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FILM
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
The Twilight saga:
Eclipse (pG-13)
smokin’ hot werewolf
beefcake and tortured,
romantic vampire poet are
both in big swoony love with
an everygirl in The Twilight
saga: Eclipse, part three in
the wish fulfillment gothic
romance series.
This movie opens nearly exactly
where previous film New Moon
ended, with vampire Edward Cullen
(Robert Pattinson) trying to convince
human Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart)
to marry him. She has apparently
been saying no for the weeks that have
elapsed in the breach between movies.
Marriage is, like, weird and old and
Bella is more interested in the kind of
forever that comes with being bitten
by a vampire — even though Edward
would prefer she stay mortal. But
Edward isn’t the only one after Bella’s
heart. The werewolf Jacob Black
(Taylor Lautner) is in big hunky shirtless
love with her too. He can be her
boyfriend without wanting to eat her
and they can grow old and have hairy
children together — being “dead”,
Edward and vampire Bella could never
have children (hey, you with the
giggling, stop reading ahead).
But there are bigger problems in
the town of Forks than a totally Bev-
Hippo | July 1 - 7, 2010 | Page 48
erly Hills: 90210-style love triangle.
Victoria (now played by Bryce Dallas
Howard), the vengeful vampire
who hunted Bella all through the last
movie, is still on the lookout for her.
And in nearby Seattle, people are
being killed and going missing at
such an alarming rate that Dr. Carlisle
(Peter Facinelli) and the rest of
the Cullen Scooby Gang are pretty
sure that someone’s creating a vampire
army. And the creepy red-eyed
vampire royalty the Volturi — led by
creepy red-eyed sadist Jane (Dakota
Fanning) — is still waiting for
Edward and his special powers of
mind-reading to make Bella and her
special powers of not being readable
one of them already.
And to make things even worse,
Bella’s dad (Billy Burke)? Still totally
hating on Edward. As the movie
opens, she’s basically grounded.
Curfews, vampire army — being a
teenager sucks.
So, yes, we get The Forbidden Kiss
— though why it happens when it does
makes even less sense the way it’s set
up in the movie than the shaky way it
happened in the book. And The Tent
Scene is even more squirm-inducing
and strangely hilarious than it ever was
in the book — and yes, I give, I read the
books. All of them. They are like one
of those find-the-3-D-image posters
that used to be on display in every mall.
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You can’t look away, even though your
eyes are crossed and you’re embarrassed
to be spending this much time
looking for, like, a Romulan ship.
There are some structural, storytelling
problems with this movie. The
big climactic battle in this episode is
almost an afterthought, it’s so barely
a part of the story. A lot of supporting
characters and little plot points go
uncontextualized — I can’t see how
someone coming fresh to this universe
can possibly untangle the wad
of characters and relationships. The
movie picks as its focus the romantic
turmoil — Jacob’s love for Bella,
Bella’s fear of marriage, Edward’s
horrible taste in jewelry. (The engagement
ring he offers her looks like half
a diamond-encrusted thimble.) And
these things are explained and examined
via lots of painfully flat dialogue,
at least three flashbacks and way too
many ultra-tight close-ups of one of
our three main characters, leading
you to think things like “that Kristen
Stewart really has a lot of forehead”
and “geez, Robert Pattinson, cheer
the hell up already.” The movie sort
of underlines all the ways in which
the story could have been more interesting
with a tweak here and a polish
there — the way the characters could
have been more dimensional. The
audience at my screening, based
on squeal-accompanied applause,
Reviewlets: Snack-sized movie reviews
* Indicates a movie worth seeking
out. Previously reviewed
movies have grades. For full
reviews of most movies here or
movies previously released, go
to www.hippopress.com.
The A-Team (Pg­13)
Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper.
A special forces team goes
rogue to clear their names
— and blow stuff up. C+
Grown Ups (Pg­13)
Chris Rock, Adam Sandler.
Our local commencement
speaker also brings along David
Spade, Rob Schneider and
Kevin James for this movie
about boyhood friends reuniting
as adults. C+
Iron Man 2 (R)
Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle.
Tony Stark is Iron Man, who is
REVIEWs BY AMY DIAZ
awesome. C+
Jonah Hex (Pg­13)
Josh Brolin, John Malkovich.
And not doing anybody any
favors, Megan Fox. A bounty
hunter unleashes badassery on
the Old West in this adaptation
of the comic book. D
*The Karate Kid (Pg)
Jackie Chan, Jaden Smith.
Mr. Chan is the Miyagi (called
Mr. Han here) and the Will
Smith progeny is the new kid
learning to wax-on-wax-off. B+
Knight & Day (Pg­13)
Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz.
Romantic comedy alert — Cruise
plays a spy on the run and Diaz
is a hot girl caught in the crossfire.
C
The Last Airbender (Pg)
Noah Ringer, Nicole Peltz.
seemed to agree that Jacob was the
more interesting of the boys Bella has
to choose from. In this book/movie in
particular, you have to use your own
imagination to fill in some of holes in
explanation for Bella’s unwavering
love for Edward.
Lautner can’t seem to figure out
where to correctly put the emphasis
in his sentences, much less how
to match them with some believable
emotion. Pattinson is at risk of cracking
his skull, so deep is the furrow of
his brow. Stewart might seem like
Meryl Streep in comparison (there
are some genuinely nice scenes
between Bella and her parents) but
she’s still basically giving the same
halting, open-mouthed performance
she has in the previous two movies
(though this time in an unflattering
wig thing).
But, to some extent, so what?
The point of the movie — all of
these movies — seems to be some
deeper, more primal guilty pleasure.
Lick the frosting of hurts-so-good
romance off the top and bite into
the desire-beyond-reason cupcake,
enjoying the crunch of campy-badacting
sprinkles. Eclipse isn’t good,
per se; might not even be as “good” as
New Moon. But Eclipse is still goofily,
dizzyingly enjoyable. Sure, the
books are kind of ridiculous and the
movies are ridiculous and unevenly
acted but they are fun, wonderful silly
fun that, if you are a girl, reminds
you of the intense embarrassing silly
emotions of your younger girl
self. It’s fun to giggle at these things
— I’m sure girls of the Bella-andyounger
age enjoy the movie for
reasons that both overlap with mine
and are different. But for me, it’s
the wacky roller coaster quality that
makes them exciting and the glad-
I’ll-never-be-there-again nostalgia
that makes them entertaining. C+
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences
of action and violence, and some sensuality.
Directed by David Slade and
written by Melissa Rosenberg (from the
novel by Stephenie Meyer), The Twilight
Saga: Eclipse is two hours and four
minutes long and distributed in wide
release by Summit Entertainment.
M. Night Shyamalan presents
your 4th of July weekend entertainment
with this big actionstravaganza
(in 3-D!) about warring
tribes and a boy with supernatural
powders. Can’t be worse than
green wolves! Opens wide on
Thursday, July 1.
Shrek Forever After (Pg)
Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz.
Allegedly, the green moneymaking
machine ends up the
Mother and Child (R)
Three women deal with
different approaches to
motherhood in Mother
and Child, an actory but
ultimately more or less
satisfying movie.
Karen (Annette Bening) is a brittle
and joyless 50-something who lives
with her ailing mother (Eileen Ryan)
and works at a nursing home. She
seems like someone who has hardened
into her current bitter and unkind state
— openly hostile to her mother’s home
caregiver, Sofia (Elpidia Carrillo), and
Sofia’s young daughter Cristi (Simone
Lopez). And despite being interested
in Paco (Jimmy Smits), a new worker
at the nursing home, she is difficult
and off-putting in the extreme when he
attempts to begin a friendship with her.
Though there could be many reasons
for the hard-packed personality
Karen has developed, you sense that
the main reason is related to the
scenes we see in the movie’s opening
moments, when a young girl has sex
with her boyfriend and then, months
later, is seen sitting in a room with
other girls who, like her, are now in
a family way. Karen gets only a few
glimpses of her baby girl before she
is whisked away, leaving only an
ever growing hole in Karen’s soul.
Elizabeth (Naomi Watts) seems to
have a bit of a hole in her soul as well
— adopted at birth, she has never met
her birth mother, lost her adopted father
at a young age and does not have a
good relationship with her mother.
We suspect that Elizabeth, also brittle,
judgmental and relatively lacking in
joy, doesn’t have a good relationship
with anybody. A talented lawyer with
ambitions, she has avoided putting
down roots. When she interviews at a
new law firm with owner Paul (Samuel
L. Jackson), she also informs him
that it’s better if she reports to a man
than a woman, as women often feel
threatened by her. When we see her
aggressively seduce a married man, we
can guess at why that might be.
Lucy (Kerry Washington) and her
husband Joseph (David Ramsey)
want a child but Lucy can’t get preg
series with this little riff on It’s
A Wonderful Ogre Life. Though
at times a bit talky and reflecty
for a younger audience (also,
long), this Shrek isn’t a bad
place to stop. C+
*Toy Story 3 (Pg)
Tom Hanks, Tim Allen.
Andy heads to college and the
famous toys head back to the
big screen. Bring Kleenex. A-