After watching the sci-fi action drama Jumper I was aghast on how a nifty concept and open door for a franchise could be this…bad. While we have seen this power of teleportation in other films and shows, such as X2 and TV’s Hiro on Heroes, here was a decent chance to take this concept and make a entertaining movie. That entertainment comes at the expense of a coherent story, and the sacrifice of any interesting, let alone believable characters.
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Will Smith—despite Time magazine’s George Clooney article—is the last movie star. With Hollywood’s profits mostly coming from DVD sales and changing tastes among audiences, the so-called “star power” no longer has the impact it once did. That being said, it’s almost fitting that Will Smith plays the last man alive in I Am Legend. Set in a post-apocalyptic Manhattan, we watch Smith go through his daily routine: trying to find food, keeping in shape and coping with loneliness. Conceived by the fertile imagination of Richard Matheson, I Am Legend is a great concept but executed with fair results.
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For the most part, when it comes to silly direct to DVD films in the U.S. and the film features a martial arts action star who once had silly but entertaining B action film in theatres, I pretty much have given up. But there is one exception, and that exception is Jean Claude Van Damme. I don’t know what it is with Van Damme’s DTV work; it always seems better quality in production than any of Dolph Lundgren and the Steven Seagal pictures. Unlike Lundgren or Seagal, Van Damme’s work seems to always have a rumor of going theatrical, but never does. Van Damme’s latest, The Shepherd: Border Patrol I think, was a hair of making that cut.
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Much as i’ve grown to dislike Tom Cruise over the past few years due to his ridiculous rants on television and his generally odd behaviour, it’s impossible to deny that he’s made some good movies. There’s the powerful A Few Good Men, and the moving Born on the Fourth of July, but Jerry Maguire is undoubtedly my favourite of his films. It may be considered sentimental by some viewers because it argues ‘love before money’, but nevertheless, it is a heart-warming movie that doesn’t disappoint from start to finish. It has an incredible soundtrack, a great plot, excellent performances and a wonderfully underplayed happy ending.
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If anyone would have told me a few years ago that nature documentaries would attract large cinema audiences I would have probably laughed in their face. March of the Penguins however proved me wrong, and so did Al Gore a year later with his environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Earth covers some of the middle ground between those two movie, and although amazingly beautiful at times I thought it missed the mark somewhat.

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