Jumper

SCRIBE'S I WISH I COULD TELEPORT SO I COULD MATERIALIZE INSIDE SALMA HAYEK'S UNDERWEAR DRAWER & JUST WAIT...JUST WAIT...REVIEW:

Half of me wanted to hate this movie, while the other wanted to love it. As it turns out, it’s based on one of my favorite novels by Stephen C. Gould.

I read Jumper in the early Nineties while I was still formulating my reading tastes and loved its often unsettling portrayal of an abused teen who suddenly discovers he can teleport to places he’s been before. Eventually, he finds out he can teleport to places he hasn’t been as long as he can focus on an image of it. Talk about your wish list of powers!

Naturally, the protagonist is pursued by a government agent hell-bent on either destroying him or using his powers for national security.

The film is something of a departure from the book in that it fleshes out the concept of Jumpers as a secret group of social outcast and adds a group of fanatical weirdos who pursue them. The first twenty minutes of the novel, the narrated portion, are identical to the book with one glaring exception: The truck stop anal rape scene is missing! The whole point of that scene was to show the protagonist that escape from abuse is not always as easy as it sounds. I really wish they’d kept that scene.

DON’T PSYCHOANALYZE ME!!!

The film is surprisingly enjoyable. Instead of destroying a great concept, it builds upon it. Even Gould acknowledges in the extras that his story was too internal to make a good visual tale without some major changes. He even likes the idea of the fanatics who feel it’s their duty to destroy these “abominations” against God’s will and so do I!

Hayden Christensen shows he is not a wooden actor at all and is in fact in possession of a decent amount of range. Samuel L Jackson is…well, come on, who in their right minds would say anything negative about one of our greatest actors? I loved the Scottish kid who reveals to Christensen that Jumpers have been around for a long time, a departure from the novel.

Doug Liman’s direction is first rate as he keeps the action moving without sacrificing character development and emotion. The screenplay makes excellent use of the source material while developing its own mythology. Oh, and the chick is pretty cute and a good actor as well.

The DVD extras are filled with talk of making this a film trilogy and I would be interested in seeing that.

*** out of *****

GREEN'S "COME WITH ME TO ROME BECAUSE I'VE HAD A SECRET CRUSH ON YOU MY WHOLE LIFE" REVIEW:

The last time we saw Hayden Christiansen and Samuel L. Jackson on screen together, Mace Windu was receiving his first and only impromptu flying lesson from a newly minted Darth Vader. Oh, what a great film Revenge of the Sith was!!!

Wait, we're not talking about that movie now, are we?? What the....!!

Oh, this is supposed to be a review of Jumper, huh?

Right, right. Why didn't you say so sooner?

It has been a long time since I've anticipated watching any movie as much as I had with this one, while not knowing much about it. I had wanted to see it in the theater but never got around to it.

Quite frankly, I would have been disappointed and I'm glad I didn't waste my money.

Why, you ask? Was this not a great and enjoyable film? Sure it was. What there was of it, anyway.

Unlike the scribester, I had never read the novel and only knew about the story from what the movie trailers gave away, which is to say not much. If ever there was unrealized potential in a movie, this was it.

At 88 minutes of run time, this movie was way too short. It could have easily been an hour longer without dragging the story down one bit. The story didn't develop nearly as much as I would have liked and was expecting. It left more questions than it answered and left many questions unanswered.

Here are some of the questions I had:

How exactly does Roland find David after eight years of presumably cold-trail and somehow end up in his apartment out of the blue one night?

I want to know more about the history behind the story. Show me some of the battles, rivalry and hatred between Paladins and Jumpers in the past; how it came to be that way and how that leads us to the story at hand? Seems like being a Jumper is something you are born with, not a skill you can aquire over time.

Exactly how does one become a Paladin? why is it that a female Paladin can give birth to babies who eventually become Jumpers? What is the connection between them? Can female Jumpers give birth to eventual Paladins? Let's see some juicy inner conflict as Mary Rice realizes she'll have to abandon her five year old son or kill him when she realizes what he is.

Why is Griffin such a twat? Shouldn't he be happy there's another Jumper to fight the Paladins along with him instead of being annoyed and offended by David's presence in every scene?

Good questions all.

I'll agree wholeheartedly with scribe-o-rama in that Christiansen displays much more talent and range here than he was able to do with some character that the whole world knew what was going to happen to him eventually with the only question being how exactly does it happen? There's no doubt that Jackson is one of the best actors in showbizznizz today. And let's not forget the great Diane Lane, who in her brief scenes, is able to shine as bright as Christiansen and Jackson do. Yeah, the chick (Rachel Bilson) is cute but would scribe's opinion of her acting ability be different if he realized that this actress starred for four seasons on a show which he probably considers lame and wimpy?

Doug Liman's reputation as an action movie director is never in question with me. He does a great job with the material he has to work with. The screenplay, while short, is excellently written and is tailor made for a sequel because Roland is too much of a bad-a$$ to be left in the mouth of a cave in the desert for too long...

Actually, I think this movie needs at least a prequel/sequel type deal to address the plot holes and questions I mentioned above. A third film could be good, nay- might even be necessary- depending on how the first sequel works. BUT Liman must direct and the five main actors must reprise their roles. Using alternate actors just won't do.

Because my library set this DVD up as a two day rental, I didn't have time to watch the extras. Too bad for me, I guess.

This film could easily have gotten four or four and a half stars and become one of my favorite films. But as it is now I can't say that or rate it any higher.

** out of *****

Bulworth

GREEN'S CANCEL THE WEEKEND RESEARCH PROJECT REVIEW:

What happens when a white, highly suicidal, uptown United States Senator falls in love with a woman from the 'hood? If you're Senator Jay Bulworth, it means you don't need the ridiculously large insurance policy you just agreed to buy for your daughter, nor do you want the mob man who you've just hired to contract out to kill you to follow through with it.

Thinking your life is about to end, you begin to tell the truth wherever you go. The blunt and honest truth, no matter who it hurts or what people think of you. Worse, you do it singing, rhyming and rapping. Now if you could only find the person who wants to kill you....

Whenever I think of Warren Beatty, which is not often, I do not think of a comedic actor. In fact, he wouldn't even make my top ten list of funniest actors, if I had such a list. So I was quite surprised that this movie, and Beatty himself, was quite funny, though sometimes a bit offensive.

Oliver Platt absolutely steals this movie as the conservative, absolutely hates surprises, life organizer for Senator Bulworth. I thought Don Cheadle also did a fine job with his part in this film. I was disappointed in Halle Berry's part, not because of her performance per-se, but because it seemed to me like her part was too small, her character way too underdeveloped, even though she got 2^nd billing in the credits.

A good movie but not great. You'll get a few laughs out of it.

**¾ out of *****


(Two and three quarters??? We never agreed on quarters!!! Anyway:)


SCRIBE'S HIT DAT NAPPY DUG-OUT REVIEW:

This is one of my favorite movies so I will try to be objective when I tell you it was quite possibly the greatest statement on faux white liberalism and black cultural failure ever put to film. OK, it's probably the only one, but still...

Senator Jay Bulworth was once a Sixties poster boy, shaking hands with the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and hanging out with Huey Newton. But that was then. Nowadays he panders to wealthy special interest groups while pretending to be a centrist who cares about minority rights. He hates himself. He should hate himself. He is a sellout and a whore.

As the film opens, we meet Bulworth at the moment of his epiphany. He sobs uncontrollably in his office through the night, surrounded by pictures of his former achievements and a looping videotape of his spin doctoring present day bullshit. It comes as no surprise that this guy wants to die. What does, however, is the total sense of liberation he experiences when he pays a guy to pay a guy to kill him so his daughter can collect the life insurance policy...his wife's a self-indulgent, unfaithful bitch.

What follows is a surreal trek into Bulworth's sleep-deprived unconscious mind as he informs African-American voters the Democratic party doesn't give a rat's ass about them and tells wealthy Jews their Hollywood products are shit. In-between, he meets a hot biracial chick (Halle Berry) and her hood-rat girlfriends, decides he wants to live after all, and raps his way through a debate and TV interview where he spits naught but truth complete with foul language.

If there's anything offensive in Beatty's story, it is the unflinching and factual social commentary. Obviously disgusted with his fellow left-wingers and their tendency to sell their souls to the highest bidder, Beatty has created an enduring and electrifying statement on the affairs of state. The underlying message, that white liberals need to overcome their hypocrisy and blacks need to stop waiting to be saved by someone else, is even more relevant in light of the recent election than it was in the Nineties when the film was first released. (I saw it in a theater, by the way, and the mixed audience loved it)

**** out of ***** (One star subtracted for the lack of nudity on the part of Berry)