Web Site Offers Obscure Titles, Painless Shopping To Rent Or Buy

If there’s one thing that age teaches you, it’s that memories are deceiving. Those golden recollections that we carry with such precious tenderness sometimes turn out to be pure fiction.

Just ask Robert Barcus.

A longtime moviegoer, Barcus remembers seeing the Fred Astaire film “Yolanda and the Thief” when it was first released in 1945. Now 74, Barcus at the time was a sailor billeted aboard an aircraft carrier.

“It just seemed like absolute magic to me,” Barcus recalls. For years afterward, he says, “I had this vivid memory of the great Fred Astaire and the beautiful Lucille Bremer.”

Then reality struck. After years of looking, Barcus located a copy of the film. He was so excited about being able to watch it again.

“And it is the corniest, trashiest thing that you ever want to see,” he says. “I just couldn’t believe that my tastes had changed so much in 55 years.”

There’s a video-related point to all this: Barcus located “Yolanda and the Thief” through Reel, an Internet video rental/sale service. And as much as he disliked the film, he loves Reel.

“It’s just a beautifully ordered service,” he says.

Barcus discovered Reel through Newsweek magazine’s Web-related column Cyberscope. A client of America Online, Barcus checked out the site and discovered not only that it had a lot to offer, but it was easy to use.

“A lot of these sites aren’t exactly straightforward,” he says. “You have difficulty finding your way around them. The buttons don’t work and so on.”

But Reel was different.

“This one worked like a dream,” Barcus says.

Reel offers a variety of services both for moviegoers and video viewers. You can check out new releases, both video and theatrical, which are separated into “mainstream” and “art-house” films (a good description of this week’s two major releases, “The People vs. Larry Flynt” and “Breaking the Waves”; see capsule reviews below).

You can search through Reel’s inventory of some 35,000 films to rent, 80,000 to buy. Each film is accompanied by a capsule review plus critics’ and readers’ ratings.

Reel also offers movie “best bets” on upcoming television movies.

For example, TNT is screening “Big Trouble in Little China” tonight, Lifetime is featuring “When Harry Met Sally” on Saturday, and Showtime boasts “The Usual Suspects” on Sunday.

But what Barcus likes most is the rental service.

“When you decide you want a movie, you put it in your ‘shopping cart’ and go on to the next selection,” he says. “When finished, you’re given a summary of your selections with the charges, including Priority Mail or UPS (your option) both ways. You enter your credit card number, which is conspicuously encrypted for security.”

The movie arrives in a couple of days, complete with return mailing materials and a package of microwave popcorn.

And the price? According to Barcus, rental and shipping costs amount to about $6 a film, which, he says, is “a bargain for a painless shopping experience and a week’s use of titles probably unobtainable from local stores.”

In the case of “Yolanda and the Thief,” of course, there’s probably good reason for its scarcity.

“Pauline Kael said that this movie is so bad that it signaled the end of the big Hollywood musical,” Barcus says. “And she was right.”

You can access Reel at www.reel.com.

The People vs. Larry Flynt

***

Two-time Oscar-winning director Milos Forman explores the life of the Hustler publisher, whose outrageous behavior stretches tolerance for the First Amendment about as far as it can go. Woody Harrelson stars as Flynt and gives a stirring performance as a man guilty more of bad taste than evil intent, though sometimes even die-hard liberals would have trouble telling the difference. Forman does a better job of portraying something closer to reality than Oliver Stone might have (Stone produced), but the film does gloss over some moments and obviously ignores others. Still, the pacing is brisk and the acting is superb by Harrelson, Courtney Love as Flynt’s doomed wife and Edward Norton (Oscar-nominated for “Primal Fear”) as the attorney who argued Flynt’s case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Rated R

Breaking the Waves

**-1/2

A young woman living in a small, ultrareligious village on the harsh Scottish coast experiences a spiritual crisis when her oil-rig-worker husband suffers a disabling accident. Her torment is twofold: He may or may not be developmentally disabled, and she blames herself for his condition. Directed by Lars von Trier (“Zentropa,” “The Kingdom”), “Breaking the Waves” received much critical acclaim for its unusual story line, for its unique cinematic style and for the stirring lead performance by Oscar-nominated Emily Watson. But that very “style” - which involves grainy black-and-white cinematography, in-your-face close-ups, and hand-held camera shots that are jarring to the extreme - tends to get in the way of Von Trier’s story, which is not an easily accessible narrative in the first place. Rated R

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: WHAT’S NEW TO VIEW Now available: “Breaking the Waves” (Evergreen Entertainment) “The People vs. Larry Flynt” (Columbia TriStar) “Trigger Happy” (MGM/UA). Available Tuesday: Available Tuesday: “Beavis and Butthead Do America” (Paramount) “I’m Not Rappaport” (MCA/Universal) “Marvin’s Room” (Touchstone) “Michael” (Touchstone).