Welcome to the Movie Rental Finds blog. Don't know what to rent? Want to pick a good movie for your house guests? We watch, rate, and recommend them.

Case 39

Case 39 is about one of the cases of a social worker played by Renée Zell­weger. She’s a worka­holic but very car­ing and very effec­tive at her job. She basi­cally helps to iden­tify chil­dren in bad sit­u­a­tions with their par­ents and works to make them bet­ter. When she get’s this spe­cific case she find a lit­tle girl in seri­ous trou­ble but has no proof. The hor­ri­ble things her par­ents try to do her are strik­ingly bad. The social worker works to save her but then pecu­liar and some­times grue­some things begin to happen.

This movie, very nicely, moves from a mys­tery to a thriller to a hor­ror film. It almost fools you into think­ing it’s a dif­fer­ent type of movie than it actu­ally is, and this is a good thing. The sur­prises keep com­ing even up to the end. The role of the lit­tle girl Lilith was played very well by Jodelle Fer­land. There were times when I really felt con­cerned for her saftey and oth­ers where I feared for every­one elses.

Case 39 takes you on a trip and you can’t help but fol­low along as the story twists and turns. I watched it with some­one who doesn’t nor­mally watch hor­ror movies and they didn’t know it was one until they were caught up in watch­ing it. I really enjoyed this movie and give it a 4 out of 5 marks.

24.02.2011 Horror, Mystery, Thriller No Comments

Intacto

Intacto is a movie about a group of peo­ple, gam­blers actu­ally, that are all con­nected. What makes this story unique is that they all seem to have the abil­ity to take luck from peo­ple, not unlike a super power. Each of them, at least once in their lives whether acci­den­tally or on pur­pose, has sur­vived an acci­dent by drain­ing the luck out of peo­ple nearby so that they might sur­vive. Some of the fac­tors included in the luck they obtain are the like­li­hood of sur­vival and the amount of peo­ple that die in the accident.

All the actors were pretty good but the only one I rec­og­nized was Max von Sydow. He played the part of a Jew­ish sur­vivor of the Holo­caust and was the only char­ac­ter that spoke Eng­lish in the entire movie. Intacto is a Span­ish film. When I rented it I was pre­pared to sit down and read sub­ti­tles but I found the DVD does have a 2.1 Eng­lish track you can choose instead of the 5.1 sur­round sound Span­ish one. I opted to lis­ten in English.

One of the great things about this movie is the dis­cov­ery of this world of under­ground gam­blers, the games they play to test their luck, and the cur­rency they put up as col­lat­eral in order to compete. I would have liked for there to be a visual rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the luck of the gam­blers as it changed bod­ies and was used. The con­cept of how luck could be absorbed and given out by cer­tain peo­ple was inter­est­ing. This was one of those films where you just go along for the ride and enjoy it’s twists and turns. I rented this movie based solely on its premise and was pleased to find it was much more. I give this film a 3 and a half out of 5 marks. Here’s the trailer:

11.01.2011 Drama, Thriller No Comments

King of the Avenue

King of the Avenue is a movie about a boy being brought up in the drug game by his ruth­less and suc­cess­ful step father. He inher­its the game after his step-father’s mur­der and plays it bet­ter than most. As a mea­sure of suc­cess he pur­sues the title of “King of the Ave” but a series of mis­for­tunes cause him to make a deal with the devil, played con­vinc­ingly by Esai Morales, who res­ur­rects his step­fa­ther with the soul of a ruth­less and unre­lent­ing demon.

This movie is for all intents and pur­poses a “B” movie. It’s low bud­get. It’s about the hood and the drug game, and it has only one or two rec­og­niz­able actors. That being said, I found it to be more enjoy­able than I expected. Ving Rhames was dis­gust­ingly evil and every evil act he did was as fun to watch as it was out of bounds. Another thing that made this movie inter­est­ing is how it por­trayed the drug game. Every­one who comes from the hood has their idea on how the drug game should be played and the way the main char­ac­ter played it is how any­one would expect a suc­cess­ful drug dealer would. The way that the devil explained his moti­va­tion and actions was sur­pris­ingly clear and almost fair. If not for the super­nat­ural ele­ment, I’d say this movie almost cel­e­brates the drug game. I enjoyed this film and give it a 3 and a half out of 5 marks. Check out the trailer:

18.12.2010 Thriller No Comments

Stranger Than Fiction

Stranger Than Fic­tion is the story of Harold Crick, an IRS audi­tor, played by Will Fer­rell. While this film is a bit of a com­edy, it’s not Will Ferrell’s stan­dard fare. In fact, he plays this role fairly straight. In the movie he’s liv­ing a pre­dictable life of his own choos­ing when sud­denly he hears a voice, one no one else can hear, that begins to annoy­ingly nar­rate his life. That being chal­leng­ing enough to bear, the always accu­rate nar­ra­tive voice one day pre­dicts his death which changes every­thing. The ‘voice’ is that of Karen Eif­fel, played by Emma Thomp­son, who is cur­rently writ­ing a novel that is indeed telling the story of Harold Crick and hav­ing trou­ble fig­ur­ing out how to kill him. A cer­tain amount of this movie is about her char­ac­ter. Dustin Hoff­man plays the role of lit­er­ary advi­sor to Harold and Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal plays the woman who makes him want some­thing more in life.

Thought it was a lit­tle slow at times, I found this movie intrigu­ing. Part of the time I was wait­ing for Will Fer­rell to do some outrageously, comedic, stupid bit which amaz­ingly didn’t hap­pen though much of his more sub­tle funny stuff made it through. The other part had me won­der­ing where it was all going as, over time, it seemed to become less and less of a com­edy and more of a roman­tic drama. I’ve never been much of a fan of Will Fer­rell and tend to pass on films he stars in but I’m moved to say I liked him in this. In fact it was such a sur­prise that I give it a 4 out of 5 marks. It’s one of very few films that I’ve sit through more than once.

29.10.2010 Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Romance No Comments

Diary of a Tired Black Man

No this isn’t another Tyler Perry movie and it’s not just a movie about one of the gen­ders bitch­ing about the other…well mostly not. Here’s the press release: “A humor­ous and deep look into why rela­tion­ships fail to work from the point of view of a good black man. It is part scripted and a series of inter­views with real peo­ple from across the coun­try.” Basi­cally Diary of A Tired Black Man explores the Black Male side of rela­tion­ship in an intel­li­gent way and pro­vides dis­cus­sion via inter­view from both sexes. Sure stereo­types abound in these kind of movies and this one was no excep­tion but the movie was still enter­tain­ing and fun.

The whole phe­nom­e­non started out with an orig­i­nal clip cir­cu­lated around the Inter­net via YouTube. That got the dis­cus­sion going and in the movie you see addi­tional skits after which there are inter­views from peo­ple who have just seen it. The only reco­gize­able actor is Jimmy Jean-Louis who plays the main male role in all the skits. You can find out more about the film and the phe­nom­e­non at the offi­cial web­site.

The movie is avail­able for imme­di­ate stream­ing on Net­flix so if you’re look­ing for some­thing to watch with a group of mixed friends that will spark dis­cus­sion, this could be it. It def­i­nitely worked out that way at my house. I give this film a 3 and a half out of 4 marks. Here’s the video that started it all:

14.10.2010 Comedy, Drama No Comments

Previous Entries