We got a movie pass again. It is a 2-week free trial at Blockbuster that's like an in-store and online combo thing that's just a crazy good deal, which only exists because obviously Blockbuster wants to stop people from using their nemesis Netflix any way they can, which in this case is just give away movie rentals. (For anyone interested, here's the deal. They send you movies and you send them back, and you can have three at a time. But that's not all! Each mailed movie can be returned in-store in exchange for an in-store movie, which does NOT count toward your three-movie maximum. Moreover, they give you one free in-store rental coupon. Of course, per Blockbuster's new-ish policy, no late fees (I'm not gonna go into the catch). All of this free for two weeks. In addition, supposedly you can keep getting the two-week free trial over and over again and no one cares.)
OK I didn't mean for that to be that long. Anyway, here is what we've rented:
Children of Men, Night at the Museum, Notes on a Scandal, Wordplay, Deja Vu, Borat, Munich, Blood Diamond, A Scanner Darkly, The Last King of Scotland, Superman Returns, An Inconvenient Truth, Rocky Balboa. The last four of which have yet to be watched, and I've got a thing or two to say about each... which I won't do here... but so far all have been pretty good to great, except Borat, which I found extremely disturbing, excruciating to watch, and by the way, those were all unknowing/innocent people except for Pamela Anderson, so it really sucks for them. I would recommend people not see Borat. Even if you are curious, it's not worth knowing how dispicable it is. Secondly, Deja Vu has a huge plot hole! If you don't think about it TOO hard (because honestly you have to think about it pretty hard to sort out the plot and its hole), it's okay to watch. But my husband, being some mathematic/logic psychotic person, put the plot hole together right away, which makes Deja Vu the dumbest movie of 2006. Otherwise, I enjoyed or appreciated all the others very much, although none of them are for repeated viewing, as they are mostly hard to watch or very serious.
Even amidst our two-week rental extravaganza, we made time to see the very wonderful
Waitress, which I must rave about so anyone reading this will be nudged to see it. Sadly, it is only in 116 theaters, but one of those theaters is Century in Evanston--so I'm not sad! I would probably see any film that has Nathan Fillion, and I sorta love Keri Russell after her small role in M:I 3, but it is also critically beloved, with a 89% tomatometer rating on
rottentomatoes. It will make you smile in an Amelie kind of way, except it's not at all in utopia.