The Double.
So... the last ever film i'll ever rent as a staff member of Blockbusters. (though once i'm through with the 'to watch mountain' I may very well join love film) It's a High fliers disc, a company thats provided many dubious pleasures over the years. Remeber seeing those films on the shelves that had big actors in them but you had never heard of the film itself? Those were almost entirely the sort of films high fliers would turn out. The almost rans, the films that never quite made it in america, or lacked the big studio push to make it. These are the films I really loved renting from work, sure the big studio stuff had its pleasures and once upon a time we were chock-a-block with zero budget horrors but I always found it interesting to see if any hidden gems could be located, great films that for whatever reason slipped the net.
This isnt one of those.
It stars Richard gere and topher grace as agents forced by circumstance to work together to track down a legendary asassin long thought dead, only for it to turn out one of them is the assasin (its not a spoiler, its revealed pretty early on and becomes the hitchcockian bomb under the table for the film).
Not especially outstanding in any way its an enoyable enough if totally contrived thriller, topher grace is average but gere is good and seems to turn up in a few high fliers titles in the last few years. (check out the flock, very underrated) This is the sort of film i'll miss picking up, the films I would normally pass over for whatever reason without any real excuse to pick up (like free rentals for instance).
After that I watched WAR GAMES.
No matthew broderick playing tic tac toe with nuclear armageddon here, this one is about a bunch of people out for a weekend paintball session coming toe to toe with some survivalist psychos out to play some very real and very deadly war games. In the wrong hands a film like this can end up cliche' ridden trash (see the previous two wrong turn movies for the best example of that) but WAR GAMES is actually pretty darned good. Its well shot, tense and well acted and for the most part feels plausible. It looks bloody marvelous on blu-ray as the photography is great. I even liked the psychos, though my main complaint was the lead actor was somewhat incomprehensible in places, and came across more like peter stormare if he was reading his lines with a mouth full of cotten wool. Picked this up in a charity shop for £3.99 and was definatley worth it.
Finally I watched my blu-ray of sidney lumet's NETWORK.
Sheer genius, the outrageous humour of the film seems to steadily morph over the years as what seemed totally over the top merely seems horribly plausible today. Scarily Faye Dunaways 'child of television' who can only see life through the context of the meium is not only well played, but becoming more identifiable over the years. Of course there isnt one bad performance in the whole movie so everyone involved deserves plaudits for this one! The us blu-ray is totally region free, looks good but not great and has a six part 82 minute documentary, interviews and a lumet commentary so woth picking up.
If you havent seen network yet you really need to change that... So i'll leave you with a slice of peter finches supurb monologes to entice you to watch!
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