ncobb-watched's - Rented List

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When a fellow traveler dies suddenly, burned-out journalist David Locke (Jack Nicholson) assumes his identity. Using the dead man's datebook as a guide, Locke travels throughout Europe and Africa, taking meetings with dangerous gun runners and falling for a beguiling young woman (Maria Schneider).

But his exciting newfound freedom carries a fateful price as Locke gradually realizes he is in over his head.

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The triumph of the human spirit is the theme of Rosi's epic film, in which Carlo Levi is exiled in 1935 by the ruling fascist dictatorship to a poverty-stricken village in the Basilicata region of southern Italy.

Levi finds himself in a stark world little changed since the middle ages in which the peasants scratch a meagre living from the land. But as Levi grapples with this new environment, it is the peasants' wisdom, humanity and spirit that help him to cope with his sense of helplessness and isolation.

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Black Cat White Cat is a riotous mix of farce, romance and crime. Set within a community of gypsies, it tells a story of dodgy deals, family ties, young love and magical occurrences.

Zare is a young man in love with the beautiful Ida, but his crooked father, having botched up a black market deal, intends to marry him off to the sister of a powerful gangster - a woman so tiny that her nickname is Ladybird. Set on the banks of the Danube, this colourful comedy is crammed with spectacle, incident and the music of Emir Kusturica's famous travelling gypsy band.

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This extraordinarily dramatic black tragicomedy is an epic tale of love, friendship and betrayal set against the complex historical backdrop of the former Yugoslavia.

The story follows two likeable crooks - Marko (Miki Manojlovic), a charmer who manipulates everyone within his reach, and the foolish but loveable Blacky (Lazar Ristovski) - and Natalija (Mirjana Jokovic), an actress of easy virtue with whom they are both in love. The three become embroiled in a world of conflict, self-delusion and deceit - but where there are also moments of tenderness and love - in this visionary allegory of Balkan vitality, energy, humour and the will to survive.

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Perhan (Davor Dujmovic) is a Gypsy teenager with the ability to move objects with his mind. A criminal named Ahmed (Bora Todorovic) convinces him to leave his devoted grandmother (Ljubica Adzovic) and loving girlfriend, and to use his powers to make some money illegally.

While becoming a man and learning the trade of crime, the boy searches for his sister (who was supposed to have a leg operation) and tries to save money to realize his fantasy of returning home to marry the woman of his dreams.

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Set amidst the glittering theatre world of 19th century Paris, the story revoles around the beautiful and free-spirted courtesan, Garanace, and the four men who compete for her affections; a mime-artist, an actor, an aristocrat and a criminal.

As the melodrama unfolds, we are treated to one of cinema's greatest love stories, a captivating tale of passion, deception and murder.

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In Shogun-era Japan, the powerful and sadistic Lord Naritsugu threatens to shatter the country's fragile peace and plunge it once more into war. Determined to stop him at all costs, an elite group of renegade samurai - each with their own deadly skill - plot his downfall.

Massively outnumbered, the thirteen fearless warriors must face Naritsugu's lethal army in a monumental and bloodily violent showdown.

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Tony Takitani had a solitary childhood. Used to being self-sufficient, Tony seems to find emotions illogical and immature; until he meets and becomes fascinated by Eiko, a beautiful young woman who, in turn, is fascinated by high end fashion. Eventually Tony marries Eiko, and his life changes.

He feels vibrantly alive and for the first time he understands, and fears, loneliness. But Eiko's obsession with designer clothes begins to worry Tony. When he asks her to economize, the consequences are tragic.

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In this visually stunning drama, three romantic tales are told using elements of Japanese Bunraku puppet theater. In the first, Sawako (Miho Kanno) becomes suicidal when her fiance, Matsumoto (Hidetoshi Nishijima), leaves her to marry the boss's daughter.

Next, an obsessed fan, Nukui (Tsutomu Takeshige), expresses his love for pop singer Haruna (Kyoko Fukada) in a highly violent manner. Then, aging gangster Hiro (Tatsuya Mihashi) attempts to reconnect with an old flame (Chieko Matsubara).

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Based on a true story, this is the story of one of Japan's most notorious scandals. An ex-prostitute enters service in a household and promptly begins an obsessive and sexually perverse affair with the master. What starts as a casual diversion escalates into a passion that holds no bounds.

The intensity of the affair and the couple's mutual appetite for exploring the physical and sexual limits of their love-making completely overwhelms them and the strain of the relationship takes its toll on all concerned.

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A Japanese box-office sensation in 1968, Kuroneko is a sparse, atmospheric horror story, adhering to Kaneto Shindo's philosophy of using beauty and purity to evoke emotion.

Eccentric and more overtly supernatural than its breakthrough companion piece, Onibaba (1964), Kuroneko revisits similar themes to reveal a haunting meditation on duty, conformity and love. In this magnificently eerie and romantic film - loosely based on the Japanese folktale The Cat's Return - a mother and daughter-in-law (Nobuko Otowa and Kiwako Taichi) are raped and murdered by pillagers, but return from the dead as vampiric cat spirits intent on revenge. As the ghosts lure soldiers into the bamboo groves, a fearless samurai, Gintoki (Kichiemon Nakamura), is sent to stop their reign of terror.

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Made under the Franco regime, Victor Erice's astonishing 1973 feature debut is quite simply one of the most remarkable, influential and purely poignant films to emerge from the 1970's. A bona-fide classic of European cinema, the film brought Erice instant and widespread acclaim.

An audacious critique of the disastrous legacy of the Spanish Civil War, 'The Spirit of the Beehive' is set in a rural 1940's Spanish village haunted by betrayal and regret. Following a travelling cinema's screening of James Whale's Frankenstein, seven year-old Ana (the mesmerising Ana Torrent, later to grow into an international star of some standing) becomes fascinated with Boris Karloff's monster. Obsessed with meeting the initially gentle creation, she transfers her entrancement to tending a wounded army deserter. Atmospherically rendered by legendary Director of Photography Luis Cuadrado, it's impeccably performed by both Torrent and veteran actor Fernando Fernan Gomez in the role of her emotionally scarred, bee-keeping father. Existing in a highly evocative dreamlike state, it's a powerfully symbolic, richly allegorical tale that is as unique as it is beautiful.

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Since the death of his wife, Seibei's main concern is for his family. Invitations for drinks with fellow workers are refused in favour of getting home, and Seibei earns the nickname 'Twilight Samurai'.

Soon, a chance meeting with an old friend brings news of a lost childhood love, and a reunion makes an emotional impact upon both Seibei and his two daughters. But the woman is still married, and Seibei is forced to defend her honour by fighting the overbearing husband. As news of his fighting skills travels, Seibei is ordered by the ruling clan to serve as a Samurai in a matter of great importance. Stylish, moving and evocative, The Twilight Samurai tells the tale of a low-ranking retainer whose struggle to keep his family, and maintain his honour without resorting to the violence he denounces, is tested at every level.

When high-schooler Makoto (Miyuki Kuwano) is saved from the advances of a lecherous middle-aged man by uni student Kiyoshi (Yûsuke Kawazu), the pair embark on a fits-and-starts affair that finally settles into a sexually extortionary, mutually exploitative dependency that promises to spell their relationship's doom.

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The culmination of Imamura's extraordinary examinations of the fringes of Japanese society throughout the 1960s, Profound Desires of the Gods was an 18-month super-production which failed to make an impression at the time of its release, but has since risen in stature to become one of the most

legendary — albeit least seen — Japanese films of recent decades. Presenting a vast chronicle of life on the remote Kurage Island, the film centres on the disgraced, superstitious, interbred Futori family and the Tokyo engineer sent to supervise the creation of a new well — an encounter which leads to both conflict and complicity in strange and powerful ways.