Screening Log
This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.
April 2006 activity
Total Log Entries: 73
- Adam (8)
- Andrew (0)
- Chet (0)
- Chiranjit (2)
- David (0)
- Eva (0)
- Evan (0)
- Ian (4)
- Jenny (5)
- Katherine (0)
- Leo (15)
- Megan (0)
- Rumsey (18)
- Teddy (0)
- Thomas (6)
- Timothy (0)
- Victoria (0)
Total Comments: 32
- Lady Snowblood (0)
- Lost Highway (6)
- The Ring 2 (0)
- The Proposition (0)
- King Kong (0)
- Club Paradise (3)
- Good Night, and Good Luck. (0)
- Missing (0)
- You Are My Sunshine (1)
- The Passion of the Christ (0)
- Finder’s Fee (1)
- Days of Heaven (0)
- Eat The Document (0)
- The Gladiators (0)
- L.A. Confidential (1)
- Dead Man’s Shoes (0)
- Inside Man (0)
- Rhythms of the World Anthology (0)
- Mr. Arkadin (Corinth Version) (0)
- Thank You For Smoking (0)
- Frenzy (0)
- Pulse (0)
- A Walk Through H (0)
- Bend of the River (0)
- Oh My God! (0)
- The Pity Card (0)
- The Devil’s Rejects (3)
- House of 1000 Corpses (4)
- Clean (0)
- Sex & Fury (0)
- Days of Heaven (0)
- My Grandmother’s House (0)
- They Live (0)
- The Double Life of Veronique (1)
- L’Enfant (0)
- Possible Models (0)
- Thank You For Smoking (0)
- Point Break (0)
- Max Headroom (0)
- Big Time (0)
- Scary Movie 4 (0)
- Wolf Creek (0)
- The Stepfather (0)
- Saw (0)
- The Intruder (0)
- Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (0)
- V For Vendetta (0)
- Match Point (0)
- Jarhead (0)
- A Very Long Engagement (0)
- Gerry (0)
- Brick (0)
- Friends with Money (0)
- Solaris (4)
- Westworld (0)
- Hardcore (0)
- Tenebre (0)
- BMX Bandits (2)
- Cursed (0)
- Rumble Fish (0)
- Condemned to Live (0)
- The Talk of the Town (0)
- Shivers (0)
- The Best of Youth (0)
- Full Metal Jacket (2)
- The Parlor (0)
- Bully (1)
- Lumière (0)
- The Cowboy and the Frenchman (1)
- Welcome To The Jungle (0)
- Return Of The Secaucus 7 (0)
- Wake Up Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie (2)
- 3-Iron (0)
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Finder’s Fee / Canada/USA / 2001
Finder’s Fee, the directorial debut of Survivor host Jeff Probst, is chocked full of those cliches and coincidences you’d expect from a first-time director. Not that the movie is bad—in fact, Probst manages to draw out the story rather well, confining the events to a sole Manhattan apartment. I can best describe it as a mesh of humanity and suspicion, of Hitchcock’s Rope and D.L. Coburn’s famously profane The Gin Game, all simplified for the twenty-something audience.
The plot focuses on a card game between four friends and a newcomer, the owner of a lost wallet played with masterful reservation by James Earl Jones. At stake are five lottery tickets—one of which is worth six million dollars. What ensues is an unwinding of civility and acquaintance as, more and more, they all begin to suspect one another of dishonesty.
Since viewing the film, I’ve enjoyed reading online posts deriding Probst for plot holes and editing errors. While Probst does make a few expected mistakes—an umbrella that changes color, a pizza that mysteriously never appears—he does do something right: he forces us to think. Never have I finished a film with so many vital questions left unanswered. But it’s all part of the film’s amateurish magic. We’re left to put the pieces together, to read the characters as though we ourselves were seated at the card table waiting for the others to show their hands. I’ll be interested to see what Probst does after he’s left the islands and jungles for good.
by Adam Balz | Source: DVD
26 Apr 2006 5:43 PM | Comments (1)
maryellen / 29 April 2006 / 7:26 AM
Interesting, just like survivor where everyone gets more and more paranoid and suspious of one another so do these characters…Jeff likes to stay where he is comfortable….good for you Jeff I think your great….