Recent Rentals

Short Cuts:  The movie Magnolia ripped off.  That was harsh, it just took the premise and did something else with it and PTA isn't ashamed to admit that (and he shouldn't be).  But anyways, that's how I heard about this great Altman film that he made in like 1993.  It's very much like his Nashville, with no real plot but instead weaving together many stories taking place at the same time in Los Angeles.  Great character studies played by an awesome ensemble cast (Robert Downey Jr., Tim Robbins, Lily Tomlin, Chris Penn (RIP), Julianne Moore,  Jack Lemmon, Tom Waits etc.)  As always, Altman keeps this 2 and a half hour, plotless film interesting with engrossing and emotional stories and some signature interesting camera work.  Also, chooses to focus on the lives of middle and working class people in LA in the 90's, many of the stories intersecting without the characters even knowing it showing how people are shaped by and respond to their environment and times.  Rent it.

Rashomon:  My introduction to Kurosawa (very late, I know) and this was as great as it could be.  I still can't believe this was made in 1950 - I mean four, incongruent stories, with no real resolution, told through the character's perception.  I was always amazed at what Wilder, Kazan, and Ford could do in the culturally repressive 1950's, but even with that this still seemed so ahead of its time.  Great, great movie. Rent it.

Dark City:  I thoroughly enjoyed this as well.  Proyas paints a beautifully, dark, German expressionist, noir-ish, claustrophobic future.  It's just so great to look at the whole time. This really feels like the Blade Runner of the 90's, and looks and plays almost as good.  A very interesting premise, I don't want to spoil the ending so I won't.  William Hurt, Jennifer Connelly, and Kiefer Sutherland are all good in this.  Great storytelling and plenty of weird sci-fi philosophizing about what it means to be human in our increasingly urbanized and mechanized world (and it's good because it doesn't totally have the fear of technology and progress that others in the genre contain).  It also has a Matrix-y feel to it, and that's almost unfair to say because it came out one year before.  Rent it!

Hard Eight:  PT Anderson's first feature and it's no wonder he was able to get work right after. Awesome casino rip off sequences, that have a more solemn feel than the epic ones in the Ocean's movies.  Hard Eight instead focuses on its character's development on the margins of society, in the city of sin, taken in by the all-too-lovable Sydney (Philip Baker Hall), an old man who knows a little too much about scamming casinos and getting money fast.  Anyways, great cast (John C. Reilly, Gwenyth Paltrow, Samuel L. Jackson) with great dialogue.  There's a twist at the end that makes this movie a question about the possibility of redemption. That's all I'll say about that.  PT Anderson continues to be one of my all-time favorite directors. Rent it!

Secret Honor:  Ok this was a great addition to my new favorite historical figure/movie subject - Richard M. Nixon.  Altman made this in the early 80's when memories of Nixon's presidency were still fresh and it was based on a solo-act play.  Philip Baker Hall plays our 37th president, alone in a room, speaking in a stream-of-conscious manner to a tape-recorder for an hour and a half.  Hall is amazing in this, carrying this film the whole way with his powerful, and sometimes humorous portrayal.  Altman also keeps it interesting with camera movement that definitely transforms the source material from a play to a cinematic representation.  He cuts to portraits of different presidents on Nixon's wall, shows his paranoia with his four camera security monitors (that make for an amazing ending with four Nixon's yelling "Fuck em'), close ups on different objects in the room, and shots that follow his pacing and reflect his energy and moods.  The subject matter deals with Nixon thinking about his political career, his legacy, and hating on any and everyone.  We get a sense, in this room, as this shamed president slowly disintegrates, that he is fully conscious of the weight of American history and wanting desperately to look favorably upon his legacy.  Some arguments are convincing, some aren't, but this is an amazing film. Rent it!

Videodrome:  I've been wanting to watch this for a while and it also did not disappoint.  This was a definite mind-fuck of an awesome sci-fi movie, with all the great direction and bodily horrors that I've come to expect from David Cronenberg.  James Woods is also cool as fuck as the lead, a sleazy owner of what basically amounts to a smut television station.  Debbie Harry from Blondie is also in this, as a sadistic, trippy, sci-fi femme fatale.  Lots of great ideas are contained in this, especially the theory that humans need to start biologically evolving along with the rate and expansion of media technology.  The lines between fiction and reality are constantly blurred.  These ultra-right wing, militarist owners of the videodrome think North Americans are getting to soft, and they need to be inundated with constant images of torture to catch up with the death squads in Latin America. There's some crazy twists and James Woods' literally has a handgun.  It's fucking awesome to see him pull that out of his stomach-vagina.  I hope you get a sense of the craziness/awesomeness of this movie. And that is why you must Rent it!