It's widescreen

Usually it's just my sister and I renting movies but I ended up at Rogers with both my parents without any clear indication as to what she meant by "bring home a movie or something".

We started at the foreign films and found that alas, everything we wanted to see was out, including a film described as "a black comedy with dire consequences". I can't remember what it was about exactly, or what it was called, but it had a picture of a hospital stretcher with a crumpled pile of clothing and a bunch of cats on it and that means that I have to watch it. Definitely.

Mom grabbed The Illusionist and began to read out the parental warnings on the back. I don't think we really bother with the plot synopses anymore, mostly because what's on the original packaging is always horribly vague and whoever writes the ones on the in-store packaging is clearly an idiot. These days we go by the picture, the name and how much sex, drugs and violence we are warned about. Murders and suicides and sex - it's all good.

Down to the checkout, where the girl who rang us through made the mistake of telling us what we already knew and were keeping secret from dad: it was a widescreen dvd. "What? Pardon me?" he asked, "I didn't hear you..." and she had to repeat it three times while he frowned and got upset that it wouldn't work in the tv. We had to assure him that it was fine before we could pay and leave the store.

So the movie: visually excellent, but it just didn't quite grab me in the beginning. Maybe it was just that the opening flashback sequence was kind of a boy meets girl, boy loses girl cliche. Regardless, not a bad movie. I don't know. I'm notoriously bad at reviewing films.