It was announced in July of this year that the parent company of the DVD-rental kiosks known as Redbox filed for bankruptcy. Operations are being shut down. So, good-bye to the Redbox. From the inception in 2002 and a peak of popularity in 2013 (when it operated more than 20,000 kiosks) the sites served as a source of entertainment for those who hadn’t yet believed that the streaming of movies was the way to go.
You passed a Redbox many times—maybe without checking the movies for rent. They stood outside of Giant Eagle, GetGo and inside of Wal-Mart. I was once in GetGo to get 5:00 a.m. coffee and saw a man loading the new DVDs into the machine. I was happy and surprised to see the how the “sausage was made”. I tried to engage him in a conversation about the new releases but he had a job to do. Many other boxes needed to be filled before the sun came up.
I maintained a list of sleeper movies that I found in the Redbox. If you’re a movie fan, you will want to check out these movies. They are listed in the order of their release year and not in the order I found them. As for a personal favorite, they are all tied for First Place in the Redbox Sleeper Movie category.
The Railway Man (2013) WWII veteran Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) meets the beautiful Patricia (Nicole Kidman) on one of his many train excursions. They marry. On their wedding night, Eric wakes from a screaming nightmare. He was a POW in a Japanese camp along the Thai-Burma Railway. His main torturer was Takashi Nagase. Lomax’s friend and fellow POW, Finlay, brings evidence that Nagase now operates a tour service at the same camp where Lomax and Finlay were held captive. Lomax returns to the camp with the intention of killing Nagase. And that’s where the story really starts…
The Rewrite (2014) Keith Michaels (Hugh Grant) is a LA-based screenwriter who hasn’t had a sale in 15 years. Things are tough. He finds himself pitching the same ideas to the same executives who are now working at different studios. Keith’s agent can only find him a job teaching screenwriting at Binghampton University in Upstate New York. Keith takes the job thinking that he will be called back to LA soon and doesn’t actually try to teach. But when he gets to know his students’ personalities, ambitions, and problems—and develops an attraction to older student Holly Carpenter (Marisa Tomei)—his attitude changes. Keith is divorced and estranged from his son who lives on the East Coast. The way Keith and his son reconnect is one of the best endings to any movie I’ve ever seen. JK Simmons, Chris Elliot and Allison Janney are also in this true sleeper movie.
Their Finest (2016) This film tells the story of the British Ministry of Information making a movie about the Dunkirk evacuation as a way to give hope and a morale boost to the country. Gemma Arterton (Catrin Cole) joins the film office and is involved in all aspects of the low-budget production. This movie was released the year before Christopher Nolan’s telling of the tale (Dunkirk). A highlight of this movie is the role played by the great Bill Nighy (Love Actually, About Time, Pirates of the Caribbean, Still Crazy…and many more). Nighy is Ambrose Hilliard, a British matinee idol. When he is approached to be in the movie, he thinks they want him for the leading role. The star. But he is wanted to play the drunken uncle who helps to rescue soldiers from the beach at Dunkirk. His transformation from turning down the role to accepting it and giving a memorable performance is one of many highlights in Nighy’s amazing career.
Torpedo: U-235 (2019) It is 1943. A group of Flemish resistance fighters are operating in German-occupied Belgium doing what they can to kill Nazis and gum up the works. They are tasked with navigating a captured German U-boat loaded with Uranium-235 to New York City. The cargo will be used in the Manhattan Project. The group must evade capture from the Germans and survive the internal conflicts among the crew. Submarines, Nazi villains, great action sequences, and a happy ending that makes one feel good about life. What’s not to love about this movie?
The location of the Redbox in the photo is the Shop ‘n Save in Mt. Oliver on Brownsville Road, Pittsburgh, PA. Maybe the last Redbox standing (or maybe they just forgot to pick it up).
