ncobb-watched's - Rented List
-
Cria Cuervos (1976)Raise Ravens
Shot in the summer of 1975 as General Franco lay dying, Saura's masterpiece takes its title from a sinister Spanish proverb: 'Raise ravens and they'll pluck out your eyes'. A subtle yet unmistakable indictment of the family as a repressive force in Spanish society, 'Cria cuervos' centres on an eight-year-old orphan (the spellbinding Ana Torrent) who believes herself to have poisoned her cold, authoritarian father (Hector Alterio), a high-ranking military man whom she blames for the death of her adored mother (Geraldine Chaplin). - Director:
- Carlos Saura
- Cast:
- Geraldine Chaplin, Mónica Randall, Florinda Chico
- Formats:
-
-
This smash hit futuristic comedy is a fresh and sublimely entertaining tale from French filmmakers, Jeunet (Amelie) and Caro. In a starving, post-holocaust France, a butcher keeps his customers supplied by his cannibalistic tendencies. But when his daughter falls in love with a circus performer, only an underground band of vegetarian freedom fighters can save her beloved from the meat cleaver. - Director:
- Marc Caro
- Cast:
- Marie-Laure Dougnac, Dominique Pinon, Pascal Benezech
- Formats:
-
-
Tales from the Golden Age (2009)Amintiri din epoca de aur
To warm and often hilarious effect, Mungiu combines several urban legends to portray a time during which food was more important than money, freedom more important than love and survival more important than principles. As he does so, he subtly and comically unseats the propagandist myth that Ceausescu's Romania was the "golden age" of communism. - Director:
- Hanno Höfer
- Cast:
- Diana Cavallioti, Radu Iacoban, Vlad Ivanov
- Formats:
-
-
Cronos (1993)La invención de Cronos / Chronos
Combining a surreal and distinctive take on the classic vampire yarn with an allegory about US/Mexican relations, 'Cronos' concerns elderly antique dealer Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi) who, with his eight-year-old granddaughter Aurora (Tamara Shanath), discovers an ancient artifact that once belonged to a 16th-century alchemist. Unbeknownst to Gris, the device - which resembles an ornate mechanical beetle - houses an immortal parasite that will grant eternal life to its host. The cost? An extreme aversion to daylight and an agonising thirst for human blood. Hot on the trail of the device is a dying millionaire (Claudio Brook) and his brutish nephew (Ron Perlman). - Director:
- Guillermo Del Toro
- Cast:
- Federico Luppi, Jorge Martínez de Hoyos, Ron Perlman
- Formats:
-
-
The Red Squirrel (1993)La Ardilla Roja
Contemplating suicide as he stands against the parapet of a pier one summer night, ex-pop star Jota is interrupted by a sudden motorcycle accident. Rushing to the scene he discovers that the injured biker is an attractive young woman suffering from amnesia. Masquerading as her boyfriend, he names her Lisa, invents a shared history for the two of them and whisks her off on a holiday to the Red Squirrel campsite. Here he reinforces his deception by keeping up the facade of their long-term relationship in front of the other campers. However, it is not long before Jota has to confront the surprising consequences of his lie, as there is more to Lisa than meets the eye... - Director:
- Julio Medem
- Cast:
- Emma Suárez, Nancho Novo, María Barranco
- Formats:
-
-
Lovers of the Arctic Circle (1998)Los amantes del Circulo Polar
A passionate and secret love story as told by each one of the protagonists, Ana and Otto, from the age of eight until the age of twenty five. It all starts in 1980, when after school a girl and a boy start to run for different reasons. Since that afternoon when the world escaped from their grasp, the lives of Ana and Otto will be intertwined in a single circle that will begin to close seventeen years later, in Finland, on the very edge of the arctic circle. - Director:
- Julio Medem
- Cast:
- Najwa Nimri, Fele Martínez, Nancho Novo
- Formats:
-
-
Sex and Lucia (2001)Lucía y el sexo
Lucia is a young waitress working in a restaurant in the centre of Madrid. After the loss of her long-term boyfriend, a writer, she seeks refuge on a quiet, secluded Mediterranean island. There, bathed in an atmosphere of fresh air and dazzling sun, Lucia begins to discover the dark corners of her past relationship, experienced as if through the forbidden passages of a novel which the author allows her to read from afar. - Director:
- Julio Medem
- Cast:
- Paz Vega, Tristán Ulloa, Najwa Nimri
- Formats:
-
-
Landscape in the Mist (1988)Topio Stin Omichli
Two children, Voula (Tania Palaiologou) and her young brother Alexander (Michalis Zeke), run away from their Athens home to search for their father, whom their mother has told them lives in Germany. Boarding an express train, the children begin an epic journey into the chaos of the world and away from the innocence of childhood. Beautifully photographed by Giorgios Arvanitis and referencing several of Angelopoulos' earlier works, this extraordinary coming of age tale paints a dark portrait of Greece in the eighties - a country caught between its past and present, struggling to find a place in the future. - Director:
- Theodoros Angelopoulos
- Cast:
- Michalis Zeke, Tania Palaiologou, Stratos Tzortzoglou
- Formats:
-
-
The Hunters (1977)Oi kynigoi
Whilst crossing a snowy mountainside, a group of modern-day hunters are astonished to discover the corpse of a Greek guerrilla fighter from the 1949 civil war with wounds still fresh. At the subsequent inquest set up to explain the impossible phenomenon, the group is called upon to give evidence. As they speak of their experiences during the civil war and the years that followed, each is revealed to be in part responsible for the man's death. Highly symbolic and at times surreal, the country's political right is held to account for its past crimes in Theo Angelopoulos' impassioned and powerful film. - Director:
- Theodoros Angelopoulos
- Cast:
- Mairi Hronopoulou, Eva Kotamanidou, Aliki Georgouli
- Formats:
-
-
Alexander the Great (1980)O Megalexandros
The most controversial film by Theo Angelopoulos tells the story of the Greek bandit Alexander (Omero Antonutti) at the turn of the twentieth century. Escaped from prison, he kidnaps a party of English aristocrats and demands as ransom that his band of anarchist socialists are granted amnesty and that landowners turn their property over to the local peasants. But when the group reaches its mountain stronghold, internal tensions arise which threaten to bring about disaster. Taking inspiration from ancient cultural myth and actual historical events, Angelopoulos' visually stunning film presents a challenging and complex portrait of a revolutionary leader. - Director:
- Theodoros Angelopoulos
- Cast:
- Omero Antonutti, Grigoris Evangelatos, Norman Mozzato
- Formats:
-
-
The Reconstruction (1970)Anaparastasi
Theo Angelopoulos' first feature tells the compelling true story of a crime of passion. In a remote village in Northern Greece, a middle-aged woman and her lover murder her husband and bury the body in the garden. But as they attempt to flee the country, their escape plan fails and they return to the village just as the investigation into the husband's disappearance begins. Largely performed by the people of the village where the actual murder took place, 'The Reconstruction' is a multi-layered study of a crime and of the wider problems facing Greek society, which marked Angelopoulos as a filmmaker of great talent and individuality. - Director:
- Theo Angelopoulos
- Cast:
- Toula Stathopoulou, Yannis Totsikas, Thanos Grammenos
- Formats:
-
-
The Beekeeper (1986)O Melissokomos
Distinguished Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos directs the great Marcello Mastroianni in this extraordinary and beautifully photographed tale of self-discovery. Mastroianni plays Spyros, a schoolmaster of late middle-age who is disenchanted and unfulfilled by life. Deciding to undertake a solitary journey to find emerging springtime flowers for his cherished beehives, Spyros encounters a young female hitchhiker with whom he begins to become obsessed. Charged with quiet emotional intensity, The Beekeeper' is a moving and powerful film about a man's struggle to find release from the spectre of the past. - Director:
- Theodoros Angelopoulos
- Cast:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Nadia Mourouzi, Serge Reggiani
- Formats:
-
-
Before the Rain (1994)Antes de la lluvia
Before the Rain unravels within an unstable and hostile climate where ingrained anxiety and Fears of the past and present and political unrest lead to hate and violence. Comprising of three stories, Words, Faces and Pictures. Each focus on conflicted love haunted by a greater context. Both doomed by history and complicated by love. In Words we meet Kiril a young monk who has taken a vow of silence in a reclusive monastery. He meets Zamira a young Albanian girl who stands accused of murder and on the run from a revenge mob. In Faces we meet Aleksander, a disillusioned war photographer just returned from assignment and hoping to rekindle and relocate his affair with Anne a married London based picture editor. The final story, Pictures, sees Aleksander return to his native village in Macedonia, now politically divided. Despite the cost, he helps Hana, his first love, whose daughter is accused of murder. Set mostly in Macedonia during the early 1990s the film occupies a time just after the countries independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. - Director:
- Milcho Manchevski
- Cast:
- Katrin Cartlidge, Rade Serbedzija, Grégoire Colin
- Formats:
-
-
No Man's Land (2001)Nicija Zemlja
Against the sunny landscape of a Bosnian summer, two enemy soldiers are trapped in a trench in no man's land. The world's press watch as a French UN sergeant battles with a British colonel to negotiate their safety. And the only people who speak the same language are the men fighting each other for survival in the trench. Surprisingly funny, strikingly moving, 'No Man's Land' is a portrait of the petty normality, not only of one particular war, but of all conflicts everywhere. - Director:
- Danis Tanovic
- Cast:
- Branko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac, Filip Sovagovic
- Formats:
-
-
An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker (2013)Epizoda u životu beraca željeza
Winner of 2 Silver Bears at the Berlin Film Festival, the film reconstructs (using the actual people involved) a real incident that became a national scandal - Nazif and his wife Senada are from Bosnia's Roma community, living with their two young daughters in a remote village. Nazif makes just enough to keep them going, by salvaging metal from old cars. But when Senada has a miscarriage and requires surgery, she does not have the card for free treatment. Though the sum being asked is not huge, it's far beyond Nazif's means. Each day that Senada continues without being operated on risks death from septicaemia. With time running out, Nazif must desperately try to raise the money from more and more scrap whilst pleading for help from state institutions that try to ignore him. It's both an expose of the plight of the poor in the region, and a depiction of one Roma family's huge courage and will to survive. - Director:
- Danis Tanovic
- Cast:
- Nazif Mujic, Senada Alimanovic, Semsa Mujic
- Formats:
-