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.

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.

20.03.2010 Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller No Comments

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.

14.03.2010 Crime, Drama, Thriller No Comments

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

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