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.

Boondock Saints

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

The Boon­dock Saints is the story of two Irish fra­ter­nal twins that set out to kill evil men in Boston. It styl­ish, funny, and action packed. The twins are played by Sean Patrick Flan­ery and Nor­man Reedus. There’s also a flam­ing gay FBI agent hot on their trail played by Willem Dafoe. The twins are bad-ass, and while they may not be the most intel­li­gent of vig­i­lantes, they make up for it in atti­tude, dar­ing, and style. Though they are killers, they believe them­selves to be doing the lord’s work by destroy­ing evil. There is a prayer they say just before they kill their last vic­tim that is quite inter­est­ing and mem­o­rable. This movie is fun to watch all the way through and the music is pretty good too.

I was look­ing back try­ing to fig­ure out why I hadn’t seen this movie in the the­ater and found out the movie was released in the U.S. on only a few screens due to the actual columbine inci­dent. It was later re-released seven years later. There is already a sequel which I have seen and also rec­om­mend called The Boon­dock Saints II: All Saints Day. It’s nearly, if not just as good, as the orig­i­nal. I ended up screen­ing both movies back-to-back with friends and a good time was had by all. I con­sider them both clas­sics and eas­ily give the orig­i­nal 5 out of 5 marks. Check out the trailer for the orig­i­nal:

Mirageman

Monday, July 5th, 2010

MiragemanMirage­man is the story of a young man in Chile who decides to be a Super­hero. He has no pow­ers, just some mar­tial arts skills or as the byline says, “just his fists and guts”. The film starts with the hero prac­tic­ing his mar­tial arts while his his­tory is told from news­pa­per clip­pings and pho­tos on his wall. He’s a hum­ble guy and appar­ently liv­ing on just enough money to get by. Later he runs across a chance to use his skills to help some­one and dons a mask to do so. His story makes it to the news and his sick brother who imme­di­ately starts to improve. It is at this point that the main pro­tag­o­nist of the story decides to be a Superhero.

There’s a lot to like about this movie. It’s clearly low bud­get but some­how con­tains all the ele­ments of a great Super­hero movie. There’s plenty of com­edy as Mirage­man learns about the super­hero busi­ness through trial and error; from who he should trust, what cloth­ing he should wear, to how to get around trans­porta­tion issues. What really stands out here is the mar­tial arts. This was some of the best fight­ing chore­og­ra­phy I have ever seen out­side of a Chi­nese or Japan­ese film. There’s no slow motion, just awe­some, real-looking fight scenes.

As I said before, this film was made in Chile so it is Eng­lish dubbed but if you’ve ever watched old mar­tial arts movies of the past then get­ting through this will be easy. The Super­hero move­ment and action is some­what sim­i­lar to the old Spider-Man live action tele­vi­sion show. It’s a lit­tle cheesy but def­i­nitely enter­tain­ing and fun to watch. The music is good too. I give this movie a 4 out of 5 marks. Check out the trailer:

Dirty Pretty Things

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

Noth­ing pretty in this movie stays that way for long so I’m not sure how the title fits but this was an inter­est­ing film nonethe­less. Dirty Pretty Things stars Chi­we­tel Ejio­for, a great actor who I believe has never really got­ten his due. He plays a hard work­ing ille­gal alien liv­ing in Lon­don named Okwe. The life of an ille­gal is dirty, shady, and hum­ble and Okwe trys his best to be a good man despite. He works more than one job and sel­dom sleeps. Every ille­gal alien has a story and Okwe has an inter­est­ing one. When his past comes to light and col­lides with his sense of honor and the plight of a female friend, every­thing hits the fan. The female friend is played by Audrey Tautou, the other star of this film. She’s the face on the movie poster. Her story is a bit more com­mon but is easy to feel for her as well.

There are a lot of inter­est­ing lit­tle char­ac­ters here, each with their own lit­tle story, the hotel owner, the whore, the door­man, the guy who works in the hos­pi­tal morgue, and oth­ers. This story is more about the chal­lenges, hopes, and dreams of the peo­ple you tend to ignore as you go on about your per­sonal busi­ness. The taxi dri­vers, jan­i­tors, maids, and count­less oth­ers are peo­ple you pass by and don’t give a sec­ond thought but their lives can be vibrant, chal­leng­ing, and full of fla­vor. I enjoyed this movie and give it a 4 out of 5 marks.

10 Items Or Less

Friday, April 16th, 2010

10 Items Or Less is the story of two peo­ple who meet by chance and spend a day together, shar­ing each other’s world. The two peo­ple in this story are Mor­gan Free­man, who pretty much plays him­self and Paz Vega who plays the part of a gro­cery clerk who works the 10 items or less counter. Mor­gan Freeman’s char­ac­ter is there to do research for a movie role. He is funny, friendly, and engag­ing. Paz Vega’s char­ac­ter is young, lov­able, and in a place in her life she doesn’t want to be anymore.

This movie is kind of out there. You don’t know where it’s going until it’s over then your remem­ber you had a pretty good time get­ting there. Here, it’s clearly more about the jour­ney than the des­ti­na­tion. If I had to describe it bet­ter I say that it was about two peo­ple being gen­uine and con­nect­ing. What comes of it? Well, you’ll just have to check out the movie to see for your­self. There’s no big action and no sex, just two peo­ple hang­ing out really. At first I won­dered where this all was going but once I let that notion go I enjoyed this film. I give it a 4 out of 5 marks. It’s worth a rental.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Saturday, March 27th, 2010

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is an Anime movie about a high school girl who sud­denly comes upon the abil­ity to leap through time. It’s funny, a bit silly, and also seri­ous at the same time. She has the usual high school girl prob­lems and this new­found abil­ity doesn’t make it any eas­ier. As the girl learns to make bet­ter use of this power she also learns more about her­self. One of the things that is really funny is that she actu­ally has to take a run­ning jump to make it work and her land­ings are awful.

All that sappy stuff aside, this was a sur­pris­ingly good movie and just when I thought I fig­ured out how it was all going to work out, a plot twist came out of nowhere and threw me for a pleas­ant loop. When I saw the movie I had to read sub­ti­tles so if that’s not your bag, make sure you get the Eng­lish dub. Appar­ently this is a clas­sic story that has already been made into a movie and a TV drama but prob­a­bly not here in the U.S. If you’re already an Anime Fan then you’ll love this. If Anime is new to you then this just might be a pleas­ant way to start get­ting to know the genre. I’ve included the trailer so you can have a look at it.