Quickflix

The other day I joined up with Quickflix for a free trial. The concept sounds good - you order movies online, they ship them to your home within a day or so, you return them in the reply paid envelope they send you, then they send you some more DVDs.

I can see one problem already - the cost is like $30 or more a month, which is quite a lot to spend on DVD rentals, assuming you have a job to go to and some semblance of a social life.

The other problem is you can't just order anything you want - you have a "queue" of movies you want to see - which they recommend you keep topped up with at least twenty titles. What this means is that you might not get your first pick, or your second, but there's a good chance you'll get your nineteenth. You'd be surprised how few movies there are that you are interested in seeing, I know I struggled to fill my queue.

Anyway I joined up last Thursday, and my first movies arrived in the post yesterday. Which was awesome timing since I was home sick. (Side point - staying at home in bed all day is not nearly as fun as I remember it being. I would have had to have been in intensive care to stop me coming in to work today, and I don't love my job that much). I didn't get the movies I really wanted, but the ones I got were pretty good.

The first one I watched was "The Wrong Man". Starring Josh Hartnett (as the wrong man), Bruce Willis, a surprisingly attractive Lucy Liu, Morgan Freeman and Sir Ben Kingsley. I thought it was really good - kind of like a Quentin Tarantino/Guy Ritchie movie, but with less funny dialogue and perhaps a few more twists. I recommend this one, check it out. Final rating - B plus.

The second was "World Trade Centre". I was kind of in the mood for this after watching "United 93" a week or so ago (which by the way was a bit of a weird film - it's all in real time so there's no real character development, backstory or anything like that - its just a 90 minute dramatisation of the event). I enjoyed both films but possibly World Trade Centre a little more - for one thing, anything with Maggie Gyllenhaal is usually better than something without her in it. Also this movie just seemed a bit wider in scope - the scenes they shot in the New York streets as the building was coming down looked amazing. Nicolas Cage can be a bit annoying but he was fine in this. I'd give it seven out of ten.