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

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

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

The Prisoner

I haven’t been watch­ing many movies lately because I’ve been stuck on anime and minis­eries. My favorite minis­eries lately is The Pris­oner. It’s about a guy who wakes up in ‘the vil­lage’ where every­one thinks there is no place in the world other than that place. The pro­tag­o­nist, played by Jim Caviezel, has pieces of mem­o­ries of another place but he doesn’t know any other name than the num­ber he has been given. The entire com­mu­nity, is run by one man, num­ber two, played by Ian McK­ellen. In the vil­lage every­one is a num­ber. What unfolds over the six-part series is the pris­oner try­ing to escape, insist­ing that he is from some­where else while the leader of the vil­lage makes no small effort to con­vince him and oth­ers that may be like him, otherwise.

This Pris­oner minis­eries is a remake of sorts of a 60’s British series that is quite famous but I have never seen it. The minis­eries was aired on AMC and will be aired again this month. It’s also avail­able on Net­flix. When the series starts, it was imme­di­ately clear that there was a lot more going on that was obvious. I thor­ough enjoyed this series and tried very hard to fig­ure it all out as I went through it but except for a few points was unable to. That’s the mark of a good story for me.  I watched the begin­ning of it with friends and they were quite taken with it right away. It’s too bad they didn’t make this an ongo­ing series. I def­i­nitely would have watched it. I give it a four out of five marks. I think you’ll enjoy it.


09.03.2010 Drama, Miniseries, Mystery No Comments

Turtles Forever

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

Consent

Con­sent is a cute short film that plays on the fact that two peo­ple should thor­oughly dis­cuss sex before actu­ally doing the deed. How thor­ough? Well you’ll see just as two young adults lean in for the kiss. The lan­guage is rather sug­gestible so don’t play this in front of the kid­dies. The film has writ­ten and directed by Jason Reit­man and won a cou­ple of awards. It’s eas­ily worth a few moments of your time.

05.02.2010 Comedy, Short Film No Comments

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