Moving on up

Since they don’t come along too often anymore, Second Hand Popcorn film reviews will now be merged into my main blog, akuhei bakery. So, if you came here looking for film reviews, you can look at the old, archived ones, or head onto akuhei bakery for films, music and (possibly soon) books!

Hop, Skip, Jump

Jumper
In cinemas now

Y’know, despite eveyrthing, I had high hopes for Jumper; it was a good story, Samuel L Motherfuckin’ Jackson was being all badass, Billy Elliot actually looked cool, and Rachel Bilson took her clothes off – but I didn’t reckon on two men (if you could call them that); Doug Liman and Hayden Christensen.

Now, I wasn’t expecting much from the former, seeing as all I’d seen him in was the Star Wars sequels, ‘portraying’ Mannequin Skywalker. And he waas awful. Just, truly dreadful. “However!” my mind interruprted, “Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson and Christopher Lee were shit in those films too, but you’ve seen them act well in other places!”

This was true. So maybe Hayden could actually act, right? It was just the negative influence of beardy Lucas, right? Right? 

No. No it was not. Hayden Christensen could not act his way out of an episode of Eastenders. He is utterly, irredeamably shit. He’s thenew Keanu Reeves.

Anyway, I should probably actually talk about the film now, which is basically about a kid from a ‘broken home’ (if your Dad asking you to mop up all the water that you flung around your house counts as a ‘broken home’) called David Rice (Captain Wooden), who finds he has the power to teleport. Then one day, Roland Cox (SAM-U-ELLLLLLLLL), who calls himself a ‘Paladin’, shows up to kick Hayden’s ass – and you sort of want him too, because he’s a smug bastard – teleporting into bank vaults, stealing stuff, hanging out on Big Ben.

This is where that Doug Liman fellow comes in. For about 20 minutes after this scene,the film turns into some rubbishy romance drama, with David wisking childhood sweetheart Millie (Rachel Bilson) to Rome, then making her break into the Colosseum with him.

It picks up again with the introduction of Griffin (Jamie Bell), a way more awesome ‘Jumper’, who you wish the film was really about, as he beats on some Paladins with a baseball bat. Then nothing happens for a while, then a lot of stuff happens in a short space of time, thennnnn; well, it ends.

Jumper, really, seems like a long trailer for a what should really have been a series of films – I’m all for shorter films, after snore-fests like the second two Pirates of the Carribean films, but this film is almost too short; this leaves no space for explanations, character development (I swear, they’re so one-dimensional you shouldn’t be able to see them when they turn sideways), or…well, anything.

Maybe it’s just because I had such high hopes, or because I hate Hayden Christensen and think he should of been replaced by Jamie Bell, or because Rachel Bilson spent too much of the film with her clothes on; either way, Jumper was, well, a little bit shite.

Woops

Sorry for the lack of updates as of late, I have been slightly ill. Expect a double-bill of reviews, namely of Cloverfield and Juno.

In the meantime, I present to you: Nicholas Cage, dressed as a bear, punching a woman in the face.