Review: Synecdoche, New York (2008)

This is not exactly a new release, but I’m going to review it anyway because this is the first chance I had to see it as it never actually got a cinema release here. This is the directorial debut of Charlie Kaufman (known for his excellent writing in among others Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, etc) and I can honestly say that Charlie Kaufman being given reign to direct his own script is possibly the best thing to happent to cinema in the past few years and that this, undoubtedly, is the best film of said timespan.

Synecdoche, New York is an oftentimes surreal drama detailing the life of a depressed theater director with something close to hypochondria and an intense fear of death and, perhaps, fear of everything – in particular loneliness, something which he is crippled under for his entire life. As the movie and his life trots along, seemingly becoming more and more downtrodden and depressing by the minute, friends and family dying around him – it becomes more and more surreal. He aims to put on a play, a play which grows, eventually encompassing entire cities, with plays inside the play whose plot is his life and the very mounting of said play. Characters appear in duplicates, our director directs himself directing himself in the story of his life, and boundaries between reality and fiction are not broken, but crumbled into a dust, completely indistinguishable amongst the rubble that is director Caden Cotard’s (Philip Seymour Hoffman) life.

Kaufman, it seems, has outdone himself. Always he has lived on the border between fiction and reality – to the point where I suspect a prospective autobiography might be titled “Breaking the Fourth Wall: The Charlie Kaufman Story” – but this time it all comes together. Ideas about life itself, about death, about family, about friendship, about the connection between people are all discussed in the telling of Cotard’s life – for Cotard is every person. As events unfold as Cotard directs actors playing every person who has been a part of his life, one realizes that they are all just that – part of his life. His life encompasses them all, encompasses everything, yet he is completely alone, and he is inevitably dying.

I’m going to keep this pretty brief. Kaufman has written this perfectly, and while his direction is not pronounced I daresay no other direction could even make sense of his vision for this film. The casting is absolutely amazing, and every actor is perfect. I don’t know what else to say than that this is possibly one of the best movies to come out of the American film industry for many, many years. It left me feeling uplifted, it left me feeling depressed, it left me feeling agitated, it left me thinking about life, death, and how precious time is. When the absolutely fantastic monologues began towards the end I was torn between a transfixion with the events I saw on screen and an urge to get out of my seat and do something, anything, immediately, as not to waste any time.

Everyone needs to watch this movie. It is painfully sad, alarmingly real and, maybe, extremely true. Kaufman’s directorial debut is one of the best I have ever seen. I felt completely connected to every character, and I cannot remember ever feeling this much during a film. It stands close to my heart.

5/5

Review: Five Minutes of Heaven

I’m not sure anyone anywhere has heard of this film. It’s something quite strange, a made-for-TV movie which is enthrallingly cinematic at the same time as having a very made-for-TV plot. It premiered on TV in the UK in April and as far as I know never reached cinemas there, but somewhat strangely a variety of other countries have seen it at film festivals and a very small amount of countries (including Norway, luckily for me), have seen a wide cinema release of it (although undoubtedly it won’t run for very long).

The plot is as follows: Portraying the aftermath of the Irish troubles, two characters involved on two sides of a 1970s murder are in the present day meeting for the first time since the event. Alistair Little (Liam Neeson) murdered a man when in his teens, Joe Griffin (James Nesbitt) was the brother of the victim. In the direction of a TV program the two are brought together to meet after some 30 years. Most of the film takes place in flashback to the murder in question and following the characters in the day leading up to their meeting, with a growing tension between them, true intensions of each character becoming apparent through various conversations with other people, like the TV crew. The pace of the film, then, is what you’d expect from a made-for-TV movie.

In a surprising twist, however, the movie seems to be filmed for a cinema audience, with some quite amazing tracking and panning shots that would surely not have been done their due by never being shown on the big screen. In addition, Liam Neeson is undebatably a big-screen star, and the acting performances (by the stellar Nesbitt in particular) have absolutely no trouble carrying a cinema experience emotionally. Even if the plot moves slow, it is built well enough that I myself can’t see why it wasn’t given cinema release at least in the UK, where it was produced.

The film ends up giving a pretty good view of what goes through the minds of each side in a conflict, in fact it does it beautifully. Because the relevance of this movie stretches not only to the Irish troubles but to larger conflicts in the world at large, and the way it opens for interpretation of paralels to the middle-east conflict leaves no doubt about it, I would urge you to give this a watch if you have interest in the subject of the human mind when confronted with such a conflict. That said, it’s definitely not for anyone, and if you can not endure a pretty sludgy pace and a tight yet not entirely fulfilling character study you should probably give it a miss.

4/5

Review: Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

It’s been a long while since I posted anything. For this there are several reasons:

1. I quite liked the idea of my scathing review of New Moon being the first thing people see when they come to my blog, and so was determined to have it be the latest story for as long as possible.

2. For some reason there seemed to be a low amount of cinema releases throughout December and I figured it was best to spread them out.

There are a few films coming out Friday, however, and I now have a good 3 reviews in me that I’ve not yet posted. So I can hold this off no longer.

Capitalism: A Love Story, then. It is the latest film of documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and it deals with some very interesting subjects. It is extremely timely – whereas Moores previous films have often come 3-4 years after the questions they deal with were most in the now this, dealing with the financial crisis, feels incredibly current.

If you want an informative tale of how the financial crisis came to be, this film is for you. While Moore is often extremely biased and a documentary filmmaker I hardly ever trust (Bowling for Columbine and particuarly Fahrenheit 9/11 are manipulative to the point of insulting my intelligence at times), this time I feel like I can vouch for him. Where with his previous films his agenda appears to be to question the “American way” as much as he can with basis in whatever he can, Capitalism: A Love Story feels very true. As if Moore is completely fed up with the situation he seems to say “look, I know I always say this, but this time they really screwed up. Forget everything I said before. This is completely ridiculous.” And I am, after seeing this film, extremely inclined to believe him.

Some of the typical Moore-issues still remain, a slightly too manipulative view (such as confrontations between himself and Wall Street bigwigs that he knows isn’t going to go anywhere and that are there only to get the audience on his side), a slightly too broad yet still way too narrow perspective (as always he throws out way too many questions, only manages to answer a few of them and even then he does so slightly hastily), and everything else people familiar with his previous films will recall. Still, they are toned down to a large degree in favor of what seems, now, to be the full story. Capitalism: A Love Story is entertaining, it’s compelling, and most importantly eye-opening. I recommend that every single person, at least every single American person, see this film. I hate to say it (as I know Michael Moore to be the manipulative man he is and I have the constant feeling he has hoodwinked me into it), but this is the most important documentary of the year. A few of the points made are so hard-hitting I am frankly appalled that several of the people who are basically in charge of America are not jailed. Has America been run by criminals? Probably. Is the American economy capitalist? Probably not. I think everyone should get to know these facts.

Not without its flaws; way too long and way too Michael Moore. But where Moore’s previous films were eyesight-narrowing this is eye-opening. It is clearly his best film to date.

4/5

Review: The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)

Don't worry, ladies, the men without shirts are here.

Oh, for Christs sake. Lo and behold, along comes another Twilight film. This next endeavour into possibly the dullest “saga” of all time (I’m not sure whoever decided to call this a saga actually looked up the definition of the word saga but there’s a different problem altogether) is probably the dullest installment in said saga. From beginning to end, nothing happens other than convoluted romantic twists and ridiculous trips into an Italian underground where an ancient vampire tribe (consisting of Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning, of all things) is located.

As one would expect, events are tied together incredibly loosely and any measure of causality/effect one would expect to find in the plot is pretty much absent. The plot is at a standstill in the beginning. Let’s have Edward leave Bella! Why? For the sole reason that nothing is happening and that Edward is apparently a complete idiot. This goes on through the entire film. Is nothing happening? Ok, let’s have some character do something that’s half out of character and half just dumb. Repeat every 30 minutes. Despite this strategy, still nothing seems to happen. The film is a snoozefest from beginning to end, with the entire middle consisting of Bella and Jacob fixing some bikes for about an hour and going to the movie theater. Mundane activities that would be boring even given that we cared about the ridiculous love triangles the film shoves down our throats.

All that aside, while the first film was merely boring, incredibly stupid, poorly written and inconsistent on a level I had never before witnessed, this film is blatantly offensive in its character presentation. While Bella was always the most 2 dimensional character in a film full of 2 dimensional characters, it becomes clear quite early in New Moon that something is seriously wrong. The fact that a film aimed at girls has such an atrocious view of women is to me appaling. Bella is portrayed as a character who, and I’m not exaggerating this, is nothing without a male companion with which to identify herself. Not only that, but she is seen as being completely unable to defend herself in any way and relies on not only a number of men to save her in various situations, but men who are presumably “monsters” and at least one of whom is a man of pretty debatable moral fibre. Not only that, but every single choice she is able to make for herself through the entire movie is a self-destructive one, in the most extreme cases actions bordering on suicide in attempts to win her old boyfriend back. These seem to a degree to be along the lines of usual Hollywood characterizations but they are not. They are taken to an outrageous extreme and to the point that I feel deeply wronged by the fact that millions of 14 year old girls will no doubt see this film and be bombarded by these ridiculous female characterizations (and, in all likelihood, not notice it themselves).

The dialog is still awfully written, the characters are still awfully uninteresting. There are werewolves in this one, but they aren’t werewolves really, they’re more like the hulk, breaking into wolf whenever they get slightly agitated which, of course, is all the livelong day in Forks, which might as well be known as Ye Olde Towne of Emotional Instability. Characters only show extremes in emotion at any given time, switching back and forth at a rapid rate and pretty much without regard to the events that are actually unfolding. On the plus side, at least there’s no vampire baseball in this one.

New Moon is a terrible, terrible film. Twilight is a terrible franchise. Its view on women is reprehensible, as is the film itself in terms of any measure of quality. New Moon is beyond a shadow of doubt the worst film of the year, and in 2009 where we have had Transformers and G.I. Joe and all sorts of rubbish that’s saying quite a lot.

0,5/5

Review: Saw VI (2009)

Through bizarre circumstance I ended up watching Saw I through V in about 6 days last week. I didn’t write reviews of them because I considered them to be pretty much irrellevant. Then I realized that Saw VI is out in theaters, however, so I went to see it last weekend and seeing as this one is actually current (don’t mistake that for timely or relevant, just saying it’s actually out in theaters so writing a review seems appropriate) I thought I’d write up something.

The Saw series is a bloody mess, in every sense of the word(s). The first one started out with a relatively intriguing premise, but never really managed to make anything of it beyond unnecessary gore for the sake of unnecessary gore, which is a bit of a shame because I believe there is a level of intelligence (or at least could have been) underlying the premise: Trap people in life-threatening situations and observe just how far they are willing to go to save their life (usually survival requires going through extremely strenuous mental or physical torture, i.e. being required to saw your own foot off to escape.

One might think this premise opened for, if not any sort of humane treatment of the issue, at least an interesting perspective on the human survival instinct. Or perhaps some weird sense of reformation treatment that Jigsaw (the man behind it all) seems to be aiming for. Alas, none of this is had in any of the films, VI included, as it all boils down to gore and nothing else. Jigsaw’s motivation for choosing people is completely arbitrary, the extent of the task they are required to perform to survive is completely arbitrary, and the actual way in which they die is equally so, some being tortured to death and others dying, presumably, in an instant. If any social commentary was meant to be made it was more or less completely idiotic before the words were ever uttered. The uncivilized manner that the apparently civilized Jigsaw executes his whole plan is pretty much bat-shit insane from beginning to end. Everyone seems to have the sloppiest definition I’ve ever heard of what murder is and moral questions are treated about as delicately as if someone witohut fingers wearing huge boxing gloves is trying to thread a tiny thread of logic through an equally tiny needle hoop of moral questions.

I could go on at length about how truly ridiculous, inconsistent, gratuitous and blatantly hypocritical the entire Saw series and every character within it is. That said, while Saw I started on a pretty average note and the series has regressed steeply and consistently into awful from there, a fall ending with the absolutely uncomprehensible Saw IV and the slightly less awful but still migrane-inducing Saw V. I could not expect Saw VI to be any better. However, it is.

The series has been attempting to have a plot outside the traps since day one (which I have consistently maintained is a huge mistake, as I have not cared about any of the plots at all as they all involve completely generic cop characters doing completely generic cop things and reaching no end whatsoever) and it does so here as well. Magically, unbelievably, this time I cared. Weirder still, the plot involves the same characters as IV and V (although a lot of these die in their respective films, including Jigsaw himself who surely died 3 films ago yet still lingers on through the magic of the flashback) and follows those plots, and still I cared. It’s hard to say what did it. The plot is not genius, it is not impressive in any way, but it is completely followable and pretty much devoid of logical inconsistencies and characters whose motivations are at best hypocritical and at worst completely arbitrary. Saw VI is, to put it simply, completely acceptable which considering how horrible the last few films have been is a bit of an achievement.

The traps are also pretty clever, relying more on psychological terror than gratuitous gore and following one character in a pretty logical manner most of the time. A lot of the issues are still there, incompetent editing, incredibly seizure-inducing camerawork and pretty much every thing one could mention is probably further away from perfect than it is from terrible. It is not a particularly enjoyable film, but I am willing to say that it is probably the first Saw film to actually make a shred of sense. If only they had managed to do this with the first film, where the premise was original and fresh and not worn down by years of rehashes of the same plot points, they might have had a memorable horror film on their hands. As it stands, it is pretty much just watchable.

2/5

Review: 2012 (2009)

Huh, I was unaware that when provoked the earth acts like a crumbling house of cards.

In place of this review I could simply make jest with playful interpretations of the films title. The title may for instance refer to the 2012 minutes this film surely lasted. Or 2012 cheesy lines of dialog. Or, as my brother quite wittingly pointed out, 2012 special effects scenes. The fact of the matter is that the makers of this film have either as little knowledge of or as little respect for the original Mayan calendar and how it ends in the year 2012 that these examples may just as well be the source of its title.

I’m not going to get into how they have completely misunderstood the Mayan calendar in every way and how they spend the entire first half of the film desperately trying to fit every single ancient people/belief system into the year 2012, like someone who has bought 100 rounded pegs but only posesses one hole, and the hole happens to be square. He then proceeds to spend a few hours trying to push all the rounded pegs into the square hole only to justify his purchase. 2012 really takes the old “ancient cultures knew about this a million years ago and we didn’t even figure it out yet!” angle to a new level. Sure, it’s mystical, but that doesn’t mean it’s not dumb, and when presented by this in such a large quantity (as the basis of a $200 million film production, no less) it becomes laughable.

Oops, I seem to have gotten into it after all. Oh well. Not only is the movie’s premise outrageous, but the movie itself manages to be even more outrageous than its premise. It manages to portray the destruction of the entire city of Los Angeles and no doubt the death of probably millions of people as a fun family road trip in a limousine. Like a slapstick comedy the family drive around (in a limousine, oh how hilariously outrageous) while the entire world is crumbling beneath them and it somehow comes across as something out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It manages to, for the purpose of John Cusack, our everyman of the day, becoming the hero to hinge the entire survival of mankind on Cusack and his son (family values!) being able to retrieve a small metal piece thats jamming some cogwheels. This is ridiculous enough before I even mention that this plot point alone takes in the vincinity of 45 minutes. And I’m not exaggerating. Nor have I yet mentioned that it was Cusack and his hilariously outrageous family who caused the problem in the first place. He fixed the problem he caused that almost killed millions? What a hero! The entire world is falling apart and the survival of mankind hinges on one man (incidentally the most generic man/father/person/movie character of all time) being able to perform a small task. Trust Hollywood to stop at nothing to make the worlds blandest person the hero to save the world.

This movie is about 2 hours and 40 minutes too long. Assuming that the movie wasn’t awful it would still be an hour too long. The special effects are ok, but frankly I expected much better at this point. Its one redeeming feature are the Yellowstone scenes, particularly the Yellowstone escape sequence, which unlike the destruction of LA actually remembers that hey, the world dying is probably a bad thing. Woody Harrelson gets nothing short of cheated out of screen time as he is the only interesting character, yet he does manage to add something to these scenes and I’ll admit I enjoyed the eruption of Yellowstone to an extent.

That’s pretty much the extent of my enjoyment though, as everything else falls flat on its face. The movie tries to include some religion, it harps on about the morals of who to save seeing as not everyone can be saved for hours on end, it tries to deal with lots of issues it does not itself understand. It’s like watching a chef making a bunch of pancakes in a bunch of different pans, occasionally grabbing each pan and attempting to flip the pancakes over in the air, only to toss the pancakes up in the ceiling. Then the pancakes explode and the special effects are only ok.

2012 is the mother of all disaster films. That is good as well as bad, what that means is that it is probably the best disaster film I have seen (which is like saying that “this poison is probably the least lethal I have had the misfortune of being injected with”) but that it also falls into every single disaster movie cliché ever. Every single one, without fail. Its lack of understanding of physics is staggering (apparently huge voids will erupt in the ground below without creating any suction of air/materials into it, apparently buildings will always topple over sideways like dominos rather than crumble upon itself, apparently rifts of kilometer-length in the earth appear in a matter of seconds and buildings collapse in less time) and its reliance on and failure to even properly execute an annoyingly predictable plotline is baffling. Roland Emmerich: Cut about an hour off the end, cut about half an hour off the beginning, try to understand that maybe you’d want to be sad about a million people dying as Los Angeles goes up in flames and try not to make the movie a discussion about which lives are worth saving when the issue is so above this film’s head it’s not funny. That, and try not to make the same films over and over and we wouldn’t even be having these problems.

Despite what this review may indicate, 2012 is not awful by any means and a lot of people might enjoy it. Considering that a lot of this movie’s plot makes for the most intense conspiracy theory-fodder in a long while and the fact that people lap that stuff up there’s no doubt a lot of people will enjoy it, really. I did not.

1,5/5

Review: Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

Law Abiding Citizen stars Jamie Foxx (who I am  now growing to love more and more) as a district attorney and Gerard Butler as something of an “everyman”, a man unfortunate enough to witness the murder of his wife and daughter and subsequently suffer through what he sees as a complete fumble of the case by the DAs office and/or justice system, where a deal is made with one of the killers and he is set free after only a short time in jail. Our friend Butler decides this is bullshit, takes matters into his own hands and begins to kill everyone he feels is responsible while standing up for a less awful justice system in the process.

Let this be said: I loved the court scene pretty early on. If only the film was made as a coutroom drama rather than throwing a lot of its brilliant justice system criticism out the window to become a thriller pretty early on it would probably have been great, because this scene is absolutely fantastic. That said, the thriller bits work pretty well as well, and Butler’s character has something of a Silence of the Lambsian charm about him, as well as him more or less having an excellent point meaning its hard to know who to root for most of the time.

I’ve come to a point where I really like Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. They both carry enough screen presence for one film on their own, so the fact that they are both present here is a huge point in its favor. It cops out a bit in the end, and again I wish it would have focused more on the justice system criticism which is at times in the beginning profound, but I was pretty happy with this nonetheless. Not a perfect film, but an acceptably good thriller with a point.

 

3,5/5

 

 

Review: A Serious Man (2009)

Sometimes I think the Coen brothers try a bit too hard. Actually, most of the time I think this. Even when the movies they make are incredibly good I always get the sense that they are out to prove something or to show something off. This is in no way the case with A Serious Man. A Serious Man tells the story of a jewish man, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), and his family and how his life falls down around him. We observe how he deals with his problems and how he seeks answers in his religion.

It is a very refreshing film, as it does not seem to have anything to prove. It simply is what it is, the story is what the story is and the Coen brothers have just put it up on screen and left it there. Yes, certain statements about religion are certainly made, but only in passing. The focus is Gopnik and his problems, and the bigger message at work seems to be that some problems cannot be solved, so perhaps you’d be best off not to try.

Set in the 60s, the sets, costumes and props are completely perfect for the feel of the time and the film is generally well put-together, weaving in and out between the different stories with a great flow in the narrative. The acting is great, and the characters impossible to care for. I’m not sure how much more I have to say about it. It is probably my favorite Coen film to date, in its simplicity and in its mix of serious themes/tragedy and witty humor/comedy it manages to be incredibly enjoyable.

 

5/5

 

Review: A Christmas Carol (2009)

 

Like Beowulf, A Christmas Carol feels like a feature-length video game cutscene.

 

 

First off, I’m a bit unsure why this is already out. I know this is probably commonfare in the US (I’m guessing), and while stores are carrying Christmas products (candy and whatnot) as early as October here there is something truly bizarre about hearing this much Christmas music in early November. Possibly this would have been better served to premiere in early December. But that’s just my opinion, I’ll quickly confess to know very little about movie release-politics beyond the usual patterns of summer blockbusters/fall oscar bait/Christmas holiday films.

That said, let’s discuss A Christmas Carol. This story lies close to my heart mostly because of Mickey’s Christmas Carol which I used to watch time and time again when I was younger. One of the only things that is sure-fire to get me in the Christmas spirit is Mickey’s Christmas Carol. I do not know the original story (I’ve seen a few adaptations, but never read the original by Dickens), and I’ll admit that right off the bat. I will for obvious reasons be comparing this to the aforementioned adaptation.

To sum up my opinion of this as shortly as possible, I can probably count on the following relatively factual statement: Mickey’s Christmas Carol is 26 minutes long. A Christmas Carol is 96 minutes long. The latter includes a few things (possibly from the original Dickens story that were left out, I do not know) that the former did not include, but somewhat bizarrely manages to exclude a lot of things from the former as well. I can approximate that the latter has about 15, maybe 20% more content than the former. These are hindsightial approximations in no way based on scientifical measurements and should not be taken entirely seriously, but the point still stands. You will probably already see where I’m going with this: Even at 96 minutes this film is way, way too long. I do not believe this story is long or encompassing enough to be a feature film. At least A Christmas Carol does not exemplify it being long enough, because the gaps are more or less filled by, well, filler. Things are dragged on for way too long and the fact that nothing is happening is covered by showing off special effects. This is apparent throughout the entire film, long segments are spent with Ebenezer flying alongside a spirit through 3D environments, serving no purpose other than showing off the 3D effects, a particularly painful segment is the second spirit’s encounter, where he sits atop his food pile and laughs (very unnaturally) for what seems like minutes on end. Probably the entire plot could have been done in half the time if effectivity had been more important than showing off the effects.

And boy, does Zemeckis seem to love these effects. Why though? They’re not particularly great – it’s basically the same fare as Beowulf (also directed by Zemeckis), but where the style of animation fit very well for Beowulf, and outrageously epic fantasy adventure, it seems completely out of place in this supposedly charming Christmas film. I felt myself constantly longing for Mickey’s Christmas Carol and its simple yet effective animation – nostalgically, perhaps, but even so. This new adaptation seems to me to add nothing whatsoever, and rather subtracts from what was already there. Some of the most effective parts of Mickey’s Christmas Carol are removed completely, I suspect because they were just too effective for this film and it needed to fill time, so certain aspects are handled clumsily and in completely different ways just so they will last longer. Tim’s death, for instance, which is handled in Mickey’s Christmas Carol simply by Ebenezer witnessing Cratchit walking up to his son’s grave and placing his crutch upon it, is in this dragged out to a state of meaninglessness just to fill time, the original version completely abandoned for something which is did not provoke any emotion in me at all. It made me angry and sad considering how greatly and subtly some of the aspects in Disney’s previous short were handled to see Zemeckis juggle them about mercilessly just because juggling looks much better in 3D.

The acting doesn’t really work either, not by Carrey (who I usually like) whose over-the-topness fits none of the characters and his accents and intonations are incredibly rocky, not really by Oldman who isn’t given enough of a part to play, and not really by anyone else (even knowing from the start that Bob Hoskins is in it, I found it incredibly difficult to see which part he was even playing).

Zemeckis has thrown together a jumbled mess here. I know the man can make good movies (the Back to the Future trilogy is still amazing today and the same is true for Forrest Gump), but his recent infatuation with the animation technique he has utilized in his latest films seems to have lead him to forget that it is films he is making. With all the effort put into animation no thought is spared for a decent script or decent direction. I was really, really disappointed by this, it is probably the worst adaptation of Dickens’ story I have seen. Watch Mickey’s Christmas Carol instead this christmas, that way you’ll have had a better experience and you’ll have 70 minutes to spare.

1,5/5

Twilight: An absolute and utter travesty

Twilight is probably the worst movie of the century so far (Tim Burton’s absolutely atrocious Planet of the Apes remake notwithstanding). I’m going to try to, although I do not really expect or hope to be able to due to just how insanely awful it actually is, explain why. There are frankly so many things wrong with Twilight that I literally do not know where to start. And I’m not just saying that. Let me first introduce the film shortly and try to pinpoint just what it is:

Twilight is a vampire/teen romance movie. Girl meets boy, girl finds out boy is vampire, girl “sacrifices everything” to be with him (er, according to the plot summary I found, although I would hardly agree). That’s about as far as the plotline goes, and the movie-literate out there might notice that this qualifies as a feature-film plotline about as much as a newborn baby qualifies as a full grown human. The stage of infancy at which this script has been cleared is frankly baffling, and that’s not even mentioning just how appalingly poorly the script is written. I do not know whether it is novelist Stephenie Meyer’s fault or screenplay-adapter Melissa Rosenberg’s, but my god, this script is probably the worst thing I have read in my entire life. This is probably a good place to start, as the script is easily this film’s biggest fault. Let’s have a look at choise parts of it, shall we?

          EDWARD
          Enjoying the rain?


          BELLA
          Seriously? You're asking me about the
          weather?


          EDWARD
          It appears.


          BELLA
          No. I don't like the cold. Or the
          wet. Or the gray. Or parkas. Or
          turtle necks.

 

Doesn’t seem to bad? Did I mention that this is delivered with the most awkward chemistry and acting I have ever seen on screen? No? Very well. Let’s continue.

EDWARD

          Are you afraid?


          BELLA
          No.



          51.
          EDWARD


          (angry)
          Then ask me the most basic
          question: what do we eat?


          BELLA
          You won't hurt me. You're different.


          EDWARD
          You think you know me?


          He glares at her. She holds her ground. Suddenly, he takes
          her by the hand. Starts walking.


          BELLA
          Where are we going?


          EDWARD
          Up the mountain. Out of the cloud
          bank. You need to see what
          I
          really am. What I look like in the
          harsh light of the sun.


          BELLA
          No! The sunlight will kill you.


          EDWARD
          Myth. You need to see the truth.


          He pulls her but she stumbles.


          BELLA
          Slow down.


          Suddenly, he's right next to her.


          EDWARD
          Are you afraid?


          BELLA
          No.


          EDWARD
          Then come with me. Someplace where
          no one can protect you. Where
          I
          could do what I've wanted to do from
          the first moment I met you.


          Their proximity is intense, riveting both of them.


          BELLA
          I'm not afraid.


          EDWARD


          You should be.

 

Well, at the very least we can now say to have established one fact: She’s not afraid. Because I was still pretty unsure after about the 5th time she cleared that up. Yes, this goes on throughout the entire film. Let’s see what happens seconds later when Edward demonstrates what happens if he goes out into the sunlight:

          EDWARD


          This is why we don't show ourselves


          in sunlight..
          .


          As the sun hits him... EDWARD'S SKIN literally sparkles as if
          embedded with thousands of tiny diamonds. He is magnificent,
          shimmering, like a statue carved from glittering crystal. He
          moves toward her.

 

Uh… Hang on. What? The sane person will immediately notice that this is not a vampire at all but rather some whiny kid who simply whines a lot about living forever, being unable to eat and sleep, having to take the same year of school over and over for about 80 years (god forbid he, you know, just stopped going because it’s not as if he doesn’t know it all after 80 years of it) with a weird skin condition. And, you know, he couldn’t show himself out in the sunlight in public because then people would know what he was. Yeah, of course. Because they don’t notice that the same goddamn kid has been repeating the same goddamn year of high school for 80 years and he’s still exactly the same age. Let’s move on with a final example to illustrate the process of translating this script to the screen and just what the result is:

 

          EDWARD
          Bella, you should go to Jacksonville.
          Where I can't hurt you anymore..
          .


          BELLA
          What? No! I want to be with you!
          I
          don't want
          -

 

Ok, let’s see how this translates to film:

Ok, enough of this, I suppose. This isn’t even fully illustrating just how outrageously poor this entire film manages to be, with the first 30 minutes drenched in awkward, awfully written, awfully acted teenage romance subplots in every direction which are touched upon for about 5 minutes each and consist of characters you don’t even remember 5 minutes aftwards, the next hour with Bella and Edward running around the forest and talking through each other without any line of dialog being relevant to any other line of dialog, and the last 30 minutes to some vampire fighting and one of the most awkward scenes I’ve ever witnessed (video above). The acting is ridiculous, the filmatic prowess is completely absent (bar in the baseball scene, where there is actually some visually interesting stuff going on despite that this scene is also the most ridiculous and out of place one in the entire film), the music is awful and completely random consisting only of popular music tracks that have no relevance to the plot or setting and detracts more from the mood than it ads, and I could go on. The only somewhat worthwhile part of it is the aforementioned baseball scene, ruined only because it’s completely ridiculous, the background music is entirely out of place, it makes the yeti-football scene in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor look sensible. It is still the best part of the film, but is a breath of fresh air only in the sense that the breath of fresh air comes suddenly while you’re stranded on a deserted planet where there is absolutely no air. It doesn’t really help much when there’s absolutely no air after it. And then you die.

It is entirely clear that there is absolutely no artistic ambition behind this film whatsoever. It is produced to appeal to teenage girls, and the lazy exit of just tossing a lot of random nonsensical romance in and seeing what sticks is painful to watch, and it makes me truly sad that there are people who actually enjoy this garbage.