trh's - Rented List
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A Foreign Affair (1948)Operation Candy Bar
From the inimitable Billy Wilder (Double Indemnify, The Lost Weekend) comes this classic comedy that mixes romance with hard-boiled wit in a story about stiff-necked Iowa congresswoman Phoebe Frost (Jean Arthur -Shane) mired in jaded postwar Berlin. As she investigates the morale of American troops, Phoebe is cynically wooed by fellow Iowan Captain John Pringle (John Lund), who is trying to cover up his affair with Nazi-tainted chanteuse Erika von Schlutow (Marlene Dietrich). Filled with sharp dialogue and satiric jabs, 'A Foreign Affair' is one of Wilder's most beloved comedies... - Director:
- Billy Wilder
- Cast:
- Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich, John Lund
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One, Two, Three (1961)One, Two, Three
James Cagney is C.R. "Mac" MacNamara, a top soft drinks executive shipped off to (then West) Berlin and told to keep an eye on his boss' 17-year-old Atlanta socialite daughter Scarlett (Pamela Tiffin) while she visits Germany. Scarlett's tour seems endless, and Mac discovers she's fallen for a (then East) Berlin communist agitator and the young couple are bound for Moscow! Mac has to bust up the burgeoning romance before his boss learns the truth, all the while dealing with his wife Phyllis (Arlene Francis) and her own impatience with German living. - Director:
- Billy Wilder
- Cast:
- James Cagney, Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin
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Olivia de Havilland stars in a dual role as twin sisters - one of whom has committed a murder. Since each twin can provide an alibi for the other, a rumpled detective (Thomas Mitchell) and a handsome shrink (Lew Ayres) are compelled to get to the truth, a task not made easy by the siblings. At first the duo seem physically and emotionally similar but soon subtle nuances begin to differentiate their personalities. In a tour-de-force performance De Havilland's fine acting peels away the layers of emotionalism that define each sister's character traits. - Director:
- Robert Siodmak
- Cast:
- Olivia De Havilland, Lew Ayres, Thomas Mitchell
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Ace in the Hole (1951)The Big Carnival
In one of the most powerhouse performances in American screen-acting, the great Kirk Douglas stars as Chuck Tatum, a newspaper reporter who stumbles upon a potentially career-making story in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When Tatum begins to influence the story's outcome, a descent begins that finds more than one man caught between a rock and a hard place. An electric narrative that stands as one of Wilder's tautest and most (melo)dramatic plots (penned with Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman), 'Ace in the Hole' plays today as both a prescient examination of the modern media landscape, and the public appetite for the disastrous news-story that leads to toxic wish-fulfillment. - Director:
- Billy Wilder
- Cast:
- Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur
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The Favourite (2018)Favorite
In early 18th-century England, a frail Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) occupies the throne, and her closest friend, Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), governs the country while tending to Anne's ill health and volatile temper. When new servant Abigail (Emma Stone) arrives, Sarah takes Abigail under her wing as she cunningly schemes to return to her aristocratic roots, setting off an outrageous rivalry to become the Queen's favourite. - Director:
- Yorgos Lanthimos
- Cast:
- Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz
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My Life as a Dog (1985)Mitt liv som hund
The year is 1959. A young boy, Ingemar (Anton Glanzelius), is obsessed by two things - his namesake fighting for the World Heavyweight boxing title and the fate of Laika, the dog sent in to space by Russia. As his mother's health deteriorates and she no longer has the strength to cope with him, Ingemar is sent to stay with relatives in the country, much like Laika's journey into the unknown. - Director:
- Lasse Hallström
- Cast:
- Anton Glanzelius, Olle Björklund, Folke Olhagen
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Shoplifters (2018)Manbiki Kazoku
After a successful shoplifting spree, Osamu (Lily Franky) and his son rescue a little girl in the freezing cold and invite her home with them. Osamu's wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) reluctantly agrees to shelter her. Although the family is poor, they live happily together until an unforeseen incident upsets the delicate balance they have created, revealing long-buried secrets... - Director:
- Hirokazu Koreeda
- Cast:
- Rirî Furankî, Sakura Andô, Mayu Matsuoka
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Babette's Feast (1987)Babettes gæstebud
When Babette (Stéphane Audran), a beautiful and mysterious French refugee, arrives in a remote Danish town the tight-knit, puritanical community begrudgingly let her in, providing her with shelter and work. But after the town patriarch passes away and Babette insists on preparing a feast in his honor, a magical world of sensory revelations is thrown open to the villagers, changing their lives forever... - Director:
- Gabriel Axel
- Cast:
- Stéphane Audran, Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel
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Rex Black (Laurence Harvey) has successfully faked his death in a plane crash and escaped to sunny Málaga under a new identity, waiting for his wife Stella (Lee Remick) to arrive with £50,000 of life insurance money. It's the start of a blissful, trouble-free new life for the couple - until Stephen (Alan Bates), the insurance agent in charge of investigating Rex's death, suddenly arrives in town. Is he just holidaying in Spain, as he claims, or is he on assignment to foil Rex's scheme? - Director:
- Carol Reed
- Cast:
- Laurence Harvey, Lee Remick, Alan Bates
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Children of Paradise (1945)Les Enfants Du Paradis
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. - Director:
- Marcel Carné
- Cast:
- Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur
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On a cold, bright autumn day in Suffolk, England, a little girl in a red mackintosh drowns in a pond-the daughter of John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura Baxter (Julie Christie). Trying to recover from the tragedy, the couple arrive in Venice, Italy, where John has been commissioned to restore a church. In the eerie atmosphere of the lagoon city in winter, they encounter two strange sisters. Laura is suddenly released from her grief when one of them, a blind psychic, tells her that she is in contact with her dead daughter. Angered and sceptical, John carries on with his work, but witnesses an unsettling vision of his own: a little girl in a red mackintosh disappearing into the Venetian alleys. As Venice and his fate close in on John, illusion, reality and sudden terror spiral the story to its grotesque climax. - Director:
- Nicolas Roeg
- Cast:
- Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, Hilary Mason
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The Key (1958)Stella
The relentless struggle of war time wreaks havoc on the sexual mores of two war-weary lovers in this provocative drama starring William Holden and Sophia Loren. Living in a small London flat during World War II, Stella (Loren) has fallen into a series of unhappy relationships with men. Over the years she has allowed the key to her apartment to pass from sea captain to sea captain. The cold reality of her of her intimate "services" has caused Stella to develop a callous attitude towards her lovers. But when Canadian captain David Ross (Holden) is taken to her apartment by an old friend, Stella finds herself embraced by an unknown feeling: love. She promises Ross that he is her last, permanent lover. But in wartime... keeping promises can be the most heart wrenching struggle of all. - Director:
- Carol Reed
- Cast:
- William Holden, Sophia Loren, Trevor Howard
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Julie Christie plays the part of 'Darling' in this story of a stylish amoral model. There are three men in her life, each of whom willingly or involuntarily helps her on her way to the top. Dirk Bogarde plays a TV interviewer, an honest man striving to tell illusion from reality; Laurence Harvey, an advertising executive, totally cynical about manipulating society's values; and Roland Curram, a gay magazine photographer battening parasitically on glossy society. There is also a 'fourth man' - the one whom Darling marries, only to find herself a prisoner of the smart world she has conquered. Although Darling thinks she can exploit society to her own advantage, she ends up exploited - manipulated by men who are, aptly enough, professional image-makers at a time in British life when the image said it all (or so it was thought). And at the centre of it all, incarnating the decade which saw the ascension of the model girl to the status of international idol, Julie Christie gives the sort of indelible performance that made many of her subsequent roles look like Darling's distant cousins or historical ancestors. - Director:
- John Schlesinger
- Cast:
- Julie Christie, Laurence Harvey, Dirk Bogarde
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An ex-con, a corrupt cop, a reformed alcoholic, a wrestler, a sharpshooter and a pair of inside men: these seven men intent on executing the perfect robbery and taking a racetrack for two million dollars. But this is the world of film noir, a tough, sour place where nothing quite goes as planned... For his third feature Stanley Kubrick adapted Lionel White's 'Clean Break' with a little help from hard-boiled specialist Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside Me), and in doing so created a heist movie classic, one to rank alongside John Huston's 'The Asphalt Jungle' and Quentin Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dogs'. The robbery itself is one of cinema's great set-pieces, as taut a piece of filmmaking as you'll ever find, expertly controlled by Kubrick, who called 'The Killing' his first mature work . Starring Sterling Hayden, perennial fall guy Elisha Cook Jr. and Marie Windsor as his duplicitous wife, 'The Killing' is quintessential film noir, still as brutal, thrilling and audacious as it was almost six decades ago. - Director:
- Stanley Kubrick
- Cast:
- Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards
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8½ (1963)Otto e mezzo / Eight and a Half
Marcello Mastroianni is (Fellini's alter ego) Guido, a successful filmmaker who, embarking on his next film, discovers he has a complete "director's block": he has no story to tell! Harassed by his producers, his mistress (Sandra Milo) and his wife (Anouk Aimee), while struggling to find the inspiration for his film, he increasingly retreats in dreamy recollections of his life and lovers, until fantasy, memories and reality merge in the director's mind - and on screen, in an astonishing, masterful spectacle, culminating in an electrifying triumph of optimism. As Guido-Federico says at the end of 8 1/2: "Life is a party, let's live it together!" - Director:
- Federico Fellini
- Cast:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, Claudia Cardinale
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