mpb's - Rented List

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Sold by her impoverished mother to Zampano (Anthony Quinn), a brutish fairground wrestler, waif-like Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina) lives a life of drudgery as his assistant.

After taking to the road with a travelling circus, a budding relationship with II Matto/The Fool (Richard Basehart), a gentle-natured, tightrope walking clown, offers a potential refuge from her master's clutches. Trapped by her own servile nature, Gelsomina waivers, and Zampano's volcanic temper erupts with tragic consequences. Characteristically mingling elements of biography with metaphor and symbolism, 'La Strada' also combines an easygoing charm with a far harder edged realism in the form of domestic violence and decaying, desolate towns. Masina - Fellini's wife - is astonishing in the central role and what with the evocative Nino Rota score and Otello Martelli's ravishing photography, it's little wonder that 'La Strada' was the winner of the first official Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

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Fergus (Stephen Rea) is an IRA "volunteer" who reluctantly takes part in the kidnapping of a black British soldier, Jody (Forest Whitaker), stationed in Northern Ireland.

When the kidnapping goes terribly wrong, Fergus escapes to London and tracks down Jody's glamorous girlfriend Dil (Jaye Davidson), spurred on by a promise made to his former hostage. Tailing Fergus are two fiercely loyal IRA operatives.

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In one of the most powerhouse performances in American screen-acting, the great Kirk Douglas stars as Chuck Tatum, a newspaper reporter who stumbles upon a potentially career-making story in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

When Tatum begins to influence the story's outcome, a descent begins that finds more than one man caught between a rock and a hard place. An electric narrative that stands as one of Wilder's tautest and most (melo)dramatic plots (penned with Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman), 'Ace in the Hole' plays today as both a prescient examination of the modern media landscape, and the public appetite for the disastrous news-story that leads to toxic wish-fulfillment.

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Voted the best Czech film of all time, Marketa Lazarová is a powerful and passionate medieval epic set in the mid-13th Century.

Based on avant-garde writer Vladislav Vancura’s novel, it follows the rivalry between two warring clans, the Kozlíks and the Lazars, and the doomed love affair of Mikolá Kozlík and Marketa Lazarová. Vlacil draws upon remote historical sources to recreate an authentic primitive world and fashion a film with surprising contemporary impact. Owing as much to the stylistic vigour of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai as it does to the rich tapestry of Czech fiction, this ambitious and poetically extraordinary film is the crowning achievement of Vlacil's career and an undiscovered cornerstone of world cinema.

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Nick and Nora Charles cordially invite you to bring your own alibi to The Thin Man, the jaunty whodunit that made William Powell and Myrna Loy the champagne elite of sleuthing, Bantering in the boudoir, enjoying walks with beloved dog Asta or matching each other highball for highball and clue for

clue, they combined screwball romance with mystery. The resulting triumph nabbed four Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) and spawned five sequels. Credit W.S. " Woody" Van Dyke for recognizing that Powell and Loy were ideal together and for getting the studio's okay by promising to shoot this splendid adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's novel in three weeks. He took 12 days. They didn't call him "One-Take Woody" for nothing.

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Ten years in planning, Sergio Leone's epic 'Once Upon a Time in America' portrays 50 years of riveting underworld history and offers rich roles to a remarkable cast. Robert De Niro and James Woods play lifelong Lower East Side pals whose wary partnership unravels in death and mystery.

Strong support comes from 'Tuesday Weld', Joe Pesci, Jennifer Connelly, Elizabeth McGovern and the young actors playing the central characters as ghetto kids.

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'Pather Panchali' tells the story of a family living in the grip of poverty in a small Bengali village, focusing on the experiences of a young boy, Apu (Subir Banerjee), and paying careful attention to a series of ordinary events: Apu's father sets off to the city in search of work, leaving his

wife to take care of the children and an elderly aunt; a frugal meal is prepared; rains flatten the landscape; a train passes by; someone dies.

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You have a lot of time to think when you're locked away seven years. So criminal mastermind Doc (Sam Jaffe) conceives what he believes is the perfect heist.

As in 'The Maltese Falcon' and 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre', director John Huston explores the feverish grab for the big score and how it unravels in 'The Asphalt Jungle', a renowned tale of dishonour among thieves whose cast includes Sam Jaffe as Doc and Sterling Hayden as Doc's unflappable gundel. Louis Calhern portrays Emmerich, the shady lawyer for whom "crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavour". And rising star Marilyn Monroe grabs everyone's attention as the doxie who briefly provides Emmerich with the most gorgeous alibi ever to reach the screen.

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Set in the 1890s, West plays a brash barroom entertainer with a soft spot for men in trouble, especially the mission director, young Cary Grant. She unknowingly gets caught up in a murder, as well as a white slavery ring, and sets about clearing things up as only Mae can.

In between rescues she manages to perform some of her heated, hip-swinging classics including a steamy belting of "Frankie and Johnnie". Dripping in gems and low cut splendour, Mac is a delight for all of the senses. No one comes close to this lady's style of pure brazen wit and suggestive invitations to "Come up some time and see me?"

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You're invited to one of the most celebrated and audaciously funny hit comedies of the year - Muriel's Wedding! Follow frumpy, misguided Muriel Heslop on her lifelong quest for a glitzy fairy-tale wedding.

With visions of nuptials dancing in her head, this ABBA-obsessed misfit ditches her pathetic life and plastic friends in a small Australian suburb for big-city dreams in Sydney. But the road to the altar takes surprising twists and turns - and Muriel is about to learn the lesson of a lifetime. Wry, witty and hailed by critics everywhere, Muriel's Wedding is one affair you don't want to miss.

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Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), a brilliant, gifted young man born into a destiny beyond his understanding, must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and people.

As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet's exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence, only those who can conquer their fear will survive.

Hailed as amazing and a genuine surprise, it absolutely took New York by storm at the Capitol the week of June 11th.

Agnes Varda's classic 'Cleo from 5 to 7' from 1962 manages to successfully capture Paris at the height of the sixties in this intriguing tale expertly presented in real time about a singer (Corinne Marchand) whose life is in turmoil as she awaits a biopsy test result.

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Denigrated by the public, vilified by the critics, re-cut at the insistence of its producers, and finally banned by the French government as 'demoralising' and unpatriotic, La Regle du jeu was a commercial disaster at the time of its original release.

On the surface, a series of interlinked romantic intrigues taking place at a weekend shooting party in a country chateau, the film is in fact a study of the corruption and decay within French society on the eve of the outbreak of World War II.

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For the first time in the cinematic history of 'Spider-Man', our friendly neighbourhood hero's identity is revealed, bringing his Super Hero responsibilities into conflict with his normal life and putting those he cares about most at risk.

When he enlists Doctor Strange's (Benedict Cumberbatch)'s help to restore his secret, the spell tears a hole in their world, releasing the most powerful villains who've ever fought a Spider-Man in any universe. Now, Peter (Tom Holland) will have to overcome his greatest challenge yet, which will not only forever alter his own future but the future of the Multiverse.