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.

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.

Primer

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

Primer is a very low bud­get film in which four young entre­pre­neurs work together in their spare time to build some­thing that will make them wealthy. They’re all smart guys and quite ide­al­is­tic. After con­sid­er­able trial and error, what they get is a kind of time travel device which cre­ates all sorts of pos­si­bil­i­ties and dilemmas.

I came across this film sort of by acci­dent. It was the title and premise that made me give it a shot and for the most part I was pleas­antly sur­prised. The char­ac­ters did a lot of what I con­sid­ered I might do with a time machine. It did hurt my brain at times to keep up with every­thing but I didn’t mind the chal­lenge. This film has few, real spe­cial effects but man­ages to make the time travel device seem plau­si­ble. None of the actors are well known and in truth, the film didn’t require incred­i­ble amounts of act­ing chops. The story is the star here.

This film isn’t for every­one. It’s def­i­nitely low bud­get Sci-Fi and while it can be con­fus­ing at times, it was also inter­est­ing and rather intel­li­gent. I con­sider it worth check­ing out and give it a 3 and a half out of 5 marks. On a good day I’d give it a 4.

Boiler Room

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

Boiler Room is the story of a young man from a suc­cess­ful fam­ily who tries to make his own way. He drops out of col­lege and indeed achieves some suc­cess though all his entre­pre­neur efforts hap­pen to be ille­gal. When a chance meet­ing between him­self and a stock bro­ker pro­vides an oppor­tu­nity he takes it. He finds that he is quite good at this too but ques­tion­able prac­tices of the firm he works for, choices he has to make to be suc­cess­ful, and fail­ure to obtain his father’s approval put him at a cross­roads that make him choose what kind of per­son he truly wants to be.

One of the things I like most about the movie is the sound­track. It is made up entirely of East Coast Hip Hop music though there is no African Amer­i­can male star­ring in the entire movie. In fact the pro­tag­o­nist char­ac­ter in the movie played by Gio­vanni Ribisi com­ments that he is embark­ing on the White person’s ver­sion of sell­ing crack rock, becom­ing a stock bro­ker. The movie has a cast of well known young actors includ­ing Ben Affleck, Tom Everett Scott, Jamie Kennedy, and Vin Diesel as well as Ron Rifkin as the Father and Nia Long as the love inter­est and only African-American mem­ber of the cast.

This movie was enjoy­able all the way through and I espe­cially loved the sound­track. I give it a 4 out of 5 marks.