Review (Taken from the net)
Mr. Rice's Secret is a children's film about dealing with death. The central character of Mr. Rice's Secret is Owen Walters (Bill Switzer). A 12-year-old who is fighting Hodgkin's Disease, Owen has spent a great portion of his life in and out of hospitals and chemotherapy sessions, surrounded by other children who are all-too-aware that their time on earth will not be as long as most people's.

One of those children is Simon (Richard de Klerk), a young boy with leukemia who wants to be Owen's friend. Owen resists Simon's friendly advances because his own group of friends doesn't particularly care for Simon, plus Owen wants to distance himself from a boy who he deems to be sicker than he is.

At the beginning of the film, Owen is faced with death in another, and in some ways more painful, way: His neighbor and good friend, a mysterious man named Mr. Rice (David Bowie), has just died. Owen's parents don't want him to go to the funeral, but he sneaks to the church anyway and secretly videotapes the ceremony.

Later, Owen and three of his friends, Funnell Head (Zack Lipovsky), Veg (Jason Anderson), and Gilbert (Tyler Thompson), decide to sneak into Mr. Rice's empty house in order to watch the videotape. While in the house, they stumble upon a trunk filled with photographs and old letters, one of which is still sealed and addressed to Owen.

Owen opens the envelope to find a letter written in code, which he decodes using a special ring Mr. Rice had given him. This leads him to series of clues, each of which leads to more clues, which eventually leads to the answer posed by the film's title: What is Mr. Rice's secret? What Mr. Rice's secret is becomes fairly obvious early on, but it doesn't prove to be a real stumbling block because the real question becomes what will Owen do once he discovers the secret.

Comments
Every once in a while you stumble upon a movie of which you have no idea of what to expect but in the end turns out to be a real attractive movie. Mr. Rice's secret is one of those movies. Fairly unknown, but really worth watching. Not only because of the great performances of Bill Switzer and the other actors but also because of the story. Although the film is dealing with death the movie is never sentimental. Bill Switzer is doing great in this movie. Just happens to be the second movie I saw this weekend starring Bill Switzer (I saw Locked in Silence only yesterday) and I am really impressed about his talent.

DVD
This movie can be bought both in R1, R2 and R4. Try (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) for R2 and (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) for R1.

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I saw this on VHS a few months back. It's definitely worth watching.