ncobb-watched's - Rented List
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The Phoenician Scheme (2025)El esquema fenicio
Anatole "Zsa-zsa" Korda (Benicio del Toro) - ruthless, unscrupulous, one of the richest men in Europe - fights for his life in Wes Anderson's: 'The Phoenician Scheme'. During the final stages of a vast, decades-long, career-defining business project, Korda survives a sixth assassination attempt and must appoint a successor: his long-estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) - a nun. With personal tutor Bjorn (Michael Cera) in tow, the trio set off on a globetrotting adventure to achieve Korda's epic mission. - Director:
- Wes Anderson
- Cast:
- Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera
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Rififi (1955)Du rififi chez les hommes
Jean Servais is Tony le Stephanois, a master thief with a battered face and a tubercular cough, souvenirs of a recent stint in the pen. The ageing Tony is reluctant to return to a life of crime, but when he realizes his girlfriend has thrown him over for a rival gangster, he agrees to attempt one last job. Together with three collaborators – a young father, a boisterous Franco-Italian and a sentimental Milanese safecracker – Tony meticulously engineers his biggest heist yet: robbing the most heavily guarded jewelry store in Paris. - Director:
- Jules Dassin
- Cast:
- Jean Servais, Carl Möhner, Robert Manuel
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The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)Le chagrin et la pitié
Marcel Ophuls' four-and-a-half hour portrait of the French town of Clermont-Ferrand under German occupation from 1940-44 is one of the greatest documentaries ever made, as important as Claude Lanzmann's 'Shoah' in its value not just as a film but as an essential historical record in its own right - not least since its interviewees are all long dead. Describing the fall of France and the rise of the Resistance, with the aid of newly-shot interviews and eye-opening archive footage including newsreels and propaganda films, Ophuls painstakingly crafts a complex, nuanced picture of what really happened in France over this period. He also demolishes numerous self-serving national myths to such an extent that, although he made the film for French television, they wouldn't show it for over a decade. But, as he demonstrates again and again, the overwhelming majority of French citizens during this period weren't heroes, villains or cowards, but simply ordinary people trying to make the best of an impossible situation. And it's Ophuls' portrayal of these people, their hopes, their fears and their appalling moral quandaries, that remains unmatched in film history. - Director:
- Marcel Ophüls
- Cast:
- Georges Bidault, Matthäus Bleibinger, Charles Braun
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Like Water for Chocolate (1992)Como Agua Para Chocolate
In a Mexican border town in 1910, neighbours Pedro and Tita wish to marry, but Tita's mother Elena refuses to give her consent, since she wants her youngest daughter to stay living with her as a full-time carer. So Pedro marries Tita's sister Rosario instead - and Tita pours her innermost feelings into her cooking, triggering similar responses in anyone who samples it, whether lovelorn grief or overwhelming passion. But Tita's concoctions are just one of many magical-realist touches in this sensuous and intoxicating film, which offsets the real-life historical background of the Mexican Revolution with tales of ghosts, mysterious lights and an ancient legend that claims that human beings are essentially matches, combustible at any moment when given the right trigger. - Director:
- Alfonso Arau
- Cast:
- Marco Leonardi, Lumi Cavazos, Regina Torné
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The Eel (1997)Unaqi
With 'The Eel', the late Shohei Imamura became the only Japanese filmmaker to have twice won the Cannes Film Festival's coveted Palme d'Or. After an eight-year prison sentence for murder, Tajuro (Kôji Yakusho) chooses to start a new life as a barber in a small town, which offers perfect isolation from his fears. As a favour to the town priest he agrees to help a young woman with a troubled past by offering her job as his assistant. However, when he least expects it, her past will collide with his. - Director:
- Shôhei Imamura
- Cast:
- Misa Shimizu, Mitsuko Baishô, Kôji Yakusho
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Life is a Miracle (2004)Zivot je cudo
An irresistible blend of bawdy humor and love story, set against the turbulent backdrop of the Bosnian war of the early 90s. When the conflict breaks out, the life of mild mannered Serbian railwayman Luka is turned upside down as his neurotic opera-singing wife runs off with a musician and his son Milos is called up to fight and subsequently captured. A plan is hatched to exchange Milos for a hostage - a pretty young Muslim nurse, whom Luka is assigned to guard - but in the midst of the chaos around him, Luka can't help himself from falling in love with his captive. - Director:
- Emir Kusturica
- Cast:
- Slavko Stimac, Natasa Tapuskovic, Vesna Trivalic
- Formats:
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Life Is Beautiful (1997)La Vita e Bella
Guido - a charming but bumbling waiter who's gifted with a colourful imagination and an irresistible sense of humour - has won the heart of the woman he loves and created a beautiful life for his young family. But then that life is threatened by World War II... and Guido must rely on those very same strengths to save his beloved wife and son from an unthinkable fate! - Director:
- Roberto Benigni
- Cast:
- Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Giorgio Cantarini
- Formats:
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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). - Director:
- Edward Berger
- Cast:
- Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow
- Formats:
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Evil Does Not Exist (2023)Aku wa sonzai shinai
Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) and his daughter Hana (Ryô Nishikawa) live in Mizubiki Village, close to Tokyo. Like generations before them, they live a modest life according to the cycles and order of nature. One day, the village inhabitants become aware of a plan to build a glamping site near Takumi's house; offering city residents a comfortable 'escape' to nature. When two company representatives from Tokyo arrive in the village to hold a meeting, it becomes clear that the project will have a negative impact on the local water supply, causing unrest. The agency's mismatched intentions endanger both the ecological balance of the nature plateau and their way of life, with an aftermath that affects Takumi's life deeply. - Director:
- Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
- Cast:
- Hitoshi Omika, Ryô Nishikawa, Ryûji Kosaka
- Formats:
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Red Sorghum (1987)Hong gao liang
As outlined by an unseen, anonymous narrator, "Sorghum" tells of the life between "Grandmother" and "Grandfather". The woman is a bride-to-be en-route to an arranged wedding with an aging leprous winemaker, when she is saved from a bandit attack by one of the bearers of her sedan. After the untimely death of the winemaker, she is re-united with the bearer and they endure continuous travails with banditry, pestilence and war with Japanese. - Director:
- Yimou Zhang
- Cast:
- Li Gong, Wen Jiang, Rujun Ten
- Formats:
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The Night the of Shooting Stars (1982)La Notte Di San Lorenzo
It's the summer of 1944, after the fall of Mussolini. As the Germans take control of Italy from the north and the Allies do the same from the south, ordinary Italians face a deadly conflict of loyalties. Paolo and Vittorio Taviani lived through this as teenagers, and they later turned their memories and those of countless compatriots into this extraordinarily rich and vivid evocation of the most terrifying time in their native Tuscany's history, where even the most respected authority figures can no longer be trusted and seemingly throwaway decisions can prove fatal. The Tavianis' creative masterstroke was to present all this through the eyes of a six-year-old girl, who despite the death and destruction around her is having the most exciting time of her life. - Director:
- Paolo Taviani
- Cast:
- Omero Antonutti, Margarita Lozano, Claudio Bigagli
- Formats:
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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. - Director:
- František Vlácil
- Cast:
- Josef Kemr, Antonie Hegerlíková, Magda Vásáryová
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The Valley of the Bees (1968)Udoli Vcel
A visionary medieval epic, Vlacil's dazzling film is as powerful and engrossing as his more famous Marketa Lazarova. It chronicles the tale of a young boy forced to join the Order of the Teutonic Knights. Reaching adulthood he abandons the Crusaders, only to be pursued by a fanatical comrade and pay a terrible price for his rejection of the Holy Order. The film is a haunting moral fable examining the timeless conflict between human nature and dogmatism. Released just before the '68 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the film's theme was given a political interpretation and its screenings severely restricted by the authorities. - Director:
- František Vlácil
- Cast:
- Petr Cepek, Jan Kacer, Vera Galatíková
- Formats:
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Belle Epoque (1992)Прекрасна епоха
Winner of numerous awards including an Oscar for best foreign film, Belle Epoque is a sensual, uninhibited comedy starring Penelope Cruz. Set in a sun-drenched Spanish countryside of 1931, the film tells the story of Fernando, a deserter from the war who is befriended and given shelter by an amiable artist. When his hosts four beautiful daughters arrive a classic farce ensues as Fernando is seduced by one amorous sister after the other in this funny, sexy and heart-warming celebration of love and desire. - Director:
- Fernando Trueba
- Cast:
- Fernando Fernán Gómez, Jorge Sanz, Penélope Cruz
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Kiju Yoshida: Love + Anarchism (1973)Erosu purasu gyakusatsu / Rengoku eroica / Kaigenrei
The work of Kiju Yoshida is one of Japanese cinema's obscure pleasures. A contemporary of Nagisa Oshima (Death by Hanging, In the Realm of the Senses) and Masahiro Shinoda (Pale Flower, Assassination), Yoshida started out as an assistant to Keisuke Kinoshita before making his directorial debut at age 27. In the decades that followed he produced more than 20 features and documentaries, yet each and every one has proven difficult to see in the English-speaking world. This collection brings together three works from the late sixties and early seventies, a loose trilogy united by their radical politics and an even more radical shooting style. 'Eros + Massacre', presented here in both its 169-minute theatrical version and the full-length 220-minute director's cut, tells the parallel stories of early 20th-century anarchist (and free love advocate) Sakae Osugi and a pair of student activists. Their stories interact and intertwine, resulting in a complex, rewarding work that is arguably Yoshida s masterpiece. 'Heroic Purgatory' pushes the dazzling cinematic language of 'Eros + Massacre' even further, presenting a bleak but dreamlike investigation into the political discourses taking place in early seventies Japan. 'Coup d'état' returns to the past for a biopic of Ikki Kita, the right-wing extremist who sought to overthrow the government in 1936. Yoshida considered the film to be the culmination of his work, promptly retiring from feature filmmaking following its completion. - Director:
- Yoshishige Yoshida
- Cast:
- Mariko Okada, Toshiyuki Hosokawa, Yûko Kusunoki
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