So, I went and saw it JUST so I could review and explain my opinion of this genre.

I did not, and have no plans to read the series of books partly because I am not a teenage girl, and these books were written with that target audience in mind. So, let’s begin with the movie itself. My friend and I walked into the theatre and as I bought my ticket for Twilight. The guy at the booth reminded me that Quantum of Solace was also playing there, so if I wanted to change my mind I still could… if perhaps there was still hope for me. I thanked him for his kind thoughts and attempt to save my soul… or at least my masculinity. (oh, wait.)

We got into the theatre about a half hour early since the mall was closing and sat through six slides of Hollywood trivia and quotes that replayed at least twenty times. Then I watched the trailers with the vain hope that they would show a trailer for an upcoming movie that I really wanted to see. Fifteen minutes later I was disappointed. No Watchmen. No Star Trek. In retrospect I’m not sure why I expected to see those trailers since I was in effect waiting to see a movie that was written for the same audience that made Titanic the highest grossing movie of all time for a while.

Twilight itself… judging it on its own merits as a stand along feature, it wasn’t a bad movie. I found the concept of “vegetarian vampires” (they only drank the blood of animals) to be a kinda contrived reason as to why this vampire was able to go to a high school in Forks, Washington along with the rest of his “family”. But like Louis from Interview with the Vampire, or Angel from Buffyverse and Constantine from Robin McKinley’s Sunshine fame before him, Edward (played by Robert Pattinson) seems to fall firmly into the strong, silent, brooding, pretentious, conflicted with his own humanity and completely self-involved vampire stereotype that has so many teenage girls (and those that are still stuck in that mentality) pining away for that strong, silent, brooding, pretentious, conflicted with his own humanity and completely self-involved vampire. I think modern fiction is now over-populated with these guys. Whatever happened to the proper vampire? Vlad Tepes, Count Orlock, or even Deacon Frost who put it so eloquently in the first Blade movie: “[Humans are] cattle; pieces of meat. What difference does it make how their world ends? Plague… war… famine. Morality doesn’t even enter into it. We’re just a function of natural selection, man. The new race.” See, it’s gotten to the point where the ‘nice vampires’ now out populate traditional vampires in fiction. And the Louis’, the Angels, the Constantines and the Edwards all fit neatly into a nice cookie-cutter mold. Twilight could just have easily been titled: “Angel: The High School Years” had it been written with Whedon’s particular gift for dialogue and then either Bella or Edward would likely die given Whedon’s writing style.

This brings me to an ongoing debate I’ve been having with the very friend I watched Twilight with. See, she’s of the opinion that vampires like Angel and Spike (not the actors who play them, mind you) are sooo pretty, to which my response is: ‘They’re vampires, as a rule they view humans as food.’ She then retorts with ‘Angel wouldn’t eat her’, to which my response is: Angelus would. Spike would. And Angel spent most of his unlife as Angelus. Spike spent most of his unlife as a sadistic bastard. And the debate continues with her pretty much saying she’d rather have cold-undead cock than the alternative and with me saying if you wind up dead or undead as a result of pursuing undead cock, don’t come crying to me.

Speaking of women who have next to no concept of self-preservation, there’s the movie’s main character Isabella Swan (played by Kristen Stewart) wouldn’t even have survived day 2 at her new school as a minivan skids nearly into her and her pick-up and would have crushed her in between if not for the ‘valiant’ vampire, Edward. Later as she moves to confront him about what he is, she walks right passed him and into the nearby woods… alone, knowing he’d follow. As the movie progresses I don’t think she makes one single smart decisions even when Edward tries half-heartedly to scare her off. Ms. Stewart also only manages one note throughout the entire film, and it’s “Bella hearts Edward” so much so, she comes off as an idiot in every other aspect of her life. Her first day of school she makes a number of friends and they seem like genuinely good people, but Edward is rude to her in Biology class… guess what she’s fixated on and boderline in tears over when she calls her mom later on… you guessed it! The devsatingly pretty metrosexual guy in her bio class who was rude to her.

About half way through the movie it is explained that the reason why vampires stay out of direct sunlight only because it reflects upon their skin in such a way that it looks like diamonds, which obviously Bella finds to be beautiful. Course, the sunlight could have made him look completely corpsefied and Bella would only have been thinking “I can change him!”. Nevermind the whole sunlight reduces them to so much ash as it does traditionally. I think this only served to take away the stigma of being in love with a member of the undead while simultaneously removing one of their greatest weaknesses. The writer, Stephanie Meyer has apparently openly admitted not knowing a great deal about the vampire mythos and seemingly added and subtracted from the mythos as she felt would be convenient to make her story go where she needed it to. On a similar note, Edward is able to repeatedly resist his baser desire to eat Bella despite her being his ‘own personal heroine’… there comes a point where given the previous examples of Louis, Angel, Spike, or Constantine having the conflicted vampire character be capable of continually resisting their thirst (especially in Edward’s case) seriously cheapens the addiction to and requirement of blood to survive. Eventually, it’ll become such a non-issue that future writers may forget about the thirst completely.

So, all in all… Kristen Stewart was disappointing, but that have been the script she was given. Robert Pattinson is too wooden in a ‘I’m-so-pretty-it-hurts-to-move’ kinda way. I have to give this movie somewhere between a C- to a D+. It’s very much a young adults film, but I expected more out of a film that is getting the kind praise this one is.

When Hancock came to theatres last July I was in no hurry to see it based on the reviews I’d seen and quite frankly the trailers I’d caught didn’t wow me. So, earlier this week, when my roommate wanted to rent some movies we were both fairly ambivalent about seeing Hancock, but neither of us had seen it… so we rented it with kinda a “meh” feeling. After making a point to watch the finer points of the new WWE’s Rock dvd I had to choose between Hancock and Wall-E, I had seen Wall-E already, so…

I was immedately stuck by the fact that this movie would be a lot better if it had been the movie that was promised in the trailers. I was left with the distinct impression that this movie was a sort of “What if Superman existed in the real world and was an asshole?” The story would write itself, have awesome visuals and be laden with comedy gold and might even have a message snuck in there for the kids. But no, we get is “What if a self-centered bum had superpowers?” a contrived concept of how all super-heroes were gods, angels, and heroes in the time of myth and were all immortal, but inexplicably they were ‘built in pairs’ (whatever that means) and then lose their powers if they hang out too long with their opposite… umm… what? And for some reason Hancock doesn’t learn all this until very late in the film from someone who should have said something like say… an hour and a half earlier because his life was at risk.

Let me get this straight. Somewhere in their biology is a gene that decides that they need something resembling normal lives which for some reason strips them of their invulnerability and makes them vulnerable to things like guns. So, when it comes down to it… Can you imagine if you had a genetic predisposition to becoming more vulnerable to harm? And they toss ina love interest for litterally NO REASON. I will say that this movie is based on fun moments the way most Leslie Nielsen films are based on running gags. And its a fun concept right up until they share what they feel super-heroes are.

So yeah, see it if someone else rents it and you’re really, really bored.

In the interests of proper representation, lets review a non-comicbook related movie…

“Shoot first. Sightsee later.”

Two Irish hitmen take a vacation in Bruges, Belguim… antics ensue, film at eleven.

This movie takes you on a beautiful visual tour of the most well-preserved medieval city in the whole of Belgium.  Our story follows Ray and Ken (played by Colin Farrell and Brendon Gleeson respectively) as Ken takes in the rich tapestry of culture that is Bruges, while Ray being a younger guy who apparently grew up in the big city and has ADHD has no time for culture (Dan are you listening?).

However, we quickly learn that they are not simply on vacation when one of them is forced to choose between loyalty, honor, and friendship.

When I saw this movie being advertized at the Uptown I was skeptical about it merits, “Oh great, another plotless action flick that Colo and Shugi can’t wait to see. It’ll be worse than ’War’ and they will love it.”  They both caught it in the theater… I decided not to waste my money. I should have gone, it was great. In Bruges is skillfully written and not only is it funny, it’s also serious and manages to be thoughtful; it has a heart to it, a message… and the message is: “If you’re going to have princaples, make sure the midget is actually a midget.”

This movie is very quotable, my personal favorite pretty much is the reason why Ray reminds me so much of my friend Dan:

Ken: Ray, you are about the worst tourist in the whole world.
Ray: Ken, I grew up in Dublin. I love Dublin. If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me but I didn’t, so it doesn’t.

Ken: We shall strike a balance between culture and fun.
Ray: Somehow I believe, Ken, that the balance shall tip in the favor of culture, like a big fat fucking retarded fucking black girl on a see-saw opposite…a dwarf.

If you have the opportunity, see this movie.

“Who watches the Watchmen?”

http://watchmenmovie.warnerbros.com/

This is a holder for my eventual review of the film.

Boy lives in the 60’s Liverpool, England, Boy leaves Liverpool, Boy ships to America, Boy finds long lost father, Boy finds Girl, Girl finds cause, Cause comes between boy and girl, Girl leaves Boy, Boy is deported, Boy immagrates back after some soul-searching, Boy gets Girl back because… “All you need is love”.

That sums up the wonderful formulaic love-story that is Across the Universe. This story has something extra that can’t be covered properly in the above paragraph. It’s a musical with songs provided by the Beatles. It’s not just the story of Jude and Lucy, there’s Max being drafted into the Vietnam War. There’s Prudence coming to terms with her sexuality as a lesbian. There’s the relationship between Sadie and JoJo. You might have noticed that most of the major characters seemed to be named after Beatles songs.

That in and of itself makes this love-story a cut above your average formulaic piece of crap. Eddie Izzard  (who is particularlly awesome) makes a cameo as “Mister Kite” (also from a Beatles song) during what appears to be a LSD induced circus.

All in all, this movie is worth seeing, if it doesn’t wow you, no big deal, but it is quality.

See it.

Why yes, thank you, I will be the resident chick-flick reviewer at AOTMW.  I think I’m genetically predisposed.  I’m also genetically predisposed to love Irish movie Once.  It has all the girl friendly elements:  good music, romance, and artistry, set against the unique backgrop of Irish street life.   

The movie stars real-life musicians (and partners) Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova as poor-as-dirt musicians who collaborate on a demo album.  Honestly, that’s it.  Of course, there’s the burgeoning, awkward romance that plays out unexpectedly throughout the film.  The romance is nice, but the true star of the movie is the soundtrack, with Hansard and Irglova harmonizing on haunting and emotional melodies.  There are moments, of course, when the movie lags, because it shows such gentle (slow) unfolding of their artistic partnership. But anything speedier or flashier would be an inauthentic Hollywood-ized version of poor but happy buskers.  And then, a new song swells, and you are immersed back into the story. 

As I mentioned, I’m predisposed to love this film. I love folk music, starcrossed lovers, Irish brogues, and of course, portraits of artists.  And I’m a girl.  But I will say that I did have to call “dibs” on this review, after Soulless Machine and I watched this last night.