Video Stores are cryptic places. You walk in and it's cold. That's usually the case unless you're in Family Video, and then the temperature is unknown and dependant upon an anonymous factor you'll never in your life figure out. Sometimes you have something in mind, and sometimes you don't.
Usually when you have something in mind, 99 other people had that something in mind at least five hours earlier and walked out with every copy on the shelf by nine o'clock. Every week there was a movie like this: ""Fantastic Four,"" ""White Chicks,"" ""Get Rich or Die Tryin',"" ""Gothika,"" ""Taking Lives."" Usually they were the movies that we, as video clerks, would never have recommended to anybody in a trillion years. But for whatever reason, they were popular, and to pull a Randal Graves at a real-life video store is asking desperately to be let go.
Now, I am no longer a video clerk. I'm a customer, and in a perfect video rental world, we'd be continuously armed with valid second choices and/or an inventory of rentable movies swimming in unison in our brains. Of course, there IS Netflix, but I know there are still many of us that spend our Friday nights roaming aimlessly around Four Star Video Heaven, arguing across the aisles with our partners/friends/grandmas/dads over whether to rent a new movie or an old movie, a mystery or a romance, a comedy or a drama.
Let's face it, for some people (this includes myself), things like Netflix aren't immediate enough, and there is still that definite possibility that you will open up your mailbox, expecting to find the next title on your list, ""Equilibrium,"" and discover ""Overnight Delivery"" there instead. Something like that can ruin an evening, a weekend or how ever many days it actually takes for ""Equilibrium"" to come in the mail. For some people, this kind of thing is okay. But for the rest of us, it's a gross and stifling nightmare.
That's why I've tried to compile a little list of movies to rent when there's nothing to rent. These movies are almost all completely random: things I took off the shelf with nothing in mind but the title and description on the back. Of course, trust me when I say that the whole random-picking thing doesn't always work out. When we were in high school, my best friend Chelsea and I used to pick up random two-for-a-dollars at Family Video, and we ended up watching some of the crappiest films ever. Like ""Boy Blue"" and ""Blow Dry."" Remember, especially if you're under a certain age, that just because a movie has a hot guy in it DOES NOT mean it will be entertaining. However, I like to think that we also made a few really valuable discoveries. Some of them I'll list below:
1. ""Throw Mama from the Train"" (1987). Two names: Billy Crystal and Danny DeVito. Do you like comedy? If you're a writer, especially, this movie is quite the experience.
2. ""200 Cigarettes"" (1999). This is one of those rare Casey Affleck gems. He plays a vulnerable eye-liner punk in this wacky New Year's Eve chronicle.
3. ""Commited"" (2000). Another thimble of brilliance from Casey Affleck. You'll be quoting this movie for five years.
4. ""In the Bedroom"" (2001). This movie will own you from start to finish. So, if you feel like being subtly dominated, this will work nicely.
5. ""Spartan"" (2004). One of the most random discoveries I've encountered. This one's a real, genuine thriller. But it's got depth that runs as deep as the action.
6. ""Heathers"" (1989). Need something dark, weird and wholly original? This movie is about the blasphemous hierarchies in high school and how far some people will go to control them.
