Renzie Reviews: Jumper (2008)

I had a chance to catch Jumper on the plane, on my way to Los Angeles from Manila.

It was going to be at least 11 hours, so as soon as we hit cruising altitude, and we all settled in, I thought this would be a good time to check it out, since I missed it on its regular run when it hit theaters earlier this year.

The concept of Jumper seemed promising enough: Hayden Christiansen's character finds out that he could essentially teleport, or 'jump', from one place to another.

Seems like a neat power- instantaneously transporting yourself from place to place at a thought. Rather convenient, especially these days when gas prices are off the scale.

Rachel Bilson (yes- Summer, of "The O.C." fame) provides the obligatory romantic interest and eye-candy for the movie. And bad-ass Samuel L. Jackson's character is a paladin- like a modern-day witch-hunter, who tracks down and neutralizes jumpers (along with other paladins) whenever they pop up.

Let's keep my review of this movie spoiler-free: great premise- in fact, a potential for a really great story, but the execution has left me terribly unfulfilled. Mr. Christiansen's acting, was once again, disappointing and completely unmemorable.

You got great effects though, and the action sequences were fast-paced and entertaining, particularly when Jumpers square off against paladins, or against each other.

For me, the characters haven't been developed enough for me to really care about any of them. Do I root for Hayden's character- being the underdog in the whole story? Or do I cheer on Samuel L. Jackson and the paladins- even if the whole motivation for slaying jumpers seemed really flimsy for me?

In the end, I really didn't care much.

If you had a choice to rent the DVD, I'd say you're probably better off waiting for it to show on TV, or mooch it off for free, like borrowing it off a friend who actually bought the DVD.

Not a total waste of time, it did have some entertaining enough moments- but if you had a choice of other things to watch, you probably wouldn't want to put Jumper high up on your priority list.

Cheers, everyone.

Wanna Watch: The Happening

M. Night Shyamalan is at it again with another thriller to blow your minds. This one's called The Happening- a movie he wrote, co-produced and directed.

I don't know much beyond the trailer- which I got from iTunes. Supposedly, the world is hit by some global environment crisis. Exactly what kind, we don't know just yet- only that there's some strange things going on.

The movie mentions "honeybees disappearing". Honeybees disappearing is a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)- you can read about it here on Wikipedia. Supposedly, two reasons that could be causing CCD is electromagnetic radiation, and climate change.

How this all ties in with the movie, I have no idea- if it does tie in at all. In any case, you can see it here for yourself. Here's the trailer if you haven't seen it yet.



The Happening is due out on June 13 this year- and yes, that's a Friday the 13th. The Happening stars Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel and John Leguizamo.

Check out the official movie website here.

Cheers, everyone!

Iron Man: Everything You Need To Know, Part 1.

No doubt about it, it's one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year. Iron Man is Marvel Entertainment's latest blockbuster offering. The movie has enjoyed a stupendous amount of buzz, and fans only hope that Iron Man lives up to the hype.

I've seen the Iron Man earlier today. And it was awesome. Oh, and don't forget to stick around until after the end credits- a lot of people left the theater without seeing the kick-ass Samuel L. Jackson epilogue.

In any case, just like any good motion picture, it had spurred a lot of post-movie discussions. So I've been asked several questions about it- usually along the lines of: "Was that how it really happened in the comics?"

I must confess, I am no comic book geek, but I do know enough about Iron Man (I am a RPG geek though, and we did play a lot of Marvel Superheroes back in high school and college). So for everyone who needs a little brushing up on Marvel's Golden Avenger, here we go:

Iron Man the Marvel Comic

The idea of Iron Man first came about in 1963, and it was the brainchild of Stan Lee, together with Jack Kirby, along with writers Larry Leiber and Don Heck. It was Stan Lee who fleshed out the Tony Stark character, apparently drawing inspiration from Howard Hughes- a real-life multi-billionaire, inventor, adventurer and ladies' man.

Iron Man didn't have his own comic at first; his first appearance was on Tales of Suspense #39- a sci-fi and supernatural anthology title.

Interestingly enough, he started out with the clunky dull grey armor. By the next issue, his armor was now golden, and then another redesign happened by issue #48- this time with the more familiar red-and-gold body armor.

He finally had his own comic in May 1968 with The Invincible Iron Man #1.

Origins of Iron Man

Unlike many of the superheroes at the time, Tony Stark wasn't bombarded with radiation. Instead, he's a natural when it comes to machines, supposedly a boy genius of sorts. Plus he's independently wealthy, having inherited his father's multi-billion dollar company, upon his parents' untimely and accidental death (they died in a car crash).

The circumstances regarding the creation of Iron Man has been generally the same: Stark, as head of Stark Industries, goes off to check out the American war effort (in Vietnam in the original 1963 story, and then in Afghanistan in the 90's, and finally in the Middle East in the 2008 movie). He gets injured in an explosion, and the enemy captures him, ordering him to design weapons for them.

His injuries are pretty bad though, with shrapnel bits threatening to tear up his heart. A fellow prisoner (Yin Sen) constructs a magnetic chest plate to keep the shrapnel from moving, thereby saving Stark's life. They then design a suit of powered armor in an effort to escape their captors. Stark uses the armor to escape, but Yin Sen dies in the attempt. So Stark uses the Mark I armor to blow up the enemy encampment, and flies off to rejoin the US forces, where he meets pilot James "Rhodey" Rhodes along the way.

The Iron Man Armor

Tony Stark has a workshop full of power suits, variants of the original Iron Man Armor as he constantly upgrades them, or creates one to fulfill a particular mission.

By default though, the Iron Man Armor gives Tony Stark protection against physical attack (i.e. most small arms fire) and energy attacks (via a force field), enhanced strength, the power of flight, life support, and an array of sensors and high-tech weaponry.

His main weapons are his repulsor rays (coming from his gloves), and the chestplate-mounted unibeam (which was originally just a spotlight, but in time has become a light-based weapon).

If you want more information on all the Iron Man armors, you can read up on Wikipedia here.

We continue our discussions on our favorite armored superhero with "Everything You Need To Know About Iron Man, Part 2", which you can read all about right here.

Cheers, everyone!

My Cloverfield Weekend

"What the fuck was that?" I kept asking myself, after catching glimpses of the Cloverfield creature.

The movie definitely worked for me- I grew up appreciating Godzilla, King Kong and other monster movies. So I was trying to figure out- was it humanoid? Wait- that massive foot's T-Rex-like! It's reptilian! But what the frack are those things dropping off that thing? Hang on- they're like bugs from Starship Troopers...

All while trying to keep up with the frenetic camera movement and the shouts and screams from a terrified downtown Manhattan.

What I Knew About Cloverfield (before seeing it on the big screen).

I remembered seeing the trailer just before the Transformers movie last summer- we see a bunch of people partying from the point-of-view of someone's handycam- it seemed pretty ordinary enough, until something blows up behind the New York skyline- and the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty drops down from the sky. No movie title. Just that it's from J.J. Abrams and it's coming out soon.

Wow, that worked for me- first thing I did when I got home from the Transformers movie was to Google up J.J. Abrams' latest projects. There was a huge online buzz right after the nameless trailer was shown- it could have been anything- a "Lost" movie, some 9-11-inspired project- but hey, if there's a J.J. Abrams stamp on it, it was very most likely cool. All we knew was that they deliberately didn't show any movie title on it. And that the project was codenamed "Cloverfield".

It wasn't long until the second trailer hit the internet- and this time, we catch a glimpse of the massive creature lumbering behind a ruined building in the not-so-far distance.

Then you had blogs and websites all fired up- it was a viral marketing campaign- not unlike what these same guys did with "Lost". Everyone was trying to figure out what the creature was- some alien thing, a mutated whale, a godzilla-like monster, a leviathan woken up from centuries of slumber. You had MySpace profiles for the characters, sonar images of something huge approaching Manhattan, and even a sample of the creature's roar.

You gotta hand it to J.J.- he knows how to hit his target market. Heck, it worked on me.

My Take on Cloverfield.

I liked it. Very much. I think it was a refreshingly different take on the usual monster movies.

Yeah it was a little "Blair Witch"-like. But I didn't like the "Blair Witch Project" (I didn't see any witch for Bob's sake!). I mean, sure, it had great back stories, I like the way they set things up, but the movie left me disappointed and unfulfilled because there were so many ways they could've played with the story- but for some reason, just left it that way.

The movie had pretty much explained itself from the beginning: the military salvages some video footage from a tape found in the area that used to be Central Park (used to be? oh, OK, so we know something happened to Central Park), and we're about to check out said tape. So it's gonna be like watching the entirety of somebody's home movie- but of course we know that it's going to take a turn for the worse somewhere sometime soon.

Through this one 'tape', we get introduced to the main characters (virtual Hollywood unknowns- good move!) and it paints a picture of what's going down. Of course we know there's a monster attacking New York in here somewhere- I just wanted to know what it could do, where it came from and what it looked like, really.

I liked how the movie paid attention to details of the contemporary setting- how people were taking pics of the decapitated Statue of Liberty with their mobile phones and the amount of firepower the military responded with (infantry with AT4 rockets, an M1 Abrams blasting away, volleys from an MLRS, F/A-18s and a B2 bombing run).

What left me rather bewildered was- what was the creature's motivation? Was it really hell-bent on destruction? Were we being invaded by an alien force? Was it just hungry and cranky after waking up from a millenium of sleep?

It was only later that I found out that the producers deliberately left out the creature's biological rationale- opting to stay faithful with the one-person-POV angle.

Nevertheless, we do get a close-up of the big guy- like a finale of sorts- but not before he leaves half of Manhattan in ruins. I am so going to get me a toy figure of this thing when it hits the shelves.

Lessons Learned from Cloverfield.

Just like "The Blair Witch Project" and "Snakes on a Plane", we learn this: If you're going to generate a whole lot of online/viral marketing buzz, you have got to have a solid, likeable story behind it. Fortunately for Cloverfield, it did.

Of course the movie didn't work for some people- maybe they weren't the target audience to begin with- but for the intended market of the film, you'll hear praises, read about it in blogs, and see lots of sales from merchandising.

For me, the movie is a sign-of-the-times. It's almost like user-generated-content posted on YouTube- it doesn't have to have big names, nor does it have to look professionally made- it just has to fuck with your mind, make you ask questions, reel you in.

We know that J.J. just made a lot of money and earned a lot of praise and bragging rights on this venture- I say more power to him. (Very well played, J.J.- now let's see that new Star Trek movie you're working on...)

This post originally came out in another blog of mine, "Renzie's Rants and Raves". I moved it to this blog shortly after creating it in March 2008.

Renzie Reviews: Serenity (2005)

I don't think this movie ever made regular screening in the Philippines. But at the time, I remember all they hype online across bulletin boards and fansites.

Serenity is a movie set in Joss Whedon's Firefly 'verse, written and directed by the man himself (excellent job, mate!). His pitch: it's a western- just so happens it's set in the future. Firefly also never saw airtime here (at least not on its regular run), and TV.com actually reported it as one of the best sci-fi TV series ever.

So naturally, when I had the chance to pick up a copy of said movie, I told myself that I just had to check this one out.

I wasn't disappointed at all- in fact, it's thoroughly entertaining: witty dialog, great story, excellent character development, good shots and camera work. It was sci-fi, alright, but not cheesy sci-fi (some DO tend to go overboard). It has, in many ways, set the benchmark on how science fiction movies should be done.

The movie was all about Mal and his ragtag crew- the movie had done an excellent job building up the characters in a relatively short time, so that you can't help but root for them, even if you haven't seen Firefly ever before.

I find out later on that the story played out in Serenity happens after all the Firefly episodes. Note to self: gotta pick up the Firefly DVDs. Watch more of the crew of the Serenity.

By the time the movie's done, you would definitely want to get to know the crew of Serenity a little more- a lot more. And chances are, you'll be checking out their entry on Wikipedia, Firefly sites and download wallpapers and images and stuff. At least, that's what I did.

Yes, Serenity made me an instant Firefly fan. Once I had the chance, I got the DVDs to watch them over and over again. On top of the Serenity DVD to end the unfortunately short-lived TV series just nicely.

Thanks, Joss, for a really good story. I'm personally looking forward to your next project.