ChronicleIf you should come upon a glowing, possibly extraterrestrial object buried in a hole, go ahead and touch the thing--you might just get superpowers. Or so it goes for the three high-school buds in Chronicle, an inventive excursion into the teenage sci-fi world. Once affected by the power, the guys exercise the joys of telekinesis: shuffling cars around in parking lots, moving objects in grocery stores, that kind of thing. Oh yeah--they can fly, too: and here director Josh Trank takes wing, in the movie's giddiest sequence, as the trio zips around the clouds... in a glorious wish-fulfillment. It goes without saying that there will be a shadow side to this gift, and that's where Chronicle, for all its early cleverness, begins to stumble. Broody misfit Andrew (Dane DeHaan), destined to be voted Least Likely to Handle Superpowers Well by his graduating class, is documenting all this with his video camera, which is driving him even crazier (the movie's in "found footage" style, so everything we see is from a camcorder or security camera, an approach that gets trippy when Andrew realises he can levitate his camera without having to hold it). Trank and screenwriter Max Landis (son of John) seem to lose inspiration when the last act rolls around, so the movie settles for weightless battles around the Space Needle and a smattering of mass destruction. Still, let's give Chronicle credit for an offbeat angle, and a handful of memorable scenes. --Robert Horton JumperAs preposterous action movies go, Jumper is pleasantly unpretentious and breezily entertaining. A young man named David (Hayden Christensen) discovers he has the power to teleport (or "jump") anywhere he can visualise. After using this power to steal and make a comfortable life for himself, he pursues the girl he longed for in school (Rachel Bilson, The O. C.). But as he does so, another jumper (Jamie Bell, Billy Elliot) and a pack of fanatical jumper-hunters called paladins (led by a white-haired Samuel L. Jackson) crashes into David's freewheeling life. Jumper wastes no time trying to explain how jumping works or delving into the hows and whys of the paladins; this is an alluring fantasy of power directed at a pell-mell pace by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Go). There's a brief moment when it feels like the movie will bog down in romance and vague gestures towards character development--happily, that's the moment when Bell appears and the whole movie shifts into overdrive. You might wish that Bell and Christensen had swapped roles; Bell has a far more engaging personality, and Christensen's bland good looks might better suit a more aggressive character. Nonetheless, Jumper has oodles of dynamism and nifty visual effects to propel its comic-book storyline forward. A variety of recognisable actors in bit parts (such as Diane Lane and Kristen Stewart, Panic Room) suggest that the filmmakers are laying the groundwork for sequels. Based on a critically-acclaimed science-fiction novel by Steven Gould. --Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com [show more]
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A double bill of sci-fi thrillers. In 'Chronicle' (2012), three high school friends, Steve (Michael B. Jordan), Matt (Alex Russell) and Andrew (Dane DeHaan), become endowed with superpowers after making a once-in-a-lifetime discovery in an underground crater. Initially using their new-found powers to let loose a range of teenage pranks whenever they feel like it, the trio soon find their friendship pushed to the limit when Andrew's ambitions take an altogether darker route, testing the very limits of their morality and sending their lives spinning out of control. In 'Jumper' (2008), Hayden Christensen stars as a young man able to teleport himself to any place on earth. After discovering he has a genetic anomaly that allows him to teleport wherever he wants, teenager David Rice (Christensen) embarks on a hedonistic lifestyle of girls, money and travel, indulging his every whim, and using his power to fund his desires. It's not long, however, before he discovers that others share his power, and that the underground community of 'Jumpers' are being targetted by 'Paladins', a group dedicated to their destruction. Pursued by a Paladin named Roland (Samuel L. Jackson), Rice and fellow jumper Griffin (Jamie Bell) soon find themselves fighting for their lives as their sworn enemies close in.
Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play. A double bill of sci-fi thrillers. In Chronicle (2012), three high school friends, Steve (Michael B. Jordan), Matt (Alex Russell) and Andrew (Dane DeHaan), become endowed with superpowers after making a once-in-a-lifetime discovery in an underground crater. Initially using their new-found powers to let loose a range of teenage pranks whenever they feel like it, the trio soon find their friendship pushed to the limit when Andrew's ambitions take an altogether darker route, testing the very limits of their morality and sending their lives spinning out of control. In Jumper (2008), Hayden Christensen stars as a young man able to teleport himself to any place on earth. After discovering he has a genetic anomaly that allows him to teleport wherever he wants, teenager David Rice (Christensen) embarks on a hedonistic lifestyle of girls, money and travel, indulging his every whim, and using his power to fund his desires. It's not long, however, before he discovers that others share his power, and that the underground community of 'Jumpers' are being targetted by 'Paladins', a group dedicated to their destruction. Pursued by a Paladin named Roland (Samuel L. Jackson), Rice and fellow jumper Griffin (Jamie Bell) soon find themselves fighting for their lives as their sworn enemies close in.
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