Finding Neverland (2004)

Premise: After his servant kindly cuts out an unfavourable review, James Barrie (Johnny Depp with a sexy Scottish brogue) spies the widow Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet) and her four sons playing in the park. Barrie is soon adopted as Uncle James by Jack (Joe Prospero), George (Nick Roud), and Michael (Luke Spill), while he coaxes Peter (Freddie Highmore) out of his shell. Both his social climbing wife, Mary (Radha Mitchell), and Sylvia's over-protective mother, Mrs. Du Maurier (Julie Christie), object to James' relationship with the family Davies, and they do their best put an end to a summer that would inspire children for a century.

Spoil sports!

April definitely should have spent her opening week-end money on this film.

Marc Foster (director), who brought us the quiet, poignant, but slightly overrated Monster's Ball, is in his element here. The combination of his direction, David Magee's screenplay (based on Allan Knee's play), and Depp stole my heart in the first fifteen minutes or so, and they filled it to nearly bursting. There's a part right at the beginning where Michael flies a kite, and I started crying right then I was so happy. Foster and Magee make us privy to the wonderful adventures that must have occurred in Barrie's imagination, and it is impossible not to fall in love with him.

I didn't like Mary at first, but Mitchell managed to turn it around for me. The deep yearning that the ethereal Winslet and Depp brought to Sylvia's and James' friendship made it easy to demonize Mary. Magee and Mitchell, however, gave Mary just enough for the audience to understand the daily heartbreak Mary experienced.

And for those of you who were understandably endeared by Highmore's big blue eyes and chemistry with Depp, you'll be happy to know that they will be appearing together next in Tim Burton's remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with Highmore in the title role.

There were so many good little bits that I want to comment on, and I don't want to give any of it away. I will tell you that the part with Christie when she claps was completely spontaneous, and it was also the part that got to me the most.

And Kelly Macdonald, who gives life to the first stage Peter Pan, is perfect as the little boy who never wanted to grow up. In case you didn't already know, Peter was usually played by a young lady, and Macdonald is endearing.

James tells Peter that he can always find Neverland by just believing. If I believe hard enough and long enough, will I always be able to find films that can be described in one word - magic - like this one? A+

Alexander (2004)

Summary: Raised under the watchful eye of his vengeful mother, Olympias (Angelina Jolie), and his capricious father, Philip (Val Kilmer), Alexander (Colin Farrell) grows up unsure of his position as legitimate heir of the united thrones of Macedonia and Greece. After his father's death, Alexander seeks to conquer as much land as he can with the help of many such as Ptomley (Elliot Cowan), Cletius (Gary Stretch), Cassander (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), and his love, Hesphaistion (Jared Leto). Later, Alexander makes the controversial decision to marry a Persian "of no political importance", Roxane (Rosario Dawson).

I knew I was in for a rough ride when I started laughing during the opening credits, but I had no idea how rough the ride would truly be.

At 173 minutes (that's three hours, folks), Oliver Stone (director/producer/co-writer) has turned in one sorry mess. Long, overdone, and completely unwieldy, there is barely anything to make horrible mistake of a movie worthwhile. I did my best to come up with a top 5 list for you, and it was a challenge and a half. Here's what I've got:

Top 5 things that made Alexander barely bearable:

1. Leto - that kid can act! I had no idea how well until now, but he's got some serious chops. He made Hephasition sweet, smart, and sexy without being sorry or pitiable for a single second. Go Leto! I loved the tender scenes between him and Farrel.
2. Short skirts! I've never seen skirts so short on men in movies before. They were like when girls go out nowadays with scarves wrapped around their arses, only a little bit more flowy.
3. Kilmer's prosthetic chin! Or Kilmer generally. I really liked his take on the tyrannical Macedonian ruler.
4. Connor Paolo (Young Alexander)! He looks crazy like Farrel, and he even manages to imitate Farrel's oscillating Irish accent even though he's from NYC. That's incredible.
5. Anthony Hopkins' narrating voice. That one doesn't really deserve an exclamation mark. He plays older Ptolemy, and his character is dictating the entire story to some mute scribes.

I was also going to make a Top 5 for why this movie is so bad, but I do believe that my reasons for thinking so are many more than just five. Here we go.

What the hell is the matter with Farrel? He used to be a scene stealing genius. When he made his American debut is Joel Schumacher's brilliant Tigerland, he nailed a Southern accent and quickly became someone to keep my eye on. Since then, however, my eye has been near terrified to watch. The number of poor role choices this once smoldering star has made is appalling. Here, except in the quiet scenes he shares with Leto, he completely overacts, making his performance near unbearable. And that hair is so very awful. Also, I believe he could have benefited from choosing one accent instead of wavering between two or three for all those hours. It can't be that hard.

Jolie can't act at all. In fact, in one scene, she actually howls, which I found disturbing as heck. I will never understand why she won an Oscar for Girl, Interrupted since that movie was sucky anyway. She chews up the scenery and plants laughing eyes in every scene she can, regardless of whether or not they are applicable. Her accent really threw me for a loop. I understood that her character was supposed to be Greek, so what's with her bad Russian accent? Was she preparing for her upcoming role as the sexy despot Catherine the Great? I'll never know.

Why was Cowan cast as young Ptolmey? He looks nothing like Hopkins. Nothing. And how was Ptomley supposed to know about all these intimate moments between Alexander and his mother/father/lover/wife? He wasn't even there, it seems, when young Alexander was under the tutelage of Aristotle (Christopher Plummer, who would have had to burst into song to save this sinking ship). There was never any indication that Ptomley was anything close to a confidant of Alexander's. And then, after he tells the whole "rousing" story, he admits that he never really believed in Alexander. What the hell is the point, then?

Things like that just show the complete lack of thought on the parts of Stone and his co-writers Christopher Kyle and Laeta Kalogridis. Here's some advice for Stone et al. : When your screenplay raises more questions than it answers, it's never a good sign. I don't even think it's a good sign when you make crazed conspiracy theorist movies (e.g. Stone's completely implausible bullet theories in JFK). They all worked so hard to simultaneously reinforce and negate Alexander's homosexuality that no clear point was made about it. I mean, are we supposed to believe that he was kind of gay? A little bit gay? Sometimes gay? I always thought it was pretty binary, like being pregnant.

And then they had Paolo horse-whisperer that wild horse? That was just dumb. No one horse whisperered anything back then.

For the record, it's Her-Q-lees, not Hair-A-cles.

Of course, the ridiculously stupid crowd I found myself with in that theatre didn't help. They actually laughed their way through every moment of tenderness between Alexander and Hesphaistion (and I would like to reiterate, the best scenes in the whole awful thing) and then were near hysterical when he died! So overcome with anger was I at the crowd that I nearly yelled out, "HE'S GAY!!!!!" So, so unimpressed. Clearly a group with a level of collective maturity even lower than mine.

Also, Vangelis' score was just as cheap rip off of Hans Zimmer's score for Gladiator, which this movie will never be.

I have always believed that Alexander's relationship with his father, Philip II of Macedonia, had more of an impact on him than his mother's. Rumoured to have raised his son among lions to breed fearlessness, Philip actually tried to impale his son. I don't know about you, but that would have an impact on me.

Overall, I refuse to allow Alexander the Great to be reduced to a sullen mamma's boy. D

Hey folks! I'm bogged down in term papers and the like lately, but I did come up with a top 5 list for you to discuss at leisure. This list came out of a discussion between Emily and I after we saw Stage Beauty. So, the list contains those whom are in a lot of movies but reasonably so, for they are quite talented.

Top 5 actors to put in a movie if you're going to make a movie

1. Phillip Seymour Hoffman
2. Xander Berkley
3. Gary Oldman
4. Tom Wilkinson
5. John C. Reilly

Also, check out the new link. The High Sign is a film review site by woman who writes television and media criticism for Slate, which is also linked. Her reviews put mine to shame, but she posts with even less frequency than yours truly.

Saved! (2004)

Brief: The summer before her senior year at a very Christian high school, Mary (Jena Malone) sleeps with her gay boyfriend, Dean (Chad Faust), in an attempt to straighten him out. He ends up getting sent away anyway, and Mary ends up pregnant. Although she does her best to hide it from her friends like Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore), Mary is found out and ostracizes by everyone except the school's only Jewish student, Cassandra (Eva Amurri), and the only kid in a wheelchair, Roland (Macaulay Culkin).

Hahahaha! That's right! Macaulay is back, and he's funnier than ever. I was about to call him Culkin, but I didn't want to get you confused with my love of his younger brothers. Basically speaking, those Culkins can act! I don't know where they get it from, but it's a high quality source.

I've got to tell ya, although I watched this movie with people who were obviously amused, I just don't think they got it the way I did. You've got to really enjoy/know something to really make fun of it, and Brian Dannelly (director/co-writer) and Michael Urban (co-writer) really know their stuff. This movie is so funny. So very funny. From the pins to the distribution of religious tracts on Hallowe'en to the giant white Jesus, it's almost too much.

Malone is typically plucky and diligently sullen when necessary, and I detected a note of boredom behind it all. You never want to feel like an actor is trying, but it's even worse when you feel like they aren't.

Moore, I'm shocked to admit, is really coming into her own as an actress. I didn't think it was possible, but she's starting to grow on me. Her discernment is wanting, and I am willing to see if that will develop in time.

Ooo, I forgot to mention that Patrick Fuget is in the movie as well. He likes Mary even though she's preggers. It's sweet. But he wasn't is heart-achingly endearing as he was in Almost Famous. Of course, that's sort of the magic of Cameron Crowe.

Plus there's Mary Louise Parker. I'm fond of her as well. B

Little Odessa (1994)

Idea: Joshua (Tim Roth) returns home after a long absence on a business assignment. He wishes to see his dying mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and his little brother, Reuben (Edward Furlong), but his father (Maximilian Schell) struggles to keep Joshua's influence out of Reuben's life.

I really didn't get this movie. Well, I might just be saying that.

As you know, I am a big fan of James Gray's The Yards. His writing and directorial debut, however, left me feeling uninspired.

With the exceptions of the scenes that Roth and Furlong share or the ones that Redgrave, Roth and Furlong share, there's nothing attention grabbing in this movie. And I mean that in a bad way. It's not understated; nothing's stated at all.

In fact, instead of concerning myself with the plights of the characters, I spent most of my time trying to figure out what the title referred to. Because Gray is possibly in love with the five boroughs, the movie is set in Brooklyn. Now, apparently, a large amount of Ukrainian immigrants must have settled there because the real Odessa is in the Ukraine.

Honestly, though, I can't think of much to say about this movie because it was so blah. It's a very bad thing when a movie leaves you feeling so null. C-

Stage Beauty (2004)

Premise: Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup) is the most beautiful woman on the stage, and he is renowned for his Desdemona. Invited to dine at the palace one night by his lover, the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Chaplin), Ned discovers that the rumoured first woman to act on the stage (and play Desdemona no less) is no other than his dresser, Maria (Claire Danes). King Charles II (Rupert Everett), incited by his mistress, declares that women on the stage is no longer illegal. After Ned refuses to act with Maria, the mistress then pushes the King to make it illegal for men to act in women's roles, thus depriving Ned of his livelihood.

Also Tom Wilkinson is around and bursting with talent. He's one of the few people I can think of who can genuinely play despicable and lovable characters equally well.

Crudup! I've gotta tell ya - I didn't have much of an opinion about him until now. I've seen him in things like Almost Famous and The Hi-Lo Country, and I never made much of him before. He's got it goin' on here. As a man consciously trapped in womanhood, completely unable to express himself as a man, he's really quite compelling. As much as we like to pretend that "gender confusion" and "alternative lifestyles" are an invention of the 20th century, they very much are not, and Crudup brings new insight to a man who has chosen the beauty of women over the ugliness he associates with masculinity.

Danes, whose choices are sometimes suspect, plays brilliantly in a return to that dramatic independent vein in which she belongs. By independent I don't necessarily mean independent film but independent spirit. I think she's better off with characters that she can bring that quality to. I've even started to find that quivering chin of hers endearing.

And I don't care what a certain someone says! Everett can totally play heterosexuals without coming across as "gay". His take on that gender reformist is remarkable different than Rufus Sewell's, which I saw earlier this year, and I like the contrast. He's a hoot!

Jeffrey Hatcher's screenplay, based on his play Compleat Female Stage Beauty, is alive and questioning. His words flow smoothly with Richard Eyre's (director) camera. Eyre also helmed the acclaimed Iris, and he brings a balanced sense of comedy and drama to this film.

I do have a problem with George Fenton's score, though. It reminded me so much of Michael Kamen's Robin Hood that I ended up humming Kamen's work on my way home, not Fenton's. Bad, bad sign.

By far the best Charlesian drag dramedy I have ever seen, though. A-

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)

Plot: Six weeks later, Bridget (Renee Zellweger) and Mark's (Colin Firth) relationship is going well, except that Briget is starting to get ansy. The appearance of leggy Rebecca (Jacinda Barrett) in Mark's life and the re-appearance of Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) in Bridget's has her just a bit on edge about their relationship.

Finally, a classic sequel: worse than the first.

See, the problem in this case is that the first is very, very good. A+ good. What's a sequel to do?

First, it seems, is highly deviate from the side splitting novel on which it is based. Enough is there to keep the fans happy, but so very much is missing. If you've read the diaries, you know the first film was a faithful adaptation of the book. All the promotional materials that I read and saw suggested that The Edge of Reason would deliver all the same goodies in shiny new packaging. Unfortunately, there seems to be a disconnect between whomever created the promotional materials and whomever did the editing.

Of course, whoever said it was right - Zellweger was born to play Bridget. She nails her British accent, and she is a genuine comedienne.

It also helps that Grant, as much as we all loved his floppy haired, bumbling Brit days, was born to play the cad. His Cleaver is exactly the way you think he should be - shallow, conceited, and, above all, unrepentant.

Firth remains one of the sexiest actors out there, and his shagaholic Mark Darcy is as dreamy a dish as ever.

So I blame the new director: Beeban Kidron. Sure, I love her drag comedy To Wong Foo, but she just doesn't do it for me here. Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones are wasted, and neither movie allows you to fully experience the hilarity of Bridge's social circle.

Basically speaking, the movie's just not funny the way it should be. B

The Believer (2001)

Plan: Danny Balint (Ryan Gosling) is a neo-Nazi looking to do some violence. At the same time as he is planning bombing synagogues, he becomes involved with a group of fascists led by Curtis (Billy Zane) and Lina (Theresa Russell) who believe that Danny's passionate eloquence will draw others to their cause. Danny also takes up with Lina's daughter, Carla (Summer Phoenix). Of course, there is one minor problem: Danny is Jewish.

Classic example of a great performance wasted in a poorly done flick.

Gosling is reminiscent of a young Robert DeNiro here. He's fiery and quiet, strong and even a bit subversive. He is quickly establishing himself as one of the finest actors of his generation, and he's got the stuff to make that mantle a lasting one.

The rest of it is just blah. Neither Henry Bean's direction nor his screenplay are focused enough to merit any attention. Gosling manages to rise above it, but the rest of are just stuck in the mire. It's a little sad if you think about it.

I consider this foray just another step in watching Gosling progress. Sometimes it's worth it just to watch raising star. B-

Super-Size Me (2004)

Subject: Morgan Spurlock (writer/director) eats nothing but McDonald's for 30 days while considering America's obsession with fast-food, its obesity crisis, and other nutritional ideas.

A highly irreverent, highly tough-in-cheek look at what the rest of us would never do to prove a point. And I do love it when people really want to make a point.

Is this a rigorous, scientific look at the dangers of excessive fast-food consumption? Of course not. Why would you want to see such a film?

But it is a good documentary. Spurlock sticks to the basics of film-making, keeping his focus while examining why it is that we eat the poor way that we do. He outlines his points with verbally and through images, so you never get confused about what's going on. In addition, at 96 minutes, he doesn't keep you sitting there for what can often seem like an eternity in the realm of non-fiction.

He does his best work not when he interacts with the public (although there are some priceless moments there), but when he discusses, describes, and creatively animates what is happening to his body. He does, I will warn you, throw up a lot on day three. But never again after that.

Personally, I feel that all this dependence on fast-foods is wrapped up in the myth that we are in some sort of a hurry. Everyone believes that they simply don't have enough time to do the things that they need to get done in a day, so they find ways to cut corners (how else could you explain the hundreds of new disposable products on the market? do you really need to create more garbage?).

Honestly, though, the most powerful segment for me wasn't in the original movie but in the bonus features. In a section entitled The Smoking Fry, Spurlock leaves various McDonald's sandwiches and one super-size fries to rot in containers in this office, as well as a hamburger and fries from a real hamburger place. The latter two were the first two go. In a show of pure horror, the sandwiches eventually rot. The fries, oh those once delicious golden institutions, look exactly the same 10 weeks later. Exactly, exactly the same.

I will never eat their fries again. Never, never ever. Food decomposes. These things might have been made of Styrofoam. A-

Texasville (1990)

Short: 30 years later (1984), Jacy (Cybill Shepherd) returns to Anarene following the death of one of her children. Duane (Jeff Bridges) is an oil tycoon about to lose it all, including his wife, Karla (Annie Potts); his mistresses to his virile son, Dickie (William McNamara); and his family to Jacy. Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) is also still around, although less and less of his mind is in the present.

Again, April was mislead. I thought that the sequel to The Last Picture Show was about Duane and Jacy getting back together/working on their issues with one another. It's not.

It's about how Duane is a dumbass.

So unimpressed again. I didn't much care for the first film, but the follow-up is so much worse. If it weren't for the ever-delightful Potts, I doubt I would have made it to the end.

I don't think that Peter Bogdanovich should write movies all on this own. It doesn't work for him. And what was with all the poor editing? You know when you can tell that an actor was filmed against a screen and the background was added later? At least half the movie looked that way.

While watching this movie, I did note one interesting phenomenon, although it didn't occur on the screen. Everyone who came into the room stopped to actually watch what was going on on the TV. When I watched The Last Picture Show, most people chalked it up to "one of April's weird movies."

Why, you might ask? Because it was in colour. The Last Picture Show is unquestionably the better film, but it was in black and white. Thus, no one wanted to see it. That's ridiculous to me. I don't understand at all why people should be wary of black and white pictures. I mean, does that mean that a whole generation of people will never see classics like Citizen Kane or Some Like it Hot?

Because that's just nutty. C

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Summary: In the early 1950s, small-town Texas was safe between wars. In Anarene, Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), Jacy (Cybill Shepherd), and Duane (Jeff Bridges) are floating through their last year of high school, blissfully unaware that there is more to life that high school football games and constant gossip (or is there?). Sonny soon begins an affair with their coach's wife, Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman), and Duane and Jacy's relationship begins to reach its breaking point.

Here's what I thought the movie was about:
Duane and Jacy are dating, and she cheats on him with Sonny, his best friend.

That's what you get when you rely on Dawson's Creek for your film synopses.

Here's what it's really about:
Sonny is an allegorical figure that represents the difficulties of growing up, that chasm between childhood and adulthood, and the disillusionment that inevitably follows when you graduate from that microcosm of social activity and anxiety that is high school.

Which is well enough because Bottoms does a superb job. The real knockouts, though, are Leachman and Ben Johnson (Sam), who very justly won Academy Awards for their performances here. It was Johnson who really stole the show. His performance is so nuanced and understated that you just might miss it.

Peter Bogdanovich (director and co-screenwriter) and Larry McMurtry (co-screenwriter, based on his novel) are credited with crafting a "great American movie," a" classic" for the ages. For life of me, I didn't see what critics apparently have seen for years in this movie. Although lauded with excessive superlatives, I saw a movie that was much more sexual and, well, naked that I would have liked. Maybe it's just my disappointment.

All in all, aside from the three performances I mentioned above, and the fact that I believe Bridges to be one of the top 5 underrated American actors of the 20th-21st centuries, I don't think I would have made it all the way through this one.

Alright, I'll give you cinematography, too. Excellent work, Robert Surtees. B

James Dean (2001)

Idea: A romanticised telling of the life of James Dean (James Franco). After his mother dies when James is nine, and Winton Dean (Michael Moriarty) ships his son back to Indiana. He doesn't see him again until after his high school graduation. Winton again abandons James when he decides to pursue a career in acting instead of business. James moves to New York, where he is befriended by Martin Landau (Sam Gould). When Elia Kazan (Enrico Colantoni) offers James the part in East of Eden, James moves back to California, where he falls in love with Pier Angeli (Valentina Cervi).

April takes issue with the biopic! Two issues, actually:

1) I don't understand why all biopics have to be so Freudian. I recognize that Freud is very pervasive in our times, and especially in our media, but I am just so tired of biopics that boil everything down in some person's life to their relationship with mother and/or father. Yes, those relationships are important. Are they the basis for everything else that will follow in one's life? Biopics sure think so, and Israel Horovitz (writer) has no desire to disagree.

2) Absolution. Whomever it is, whatever they have done, people in biopics always seem to be concerned with absolving their subject for their past indiscretions. Can absolution really be found in a conversation, a sentence, an utterance? Probably not. It's still worth a try.

I have never seen Franco so inhabit a role either before or since. He may not possess Dean's sheer physical presence, but he, for a brief, shining moment, was touched by the same greatness that haunted Dean.

I don't understand why the pic glosses over Rebel Without a Cause, though. I would have liked to see Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood as well. Oh, well.

Next to Franco the rest of them fade from memory, which is probably what it was like to work with Dean himself. Moriarty is a close second as a father with a secret, and Colantoni made a pretty good Kazan. Edward Herrmann has some pretty choice lines as Raymond Massey.

But that Franco. Why can't he reproduce this intensity in any of his other work? B+

The Hard Word (2002)

Brief: Dale (Guy Pearce), Mal (Damien Richardson), and Shane (Joel Edgerton) are fraternal bank robbers who just got out of jail. Thrown back in to divert suspicion from their latest heist, Frank (Robert Taylor), their partner and lawyer, offers to get them out in exchange for pulling off their biggest hit yet. When Dale realizes that his wife, Carol (Rachel Griffiths), is having an affair with Frank, the brothers suspect there is a lot more going on than they originally knew.

If that was the blurb for the back of the movie, I would have ended it with, "But is it more than they can handle?"

It's a good thing I don't have to write the blurb, though, since I would have been tempted to begin it with, "In this dialogue less wasteland of a movie . . . "

Well, it's not that bad. And a case could be made that I'm rather partial to dialogue in movies, so I may judge movies that I feel lack it more harshly (e.g. my feelings about The Bourne Supremacy).

But that's the thing about dialogue in movies. It's great in two completely different ways. A) Because the writer thinks about each word carefully (or at least s/he should), the characters either deliver the kind of speeches we wish we could if we meted out our words with greater consideration towards their meanings or B) they say exactly what we think we would say in the given situation, which makes us feel close to the character. In either case, I like dialogue.

So when I don't get a lot of it or I get a bunch of random stuff that has nothing to do with anything (Shane's strange relationship with his mom, for example), I don't appreciate it.

Also, what's the deal with Pearce? Sometimes he's sexy, sometimes he's creepy, sometimes he's a little of both. That's the kind of thing I love about him. But occasionally, he's kind of simian. I don't know what that's about.

The trailer made a big deal about the music in the movie as well, and it wasn't particularily good either.

Basically, Scott Roberts (writer/director) doesn't really give us something worth watching. A good heist flick is judged by its pacing as much as any other standard. I kept watching, thinking, "It'll pick up soon, it'll pick up soon."

It never did. C-

Zip.ca (2004)

A review two weeks in the making!

This summer The Tyee introduced me to Zip.ca, an Ottawa-based DVD rental site. Not to be outdone, I decided to give Zip a whirl myself.

The Promises:
1. Over 24, o00 titles
2. Shipping paid both ways
3. DVDs arrive anywhere in Canada in 1-3 business days
4. No late fees
5. 24.95$ plus your province's applicable taxes
6. No contracts
7. Two week free trial

I'll confess that the two-week free trial was what did me in in the end.

The Drawbacks:
1. You have to have a credit card to sign up.

So I went on a merry-go-round to get a credit card (MasterCard didn't like my multiple addresses), but I did get one.

First, I browsed their titles. I searched for a variety of movies that I couldn't get at my local Blockbuster and initially had a 75% return rate. Eventually, when I stopped spelling things incorrectly, this number grew. Also, as more movies come out on DVD, I am able to get a hold of what I want to see.

Here's what you do:
1) You create a Zip List, which consists of search for titles and then clicking "Rent". Your Zip List is established chronologically, so you would theoretically get the first movie you added first. However, what DVD Zip sends you and when has more to do with the DVD's availability. If you make a list of say, 8 movies, then the nice people at Zip will go through it chronologically and send you the next available title.
2) Sit and wait. Personally, I found my DVDs usually arrived 1 day later.
3) Watch them at your convenience. There are no late fees, so you can keep the titles as long as you want. But . . .
4) You can only have 4 DVDs out at a time. In order to receive more, you have to ship yours back. Inside the envelope Zip sends you is a pre-stamped envelope. All you have to do is drop the DVD in the mailbox.
5) My DVDs were usually back within a business day. Zip sends you an e-mail to tell you what DVD(s) they have received and which ones they have sent out.

Problems:
I really only encountered one problem with this method so far. One DVD I requested arrived in nearly two pieces. I sent it right back, checking the boxes on the envelope to make a complaint, and I went on-line and made a more detailed complaint.
I also received a sequel before I received the first movie. I moved the priority up to ASAP for the first movie, and Zip shipped it the next day. Thus, I do not regard this situation as a problem.

Another plus is the personable and friendly staff. I received what I thought was a mini-series and was shocked when it ended without resolving any plot lines. I wrote in to ask if there was another disc. While I was informed that there is not, the nice lady who wrote to me also added that she too found the end abrupt and unresolved after she watched it. That stuff's just too good.

So the real question is, can you justify the cost? A monthly fee of about $27 may seem like a lot or a little to you. Break it down. I watch about 4 DVDs a week. At Blockbuster, that's about 11$ a week, which is 44$ a month. For me that also involves busing and/or walking both ways and no doubt late fees for too small a selection.

My Zip List now sits about 65 titles, so you can guess which way I went. They have tons of movies, mini-series, and TV shows and exactly what I have been looking for. A