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.

Astro Boy

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Astro Boy has a long his­tory in Anime and Manga and has had mul­ti­ple occur­rences in TV and film. This adap­ta­tion seems a more of an Amer­i­can or British feel to it. The story of Astro Boy is sort of like an ani­mated Pinoc­chio. The 3-D ani­ma­tion in this movie is top notch. It looks great in every scene. The cast­ing was inter­est­ing and included quite a few famous actors such as  Nico­las Cage, Fred­die High­more, and Kris­ten Bell, to name a few. The story is heart warm­ing, at times tragic, and con­tained quite a few com­i­cal moments.

This movie didn’t receive a lot of acco­lades at the box office and I really don’t under­stand why. It looked great. The story was good and the voice act­ing was too. Maybe it was the actual death that hap­pened in the film. That did take me back a bit when I saw it. Still, this was a very enjoy­able film fam­ily film. The main char­ac­ter was charm­ing and easy to feel for. Maybe it was too dif­fer­ent from the source mate­r­ial. I am famil­iar with the Astro Boy char­ac­ter of old but I never fol­lowed it very closely. I enjoyed this movie and eas­ily give it a 4 out of 5 marks.

11.06.2010 Action, Animation, Family, Sci-Fi No Comments

Marley & Me

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

MarleyAndMeMar­ley & Me is the story of the mar­ried life of a man, a dog, and their fam­ily. Owen Wil­son and Jen­nifer Anis­ton play John and Jenny Gro­gan, a cou­ple of freshly mar­ried jour­nal­ists who embark upon their life together, all things accord­ing to her plan, until they bring home their new Lab­o­rador Retriever. Like their life, they never seem to get Mar­ley under con­trol but find that this works for them.

Make no mis­take, Mar­ley is the one con­stant in this movie. Owen Wil­son and Jen­nifer Anis­ton dull their onscreen pres­ence a bit to make them seem more ordi­nary and to allow Mar­ley to shine. This film fol­lows the cou­ple through­out the entire time the dog is in their life, through all their ups and downs as they strug­gle to find them­selves. Mar­ley seems to know who he is from day one.

This is def­i­nitely a date movie and while noth­ing ground break­ing or overly amaz­ing hap­pens onscreen, it is at times funny, annoy­ing, and touch­ing all at once. This is espe­cially so as the movie comes to a close. The whole fam­ily can watch this though the kids might be bored for the first third of the movie or at least until the dog gets his first close up. I enjoyed it and give it a 4 out of 5 marks.

26.11.2009 Comedy, Drama, Family, Romance No Comments

Inkheart

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

InkheartInk­heart is the story of a man who finds he has the power to bring char­ac­ters from sto­ries he reads aloud out of the book and into the world of the liv­ing. His dis­cov­ery, how­ever is tragic as it brings sto­ry­book vil­lains into the real world and leads to the loss of his wife. Bren­dan Fraser plays the role of the ‘Sil­ver­tongue’ who searches des­per­ately for the pos­si­bil­ity of bring­ing his wife back but the vil­lains he has freed like it here in the real world and have no inten­tion of return­ing to the book. Paul Bet­tany plays the hero of the book Inkeart, try­ing to find a way back into the book. The main vil­lain of this piece is played by Andy Serkis, (you remem­ber Gollum?).

It was a pleas­ant sur­prise to see Bren­dan Fraser in a role that’s not some silly over the top action movie. He’s quite lik­able in this film. In fact the entire film is quite lik­able. This is a fam­ily movie so it has some­thing for the young ones as well as the chap­er­on­ing adults includ­ing appear­ances by clas­sic char­ac­ters and crea­tures of lit­er­a­ture. It’s a fan­tasy adven­ture so you sus­pend your belief going into it and while at some times it is quite pre­dictable, the jour­ney is still fun. Bren­dan Fraser kindly moves aside for the vil­lain and hero of the Ink­heart book to shine a lit­tle brighter than him in this movie, another depar­ture from what we have seem from him lately. While it may never achieve the sta­tus of  the clas­sic fam­ily fan­tasy adven­ture, it is enjoy­able and worth rent­ing for fam­ily night. I give it 4 out of 5 marks.

28.10.2009 Adventure, Family, Fantasy No Comments