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.

Turtles Forever

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

Tur­tles For­ever is a made-for-TV movie that bridges the gap between the dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles’ that have hit the big and small scren and it does it amaz­ingly well. If you’ve ever been a fan at any age of any TMNT show, movie, or comic then this ani­mated movie was made is for you. I started watch­ing this think­ing it would be just like any other Tur­tles car­toon. What I got was sci-fi, com­edy, satire, and plenty of Ninja Tur­tle action. This movie far sur­passed my expec­ta­tions and kept me riv­eted till the end.

I’ve been a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles since they were just comic book heroes so I may be a bit biased. The orig­i­nal TV ver­sion was fun but made for kids. The lat­est ver­sion got bet­ter and also darker but never held my atten­tion enough to keep up with the seem­ingly end­less episodes. Still I’d watch an episode now and then just to see what was hap­pen­ing in the series. This movie does not require you to be as knowl­edge­able of Tur­tle lore as I am. You don’t have to be fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles to enjoy this movie but if you are, even just a lit­tle, rest assured that you will be appro­pri­ately enter­tained. All that and you can even sit and watch it with your kids.

13.02.2010 Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Thriller No Comments

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

Bound

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

Bound is a crime thriller writ­ten and directed by the Wachowski broth­ers, the same guys who wrote and directed The Matrix. This movie is no Matrix but it is a great movie nonethe­less. It’s a noir kind of film and every­one in it is dirty. I say that to express that there are no inno­cents here. Jen­nifer Tilly and Gina Ger­shon pro­vide mul­ti­ple scenes of girl on girl action and at first I thought that was all the movie was going to be. I might have been sat­is­fied with that too but then the movie turned into this mob movie com­plete with money laun­der­ing, hit­men, blood, and Joe Pan­to­liano shout­ing and wav­ing a gun. I had no idea how it was going to end.

The sex between Jen­nifer Tilly and Gina Gershon’s char­ac­ters was intense but not out­ra­geous. Both women played their part well and their sex­u­al­ity seemed to ooze from the screen and believe it or not, with­out the sex, the rest of the movie wouldn’t have worked. Once it started being all about the money, the film leapt into sus­pense mode and never let up until the movie was all but over. It’s easy to know who to root for but since every­one in this movie is a bad guy of some sort, you just don’t know for sure until it’s over. Joe Pan­to­liano was at his mani­a­cal best in this film, almost as if the role was made  for him. I enjoyed this movie from begin­ning to end and give it an enthu­si­as­tic 4.5 out of 5 marks.

17.01.2010 Crime, Drama, Thriller No Comments

The Rainmaker

Friday, January 8th, 2010

The Rain­maker is not a brand new movie but it’s not quite old enough to be a clas­sic. The orig­i­nal story is by John Grisham who has given us a great deal of nov­els about lawyers that have been the basis for quite a few good films. This one is no excep­tion. Another feather in the cap of this movie’s pede­gree is that the screen­play is writ­ten and the movie is directed by Fran­cis Ford Cop­pola. Add to all that a few great actors includ­ing Danny DeVito, Jon Voight, Claire Danes, Mickey Rourke, and a young Matt Damon play­ing the lead.

This film is by no means an action flick. It’s pretty straight for­ward. Matt Damon plays a young law stu­dent named Rudy Bay­lor. He is moti­vated by his love for the law and the pos­si­bil­ity of doing amaz­ing work as a lawyer. First he has to get out of law school, and find a way to earn a liv­ing. His path places him in a posi­tion to expe­ri­ence a lot of the ugly side of being a lawyer and into a series of legal bat­tles in which he is way over his head. This includes a major fight against an insur­ance com­pany armed with highly paid, expe­ri­ences lawyers led by Jon Voight’s character.

I would have like a but more action in the film. It’s also not as much a thriller as I would have liked but I did enjoy the movie. It made me care about cer­tain char­ac­ters of the film and I felt sat­is­fied when the movie was over. I give it a 3 and a half out of 5 marks.

08.01.2010 Crime, Drama, Thriller No Comments

Street Kings

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

StreetKingsStreet Kings is the story of a vet­eran cop played by Keanu Reeves. This rogue cop is def­i­nitely not a good guy but he thinks he is. The prob­lem is his meth­ods. He’s a bad ass and will lie, tor­ture, mur­der, plant evi­dence and do pretty much any­thing else he thinks is nec­es­sary to get the bad guys. He’s good at it too and his ambi­tious boss, played by For­rest Whit­taker, always has his back and is not above a cover-up to pro­tect his best guy. Keanu’s char­ac­ter always goes too far but this time he finds his own lim­its as gets caught up in some­thing big­ger and deeper than he expected.

Street Kings must have been the com­ing out party for a bunch of TV actors. You can’t go 15 min­utes in this movie with­out see­ing some star of a TV show. It also stars a cou­ple of well known rap­pers and even a come­dian though lit­tle about this movie is funny. This is a man’s movie. There’ plenty of gritty action and killing and very lit­tle romance. The roles of the two women in the movie are only there to sup­port the man. Like the title says, this is a street movie com­plete with drugs, thugs, and ram­pant crime. Keanu plays the action hero like a woken up Neo in the Matrix.

This was a sur­pris­ingly good movie. There are parts that reminded me a lot of Train­ing Day. I had to get over my issues with Keanu play­ing a bad ass cop but after that I was pleas­antly suprised. I didn’t go to see this in the the­ater because no one said any­thing good about it but I liked it. It had plenty of action and while the plot wasn’t entirely hard to see through, I had fun get­ting to the end. I give this a 4 out of 5 marks.

19.12.2009 Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller No Comments

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