mpb's - Rented List

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At 14, school friends Steve 'Lips' Kudlow and Rob Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, went on to become the 'demigods of Canadian metal', releasing one of the heaviest albums in metal history, 1982's Metal on Metal.

The album influenced a musical generaton including Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax, that went on to sell millions of records. But Anvil's career took a different path - straight to obscurity. Anvil The Story of Anvil is a timeless, and at times hilarious, feel good tale of survival and the unadulterated passion it takes to follow your dream. Directed by Sasha Gervasi, we follow the band as they attempt one last shot at the big time with their thirteenth album 'This is Thirteen' and a calamitous European tour. You don't have to be a metal head to love Anvil. This is an inspirational, heart warming and uplifting tale of two best friends who refuse to give up on their dream. Metal on Metal forever!

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Hero to some, outlaw to others, Ned Kelly (George MacKay) throws a long shadow over Australian history. Spanning his life from his younger years to the time leading up to his death, the film follows the story of this legendary figure.

Nurtured by the notorious bushranger Harry Power (Russell Crowe) and fuelled by the unfair arrest of his mother (Essie Davis), Kelly recruits a wild bunch of warriors to plot a campaign of anarchy and rebellion that will grip the entire country. Youth and tragedy collide with violent and explosive consequences but at the beating heart of this riveting tale is the fractured and powerful bond between a mother and son.

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In this Oscar-winning farce, Cary Grant (in the role that first defined the Cary Grant persona) and Irene Dunne exude charm, cunning, and artless affection as an urbane couple who, fed up with each others infidelities, resolve to file for divorce.

But try as they might to move on, the mischievous Jerry can't help meddling in Lucy's ill-matched engagement to a corn-fed Oklahoma businessman (Ralph Bellamy), and a mortified Lucy begins to realize that she may be saying goodbye to the only dance partner capable of following her lead. Directed by the versatile Leo McCarey, a master of improvisation and slapstick as well as a keen and sympathetic observer of human folly, 'The Awful Truth' is a warm but unsparing comedy about two people whose flaws only make them more irresistible.

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The first and possibly the greatest pairing of Lugosi and Karloff is one of the darkest, most macabre horrors ever made. Dr.

Werdegast (Bela Lugosi), a POW for fifteen years has been freed and now seeks news of his wife and daughter and vengeance on Hjalmar Poelzig, the man whose betrayal lead to his imprisonment and the deaths of thousands of his countrymen during the war. He tracks him down to the castle he has built on the site of their old fortress and soon discovers the diabolical secrets held within its walls. Poelzig is now the leader of a satanic cult, engaging in macabre practises and rituals. One man's pure evil against the others tormented need for revenge leads to an absorbing battle and a shocking climax.

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Former Police officer Nishi (Takeshi Kitano) feels responsible for the shattered lives of his loved ones. His partner Horibe (Ren Ôsugi) has been crippled in a disastrous stakeout, a colleague is shot dead by the same villain, and his own wife has a terminal illness.

In debt to a yakuza loanshark, Nishi conceives a bank robbery to provide for his partner, help the dead cop's widow, and take one last holiday throughout Japan with his wife and share a final taste of happiness...

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Fiona Maye (Emma Thompson) is an eminent judge in the Family Division of the High Court, making daily decisions about complex family issues. But her workload is heavy, and her marriage to American professor Jack (Stanley Tucci) is at breaking point.

In this moment of personal crisis, Fiona is asked to rule on the case of Adam (Fionn Whitehead), a brilliant and beautiful teenager who is refusing on religious grounds the blood transfusion which will save his life. Wanting to hear from Adam before making her decision, Fiona goes to his hospital bedside. Their extraordinary meeting releases strong emotions, with momentous consequences for both of them as Fiona decides whether Adam should live or die.

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In one of cinemas most influential, and gripping, roles, James Dean plays Jim Stark, the new kid in town whose loneliness, frustration and anger mirrored those of most postwar teens - and reverberates more than 40 years later.

Natalie Wood (as Jim's girlfriend Judy) and Sal Mineo (in his screen debut as Jim's tag-along pal Plato) were Academy Award nominees for their achingly true performances.

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"Little Caesar" is the tale of pugnacious Caesar Enrico Bandello (Edward G. Robinson), a hoodlum with a Chicago-sized chip on his shoulder, few attachments, fewer friends and no sense of underworld diplomacy.

And Robinson - a genteel art collector who disdained guns (in the movie, his eyelids were taped to keep them from blinking when he fired a pistol) - was forever associated with the screen's archetypal gangster.

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In a world ravaged by crime, the entire island of Manhattan has been converted to a walled prison where brutal prisoners roam.

But when the US president (Donald Pleasence) crash-lands inside, only one man can bring him back: notorious outlaw and former special forces war hero Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), but time is short. In 24 hours, an explosive device implanted in his neck will end Snake's mission - and his life - unless he succeeds.

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Mary (Kim Hunter) travels to New York to discover the reason for her sister Jacqueline's sudden disappearance. The cosmetics shop that Jacqueline (Jean Brooks) owned has been sold and her rented room is empty, save for a solitary chair and a noose.

Suspecting that her sister is under the influence of Satanists, Mary hires a private detective to stakeout the shop at night, but she then discovers that he has been murdered. Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway) contacts Mary to explain that he is a psychiatrist and that Jacqueline is under his care because she is mentally ill. But when Jacqueline vanishes again, it becomes clear to Mary that she in the clutches of a satanic cult whose penalty for revealing anything about themselves is death. Six people have already been murdered... will Jacqueline become the seventh victim?

Attorney Ned Racine's life coasts along in neutral - until he meets a siren in white (with a well-to-do husband) named Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner). Ned (William Hurt) knows Matty's the kind of woman a man would kill to be with. So he does.

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When callous thugs beat Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) senseless and viciously murder the gorgeous blonde he's been trying to help, the hard-boiled detective retaliates the only way he can: by hitting first and asking questions later.

Cutting a brutal swathe through the city's sleazy underside, Hammer uncovers a mysterious black container whose deadly contents not only solve the murder...but trigger an apocalyptic climax as well!

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"Weekend" follows a bickering, scheming bourgeois couple who leave Paris for the French countryside to claim an inheritance by nefarious means.

Almost immediately, they become entangled in a cataclysmic traffic jam, which is just the beginning of a journey fraught with violence and dangerous encounters: rape, murder, pillage and even cannibalism.

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In 1961, Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent), a 60 year old taxi driver, stole Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. It was the first (and remains the only) theft in the Gallery's history.

Kempton sent ransom notes saying that he would return the painting on condition that the government invested more in care for the elderly - he had long campaigned for pensioners to receive free television. What happened next became the stuff of legend. Only 50 years later did the full story emerge - Kempton had spun a web of lies. The only truth was that he was a good man, determined to change the world and save his marriage - how and why he used the Duke to achieve that is a wonderfully uplifting tale.

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Set against a background of deceit and wife swapping in the 1970s, 'The Ice Storm' is acclaimed director Ang Lee's extraordinary tale of sexual jealousy. Ben Hood (Kevin Kline) is having an affair with his neighbour Janey (Sigourney Weaver).

His wife (Joan Allen) is fast losing patience with his clumsy lies. Meanwhile his daughter Wendy (Christina Ricci), is finding new games to play with boys next door and son Paul (Tobey Maguire) has escaped to the city to try and seduce an alluring rich girl. As night falls and the members of the family embark on their separate sexual odysseys, an ice storm hits the East Coast, the worst in 30 years. The events of that night, both comic and tragic, force the Hood family to come face to face with the harsh realities that exist in their lives.