plastic-teaspoon's - Rented List

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Castella is a rich but lonely man. He has built up a successful business but has lost sight of himself, his wife and his family in the process. Clara is a middle-aged actress who lives for the theatre but craves for a family and some security in her life.

Clara teaches English in her spare time and this is how she meets Castella. There is no obvious attraction at first but when he just happens to see her perform in the theatre she triggers something inside him. Castella begins to pursue her aggressively, attempting to break into her social circle and even shaving off his moustache. But it into her social circle and even shaving c is only when he leaves his wife and becomes more considerate and sensitive to the people around him that Clara begins to have feelings for him.

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Jack Manfred (Clive Owen) is an aspiring writer going nowhere fast. Taking a job as a casino croupier just to make ends meet, he finds himself seduced by the high stakes world of luck and chance.

As the job takes over his life and his relationship to girlfriend Marion (Gina McKee) begins to crumble, Jack's attention is caught by down-on-her-luck gambler Jani (Alex Kingston). Under pressure from her creditors, she asks Jack to be the inside man for a planned heist at the casino. It all sounds so easy. But even a pro can't predict the cards he will be dealt.

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Set in a divided Belfast in 1970, this the story of two boys whose friendship breaks down the barriers.

Based on Owen McCafferty's acclaimed play, it tells the tale of two kindred spirits obsessed with 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' and how this infatuation leads them from fantasies into petty crime. The two boys play at becoming their heroes gaining the courage against all the odds, for a daring escape to Australia.

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Set in Midwestern America, 'The Magnificent Ambersons' tells the tale of Isabel Amberson Minafer (Dolores Costello) and her son George (Tim Holt), an upper middle class family experiencing social decline at the turn of the century.

With the industrial and technological age taking full force, the chances within the family are self destructing. After the death of her husband Wilbur (Don Dillaway), Isabel is romantically linked with Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotten) whom she knew from years previous to her marriage. George, unhappy with this courtship, proceeds to do everything in his power to destroy their relationship despite falling for Eugene's daughter Lucy (Anne Baxter). Disaster strikes for the Amberson family and events do not turn out as George expected...

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Carol (Catherine Deneuve), a young French girl living in Sixties' London, is repelled, yet fascinated by men. Her radiant beauty attracts the opposite sex, but she shrinks from their advances.

Her days are spent in an intensely feminine atmosphere: working in a beauty salon, and clinging to her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux) for love. Things start to unwind however when Helen goes away with her married boyfriend (Ian Hendry). As Carol incarcerates herself in her sinister, shadowy flat, men begin to invade her dreams night and day, mixing her terror with delight as bizarre hallucinations take hold of her mind. The walls start to crack, literally, before her eyes. Finally, racked and depraved through her delirium, she is left with only one instinct towards the men who invade her life - that of a killer...

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Maria and Hermann Braun marry in Germany close to the end of World War II but are shortly separated.

Just after being sent to the Russian Front, Hermann is reported missing and, although Maria believes he is still alive, her brother in law, just returned from a POW camp in Russia, confirms his death. Alone, Maria uses her beauty and ambition to prosper in Germany's "economic miracle" of the 1950s. 'The Marriage of Maria Braun' is heartbreaking study of a woman picking herself up from the ruins of her own life, as well as a pointed metaphorical attack on a society determined to forget its past.

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Three teenagers jump 'The Beast' - the infamous train that illegal immigrants board to take them from Guatemala, through Mexico, to the American border. The journey to a better life is fraught with danger.

Facing exploitation at every turn, the only people they can trust on this perilous journey are each other.

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The convergences and complexities of life in a middle-class suburb of Recife, Brazil, are played out in mesmerising style in this stunning debut feature from film critic turned director Kleber Mendonca Filho.

Taking a broad, diverse set of strikingly realistic characters -including a bored housewife seeking solace in technology, a descendant of colonial landowners struggling with his dark, mysterious past and a security company employed to provide protection to them all - Filho paints a rich, detailed portrait of a community connected and engulfed by fear, desire and the incessant murmur of modern life. A beautifully subtle, fiercely intelligent and utterly engrossing snap-shot of present-day Brazil, this bold, compelling and endlessly intriguing film has announced one of the most exciting new voices in contemporary world cinema.

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When her father threatens to annul her marriage to a fortune-hunting playboy, spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) hops on a cross-country bus to New York, where she plans to live happily ever after with her handsome new hubby.

Romantic complications however, when she's befriended by fellow passenger Peter Warne (Clark Gable), a brash and breezy reporter who offers his help in exchange for her exclusive story.

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Melville's most personal film, rooted in his wartime experiences in the French Resistance, Army Of Shadows is a hard, tense drama, depicting man's capacity for both bravery and evil. In the winter of 1942-1943, as France exist s under German occupation, an underground cell operates in the shadows.

In the clandestine world of the Resistance, the freedom fighters work against their enemies under the constant risk of betrayal, ordinary men and women in an extraordinary situation. Suffused throughout with a mood of foreboding, the suspense, heightened with directorial mastery, reaches its peak as the Resistance attempt to free a prisoner from the Gestapo headquarters, in one of Melville's trademark set-pieces of iconic action.

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This dramatisation of John Le Carre's novel proved a landmark in British Television. It received supreme critical acclaim for the screenplay by Arthur Hopcraft, the star Alec Guiness and the camerawork of Tony Pierce-Roberts.

In Alec Guiness's first major TV role he plays George Smiley, a retired agent who is secretly brought into 'the Circus' (the code name for British Secret Intelligence Service) to root out a top-level mole. Gradually piecing together the story, the weary but determined Smiley trawls through the murky waters of Cold War espionage and his own past.

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Period piece about a Brazil that is no more. This movie is the sequel to 'God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun' (Deus e o diabo na terra do sol), and takes place 29 years after Antonio das Mortes killed Corisco (the "Blond Devil"), last of the Cangaceiros.

In 'the old days', Antonio's function in life was exterminate these bandits, on account of his personal grudges against them. His life had been meaningless for the last 29 years, but now, a new challenge awaits him. When a Cangaceiro appears in Jardim Das Piranhas, the local land Baron (Jofre Soares), an old man, does what seems obvious to him: he calls Antonio das Mortes, killer of Cangaceiros. At first, Antonio is ecstatic. His life has gained new meaning. But soon it becomes obvious that this new Cangaceiro (named Coirana) is no Corisco, but an idealist. An idealist of the sixties in the garb of the forties. A leader to the hopeless and the nunyry. Antonio das Mortes begins to reconsider his feelings towards Coirana and his followers.

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Shot on the Brazilian Sertao, the bleak parched lands of northern Brazil, a poverty striken cowhand called Manuel (Geraldo Del Rey) kills his abusive boss.

Fleeing with his wife, Rosa (Yona Magalhaes) as outlaws, Manuel joins up with a self-proclaimed saint (Joao Gama) who condones violence and preaches disturbing doctrines. The movie then follows Manuel's journey into a life of crime, joining Antonio's gang (Mauricio do Vale) and eventually meeting Corisco (Othon Bastos) a hired assassin who is paid to kill both the priest and Antonio. Folk songs combine with the music of Villa Lobos and Bach to create a stirring backdrop.

Curiosity develops into voyeuristic fixation as a young writer Bill (Jeremy Theobald) follows strangers around London to research a novel. After following Cobb (Alex Haw), a well-heeled stranger who is actually a thief, Bill's obsession takes a sinister turn as he is led into a dark underworld.