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.

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.

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!

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☆

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.