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.

The Prisoner

I haven’t been watch­ing many movies lately because I’ve been stuck on anime and minis­eries. My favorite minis­eries lately is The Pris­oner. It’s about a guy who wakes up in ‘the vil­lage’ where every­one thinks there is no place in the world other than that place. The pro­tag­o­nist, played by Jim Caviezel, has pieces of mem­o­ries of another place but he doesn’t know any other name than the num­ber he has been given. The entire com­mu­nity, is run by one man, num­ber two, played by Ian McK­ellen. In the vil­lage every­one is a num­ber. What unfolds over the six-part series is the pris­oner try­ing to escape, insist­ing that he is from some­where else while the leader of the vil­lage makes no small effort to con­vince him and oth­ers that may be like him, otherwise.

This Pris­oner minis­eries is a remake of sorts of a 60’s British series that is quite famous but I have never seen it. The minis­eries was aired on AMC and will be aired again this month. It’s also avail­able on Net­flix. When the series starts, it was imme­di­ately clear that there was a lot more going on that was obvious. I thor­ough enjoyed this series and tried very hard to fig­ure it all out as I went through it but except for a few points was unable to. That’s the mark of a good story for me.  I watched the begin­ning of it with friends and they were quite taken with it right away. It’s too bad they didn’t make this an ongo­ing series. I def­i­nitely would have watched it. I give it a four out of five marks. I think you’ll enjoy it.


Turtles Forever

Tur­tles For­ever is a made-for-TV movie that bridges the gap between the dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles’ that have hit the big and small scren and it does it amaz­ingly well. If you’ve ever been a fan at any age of any TMNT show, movie, or comic then this ani­mated movie was made is for you. I started watch­ing this think­ing it would be just like any other Tur­tles car­toon. What I got was sci-fi, com­edy, satire, and plenty of Ninja Tur­tle action. This movie far sur­passed my expec­ta­tions and kept me riv­eted till the end.

I’ve been a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles since they were just comic book heroes so I may be a bit biased. The orig­i­nal TV ver­sion was fun but made for kids. The lat­est ver­sion got bet­ter and also darker but never held my atten­tion enough to keep up with the seem­ingly end­less episodes. Still I’d watch an episode now and then just to see what was hap­pen­ing in the series. This movie does not require you to be as knowl­edge­able of Tur­tle lore as I am. You don’t have to be fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles to enjoy this movie but if you are, even just a lit­tle, rest assured that you will be appro­pri­ately enter­tained. All that and you can even sit and watch it with your kids.

Consent

Con­sent is a cute short film that plays on the fact that two peo­ple should thor­oughly dis­cuss sex before actu­ally doing the deed. How thor­ough? Well you’ll see just as two young adults lean in for the kiss. The lan­guage is rather sug­gestible so don’t play this in front of the kid­dies. The film has writ­ten and directed by Jason Reit­man and won a cou­ple of awards. It’s eas­ily worth a few moments of your time.

Peaceful Warrior

Peace­ful War­rior was both famil­iar and unfa­mil­iar at the same time. It was famil­iar in that it told the story of a tal­ented young per­son who with the help of an enig­matic trainer goes through painful growth phys­i­cally and spir­i­tu­ally to find out who he really is. The unfa­mil­iar part was that there was no one for the pro­tag­o­nist to beat in this film but him­self. There is no real vil­lain. In the begin­ning I thought I was going to be watch­ing some remake of Karate Kid but what I got was a movie that was inspir­ing and some­what thought pro­vok­ing. There were many times where I was look­ing for Nick Nolte, who played the trainer, to have some magic pow­ers but except for a few tricks and some dream sequences you begin to won­der if he really has any great abil­i­ties at all. In fact I’m not totally sure the char­ac­ter even existed except for in the mind of the protagonist.

The story is about a young and tal­ented gym­nast who is train­ing to be in the Olympics. He is hav­ing the time of his life but some­thing isn’t quite right for him. It starts in his dreams and leads him to a gas sta­tion atten­dant played by Nick Nolte who offers to teach him the way of the war­rior but in order for him to go to the next level, he has to leave some of him­self behind. The lead is played by a young actor named Scott Mechlow­icz who I’ve never seen before. He car­ries the part well and is believ­able in gym­nas­tic action even if it’s prob­a­bly not him in those parts. I enjoyed the whole movie and left it feel­ing inspired. I give this film a 4 out of 5 marks.

Blindness

Blind­ness is a kind of ‘end of the world’ movie. Here the demise of mankind is their loss of site. You never really find out what causes it but you see it start and spread like any other untreat­able dis­ease. What hap­pens next is the government’s reac­tion to some­thing they can nei­ther con­trol nor stop but that’s not all of the story. The movie really seems to find it’s stride when it explores what hap­pens to a spe­cific group of blind peo­ple over time once they’re rounded up. Things become very intense and the film paints a tragic and depress­ing pic­ture of what human­ity might become or per­haps already is.

There are a few famililar faces in this movie. Julianne Moore plays the wife of an Eye Doc­tor who is played by Mark Ruf­falo. Julianne’s char­ac­ter is some­how immune to the dis­ease and shares that secret with her sight­less hus­band. The dis­ease does not dis­crim­i­nate so peo­ple of all kinds includ­ing, doc­tors, pros­ti­tutes, thieves, would-be philoso­phers, and chil­dren find them­selves herded together and form­ing a forced com­mu­nity. It get’s really bad towards the end and parts seem to resem­ble ‘Lord of the Flies’.

I don’t think I liked any char­ac­ter in this film but that didn’t stop me from watch­ing it through to the end. Watch­ing human­ity devolve day by day until they are lit­tle more than filthy ani­mals held my atten­tion sur­pris­ingly well. I give this movie a 4 out of 5 marks.