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 Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

Pelham123The Tak­ing of Pel­ham 123 sets Den­zel Wash­ing­ton as a MTA oper­a­tor against John Tra­volta as an urban ter­rior­ist using a train (Pel­ham 123) to get money. These two big named stars do what they’re known to do. They tell you where and what to focus on which is manily them­selves. Like a train, while there are many things tan­gen­tially hap­pen­ing on and around it, this films goes steadily for­ward towards its end. The women here (was there more than one?) are only impor­tant to the point that they affect one of the main actors. No one will win an Oscar for this remake. It’s not that kind of flick. You can see the plot twist from miles away like a bend in the track.

The truth is there is noth­ing orig­i­nal here. Even the parts that would make it a wor­thy thriller are some­what dulled. What’s left are two charis­matic actors you want to see that keep your eyes and ears fol­low­ing them until the movie’s end. Isn’t that what a movie should do? Even with Tony Scott direct­ing had there been two lesser actors in the roles of the main char­ac­ters, this movie might have had a chance to go straight to video. That’s not to say the movie is bad. On the con­trary, mis­takes and all, it’s worth rent­ing. It’s just not worth own­ing. Wash­ing­ton and Tra­volta put on a good show, just not an overly mem­o­rable one. I give this a 4 out of 5 marks.

21.11.2009 Crime, Thriller No Comments

Awake

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

AwakeI rented the movie Awake think­ing it would be some kind of hor­ror movie. The tagline talked about the fact that there are some peo­ple who actu­ally wake up dur­ing surgery. I didn’t look any deeper and accepted that there would be hor­ri­ble scene after hor­ri­ble scene of this guy being cut up while he endured this unimag­in­able pain. Hay­den Chris­tensen plays the lead. His char­ac­ter is a rich and suc­cess­ful young man who is in need of a heart trans­plant. His mother is extremely over­pro­tec­tive and doesn’t know he’s been see­ing a beau­ti­ful young woman, (Jes­sica Alba’s char­ac­ter), and is in love with her. By the end of the first 30 min­utes of the movie you know most of the play­ers and he is already head­ing into surgery. The head doc­tor is played by Ter­rance Howard. I thought the movie would be over quickly but a major plot twist turned it into a mys­tery crime thriller. You still get to see the main char­ac­ter suf­fer while the doc­tors are cut­ting into him. Now, how­ever, the real agenda of cer­tain char­ac­ters comes to light and events unfold that turned this into a rel­a­tively inter­est­ing movie. I liked it. The act­ing here isn’t any­thing to brag about but a good por­tion of the mys­tery caught me by sur­prise. I give this film 3 1/2 out of 5 marks. Rat­ing: ★★★½☆

25.10.2009 Crime, Thriller No Comments

The Code & The Contract — A Double Feature

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Two Mor­gan Free­man movies. One of the things that I like about Mor­gan Free­man is when he cusses in a movie. He does it prop­erly, voice inflec­tion and all. You just don’t expect that kind of lan­guage to come out of his mouth. He plays the bad guy in both of these movies but the lik­able kind.

TheCodeIn The Code (also titled “Thick As Thieves”), Mor­gan Free­man plays the part of a Mas­ter Thief. He’s the star of the movie but he shares the stage with Anto­nio Ban­deras who does most of the action sequences and all of the sex scenes. The two of them team up and have to plan and exe­cute a heist for some Faberge eggs. While all the plan­ning and steal­ing is going on, there are a lot of secrets and sub­terfuge to keep your mind busy. It’s not till the last third of the film that you find out who’s play­ing who and to what end. It’s a decent movie, the heist was good and it wasn’t totally pre­dictable. Mor­gan Free­man uses pro­fan­ity only once but to good effect and Anto­nio Ban­deras gets the girl. It’s worth see­ing at home. I give it a 3 1/2 out of 5 marks.

The ContractIn The Con­tract, Mor­gan Free­man is a con­tract assas­sin. He and his group of mil­i­tary trained mercs have been given a mis­sion. Mid­way through the op he gets into an auto­mo­bile acci­dent and gets hurt and caught. His men need him to get paid so they set out to res­cue him from a Home­land Secu­rity trans­port oper­a­tion. Freeman’s char­ac­ter nearly escapes but instead gets handed off to a Teacher and his son who hap­pen to be on a camp­ing trip. The teacher is played by John Cusack who appar­ently has some­thing to prove to his son. He tries to get to safety and civ­i­liza­tion with his son, and new pri­sioner (Free­man) in tow. It’s a race to see who gets to Free­man and his group first, the Feds or Freeman’s team. It’s not till near the end that you find out Freeman’s true mis­sion. Mor­gan Free­man doesn’t curse in this one but he does fight. He pretty much kicks John Cusack’s ass. I give this movie 4 marks.

18.10.2009 Crime No Comments

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