monsieurk's - Rented List

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Making something of a change of pace for Bergman, this blackly farcical expose takes a potshot at the world of artists and critics, and focuses on the tension between the roles of a self-opinionated critic, Cornelius (Jarl Kulle), and a talented, egocentric musician, Felix.

Felix, a womanising cellist, uses his musical prowess to charm an endless string of female admirers. However, when Cornelius, a respected critic, arrives to write a biography on Felix, he finds his efforts hampered by all the females in the house - each one determined to protect their maestro's privacy. For Cornelius, the situation becomes increasing humiliating as he is photographed in comprising positions, forced to dress in women's clothes, and is even bombarded with fireworks. But the final insult is that he never actually gets to meet Felix.

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Zoltan Fabri's striking film is a powerful love story set against the turbulent changes to rural life in 1950's Hungary. In her dazzling debut performance, the late, great Mari Torocsik plays a young girl who falls for a farm worker, but is betrothed against her will to a wealthy man.

Gorgeous free-wheeling camera work combines with expressive editing and evocative use of music to powerfully convey the freedom love offers in the face of repression. This rich, beautiful film is widely considered one of the finest in Hungarian cinema.

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Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Deliriously entertaining and ruthlessly satirical, Coralie Fargeat's Cannes sensation turns toxic beauty culture inside out with a be-careful-what-you-wish-for fable for the ages.

Demi Moore gives a career-best performance as Elisabeth Sparkle, a former A-lister past her prime and suddenly fired from her fitness TV show by repellent studio head Harvey (Dennis Quaid). She is then drawn to the opportunity presented by a mysterious new drug: The Substance. All it takes is one injection and she is reborn - temporarily - as the gorgeous, twentysomething Sue (Margaret Qualley). The only rule? Time needs to be split: exactly one week in one body, then one week in the other. No exceptions. A perfect balance. What could go wrong? Explosive, provocative and twisted, 'The Substance' marks the arrival of a thrillingly visionary filmmaker.

Maddalena (Anna Magnani) is a screenstruck mother convinced of her daughter Maria's (Tina Apicella) star potential. Dreaming of a better life for her family she invests everything, including her last penny, into the dream that her daughter will be discovered at an open casting.

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A tantalizing mix of documentary, fiction and everything in-between, Miguel Gomes' multi-award-winning film is his intoxicating love song to rural Portugal... and to cinema.

Intricately structured and beautifully filmed, Gomes creates a narrative that slowly and craftily emerges into the sunlight from under its documentary canvas, through the entrancing use of visuals, sound and music. In its deliberate moulding of documentary into fiction and vice versa, and with its nods to The Wizard of Oz as well as to the universe of Apichatpong and Pedro Costa, the film follows a playful, evolutionary path to become something wholly individual and very unique.

In an electric, star-is-born performance, Mikey Madison soars as Anora, an enterprising, ferociously foulmouthed Brooklyn erotic dancer and sex worker whose Prince Not-So-Charming comes along in the form of a Russian oligarch's-child son. This is the beginning of a fractured fairy tale.

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In the industrial North, Giovanni (Carlo Cabrini) is a skilled factory worker offered a promotion if he'll go to Sicily for 18 months to assist in a new department. His impending absence strains his already nearly wordless relationship with Liliana (Anna Canzi), his fiancée.

They meet regularly at a dance hall and sometimes go riding on his motorcycle. We watch him arrive in Sicily, walk the town, live in a hotel, find lodgings, work, and participate in local events. It's a solitary, melancholy life. In his mind's eye he thinks about Liliana. He hasn't been entirely faithful. There's pain and detachment in her eyes. Across this distance, can anything bring about a breakthrough? Do they have a future?

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When Nicolas Ray (Johnny Guitar) turns his talents to a gangster movie, a familiar genre becomes startling and new. Set in 1930s Chicago, 'Party Girl' follows a bum-legged mouthpiece for the mob (Robert Taylor) and a gorgeous, wised-up vamp (Cyd Charisse) who fall in love, try to go straight...

and head straight for trouble. Ray deepens the drama and heightens the violence with filmmaking artistry that has given Party Girl cult status: a screen painted in sinister ebony and blood red, an urban landscape of shattered glass and shattered bodies, and a scene where a Jean Harlow-besotted mobster learns his idol has married - and shreds her photo with a rat-a-tat of lead.

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Crash-landing on Earth from his dying planet, an alien humanoid travelling by the name of Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie) uses his superior intelligence to build a vast business empire.

As he takes on - and beats - every US corporation, people can only guess at his true purpose: to save his dying world from agonising death by drought. Newton's ageless fall from grace, as he becomes prey to lust, alcohol, business rivals and finally, the US Government, makes 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' not only a bitingly caustic indictment of the modern world, but also a poignant commentary on the loneliness of the outsider.

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"Conclave" follows one of the world's most secretive and ancient events-selecting a new pope. The Church's most powerful leaders have gathered from around the world, locked together in the Vatican halls.

Tasked with running this covert process, Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) finds himself at the centre of a conspiracy and discovers a secret that could shake the very foundation of The Church. Also starring Stanley Tuccl, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini and directed by Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front).

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An artist's model, Aki (Mako Midori), is abducted, and awakens in a dark warehouse studio whose walls are decorated with outsized women's body parts - eyes, lips, legs, and breasts - and dominated by two recumbent giant statues of male and female nudes.

Her kidnapper introduces himself as Michio (Eiji Funakoshi), a blind sculptor whom she had witnessed intently caressing a statue of her naked torso previously at an exhibition in which she featured. Michio announces his intention of using her to sculpt the perfectfemale form. Atfirst defiant, she eventually succumbs to his intense fixation on her body and finds herself drawn into his sightless world, in which touch is everything.

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Escaping post-war Europe, visionary architect László Toth (Adrien Brody) arrives in America to rebuild his life, his work, and his marriage to his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) after being forced apart during wartime by shifting borders and regimes.

On his own in a strange new country, László settles in Pennsylvania, where the wealthy and prominent industrialist Horrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) recognises his talent for building. But power and legacy come at a heavy cost....

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Nocturnal and steeped in sinister chiaroscuro, award-winning director Pedro Costa's latest film follows Ventura, the enigmatic lead of Costa's earlier groundbreaking Colossal Youth, as he traverses a seemingly endless night populated by the ghosts of his past.

From the restless spirits that haunt this decaying urban landscape, Costa conjures a spellbinding cinematic experience. Featured in many Top 5 Films of the Year lists worldwide, Horse Money is a hauntingly beautiful contemplation of Portugal's tumultuous past and uncertain future from a true poet of contemporary European cinema.

Elizabeth (Danièle Gégauff) sends telegrams to her old boyfriend Ben (Joe Dallesandro) in NYC and to her younger sister Leo (Maria Schneider) in Rome to join her in Paris, where she is selling her dead father's estate. When Ben and Leo arrive, a mysterious adventure begins.

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Double bill of Eric Rohmer classics.

Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987)

The film consists of four episodes in the relationship of two young women: Reinette (Joëlle Miquel), a country girl, and Mirabelle (Jessica Forde), a Parisian. The first episode is entitled 'The Blue Hour' and recounts their meeting. The second centers on a café and a difficult waiter. In the third, the girls discuss their differing views on society's margins: beggars, thieves and swindlers. In the fourth episode, Reinette and Mirabelle succeed in selling one of Reinette's paintings to an art dealer while Reinette pretends to be mute and Mirabelle, acting as if she does not know Reinette, does all the talking.
The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque (1993)
This is a "political" film with no axe to grind. An election campaign and local zoning decisions simply serve as a backdrop for an ironic reflection on the role of chance in history, starting with the ambitions of a village mayor. Although the portrait of the palce and its inhabitants is realistic enough - sometimes bordering on a documentary - the anecdote is pure ficion. It goes without saying, as the saying goes, that "the events recounted in this film and the characters who appear in it bear no connection, direct or otherwise, with real people or events".