling, Academy Award-winning visual achievement, a compelling drama of man vs. machine, a stunning meld of music and motion.

It may be the masterwork of director Stanley Kubrick (who co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke) and it will likely excite, inspire and enthrall for generations. To begin his voyage into the future, Kubrick visits our prehistoric ape-ancestry past, then leaps millennia (via one of the most mind-blowing jump cuts ever conceived) into colonized space, and ultimately whisks astronaut Bowman (Keir Dullea) into uncharted realms of space, perhaps even into immortality.

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Wine has been a symbol of Western civilization for thousands of years. Never has the fight for its soul been as desperate. Never has there been so much money - and pride -at stake.

But the battle lines are not what you'd expect local versus multinational, simple peasants versus powerful captains of industry. In the world of wine - it is never the usual suspects.

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Adapted from Michael Bond's beloved books, "Paddington" is the magical adventure of a polite young Peruvian bear (voice of Ben Whishaw), who travels to London in search of a home.

Finding himself lost and alone at Paddington Station, it seems that city life is not all he imagined - until he meets the Brown family, who kindly offer him a place to stay. But little do the Browns realise just how much chaos one small bear can cause - and they soon discover that their lives will never be the same again.

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Once-great actor Serge Tanneur (Fabrice Luchini) spends his days alone, painting second-rate portraits and cycling through the windblown landscape of France's Ile de Re.

One day his old friend Gauthier (Lambert Wilson), a famous TV star, arrives unexpectedly to coax him into a return to the stage, promising him a role in Moliere's classic play, 'The Misanthrope'. At first Serge dismisses the idea but slowly, as the pair's relationship begins to echo the play itself, he finds himself being inextricably drawn in...

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The story of a team of pioneers undertaking the most important mission in human history.

Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey stars as ex-pilot-turned-farmer Cooper, who must leave his family and a foundering Earth behind to lead an expedition travelling beyond this galaxy to discover whether mankind has a future among the stars.

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Marlene Dietrich is Agent X-27, the Mata Hari of Austria, in this exciting tale of espionage and romance, also starring Victor McLaglen. A widow forced to turn to prostitution to support herself, Dietrich is solicited by the Austrian Secret Service to become a special agent.

With her ample charms and extraordinary beauty, she ferrets out secrets from the enemy, saving thousands of lives and altering the course of the war. But she meets her mental match in a Russian agent named Kranau (Victor McLaglen), who continually outwits her and proves to be her downfall. Dietrich pays the ultimate price for falling in love with the debonair spy in this Josef von Sternberg hit.

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"Marlene" is no standard movie-star documentary. It is a mystery story, a discourse on truth and fiction, a battle with a sacred monster, a caustic comedy of errors, and the story of the making of a film, all rolled into one.

After years of public silence, the legendary Dietrich personally selected Maximilian Schell to make an interview film about her. Schell saw a golden opportunity to penetrate an enigma: he soon found himself locked in a battle royal. Marlene refused to let him photograph her or even her apartment. She was openly contemptuous of his questions and refused to answer many of them. Schell is candid enough tomake himself the butt of his own film, an increasingly comic, exasperated figure with whom Marlene toys much like one of the femmes fatales she portrayed so masterfully on the screen. Schell fills out the image track with wonderful excerpts of her performances and often bizarre representations of his own dilemma. But dominating the film is Marlene herself, her disembodied voice only heightening her mystique - querulous, witty, provocative, revealing and moving. It quickly becomes apparent that the friction between director and star is not the film's liability but its saving grace, rescuing it from conventionality and turning it into a unique, multi-leveled and richly entertaining record of an encounter with a real-life legend.

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Foxcatcher is an electrifying thriller, based on true events.

When wealthy John du Pont (Steve Carell) invites Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz (Charming Tatum) to move to his estate and help form a wrestling team for the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Mark sees a way to step out of the shadow of his charismatic and revered brother, Dave (Mark Ruffalo) and instantly accepts his offer.
However, du Pont begins to lead Mark down a dark path while becoming fixated on recruiting Dave to 'Team Foxcatcher'. As tensions and paranoia run high through their constant power-struggles and the pursuit of victory, all three men are propelled towards ;an unforeseen event that will change their lives forever.

Research scientist Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) believes other states of consciousness are as real as everyday reality. Using sensory deprivation, then adding powerful, hallucinogenic drugs, he explores these altered states...and endures experiences that make madness seem a blessing.

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When Timothy Evans (John Hurt), and his wife Beryl (Judy Geeson), move into 10 Rillington Place with their young daughter, they have no idea of the horror that awaits them.

For at the same address lives John Reginald Christie (Richard Attenborough), a man with a dark secret that will soon engulf Evans and his family in tragedy.

A stunning and beautiful film, "Mr. Turner" tells the extraordinary story of Britain's greatest ever artist. As Turner (Timothy Spall) produces masterpieces ahead of his time that challenge the art world, so he has to confront his own ever changing circumstances and deal with love and loss.

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In 'The Unknown Known', Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris offers a mesmerising portrait of Donald Rumsfeld, the larger-than-life figure who served as George W. Bush's secretary of defense and as the principal architect of the Iraq War.

Rather than conducting a conventional interview, Morris has Rumsfeld perform and explain his "snowflakes" - the enormous archive of memos he wrote across almost fifty years in Congress, the White House, in business, and twice at the Pentagon. The memos provide a window into history - not as it actually happened, but as Rumsfeld wants us to see it. By focusing on the "snowflakes", with their conundrums and their contradictions, Morris takes us where few have ever been - beyond the web of words into the unfamiliar terrain of Rumsfeld's mind. 'The Unknown Known' presents history from the inside out. It shows how the ideas, the fears, and the certainties of one man, written out on paper, transformed America, changed the course of history - and led to war.

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The Marvel Cinematic Universe expands into the cosmos when brash space adventurer Peter Quill steals a coveted orb and becomes the object of a relentless bounty hunt.

To evade his enemies, Quill forges an uneasy truce with Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon; Groot, a tree-like humanoid; the deadly assassin Gamora; and the revenge-driven Drax. But when Quill discovers the true power of the orb, he must rally his ragtag band of misfits for a desperate battle that will decide the fate of the galaxy.

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Dreamy-eyed grade-schooler Mason (Ellar Coltrane) is facing upheaval: his struggling single mom Olivia (Patricia Arquette) has decided to move him and older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) to Houston - just as their long-absent father Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) re-enters their world.

Thus begins a decade of constantly unfolding heartbreak and wonder as Mason swims against the tide of family moves and controversies, faltering marriages, new schools, first loves, lost loves, good times and scary times that shape the person he will be.

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'20,000 Days on Earth' is a bold and unique look at one of music's most mysterious and charismatic figures, the iconic musician and writer Nick Cave.

Directors lain Forsyth and Jane Pollard present a vision of an artist in a way that is unconventional yet undeniably intimate, while also exploring more universal themes of creativity and how we choose to spend our time on the Earth. The film presents Cave's personal analysis of his own life and creative processes. He shares humorous tales of times past with bandmate and frequent collaborator Warren Ellis, and engages in enlightening discussion with those who have affected his life both professionally and personally, including former Bad Seed Blixa Bargeld, actor friend Ray Winstone, and perhaps most notably Kylie Minogue, with whom Cave collaborated on his breakout hit Where the Wild Roses Grow.