Chris Curtis

Jumper

Doug Liman is the man we have to thank for 'Jumper'. FROM THE DIRECTOR OF MR AND MRS SMITH! according to the poster, as if we should take a step back and come over all reverent. Mr and Mrs Smith, wow, this must be something!

Alas, the mysterious powers that haunt Hayden Christensen, and which would have come in handy to fast forward you through an hour or two into 'Star Wars, Attack of the Clones', are also only good for this pupose in 'Jumper'. What, you mean I could jump straight to end of the film. Now that would be a superpower.

Truth is this is the poor man's poor man's best mates 'Matrix', a story so thin that it leaves too many questions I fear will forever remain unanswered. Just what is the Paladin's problem with the Jumpers, for example? We'll never really know apart from the occasional grunt from Samuel L. Jackson sporting the years best haircut: 'Only God should have this power' is about as detailed as it gets, giving the storyline of the film - a fight to eliminate the Jumpers from the face of the earth, very little to stand on.

Jamie Bell and Hayden Christensen have so little chemistry between them it's hard not to imagine they filmed their roles on different days and someone cgi'd them together. Probably the same guy who created the cars on the road in Toyko... do watch out for them, they're quite a sight.

OK, it's a bad week and I'm probably upset because there's not a single film worth seeing released today, but 'Jumper' really is an opportunity missed. There's always room for a sci-fi action flick in my book, a break from the intensity of fab films like 'Edge of Heaven', but this isn't it. 1 out of 10, and that being generous.

Cloverfield (Matt Reeves)

Everyone else has an opinion about Cloverfield, so I don't see why I shouldn't weigh in with my own two pennies worth.

Five cool things about 'Cloverfield'
1.The monster. They got it just right. Nasty.
2. Slow build up. 20 minutes and all we've seen is a party. But it sets the film up nicely.
3. Hand held filming. Sorry if you got motion sickness. I loved it.
4. The tunnel scenes. Classic horror. Always good to carry a night sight.
5. The ending. Nothing cheesy, not all happiness and light. My style.

Five bad things about 'Cloverfield'
1. The video camera guy. I know he's meant to be annoying but... he is.
2. The hospital... how the heck did they get that set up so quickly?
3. The little creature thingys... one wack with a spade and they're history. Wimps.
4. The camera battery...
5. The kids behind me in the cinema who just didn't get it.

Feast!

A feast, that's what we're currently experiencing. A glorious glut of the kind of film that by right should only appear a few times a year.

Let me elaborate:

'Let there be blood'.... and yes, blood there will be. Did someone say this is the 'Citizen Kane' of the modern day? Daniel Day Lewis is a force of nature in this movie based on a little know 1927 novel about the oil business. Will give you new ideas about uses for a bowling alley.

'Juno'... they said every line was a, well, clasic. And they were right. This is so good it'll make you weep. Except it's a comedy so maybe you'll laugh. Laugh-weep... oh, who knows. It's GOOD though!

'Before the devil knows you're dead'... Phillip Seymour Hoffman, wow. With a script so labyrinthine and exciting, you'll want to see it again and again.

'The diving bell and the butterfly'...the only one on the list I haven't seen, but the word is out that it's a cracker.

So eat up, enjoy the feast. National Treasure Book of Secrets is around the corner and we'll be back to sandwiches again.

Battle for Haditha (Nick Broomfield)

It would seem kind of bad taste to say that, together with everyone else in the cinema that night, I left shell-shocked, especially give the subject matter of Nick Broomfield's film 'Battle for Haditha'. But shell-shocked is exactly what it felt like. I've watched a lot of news coverage, documentaries and, of course, feature films about the current conflict in Iraq, but none has come close to giving such an uncompromising blast of the depravity, injustice and suffering that is life in the middle of this war zone.
I admit I went in biased: Nick Broomfield is some I admire hugely and his film about the Morecombe Bay tragedy 'Ghosts' was the best thing I saw on the big screen in the whole of 2007. That's out of over 120 films, so it's going some. Like that film, 'Bridge to Habitha' is a something you struggle to use the word 'enjoy' alongside: I don't mean that detrimentally, it's just that this is such a full-on baptism of fire to the realities of Iraq that words like "challenged". "moved" and "inspired" seem more appropriate.
The film itself is a simple retelling of the events of November 19th 2005 when a group of American soldiers, the victims of a roadside bomb in which one of their colleagues had died, went on a frenzy killing 24 men women and children in nearby homes.
The power of the film is that it resists playing to assumptions and prejudices about any of those involved. Instead we follow the bombers, the soldiers and the innocent civilians in three separate story arcs, leading up to the moment of the bombing itself. The soldiers , in particular, come across not as evil, but as poorly led and frightened. By doing this, the film doesn't let them off the hook, but it does give a sense of the moral vacuum in which they're made to operate. And, in using real Iraq veterans to play the part of the soldiers, Nick Broomfield manages to blur the line between film and documentary in a very clever way. The authenticity of their performances is what makes the whole thing so powerful.
So, back my my experience of seeing 'Battle for Haditha'. It is, by a long margin, the best film of the year so far and I'd be amazed if it wasn't still sitting somewhere at the top in ten months time. Showing at a measly three cinemas in the whole of Britain, you'll have to be clever to catch it unless it rolls out wider on Friday. I hope so. I'm going to be encouraging everyone I can to see this. It's about the most powerful 85 minutes you could spend trying to get your head around what's going on in Iraq, and why hope is so thin on the ground.