mpb's - Rented List

Show moreShow less

A keen observer of America's social fabric, writer-director John Sayles uncovers the haunted past buried beneath a small Texas border town in this sprawling neowestern mystery.

When a skeleton is discovered in the desert, lawman Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper), son of a legendary local sheriff, begins an investigation that will have profound implications both for him personally and for all of Rio County, a place still reckoning with its history of racial violence. Sayles's masterful film - novelistic in its intricacy and featuring a brilliant ensemble cast, including Joe Morton, Elizabeth Peña, and Kris Kristofferson - quietly subverts national mythmaking and lays bare the fault lines of life at the border.

A Parisian bookseller, Lestingois, fishes Boudu, a vagrant, out of the river Seine. He befriends the tramp and puts him up at home, where Boudu causes nothing but trouble. However, events take a different turn when Boudu wins the lottery...

Show moreShow less

London, 1953. Mr. Williams, played by Bill Nighy, is a veteran civil servant, a cog in the city's stifling bureaucracy as it struggles to rebuild following WWII. After a shattering health diagnosis, it dawns on him he has not been living his life to the full.

Amidst the fog of his paperwork, and his loneliness at home, he yearns to find fulfilment before it's too late. He is encouraged in his search by two younger colleagues - the vibrant Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood) and idealistic new recruit Peter (Alex Sharp) - and a hedonistic stranger, Sutherland (Tom Burke), encountered during a desperate trip to the seaside.

Hapless family man Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) finds his life turned upside down when millions of strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. But when his nighttime appearances take a nightmarish turn, Paul is forced to navigate his newfound stardom...

Show moreShow less

In 1929, F. W.

Mufnau, one of the greatest of all film directors, invited leading documentarist Robert Flaherty to collaborate on a film to be shot on location in Tahiti, a Polynesian idyll in which Murnau imagined a cast of island actors would provide a new form of authentic drama and offer rare insight into their "primitive" culture. The result of their collaboration was Tabu, a film that depicts the details of indigenous island life to tell a mythical tale that is rich in the universal themes of desire and loss. Subtitled "A Story of the South Seas", Tabu concerns a Tahitian fisherman and his love for a young woman whose body has been consecrated to the gods, rendering her tabu as far as mortal men are concerned. The lovers flee their island and its restrictive traditions, but will their love prevail in the "civilised" world?

Show moreShow less

One of the all time classic French films. Made in 1931, this is one of the first French talkies.

Pre dating Chaplin's Modern Times by 5 years (and the subject of a bitter court case stopped when Rene Clair stated that imitation is the finest form of flattery) and leading the way in a satirical attack on the machine age, Rene Clair created a wicked comedy on the dehumanisation of industrial workers. When Louis (Raymond Cordy) and Emile (Henri Marchand), two prison inmates, attempt to escape, Louis is caught and returned to his cell, while Emile succeeds and becomes a successful businessman. On Louis' release he goes to work for Emile but finds the industrial world no better than the prison regime. When Emile is recognised as an escaped convict he and Louis decide to escape the confines of the factory by taking to the road as tramps.

Show moreShow less

In this ravishing tale of romantic obsession, loneliness and friendship, Director Pedro Almodovar crafts a life affirming story of two tragic women and the men who love them. After a chance encounter at a theatre, two men, Benigno and Marco, meet at a private clinic where Benigno works.

Lydia, Marco's girlfriend and a bullfighter by profession, has been injured and is gravely ill. It so happens that Benigno is looking after another woman in the clinic, Alicia, a young ballet student. The lives of the four characters will flow in all directions, past, present and future, urging them towards an unexpected destiny.

Harrison Ford returns to the role of the legendary hero archaeologist, Indiana Jones, for this highly anticipated final instalment of the iconic franchise - a big, globe-trotting, rip-roaring adventure!

Show moreShow less

Dovzhenko's landmark 'film poem' style brings to life the collective experience of life for the Ukranian workers, examining natural cycles through his epic montage. He explores life, death, violence, sex and other issues as they relate to the collective farms.

An idealistic vision of the possibilities of communism made just before Stalinism set in and the Kulack class was liquidated, 'Earth' was viewed negatively by many soviets because of its portrayal of death and other dark issues that come with revolution.

Show moreShow less

"The Old Oak" is a special place. Not only is it the last pub standing, but it's also the only remaining public space where people can meet in a once thriving mining community that has now fallen on hard times after 30 years of decline.

TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner) the landlord hangs on to 'The Old Oak' by his fingertips, and his predicament is endangered even more when the pub becomes contested territory after the arrival of Syrian refugees who are placed in the village without any notice. In an unlikely friendship TJ meets a curious young Syrian Yara (Ebla Mari) with her camera. Can they find a way for the two communities to understand each other? So unfolds a deeply moving drama about their fragilities and hopes.

Show moreShow less

Jodie Comer "makes her mark" (Owen Gleiberman) in this thought-provoking drama set during the 14th century in France from visionary filmmaker Ridley Scott.

Based on actual events, the film centres on one woman's (Comer) accusation that she was brutally attacked by Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), her husband Jean de Carrouges' (Matt Damon) friend. Now, in order to prove his wife's claim, de Carrouges must fight Le Gris to the death, the victor believed to be determined by God. All three lives hang in the balance in this gripping, cinematic film also starring Ben Affleck as Le Gris' scheming ally, Count d'Alençon.

Show moreShow less

Alice White (Anny Ondra) is frustrated with her police officer boyfriend Frank (John Longden) as he neglects her in favour of his work. To spite him, she arranges to meet another man. When he tries to rape her, she ends up killing him in defence.

The case gets assigned to Frank who realises that Alice is the murderer, but it seems someone else knows too as Alice begins to receive threats of blackmail from an anonymous source.

Show moreShow less

Los Angeles, city of angels. Amnesiac and wounded, a mysterious femme fatale wanders on the sinuous road of Mulholland Drive. She finds a shelter at Betty's house (Naomi Watts). an aspiring actress just arrived from her hometown and in search of stardom in Hollywood.

First of all intrigued by the stranger who calls herself Rita (Laura Elena Harring), Betty discovers that her handbag is dull of dollar bundles. The two women get to know each other better and decide to investigate in order to discover Rita's true identity....

Show moreShow less

In 1991, Nick Broomfield made "Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer". Aileen's lawyer, her born again Christian mother and the Florida state police had all been involved in trying to sell her story, that of America's first female serial killer, to the highest bidder.

Aileen herself, who was convicted of murdering seven men, ironically emerged as the most honest person. Aileen and Nick kept in touch, writing occasionally until 2002 when he was served with a subpoena to appear at her final state appeal before execution. It was at this point that Broomfield and longtime collaborator Joan Churchill, then still working on Biggie and Tupac,decided to make a second film about Aileen. "Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer" looks at Aileen's violent, tortured childhood in Troy, Michigan and her subsequent years on the road as a hitch-hiking prostitute which culminated in the murders. In her last interview, conducted by Broomfield at Aileen's request, she said she believed her mind was being controlled by radio waves. On October 9th 2002 she was executed in Florida. Shot entirely by Broomfield and Churchill, longtime collaborators who worked together on the acclaimed Kurt and Courtney, the film provides a disturbing and humane insight into the mind of a deeply paranoid yet sympathetic person. Together for the first time on video, these two films form a powerful statement against the k death penalty, raising serious questions about the US legal system and the political impetus behind Aileen's execution. Both films were used by Charlize Theron as the basis of her Oscar-winning performance as Aileen in Monster. The packed disc also features the trailer for Monster, and an exclusive interview with Broomfield about his experiences when making these two extraordinary films.

Show moreShow less

Isolation...alienation...happiness. In America they all go hand in hand. Buy a new TV and you will be happy. Still not happy? Experience alienation. Can't afford a new TV? Then live in isolation. 'Be happy', and if that doesn't work, pretend to make it work.

For the characters in Todd Solondz' award winning, subversively funny film Happiness, the struggle to attain such a state is fraught with perils both heartbreaking and hilarious.