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.

Blindness

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

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.

31.01.2010 Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller 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

Signs

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Not all movies can can be fea­ture films and not all can be bought in stores. Unless they’re attached to a larger film, most short films fall in that cat­e­gory. This par­tic­u­lar film, Signs, was writ­ten and directed by Patrick Hughes and is a per­fect twelve minute date movie. I wouldn’t pay to see it in the the­ater but that’s only because of its size. I give it a 4 1/2 out of 5 marks. The other thing that’s great about it is you can watch it right now. Enjoy!

15.11.2009 Romance, Short Film No Comments

The Terminal

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

TheTerminalThe Ter­mi­nal stars Tom Hanks as an unfor­tu­nate trav­eler from some Russ­ian coun­try. While fly­ing to New York, his home gov­ern­ment is over­thrown. When he arrives in the New York ter­mi­nal he finds he can­not enter the United States because the rela­tion­ship with his coun­try has changed. He also can­not go back because his coun­try is in tur­moil and there are no flights going there so he’s stuck liv­ing in the ter­mi­nal until some­thing changes. What hap­pens next is a series of some­times sad, some­times funny, some­times heart warm­ing events that occur while he learns to sur­vive in the ter­mi­nal. He makes some famil­iar friends and falls for a stew­ardess played by Cather­ine Zeta-Jones.

This is a Spiel­berg film. I say that to say that it is enter­tain­ing and nicely put together. It mean­ders a bit here and there, which isn’t nec­es­sar­ily a good thing for a movie with a two hour run-time, but I enjoyed it nonethe­less. It’s got healthy por­tions of drama, com­edy, and romance. This is the kind of film you can watch while sit­ting by the fire­place with a warm bev­er­age in hand. It’s heart warm­ing, but also a bit slow and long. It is worth rent­ing and it’s been out long enough that you might even be able to stream it on Net­flix. I give it a 3 and 1/2 out of 5 marks. Rat­ing: ★★★½☆

04.11.2009 Comedy, Drama, Romance No Comments

Last Chance Harvey

Monday, October 19th, 2009

LastChanceHarveyLast Chance Har­vey is the story about Har­vey (of course), an older guy who basi­cally half-assed most of his life and rela­tion­ships away and is now in dan­ger of los­ing every­thing that mat­ters to him. Har­vey is played by Dustin Hoff­man who does a decent job of play­ing this pathetic guy. He takes a few days off from a job he is barely hold­ing onto and goes to see his daughter’s wed­ding in Eng­land. Emma Thomp­son plays an Eng­lish native with her own spin on a pathetic life. They meet, have a bit of a 24 hour courtship and shed light on each oth­ers issues. It’s not overly roman­tic except for their sav­ing each other in a way. The whole movie takes place over a two or three day period and frankly there’s not much here to rec­om­mend. This is not a high bud­get film and it barely deliv­ers on either the drama or the romance. Unless you’re a fan of either of these actors or have a pathetic life your­self (maybe you can relate), you can pass on this one. I can appre­ci­ate a good roman­tic movie. This just isn’t one of them. I give it a gen­er­ous 2 out of 5 marks.

19.10.2009 Drama, Romance No Comments