JUMPER

One day, Davey (Hayden Christensen) discovers he has an amazing ability. He can teleport himself to any location at will. Using his newfound power to find the man who killed his mother, Davey unwittingly becomes a target of National Security Agency officers and another person with the same exact power. Based on the popular young adult novel by Steven Gould.
Cast Hayden Christensen, Jamie Bell, Rachel Bilson, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Lane, Michael Rooker
Director(s) Doug Liman
Writer(s) David S. Goyer, Jim Uhls, Simon Kinberg
Status In theaters (wide)
Genre(s) Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Release Date Feb. 14, 2008
Running Time 88 minutes
Web Site jumperthemovie.com

Who's in It: Hayden Christensen, Rachel Bilson, Jamie Bell, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Lane

The Basics: The most boring man alive discovers he has the ability to teleport through space to wherever he wants to go — "Did I just teleport?" he asks himself the first time it happens. When he robs some banks for funding along the way? No big deal. But then Samuel L. with a white afro shows up as a "paladin," whose job is to stalk and kill jumpers. He keeps yelling, "ONLY GOD SHOULD HAVE THIS POWER!" while trying to eliminate the most boring man alive. And you're sort of rooting for Sam …

What's the Deal? This would have been a perfect piece of junk entertainment if they had only managed to steer clear of the acting pothole that is Christensen. Seriously, is it possible for an actor to have a negative amount of charisma? He makes you wish Stanley Kubrick were alive still and had cast him in the Keir Dullea blank-faced astronaut role in 2001: A Space Odyssey. As it is, you only wake up when now grown-up Billy Elliot star Bell comes along to be all swaggery and interesting.

What Would Have Happened If This Had Been a Smarter Movie:
1. Lane would have had more than five minutes of stunt-casting screen time. For as much as she had to do here, they could have let Heidi Klum play the part for a lot less money.
2. Lane's character's meaty moral conflict — she's a paladin, too, just like Jackson — could have become a metaphor for a whole lot of other stuff and not sacrificed the action. It could have been a potentially heartbreaking storyline. And it just lies there like a wad of barely chewed gum on the sidewalk.

How Late You Can Be: You can spend the first 30 minutes of this film eating one of everything at the concession and then checking your e-mail in the lobby. All he does is jump around from place to place. After that, the chasing and the fighting starts, and the movie starts to be fun. Then you'll almost forget you've just paid money to see more of young Anakin.

Still Better Than: Awake, Factory Girl, Life as a House, the picnic scene in Episode II.

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Youth Without Youth: A New Film About Choosing Good Over Evil

"Youth Without Youth" is an inspiring film written by Francis Ford Coppola about an old linguistics professor, who, through a series of events, finds his youth restored to him.

When Nazi scientists discover his miraculous rejuvenation, they take a high interest in determining how this happened and place Dominic Matei (played by Tim Roth) into exile. While he is running to escape, Dominic reunites with his long-lost love and soon finds himself having to choose between the love of his life and his life's work researching the origin of language. Which will he choose?

The film is based on a novel by Mircea Eliade. Dominic begins his journey in his hometown of Piatra-Neamt, but finds that he cannot stay here. He travels to Romania with plans to kill himself with high doses of strychnine. When a lightning strike derails his plans and burns him horribly, Dominic is taken to a local hospital. There he starts his change from an old man to a youthful man, which the treating physician, Professor Stanciulescu, contributes to the jolt of lightning that he experienced. It is there that Dominic is presented with his "double," a much younger rendition of himself. Soon, though, he must leave the hospital with a false identity because of the untoward publicity that he and his "double" have received.

Dominic winds up in a clinic where Professor Stanciulescu takes notes about his life experiences to try and make sense of what has happened to him.

During their interview, the "double" reappears unexpectedly. To this point, Dominic thought that the "double" must have been a figment of his imagination. To prove that he is real, the "double" demonstrates a miracle with roses. Unknown to Dominic, a mysterious woman in room six of the clinic gives the Gestapo recordings of nightly conversations with Dominic and then disappears. For fear of being kidnapped, Dominic flees to Switzerland with false papers provided by the Professor.

In Switzerland Dominic meets up with his beloved Veronica, a woman with whom he spends much of the rest of his journey. They travel to India to complete some research and then to Malta. In Malta Dominic discovers Veronica beginning to speak in different languages, but at first Veronica is not aware that she is doing this. Each time Veronica goes into these episodes, she becomes weaker, ages more, and her language becomes more ancient.

Dominic's "double" urges him to let her continue having these episodes, despite her suffering, so that the origin of language can be finally discovered. Because of his undying love for Veronica, Dominic cannot find it in his heart to do this. He believes that if he leaves the scene Veronica may regain her strength and youthfulness, so Dominic departs and returns back home to Piatra-Neamt.

While in his room resting, Dominic pulls out a picture of Veronica. She is youthful again and has two children. Now he knows that leaving her was the right thing to do. Dominic confronts his "double," trying to explain the difference between good and evil. The "double" insists that Dominic should have let Veronica go on to the origin of language, and that all of his research is wasted because he left her side.

Dominic ultimately shatters the mirror that brings forth his "double" to be rid of him completely. Within a short period of time, Dominic abruptly ages and dies. A rose, given by his love, appears in his outstretched hand.

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THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES

Based on the hit book series, Freddie Highmore is forced to move with his family into a dusty old mansion that houses all kinds of fantastical creatures.
Jared Grace (Freddie Highmore) moves into an old house with his family, including his twin brother Simon (also Highmore) and sister Mallory (Sarah Bolger), that they've inherited from their great uncle Arthur Spiderwick. When bizarre things start happening on the estate, Jared finds a book that holds the secret to the mystery, which includes several strange creatures who lurk in the shadows. Based on the bestselling series of books.

Cast Freddie Highmore, Mary-Louise Parker, Nick Nolte, Joan Plowright, David Strathairn, Seth Rogen
Director(s) Mark Waters
Writer(s) John Sayles, Karey Kirkpatrick, David Berenbaum
Status In theaters (wide)
Genre(s) Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Release Date Feb. 14, 2008
Running Time 97 minutes
MPAA Rating PG - for scary creature action and violence, peril and some thematic elements
Web Site Official Site spiderwickchronicles.com


REVIEW
Who's in It: Freddie Highmore, Mary-Louise Parker, David Strathairn, Sarah Bolger, Joan Plowright and the voices of Nick Nolte, Martin Short, Seth Rogen

The Basics: A fractured family with a single, stressed-out mom, a surly daughter and two twin sons — one nerdishly studious, the other combative and prone to getting into trouble — move into an old family estate only to discover that magical creatures live in and around the house.

What's the Deal? Like all movies in the lonely-troubled-kid-meets-magical-creatures genre (E.T., The Neverending Story, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Golden Compass, Bridge to Terabithia, Mac and Me), this one is more about the internal journey of the boy than about pure fantasy (OK, Mac and Me was about selling Happy Meals, but its bizarre corporate agenda was entirely its own), but the good news is that it doesn't get bogged down in sentimentality or trite lessons. It keeps moving and stays exciting and is even, at times, kind of scary.

What's Annoying: The celebrity-voiced creatures, with the exception of the perfectly cast Nolte (who is the aural equivalent of his freaked-out DUI mug shot from a while back), sort of take things in an uncomfortably cute Lion King direction for my taste. Kids might like it though. Dunno how many of them saw Knocked Up, though, you know?

Appropriate for: Ages 7 and up. Maybe younger if you're the kind of useless parent who already lets them watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on cable.

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