mpb's - Rented List

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Sam Neill - in his first lead role in a feature - plays Smith, a man escaping the break-up of his marriage by finding isolation on an island off the Coromandel Peninsula.

As he settles into his new life, the country is experiencing its own turmoil: an oil embargo has led to martial law and civil war, into which Smith reluctantly finds himself increasingly involved.

When a small-town idealist Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) goes to New York to collect a $20 million inheritance, he finds romance with wisecracking journalist Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur), becomes the target of ruthless businessmen and relatives, and finally decides to give his fortune away because it's so much trouble.

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The film tells the tale of shady pickpocket Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) who steals a wallet belonging to Candy (Jean Peters) who, unbeknownst to her, is carrying microfilm containing government secrets.

Anxious to recover the film, Joey, Candy's ex-lover and the man using her as courier, convinces her to find the thief.

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Interwoven with the spectacle, madness and vibrancy of the Rio carnival, comes the multi-award winning retelling of the classic legend of Orpheus (Breno Mello) and Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro) is awash with intoxicating samba music, frenzied dancing and vibrant costumes, as

French auteur Marcel Camus unfolds the melancholy tale of love and tragedy of two people who fall rapturously in love during the annual carnival. Inspired by the ancient Greek myth of a youth who travels to the land of the dead to bring back the woman he loves, but set amongst the slums of modern-day Rio, this bittersweet romantic tragedy has charmed audiences worldwide with its sheer colour, joie de vivre and especially its music. From the opening shot of an ancient frieze of the lovers, Orpheus and Eurydice, and a guitar softly strumming the chords of the film's main musical theme to the fast-moving shots of dancers preparing for Carnival to the convulsive, infectious beat of the Latin American bossa nova beat, 'Black Orpheus' is simply a feast of sound and vision that all movie lovers will admire.

James Mason is Johnny McQueen, the idealistic leader of an illegal organisation in Northern Ireland. Shot during an armed raid he is badly wounded. Stumbling through the back streets of Belfast his friends, enemies and the police begin to close in as he tries to find a place to hide...

A visually stunning mix of horror, romance, martial arts and eastern mysticism, 'A Chinese Ghost Story' tells the immortal story of a reluctant hero who embarks on a quest to redeem the soul of an alluring fox-spirit imprisoned for all eternity by her vampiric mistress.

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Perhaps his most famous film, La Dolce Vita slices into the decadent amoral core of Roman society with Fellini's trademark attention to detail and spectacular photography.

Marcello Mastroianni plays a gossip columnist (the term 'paparazzi' derives from the in a film) who aspires to be a more serious writer but knows he never will be, because like society, he is fascinated by the decadent hedonist pursuits which are seemingly everywhere. The Vatican was appalled by the film, but the public adored it, relishing the images Fellini fed them, most notably the now infamous scene of Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg frolicking in the Trevi Fountain.

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Marcello Mastroianni is (Fellini's alter ego) Guido, a successful filmmaker who, embarking on his next film, discovers he has a complete "director's block": he has no story to tell! Harassed by his producers, his mistress (Sandra Milo) and his wife (Anouk Aimee), while struggling to find the

inspiration for his film, he increasingly retreats in dreamy recollections of his life and lovers, until fantasy, memories and reality merge in the director's mind - and on screen, in an astonishing, masterful spectacle, culminating in an electrifying triumph of optimism. As Guido-Federico says at the end of 8 1/2: "Life is a party, let's live it together!"

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Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum have "dynamite chemistry" in this "laugh-out-loud" comedy adventure. Loretta Sage's novels are filled with ancient tombs and daring adventures, but that doesn't mean she's prepared for them in real life.

When she is kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire who wants her to locate a legendary lost city, Loretta's handsome cover model, Alan, sets off on a heroic but hapless rescue mission. Thrust into an epic thrill ride through the jungle, the unlikely pair must work together to survive the elements - and each other - to find the city's fabled treasure before it's lost forever.

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Hando (Russell Crowe), the psychotic leader of a gang of marauding neo-Nazi teenagers, begins a relationship with the epileptic Gabrielle (Jacqueline McKenzie), but though they at first make a good team the courtship soon turns abusive.

Though Gabrielle has designs to take Hando away from his Life of crime and destruction, his indoctrination into a racist world viewpoint seems all-consuming. Hard-hitting and at times cruel, this sadistic drama bleeds with unpalatable truths and difficult to face up to notions of culture, identity and working-class disintegration.

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‘City Lights’ begins with an uproarious skewering of pomp and formality, ends with one of the most famous last shots in movie history and, from start to finish, so completely touches the heart and tickles the funny bone that in 1998 it was named one of the American Film Institute’s Top-100 American

Films. Talkies were well entrenched when Charles Chaplin swam against the filmmaking tide with this forever classic that’s silent except for music and sound effects. The story, involving the Tramp’s attempts to get money for an operation that will restore sight to a blind flower girl, provides a star with an ideal framework for sentiment and laughs. The tramp is variously a street sweeper, a boxer, a rich 0poseur, and a rescuer of a suicidal millionaire. His message is unspoken, but universally understood: love is blind.

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It's 1943. The Allies are determined to break Hitler's grip on occupied Europe, and plan to launch an all-out assault on Sicily; but they face an impossible challenge - how to protect the invasion force from potential annihilation.

It falls to two remarkable intelligence officers, Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen) to dream the most inspired and improbable disinformation strategy of the war - centred on the most unlikely of secret agents: a dead man. Operation Mincemeat is the extraordinary and true story of an idea that hoped to turn the tide for the Allies - taking impossibly high risks, defying logic, and testing the nerves of its creators to breaking point.

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'Apur Sansar', the adult Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee) hopes to become a writer, but his lack of finances force him to abandon his university studies. He meets an old friend Pulu (Swapan Mukherjee) and together they travel to the wedding of Pulu's cousin, Aparna (Sharmila Tagore).

When the bridegroom turns out to be insane and the wedding is cancelled, Apu agrees to marry Aparna to save her from ridicule. They return to his Calcutta apartment to start a new life and Apu comes to love his wife, but his happiness is soon shattered by a tragic turn of events.

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"Terms of Endearment" dazzled critics and audiences alike with its believable, insightful story of two captivating people, mother and daughter, unforgettably played Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger.

Jack Nicholson turns in a great comic performance as MacLaine's neighbour, a boozy, womanizing former astronaut.

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Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante), an American writer living in Rome, inadvertently witnesses a brutal attack on a woman (Eva Renzi) in a modern art gallery. Powerless to help, he grows increasingly obsessed with the incident.

Convinced that something he saw that night holds the key to identifying the maniac terrorising Rome, he launches his own investigation parallel to that of the police, heedless of the danger to both himself and his girlfriend Giulia (Suzy Kendall)...