tom-bolton's - Rented List

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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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Sold by her impoverished mother to Zampano (Anthony Quinn), a brutish fairground wrestler, waif-like Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina) lives a life of drudgery as his assistant.

After taking to the road with a travelling circus, a budding relationship with II Matto/The Fool (Richard Basehart), a gentle-natured, tightrope walking clown, offers a potential refuge from her master's clutches. Trapped by her own servile nature, Gelsomina waivers, and Zampano's volcanic temper erupts with tragic consequences. Characteristically mingling elements of biography with metaphor and symbolism, 'La Strada' also combines an easygoing charm with a far harder edged realism in the form of domestic violence and decaying, desolate towns. Masina - Fellini's wife - is astonishing in the central role and what with the evocative Nino Rota score and Otello Martelli's ravishing photography, it's little wonder that 'La Strada' was the winner of the first official Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

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A pitch black British comedy from the mind of Alice Lowe , 'Prevenge' follows Ruth, a pregnant woman on a killing spree. The child speaks to Ruth from the womb, coaching her to lure and ultimately kill her unsuspecting victims.

Struggling with her conscience, loneliness, and a strange strain of prepartum madness, Ruth must ultimately choose between redemption and destruction at the moment of motherhood.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who had never known her mother. She grew up learning the art of her father, a famous bullfighter, but was despised by her evil stepmother. One day she ran away with a troupe of dwarves, and became a legend.

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Widely regarded as Tarkovsky's finest film, 'Andrei Rublev' charts the life of the great icon painter through a turbulent period of 15th Century Russian history, a period marked by endless fighting between rival Princes and Tatar invastions.

Made on an epic scale, it does not flinch from portraying the savagery of the time, from which, almost inexplicably, the serenity of Rublev's art arose. The great set-pieces - the sack of Vladimir, the casting of the bell, the pagan ceremonies of St. John's night and the Russian crucifixion are tours-de-force of visceral film-making.

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When Big Ronnie (Michael St. Michaels) and son Big Brayden (Sky Elobar) meet lonely tourist Janet on Big Ronnie's Disco Walking Tour, the best and only Disco Walking Tour in the city, a fight for Janet's heart erupts between father and son.

To make matters worse, a grease-slathered monster is roaming the streets, searching for his next unsuspecting victim. Who will win Janet's heart and can they escape the oily clutches of the infamous Greasy Strangler?

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American psychologist John Holden (Dana Andrews) arrives in England to discover that his colleague, Henry Harrington (Maurice Denham), has suddenly died following his efforts to discredit notorious occultist Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnls).

The cynical Holden dismisses Karswell's warnings as supernatural nonsense, even when he and Harrington's niece, Joanna (Peggy Cummins), are confronted by a series of bizarre and inexplicable events. Holden discovers that Karswell has slipped him a parchment featuring ancient runic symbols - a sign that, like Harrington before him, he has been marked for imminent destruction by a fire-breathing demon.

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One of the greatest foreign language films ever made, Roberto Rossellini "Rome, Open City" was filmed in the direct aftermath of World War II on the war-ravaged streets of Italy.

Based on real events that took place in the Nazi-occupied Italy in 1944, it examines the choices that people are forced to make in wartime. Centring on the Resistance and its members, this is a tragic and emotional exploration of human spirit and the effects of war.

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In a secluded valley in Iceland, brothers Gummi and Kiddi live side by side, tending to their prized ancestral sheep. But a long-term grudge means that they haven't spoken to each other for four decades, passing messages via the sheep dog.

When a lethal ovine disease suddenly appears in the valley, the authorities move in to cull all of the livestock. But Gummi and Kiddi don't give up easily and each brother tries to stave off the disaster in his own fashion: Kiddi by using his rifle, and Gummi by using his wits. As the authorities close in the brothers will need to come together to save the sheep - and themselves - from extinction.

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When callous thugs beat Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) senseless and viciously murder the gorgeous blonde he's been trying to help, the hard-boiled detective retaliates the only way he can: by hitting first and asking questions later.

Cutting a brutal swathe through the city's sleazy underside, Hammer uncovers a mysterious black container whose deadly contents not only solve the murder...but trigger an apocalyptic climax as well!

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Wendy Hiller stars in Powell and Pressburger's classic romantic comedy about a young woman who discovers the true meaning of wealth. Joan Webster has her life mapped out, beginning with marriage to a rich industrialist.

Her plans go wrong when she finds herself stranded on the way to a remote Scottish island and falls in love with a penniless young sailor.

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Better Things is a multi narrative drama depicting everyday life in small town England. We follow several characters dealing in their own particular way with their relationships. As a day dawns in the Cotswolds a funeral is taking place that will have bitter repercussions for some of the community.

Close by Rachel and Larry are reeling against a first love gone wrong. Meanwhile Mr Gladwin refuses to speak to Mrs Gladwin over events of a long time ago. Following on from his multi award winning and critically acclaimed short films Duane Hopkins presents a painterly view of existence against a rarely seen rural backdrop and its separate generation's approach to life, love, loss and intoxication.

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When career thief Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) meets glamorous pickpocket Lily (Miriam Hopkins), their love soon takes on a professional dimension as they initiate a plot to rob beautiful perfume magnate Mariette Colet (Kay Francis).

But as Gaston gets ever closer to his intended prey, his romantic confusion, as well as the threat that his past will catch up with him, throws their plan into jeopardy.

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A U.S. naval engineer (Joseph Cotten) on assignment in Turkey is targeted for murder by Nazi agents. To save his life, the head of the Turkish secret police (Orson Welles) smuggles him out of the country on a cargo ship. But the Nazis are one step ahead.

They already have at least one assassin on board the ship, disguised as one of the passengers...

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Evolving from an earlier project in which Morris interviewed death row inmates for a portrait of Dallas psychiatrist Dr. James Grigson, 'The Thin Blue Line' is the fascinating and controversial true story of Randall Dale Adams (Adam Goldfine).

A drifter arrested and convicted for the 1976 murder of Dallas policeman Robert Wood (Ron Thornhill), Dale Adams was sentenced to death for the crime. Billed as "the first movie mystery to actually solve a murder", Morris' film pieced together fresh evidence to eventually overturn the conviction. With its use of expressionistic re-enactments, riveting interview material and moody music by Philip Glass, 'The Thin Blue Line' - whose title recalls the prosecuting judge's comment regarding the thin blue line that maintains the social fabric - pioneered a new kind of non-fiction filmmaking whose style has been copied in countless reality-based television programs and feature films. One of the most important movies of its decade, this utterly thrilling and captivating film's influence continues to reverberate.