10,000 BC

I am really excited about this movie coming out this weekend. It looks really good as far as visual effects, but that isn’t the only reason. I am going to drag Eric to go see it with me. Now, I do this not only cause we are friends or have pretty similar taste in movies, it’s because he cracks me up with some of the things he says. He is an archeology professor at a community college here in town, so he is really smart. I was there when he saw the preview for this movie the first time. I think he called it ridiculous because, “there wasn’t monolithic architecture in the same time as major fauna.” (or something to that effect) Basically he said that during the time of saber toothed tigers and mastodons, people didn’t build temples that big. It will definitely be a fun time just hearing what he has to say about the movie once it’s over. Here is the official site.

Jumper

So I went to see Jumper last night with a group of friends from church. It was a really good time, but not a spectacular movie. The visual effects were pretty standard  while the concept of the movie was really cool. Some might say that it is yet another X-Men movie, but I would disagree. X-Men all have different powers, jumpers only have 1.

Anyways, the story starts with this high school boy, played by Hayden Christensen, that is ridiculed and basically a loser. He has a crush on this girl and tries to give her a snow globe. It was a little corny and the snow globe was seen, but never explained later in the movie. Did she have a collection of snow globes? Is that her absolute most favoritest thing in the world? Who knows, they didn’t tell us. Back to the story, there is this other guy that picks on our jumper and throws his gift out onto a frozen river. Well, as you might expect when walking on a frozen river, the ice broke and our jumper falls in. To save his own life, he “jumps” to the library. This was his first jump. He then learns how to control his jumping and eventually puts his power to the test. You might be asking yourself, “Scott, how does he do this?” Well, he robs a bank. The story then takes a, no pun intended, jump into the future and our jumper has got himself a plush apartment with lots of cool toys and a secret room filled with cash (dead useful if you ask me). Thus we are really introduced to the paladins. This is a group of people that hunt down jumpers. They don’t really explain how or why the paladins were formed or how they get their cool technology. The paladin named Roland, played by Samuel L. Jackson, then tries to kill our jumper. Suffice it to say, he failed. Our jumper then hooks up with the girl from his high school days and takes her to Rome, where they meet another jumper. The story then goes on for a bit and finally the jumpers decide to team up to go stop Roland and the rest of the paladins. Well, somehow the girl gets captured and the jumper squad breaks up and decides to pursue solo careers. So our now solo jumper decides to go rescue the fair maiden and jumps right into a trap. You learned earlier in the movie that electricity stops a jumper from being able to jump so the next part is a little weird. Our jumper of course gets caught in the trap, and with electricity running through his body, he decides to jump the entire apartment into the ocean. Maybe this is to show that he is an all powerful jumper-being and he can jump anything, but really? So they jump into the ocean, then jump out and somehow Roland comes along. So what does our little jumping bean do? He jumps Roland into a cave in a Grand Canyon looking place and leaves him. The end of the movie was a scene where our jumper friend goes to his mothers house. His mother left him and his dad when he was 5. Come to find out, the hot Diane Lane is really a paladin and to protect her son, she had to leave or kill him. Kinda harsh don’t you think? And that’s it.

I would have liked to see more development of the history of the paladins and their obsession with destroying the jumpers as well as a little more with the mother. And no, that last bit is not just cause I want to see more Diane Lane, but that would never hurt would it?

Rottentomatoes.com gave this movie only a 15%, which is surprising when you look at how much money it is raking in at the box office.

3:10 to Yuma

I watched this movie the other night, and I must say I was really impressed. My favorite movie review site, rottentomatoes.com, gave it an 88%, go here to see all the comments. I am usually not a big western movie kinda guy, but this was a good movie. The story was actually believable, guy owes other guy money, other guy burns down guys barn for not paying, guy decides to help escort mass murderer to prison to get money to pay off other guy. The only thing that I thought was a little unnecessary was the sick kid. I am sure they could have thought of a couple other good ideas as to why the guy wouldn’t pay off his debt…gambling addiction, mistress, had to buy another cow…something. Anyways, good movie, go rent it.