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Thursday, April 23, 2009

The Tale of Despereaux

Rated: G
Runtime: 1 hr 34 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
Theatrical Release:Dec 19, 2008 Wide
Box Office: $50,818,750
Review :
Once upon a time there was a charming tale of a wee little mouse with wide-open eyes and ears as large as saucers. Named Despereaux Tilling, the mouse grew up, though not by much, to become a reader of books and the besotted friend of a lovely human princess named Pea. In time he saved the day, battling an army of rats, and won the hearts of millions of readers and eventually a contract with a Hollywood studio. This is how the book “The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread” became a computer-animated movie, though without the rambling subtitle and as many eccentricities.
Being a Hollywood story of a mouse, a princess, some soup and thread — not to mention rats, hats and a girl named Mig with the unfortunate looks of a pig — the movie “The Tale of Despereaux” offers up other changes too. It begins as all fairy tales should, with a narrator (an efficient, somewhat cool-sounding Sigourney Weaver) recounting the story of the pastel-hued Kingdom of Dor, where the peasants were content, the rulers were just, and the rats scuttled about unmolested. The balm for this peaceable kingdom was soup, a fragrant broth that flowed out of the royal kitchen and into the waiting bowls of the populace. But good times turned to bad when a rat named Roscuro (Dustin Hoffman) fell into the queen’s soup, producing a fatal reaction.
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Directed by Sam Fell and Rob Stevenhagen and written by Gary Ross (who also served as one of the producers), “Despereaux” is a pleasantly immersive, beautifully animated, occasionally sleepy tale. Like most American animated movies, it centers on a plucky hero (softly voiced by Matthew Broderick) who, against the nominal odds (though, really, the odds are always stacked in his favor), overcomes adversity of some kind.

As in Kate DiCamillo’s enchanting, Newbery Medal-winning book, Despereaux has to triumph over both his home life (he’s far too bold for the other mice) and the forces of darkness shrouding Dor. What’s particularly sweet about his journey is that it begins with a book he was supposed to nibble, not read.

Reading transforms Despereaux, turning a bold little mouse into a great big hero — a wonderful moral for any children’s book. The story he reads is a fairy tale about a sad princess and a brave knight, an adventure that periodically springs to expressive life because Despereaux doesn’t merely read this tale, he visualizes it so we see it too.

Animated in a more graphically bold style than the rest of the movie, the fairy tale becomes a story within a story. And in one clever scene, which finds the mouse describing the exploits of the knight and the princess to a separate character, the fairy tale plays on the wall next to him as if it were being projected like a movie.

It doesn’t take long for Despereaux to experience the dangerous lows and exultant highs of a knight’s quest. Like many other misunderstood heroes, he suffers for his specialness, which in this case finds him banished from Mouseworld, an orderly Lilliput, to Ratworld, a menacing purgatory filled with bones and introduced with a flourish of Middle Eastern flute music. (The casbah vibe thankfully fades fast.)

There he meets Roscuro, and together they embark on the road to redemption, with justice and a happily ever after for all, including the princess (Emma Watson) and Mig (Tracey Ullman), a peasant whose porcine qualities suggest that ugliness is destiny. But “The Tale of Despereaux” is on the side of kindness, not cruelty, and it encourages smiles if not the book’s flights of fancy.

The movie has a fine sense of pictorial detail — the mouse’s delicate whiskers, the images of soup ladles carved into the palace stairs — and an agreeable gentleness. It deviates from its source material in generally modest and unobtrusive ways; for instance, by reorganizing the book’s fragmented, parallel story lines into a linear whole.

The main difference between the source and its adaptation is that while the book exudes charm, the movie leans toward cute, a substitution that largely speaks to the influence of Disney on animation. In the movie Despereaux wears a red cap that makes him look more like a well-dressed bunny than like a mouse. But at least he’s not wearing Mickey’s gold clodhoppers and bottom-line grin.

Synopsis:
Once upon a time, in the faraway kingdom of Dor, there was magic in the air, raucous laughter aplenty and gallons of mouth-watering soup. But a terrible accident left the king broken-hearted, the... Once upon a time, in the faraway kingdom of Dor, there was magic in the air, raucous laughter aplenty and gallons of mouth-watering soup. But a terrible accident left the king broken-hearted, the princess filled with longing and the townsfolk despondent. All hope was lost in a land where sunlight disappeared and the world became dreary gray. Until Despereaux Tilling was born... A brave and virtuous mouse, Despereaux is simply too big for his small world. Though tiny, wheezy and saddled with comically oversized ears, Despereaux refuses to live a life of weakness and fear...believing he was destined to be celebrated in the tales of chivalry he so adores. When he's banished from his home for not following the rules that society expects of a mouse, Despereaux befriends fellow outcast Roscuro, a good-hearted rat who can't bear to look in the mirror and hopes to live far from the grim underground of his kind. While Despereaux begins his noble quest to rescue Pea--a princess who can't see beyond her distorted view of the world--his pal Roscuro receives a painful rejection from her highness that sets him on a course of self-destruction. Along their parallel adventures, the two encounter colorful characters from a serving girl who wishes to be a princess to the evil leader of the sewer rats, who plots revenge on humans from his fiefdom in the subterranean shadows he relishes but Roscuro can't abide. From the highest turrets of the glittering castle to the dankest dark of Dor's sewers, friendships will be tested as Despereaux and Roscuro embark upon a journey that will change the way they look at their world--and themselves--forever. In this tale of bravery, forgiveness and redemption, one tiny creature will teach a kingdom that it takes only a little light to show that what you look like doesn't equal what you are. --© Universal Pictures
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Robbie Coltrane, Dustin Hoffman, Richard Jenkins, Kevin Kline, Frank Langella, William H. Macy, James Nesbitt, Tracey Ullman, Sigourney Weaver, Frances Conroy, Tony Hale, Ciaran Hinds, Christopher Lloyd, Stanley Tucci, Emma Watson
Director: Sam Fell, Rob Stevenhagen
Screenwriter: Gary Ross, Will McRobb, Chris Viscardi
Producer: Gary Ross, Allison Thomas
Composer: William Ross
Studio: Universal Pictures

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Quantum of Solace

Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and some sexual content.
Runtime: 1 hr 47 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
Theatrical Release:Nov 14, 2008 Wide
Box Office: $168,368,427
Review :
The first inclination is to ask whether “Quantum of Solace” is as good, better or worse than Casino Royale? One thing is for certain, they are two entirely different films. Both have a comparable amount of action, but Quantum of Solace isn’t as interested in over developing its story thus removing nearly 45 minutes of Royale’s running time, a move I applaud and welcome. As good as Casino Royale was the first time around, it does not hold up as well on repeated viewings due to a story that is far more bloated than it need be. Quantum has no such problem as action set pieces are the story and they are quite fun to watch.

Quantum of Solace bounces from Austria to South America and everywhere in between with a certain flair. Bond is on a vendetta to get revenge against those that killed Vesper (Eva Green) at the end of Casino Royale, which quickly reveals the existence of a massive secret organization MI6 knows far less about than they or even the villains had expected. What could be the answer to such a problem? For Bond it means killing anyone and everyone in his way in a film best described as a James Bond film in a Jason Bourne world.
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The Bourne films brought a certain level, and certain kind, of action and Quantum of Solace seems to have taken Bourne’s success as something of a challenge. Where the majority of Jason Bourne’s battles were fought hand-t0-hand or involving one big chase sequence, in Quantum Bond gets those things out of the way in the first scene and then moves on to boat chases, plane chases and exploding set pieces along the rest of the way. Many may see this as sacrificing story for action, but let’s face it, even Casino Royale was rather light on story, it just managed to make it seem bigger than it actually was. Bond has never been about story as much as it has been about action, and with action this good and this tightly edited together you don’t need much story to have a good time.

Just as in Casino Royale, and every other Bond movie for that matter, there are bad people doing bad things and Bond is out to stop them as well as out to settle his own score. As the villainous business man Dominic Greene, Mathieu Amalric is actually rather weak, but Bond is hardly facing off against one man in this flick. Greene is just another baddie in a long line of many. This flick is about stacking up obstacles for Bond to get rid of and it becomes a test to see how he can do it bigger and better each time around.

Quantum of Solace is the adult version of a summer time blockbuster. The action sequences have a gritty edge to them and Daniel Craig as James Bond has very little interest in small talk or any talk for that matter. At the end of Casino Royale M (Judi Dench) asks Bond, “You don’t trust anyone do you James?” He replies, “No.” She adds, “Then you’ve learned your lesson.” With this film it seems he not only doesn’t trust anyone, he doesn’t care about anyone either.

Bond still manages to get out a few choice one liners, but for the most part he is a man on a mission and it seems the goal to set him up as a hard edged womanizer with very little heart to speak of was instantly taken care of with the death of Vesper. There are no playful moments and no frolicking in the sand. Bond’s only sexual escapade in this flick is an off-screen one night stand that was handled with little care, mirroring what we are to assume Bond thinks of the woman he was spending his time with.

After 22 films there is very little left to be known about James Bond and the 144-minute Casino Royale made sure to tell us anything we needed to know about Craig’s Bond and then some as the two films play rather well together with Quantum picking up its story almost exactly where Casino left off.

Synopsis:
Daniel Craig returns as 007 in this electrifying follow-up to the critically acclaimed CASINO ROYALE. The film opens with two gripping, back-to-back chases, as James Bond (Daniel Craig) tries to... Daniel Craig returns as 007 in this electrifying follow-up to the critically acclaimed CASINO ROYALE. The film opens with two gripping, back-to-back chases, as James Bond (Daniel Craig) tries to heed the orders of M (Judi Dench) and, at the same time, track down the people who blackmailed his love, Vesper. Bond is still struggling with Vesper's death, displaying a new, ferocious violence in his work, and a recklessness that M would very much like to get under control. When Bond discovers a massive, secret organization called Quantum, he believes it might have been a part of the scheme that killed Vesper. He follows the clues to Haiti, where he meets Camille (Olga Kurylenko), a mysterious, driven woman, whose motives seem unclear. Camille leads Bond to Dominic Greene (Mathieu Almalric), a cold-blooded businessman who appears to be working within Quantum. Greene wants control of a valuable piece of land in Latin America, and is part of a massive plan to overthrow the government. Bond knifes, shoots, and kick-boxes his way to the center of the sinister scheme, and discovers that the plot reaches even higher than he imagined, forcing him to abandon M's orders and step out on his own. Director Marc Forster (STRANGER THAN FICTION) has crafted some truly memorable fight scenes, setting them in the most elegant of locales. Everything is beautifully shot, from Bond racing across the rooftops of Italy, to his showdown at an Austrian opera house. As for Craig, he is once again all cold precision and steely blue eyes. His 007 is positively riveting. He struts determinedly into every scene, ready to display his near superhuman fight moves, or bed a bombshell with merely a glance. Yet, just as in CASINO ROYALE, Craig never lets us forget Bond's humanity. He may fight like a ninja and smirk like Steve McQueen, but beneath his impeccable Tom Ford wardrobe, Bond is still but an ordinary man, wearily battling his own inner demons.

Starring: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Gemma Arterton, Jeffrey Wright, Giancarlo Giannini, Jesper Christensen, Joaquin Cosio
Director: Marc Forster
Screenwriter: Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade
Producer: Michael G. Wilson, Barbara Broccoli
Composer: David Arnold
Studio: MGM

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Seven Pounds

Rated: PG-13for thematic material, some disturbing content and a scene of sensuality.
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Dec 19, 2008 Wide
Box Office: $69,951,824
Review :
“Seven Pounds,” which reunites Will Smith with Gabriele Muccino (who directed him in “The Pursuit of Happyness”), begins with a series of riddling, chronologically scrambled scenes. A man calls 911 to report his own suicide. He badgers a blind call-center employee — whom we suspect will be a significant character, since he’s played by Woody Harrelson — with complaints and insults. He embraces a lovely woman in an even lovelier beach house. He visits a nursing home where he terrorizes an administrator and comforts a resident.
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For a while it is pleasant enough to contemplate these loose ends, and to tease from them the possible contours of a story. It is never unpleasant to watch Mr. Smith, who likes to play peekaboo with his charm, hiding it now and then behind fleeting shadows of anguish or malice. The music (Angelo Milli’s score and a handful of emotive pop songs) combines with the deep colors of Philippe Le Sourd’s cinematography to summon up intensities of sentiment not yet arrived at by the narrative, creating an interesting frisson of suspense. After a while, though, as the pieces of the puzzle snap together, curiosity gives way to incredulity.

Near the end of “Seven Pounds” a carefully laminated piece of paper appears, on which someone has written, “DO NOT TOUCH THE JELLYFISH.” I wouldn’t dream of it, and I’ll take the message as a warning not to divulge the astonishing things that happen, not all of them involving aquatic creatures.

Frankly, though, I don’t see how any review could really spoil what may be among the most transcendently, eye-poppingly, call-your-friend-ranting-in-the-middle-of-the-night-just-to-go-over-it-one-more-time crazily awful motion pictures ever made. I would tell you to go out and see it for yourself, but you might take that as a recommendation rather than a plea for corroboration. Did I really see what I thought I saw?

And I wish I could spell out just what that was, but you wouldn’t believe me, and the people at Sony might not invite me to any more screenings. So instead of spelling out what happens in “Seven Pounds,” I’ll just pluck a few key words and phrases from my notes, and arrange them in the kind of artful disorder Mr. Muccino seems to favor (feel free to start crying any time):

Eggplant parmesan. Printing press. Lung. Bone marrow. Eye transplant. Rosario Dawson. Great Dane. Banana peel. Jellyfish (but you knew that already). Car accident. Congestive heart failure.

Huh? What the ... ? Hang on. What’s he doing? Why? Who does he think he is? Jesus! That last, by the way, is not an exclamation of shock but rather an answer to the preceding question, posed with reference to Mr. Smith. Lately he has taken so eagerly to roles predicated on heroism and world-saving self-sacrifice — see “I Am Legend” and “Hancock” — that you may wonder if he has a messiah clause in his contract. Which is not to say that he doesn’t show range in these films, in which he credibly plays a research scientist, a dissolute superhero and, in this latest one, an I.R.S. agent.

An I.R.S. agent who wants only to help people. This is a nice, small joke that provides a few grace notes of levity in what is otherwise a lugubrious exercise in spiritual bushwa. For all its pious, earnest air, “Seven Pounds” cries out to be remade as an Asian horror movie, so that the deep, creepy grotesqueness of its governing premise might be allowed to flourish, rather than to fester beneath the surface.

As it is, the movie is basically an inverted, twisted tale of revenge. Ben Thomas, Mr. Smith’s character, is in essence a benevolent vigilante, harassing, stalking and spying on unsuspecting citizens for their own good, and also to punish himself. Why such misery should also be inflicted on an innocent, affirmation-hungry audience — and also on the marvelous Ms. Dawson, who plays one of Ben’s victim-beneficiaries — is another matter entirely.

But maybe I’m approaching this in the wrong way. Maybe “Seven Pounds” isn’t a spiritual parable about redemption or forgiveness or salvation or whatever, but rather a collection of practical lessons. Don’t drive while using a BlackBerry. Fertilize your rose bushes with banana peels — sorry, that was a spoiler. But please, whatever you do, don’t touch the jellyfish.

I’m serious. Don’t.

Synopsis:
Academy Award® nominee Will Smith reunites with the directors and producers of The Pursuit of Happyness for the emotional drama Seven Pounds. In the film, Smith plays Ben Thomas, an IRS agent with... Academy Award® nominee Will Smith reunites with the directors and producers of The Pursuit of Happyness for the emotional drama Seven Pounds. In the film, Smith plays Ben Thomas, an IRS agent with a fateful secret who embarks on an extraordinary journey of redemption by forever changing the lives of seven strangers.

Starring: Will Smith, Rosario Dawson, Woody Harrelson, Barry Pepper
Director: Gabriele Muccino
Screenwriter: Grant Nieporte
Studio: Columbia Pictures

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The Day the Earth Stood Still

Rated: PG-13 for some sci-fi disaster images and violence.
Runtime: 1 hr 44 mins
Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy
Theatrical Release:Dec 12, 2008 Wide
Box Office: $79,136,963
Reviews :
Long after we are gone, science fiction movies about our impending extinction will instruct whoever comes next that we were a strange, neurotic species indeed. We could not — cannot — get enough of fantasies of destruction, meant at once to inflame and soothe our fear of vanishing altogether, whether through war, ecological catastrophe, disease or alien invasion.
We know we have it coming, and a movie like “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” either in its 1951 version or in the “reimagining” that opens Friday, invites us to feel fleetingly bad about that even as we are encouraged to laugh it off. The laughter — at the earnest reckoning occasioned by a weary-looking extraterrestrial and his giant robot; at the panic and distress their visit provokes — serves as a necessary balm. Like other overwhelming emotions, the fear of apocalypse becomes more palatable when it is turned into camp.
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The old “Day,” made early in the atomic age, has long inspired this kind of laughter. It has also, in part because of its expressive, shadowy black-and-white cinematography, retained a measure of haunting, unsettling weirdness.

Any hope that the new “Day,” directed by Scott Derrickson from a script by David Scarpa, might also someday rise above its pulpy, corny, somber silliness rests mainly on the shoulders of Keanu Reeves. Those shoulders are perfect for filling out a dark, narrow suit, just as Mr. Reeves’s deadpan basso and permanently perplexed features make him an ideal Klaatu, as the space visitor is called. Klaatu’s job is to assist, calmly and methodically, in the extermination of the human race, a task he tries, with evident fatigue, to explain to his hysterical, violent would-be victims.

Only one will listen: Dr. Helen Benson, played with a bit too much ennui by Jennifer Connelly. Helen, an expert in astrobiology, is part of a team of scientists taken into government custody by force when a giant orb seems about to crash into the Earth. Instead it lands in Central Park, disgorging that giant metal Cyclops robot (a near replica of the one from the earlier movie) and poor Klaatu.

The secretary of defense (Kathy Bates, with Hillary Clinton’s demeanor and Sarah Palin’s hair) responds with military force, which only speeds the process of humanity’s annihilation and demonstrates that our executioners may have a point. We’re such a brutal, dumb, incorrigible life form that the only way the planet can survive is if we’re no longer on it. (In 1951 the case against us was mainly pacifist. Now the anti-militarism has a more urgent and explicit ecological dimension.) A metastasizing swarm of metal bugs — the best special effects in a movie that often looks cheap and bedraggled — is dispatched to eat us and everything we’ve made, or at least everything on the New Jersey Turnpike.

But wait, Helen pleads. We can change! To provide evidence of this transformative potential she takes Klaatu to see her mentor, Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese), a scientist who listens to Bach and was awarded a Nobel Prize for “altruistic biology.” Apparently this is the Swedish Academy’s euphemism for pimping: the good doctor’s advice to Helen about how to approach Klaatu is to “persuade him not with your reason, but with yourself.”

Still, any movie that awards a former Monty Python cast member a Nobel Prize in anything cannot be all bad. And “The Day the Earth Stood Still” could be worse. Its scenario and many of its scenes feel ripped off rather than freshly imagined — why do aliens always seem to end up in New Jersey? — and the relationship between Helen and her stepson, Jacob (Jaden Smith), does not quite add the necessary element of heart-tugging sentiment.

After “Wall-E” and “I Am Legend” and the dozens of apocalypse flicks since the last “Day the Earth Stood Still” we can surely do better. Even Klaatu looks bored and distracted, much as he did back when we knew him as Neo.

Synopsis:
A remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL follows astrobiologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) as she is unceremoniously plucked from her everyday life... A remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL follows astrobiologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) as she is unceremoniously plucked from her everyday life with her stepson (Jaden Smith), and whisked away to consult the government on a top-secret matter. That matter happens to be the arrival of a massive glowing sphere in Central Park, accompanied by a towering robot-like protector dubbed Gort and an alien ambassador named Klaatu (Keanu Reeves), who takes up human form to communicate with the people of Earth. When Klaatu finds himself faced with hawkish, uncompromising officials, he goes on the run with Benson and her son as the fate of the world gradually becomes clear. Directed by Scott Derrickson (THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE), this reimagining of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is fairly reverent to the original film, while adding a number of 21st-century elements, most notably a darker tone embodied by a more threatening Gort and the chilly, contemplative Klaatu, who is portrayed with pitch-perfect remove by Reeves. While the film--and the fate of humanity--rests on Reeves's shoulders, the cast is impressively filled out by Connelly and Smith, along with Kathy Bates, John Cleese, and familiar TV actors Jon Hamm (MAD MEN) and Kyle Chandler (FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS). Derrickson also tempers excellent special effects with a bleak color palette and plenty of existential turmoil, making this EARTH a thoughtful and fascinatingly moody blockbuster. [Less]

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Jaden Smith, John Cleese, Jon Hamm, Kyle Chandler, Kathy Bates
Director: Scott Derrickson
Screenwriter: David Scarpa
Producer: Erwin Stoff, Paul Boardman, Gregory Goodman
Composer: Tyler Bates
Studio: 20th Century Fox

She arrives in the middle of the school year so although it should be hard to make friends (and it’s implied), she manages to connect with a group of kids who are far more welcoming than she is ready to be welcomed. They give her the scoop on who’s who and they soon point out the Cullens, an odd assortment of very pale-skinned guys and gals. To make things weirder, they are apparently foster brothers/sisters yet they are “couples.” They’ve been taken in by the local Dr. Cullen and his wife.
One of the group is of course, Edward (Robert Pattinson). His story is that “no girl is good enough for him.” Of course Bella is immediately fixated on him, although the feeling is apparently very much not mutual. As a matter of fact when she is assigned to be his lab partner, he seems to be repulsed by her.
Edward leaves for a few days, and when he returns his mood towards Bella has changed considerably. He’s now polite and at least feigns interest. She (mostly) gets over being offended and tries to get to know him although he still doesn’t want to get close to her. Almost immediately he saves her from being killed in a car accident in a scene that’s been shown in the trailer. She’s no dummy and doesn’t miss the fact that he was across the parking lot, got over to her in a flash and was able to keep a van from smashing into her (to the point that he left a dent in the door with his hand). [Note slight sarcasm there, folks]
Anyway, we soon meet Dr. Cullen (Peter Facinelli) at the hospital, whose makeup job is so incredibly white that he looks like the Cesar Romero version of the Joker. He is none to pleased about Edward (I guess I can’t call him “Ed,” huh?) possibly exposing who he really is to save Bella’s life.
One thing leads to another and the burgeoning romance is on its way, with a side trip to a confrontation with the “bad” vampires who actually kill humans to feed (go figure). You see the Cullens only drink the blood of animals. The bad guys have been responsible for a number of gruesome murders in town recently. One of them decides to target Bella and thus we get the final confrontation which finally brings us some decent action.

So what’s good?

I thought that the stars and supporting cast actually did a really great job. Bella’s friends were engaging, funny and they played their roles very naturally. Billy Burke was low key and very good as Bella’s father, Kristen Stewart did a decent job, and I have to say that despite his severely sculpted eyebrows and uber-funky hair that I liked Rob Pattinson’s portrayal of Edward Cullen. I don’t know how closely the way he played the character matched the version in the book, but I thought that his uncertainty and awkwardness in light of how powerful he really was made him quite charming.

There were quite a few moments of unexpected humor in the film that I enjoyed. Nothing huge or slapsticky, but just little things that were enough to actually make me laugh out loud (which some comedies this year didn’t manage to make me do). Really the performances made this worthwhile for me.

So what wasn’t so good?

For a non-fan, it was really a pretty bland film. It seemed very slow-moving at times, and let’s face it - it’s a pretty “stock” teen romance movie. There wasn’t anything really special here outside of the fact that it had, you know… vampires.

Nothing really eye-catching as far as cinematography or interesting shots, and one think that really struck me as bad were the visual effects. When the film had its first “super-speed” effect, where the bad vampires corner one of the locals, it was so poorly done that I think I actually gasped out loud. I mean there was this incredibly cheesy blur that I can’t really describe except to say that anything you see on an average episode of Smallville is done far better.

Imagine my shock at the end of the film when in the credits I saw Industrial Light & Magic listed among the visual effects companies. I can only guess that they were responsible for some other effect and not the one I just mentioned (which was terrible throughout the film).

Towards the end the teen-romance-cheese-factor pegged the needle in the aftermath of the big battle in a scene between Edward and Bella. That was about the hardest scene in the movie to sit through, and pretty much from there until the end it was quite sappy and reminded me of a typical teen TV series on the CW.

The audience full of Twilight fans seemed to enjoy it a lot and gave it a thumbs up, so I guess it’s achieved its goal. I’m curious to see if it does well enough at the box office to generate a sequel (which I’m thinking would actually be better than this film).

So take all that for what it’s worth - I’ll leave the decision of whether to see it or not up to you.

Oh, and yes (for the fans), Edward does “sparkle” in the film and Bella is clumsy.

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Cam Gigandet, Nikki Reed, Elizabeth Reaser, Jackson Rathbone, Sarah Clarke, Ashley Greene, Anna Kendrick, Justin Chon, Kellen Lutz, Edi Gathegi, Rachelle Lefevre, Christian Serratos Director: Catherine Hardwicke Producer: Greg Mooradian, Mark Morgan, Wyck Godfrey Screenwriter: Mark Lord, Melissa Rosenberg Producer: Mark Morgan, Greg Mooradian Composer: Carter Burwell Studio: Summit Entertainment

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Thursday, April 23, 2009

The Tale of Despereaux

Quantum of Solace

Seven Pounds

The Day the Earth Stood Still

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