So right now I've got subscriptions to two DVD rent-by-mail companies: Netflix and GreenCine. The former has a great selection but there are the occasional oddball movies that are now out of print which GreenCine has (and truthfully vice versa). So between the two, I can more or less play catch up on some of the older films I haven't seen.

What prompted all this is that recently I came across a bunch of reviews that were not in electronic format -- and I discovered that somehow over the decade plus that I spent writing movie reviews, I had "lost" a whole bunch of them. Especially some of the earlier stuff I had written. Now it's entirely possible that they exist on floppy disks but I don't have a desk top machine that is compatible with that format and I have no idea whether or not the reviews are indeed on them.

But I had compiled a list of the films I had reviewed, so I went back to try to rent them. Some, unfortunately, either are not now or never have been available on DVD. A handful have turned up on various cable channels like IFC or Sundance. So I taped them or watched them when they aired. The upshot is that I'm trying to build up the archived reviews on the site.  I don't get out to many first-run films now for a number of reasons. I hope to rectify that over the summer but we'll see. In the meantime, I'm content to sit home and watch various films.

Recent rentals from GreenCine have included the four-part British miniseries A Dance to the Music of Time, the British comedy-drama Different for Girls, The Conversation and Last Summer in the Hamptons.

The last on the list is Henry Jaglom's 1995 feature about a theatrical family forced to sell their Hamptons home and a visit by an interloper in the form of a movie star who desires to work in theater. It features a cast of wonderful actors including Andre Gregory, Ron Rifkin, Holland Taylor, Martha Plimpton, Roddy McDowall, Melissa Leo,  Roscoe Lee Browne, Kristoffer Tabori, Brooke Smith, Victoria Foyt (who co-wrote the script), and the marvelous Viveca Lindfors. Playwright Jon Robin Baitz makes his acting debut and although he had a couple of small roles in later films, he's not pursuing acting which is something of a shame. He's as good an actor as he is a writer. The movie bogs down a little bit when it flirts with the pretensions of actors, but on the whole it is a Chekhovian look at forsaking commerce for the pursuit of art and the demands of a life on the stage. It's well-acted and enjoyable and director Henry Jaglom makes a fun appearance as an obnoxious movie maker.  Rating:  B

Different for Girls was a rather daring drama about a transsexual whose past catches up with her. Kim Foyle (Stephen Mackintosh) was born Karl and harbored a crush on his mate Paul Prentice (Rupert Graves), who has grown up to be something of a messed-up individual. Where Prentice goes, trouble follows. He and Kim cross paths when her taxi collides with his motorbike and the pair gradually revisit their friendship. Obviously, things have changed. Prentice's intrusion in her life brings Kim a whole lot of grief. A brush with the law leads to surprising results. Graves is superb as a man-child who hasn't fully embraced what it means to be an adult while Mackintosh is superb as Kim. The film isn't perfect but it's pretty damned good.  Rating:   B+

Although it is considered something of a classic, I somehow had never managed to see The Conversation and I thought it was about time. Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 drama about a surveillance expert (Gene Hackman) who finds himself drawn deeper into his latest job has not aged well -- mostly because technology has outstripped the story. Taken as an object of its time, though, the film is pretty good. Some of it is a bit trite and predictable but it ultimately packs a surprising punch. Hackman does his usual superb job and he's ably supported by the kind of cast that one rarely sees nowadays -- character actors who haven't succumbed to Botox and plastic surgery. The fine ensemble includes the late John Cazale as Hackman's assistant, Teri Garr as Hackman's long-suffering love interest, Allen Garfield as a rival, Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest as the targets of Hackman's surveillance, Elizabeth MacRae as a femme fatale, Harrison Ford (in one of his early roles) as a nefarious corporate type, and an uncredited Robert Duval as the man who hired Hackman to spy on a young couple. The sound design is integral to the plot and it has withstood the test of time. The rest of the movie, unfortunately, hasn't quite.  Overall, it's worth a look if you haven't seen it.  Rating:  B-

Lastly, I have been waiting more than a decade to see the British miniseries A Dance to the Music of Time, adapted from Anthony Powell's series of novels that span from the 1920's through to the 1960's. I first read about the production in Vanity Fair magazine in 1995 when they did a pictoral spread on the cast. From that alone, I could tell that the production would appeal to me as it had pretty much everything I enjoy -- a period piece that spans decades, an adaptation from a literary classic, and a cast of appealing performers from James Purefoy and Paul Rhys to Simon Russell Beale and Miranda Richardson to Edward Fox and Frank Middlemass. At the time, the film drew comparisons with Brideshead Revisited which remains one of my all-time favorite television productions (although the DVD transfer used a lousy print!). After viewing the film, I have to say that the Powell adaptation didn't quite measure up to the Waugh -- but it's pretty damned good. I'm not entirely sure why they triple cast some roles (like the lead character Nicholas Jenkins (James D'Arcy as a youth, James Purefoy as an adult, and John Standing as an older man) while others like Russell Beale get to portray their characters from youth through to old age. That's a bit jarring. But there's a lot to savor from Purefoy's excellent work to John Gielgud's cameo as a famous writer to Richardson's unstable woman. The large supporting cast includes good work from Adrian Scarborough, Nicholas Jones, Claire Skinner, Rhys, Russell Beale (who along with Richardson won a BAFTA), Grant Thatcher, Jonathan Cake, Nicola Walker, Gillian Bevan, Nicholas Rowe and Kate Isitt, to name but a few. The film loses something as it draws to a close and I wasn't as invested in the last hours as I had been in the middle sections (disks 2 and 3). Rating:  B