mervyn-verstellung's - Rented List

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An enigmatic and malign school teacher (Jeanne Moreau) torments the residents of a small French village with seemingly motiveless acts of violence and destruction.

When her erotic obsession with an ostracised outsider causes her behaviour to become yet more extreme, tensions in the community reach boiling point - but will the villagers see beyond their prejudices? 'Mademoiselle' is a mesmerising psychological drama and an artistic, disturbing exploration of the darkest of carnal desires.

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The summer of his high school freshman year, Hodaka (voice of Kotaro Daigo) runs away from his remote island home to Tokyo, and quickly finds himself pushed to his financial and personal limits. The weather is unusually gloomy and rainy every day, as if to suggest his future.

He lives his days in isolation, but finally finds work as a writer for a mysterious occult magazine. Then one day, Hodaka meets Hina (voice of Nana Mori) on a busy street corner. This bright and strong-willed girl possesses a strange and wonderful ability: the power to stop the rain and clear the sky...

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A love story about divorce. A marriage coming apart and a family coming together. 'Marriage Story' is a hilarious and harrowing, sharply observed and deeply compassionate film from the acclaimed writer-director Noah Baumbach.

Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson deliver tour-de-force performances as Charlie, a charismatic New York theater director wedded to his work, and Nicole, an actor, who is ready to change her own life. Their hopes for an amicable divorce fade as they are drawn into a system that pits them against each other and forces them to redefine their relationship and their family. Featuring bravura, finely drawn supporting turns from Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, and Laura Dern - who won an Academy Award for her performance here - as the trio of lawyers who preside over the legal battle, 'Marriage Story' (nominated for six Academy Awards including best picture) is a work of both intimacy and scope that ultimately invokes hope amid the ruins.

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A mysterious list of names is found in the shoe of a dead woman. Antiques dealer Mark Easterbrook (Rufus Sewell) is determined to find out why his name is on the list. His investigations lead him to three spinsters living at The Pale Horse in the village of Much Deeping.

As more deaths occur, Mark finds himself thinking the unthinkable. Could this all be the work of witchcraft, and is he himself cursed? Paranoia eats at Mark. Who wants him dead, and how can he save himself from the curse?

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Determined to fulfil her late mother's dream of opening a bakery in charming Notting Hill, 19-year-old Clarissa (Shannon Tarbet) enlists the help of her mother's best friend Isabella (Shelley Conn) and her eccentric estranged grandmother Mimi (Celia Imrie).

Three generations of women will need to overcome grief, doubts and differences to honour the memory of their beloved Sarah (Candice Brown) while embarking on a journey to establish a London bakery filled with love, hope and colourful pastries from all over the world.

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In 1970, the Miss World competition took place in London, hosted by US comedy legend, Bob Hope (Greg Kinnear). At the time, Miss World was the most-watched TV show on the planet with over 100 million viewers.

Claiming that beauty competitions demeaned women, the newly formed Women's Liberation Movement achieved overnight fame by invading the stage and disrupting the live broadcast of the competition. Not only that, when the show resumed, the result caused uproar: the winner was not the Swedish favourite but Miss Grenada, the first black woman to be crowned Miss World. In a matter of hours, a global audience had witnessed the patriarchy driven from the stage and the Western ideal of beauty turned on its head.

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Tolkien explores the formative years of renowned author J.R.R. Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult) as he finds friendship, courage and motivation among a group of fellow outcasts at school. Their bond strengthens as they mature, until the outbreak of World War I, which threatens to tear the fellowship apart.

Tolkien's early life experiences would later inspire him to write his famous Middle-earth novels.

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Adapted from Mary Jane Ward's autobiographical novel, Anatole Litvak's 'The Snake Pit' is a vital precursor to Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor in its concern with issues relating to mental illness.

An Oscar nominated Olivia de Havilland stars as Virginia, an outwardly normal woman whose marriage to a caring husband (Mark Stevens) unravels when her behaviour becomes erratic. On professional advice Virginia is committed to an overcrowded state hospital where she encounters the bullying antics of the resentful matrons and the threat of the fearsome snake pit, an open room where the most deranged cases are held.

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Writer-director Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) has crafted a 'Little Women' that draws on both the classic novel and the writings of Louisa May Alcott, and unfolds as the author's alter ego, Jo March, reflects back and forth on her fictional life.

In Gerwig's take, the beloved story of the March sisters - four young women each determined to live life on their own terms - is both timeless and timely. Portraying Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth March, the film stars Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, with Timothee Chalamet as their neighbour Laurie, Laura Dern as Marmee, and Meryl Streep as Aunt March.

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The film paints the relationship between L.S. Lowry (Timothy Spall), one of Britain's most iconic artists, and his mother Elizabeth (Vanessa Redgrave), with whom he lived until her death. We see Lowry in the beginnings of his career, as he yearns for his work to be appreciated in London.

However, his disdainful mother actively tries to dissuade her bachelor son from pursuing his artistic ambitions. At the same time, the film explores how Elizabeth is the very reason Lowry paints anything at all, as he desperately seeks to create something, anything, which will make her happy. This powerful yet humorous story imagines the impact this obsessive mother and son relationship had on the great artist.

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Formed in 1970, Kraftwerk's contribution to the development of electronic music remains unsurpassed.

Having inspired everyone from Bowie to Joy Division to Radiohead, this mysterious collective has also proven responsible for entire genres to emerge - electronica, techno and synth-pop to name but three. This video reviews the career and music of Kraftwerk, from their inception in the late 1960's through their most celebrated period in the mid-1970's, culminating with their resurgence during the 1980's. The film further explores how Kraftwerk both fitted into and pulled away from the electronic wing of what is often lazily referred to as 'Krautrock'. Showing respect too for many of the groups German contemporaries from a similar impulse, and tracing the unfolding of electronics in German contemporary music generally, this programme presents a fascinating story previously untold on film. Featuring exclusive and extensive interviews with ex-Kraftwerk members - Karl Bartos and Klaus Röder, German ambient and electronic musicians - Dieter Moebius, Hans Joachim Rodelius, Klaus Schulze, Wolfgang Siedel, Conrad Schnitzler, Klaus Löhmer and many others. Also boasting further contributions from Electronic music experts and writers, and rare studio and live footage of the band, these all together make for perhaps the best film on the subject ever to emerge.

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Struggling street food vendor Sentaro finds himself confronted with Tokue, an odd but sympathetic elderly lady looking for work.

When he reluctantly accepts, it's not long before Tokue proves to have an extraordinary gift when it comes to making "an" - the sweet red bean paste filling used in his dorayakis - which starts a relationship that is about much more than just street food. With 'Sweet Bean', Kawase again focuses on people at the periphery of Japanese society and investigates their place in the flow of life itself.

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In Ronald Neame's film of Joyce Cary's classic novel, Alec Guinness transforms himself into one of cinema's most indelible comic figures: the somewhat vulgar but dedicated painter in search of his artistic vision, Gulley Jimson.

As the ill-behaved Jimson searches for a perfect canvas, he determines to let nothing come between himself and the realization of his exalted ideal. Jimson is a man, who's given up all else, including health, wealth and conventional relationships to live in a leaky houseboat. As the story develops it, like all great literature, manages to puncture almost all of life's rationalizing balloons.

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Franz Biberkopf (Günter Lamprecht) is an unforgettable man: his tender, good -natured side contradicted by moments of shocking violence. Released from prison following a four year sentence for the manslaughter of his girlfriend, he plans to make a new start and a decent life for himself.

But a chaotic, decadent Berlin of the 20's is not theasiest place for an ex-con to go straight and work is hard to come by. When Franz becomes fascinated by Reinhold (Gottfried John), a psychotic small-time crook, he is soon drawn back into a world he cannot escape.

Director Bill Forsyth (That Sinking Feeling, Gregory's Girl, Local Hero, Comfort and Joy) made his American film debut with this moving and offbeat adaptation of Marilynne Robinson's acclaimed novel, about two young girls who are sent to live with their eccentric aunt (Christine Lahti) after the suicide of their mother.