At the movies: The Watchers.

 

Isharan Night Shyamalan brings us an intriguing dive into second generation Shyamalan cinema, and it's a promising beginning. Doesn't stick the landing, but still an interesting vision and voice for the genre. Also, a heroic conure.

At the movies: Breaking Dawn - Part Two.

Twilight 4.2 happened to me recently. If you'd like my thoughts on the previous films in the series to prepare yourself, you can find them here, here, and here. There's no working link to my New Moon review, so I have reproduced it below for the sake of completism. Regardless, Breaking Dawn Part 2 is kind of amazing. Read along for the goods...

Also, I'd like to point out something that I've noticed about what I've written about the Twilight experience. I've been judgy and a little off-the-cuff with these movies, but I've also had a lot of fun writing about them (even the time I got hit in the face with a New Moon t-shirt from one of those t-shirt guns like what killed Maude Flanders). As far as keeping up a tradition with a franchise I wasn't a huge fan of, these films were way preferable to the Saw movies...

NEW MOON

So free-thinking High School loner Bella and sparkly vampire Edward are together, moping magnificently throughout their Pacific Northwest High School. Then a papercut turns everything upside down, and the Cullens disappear, leaving our girl Bella a depressive adrenaline junkie with a journal full of flowery sadness. Fortunately, lurking in the shadows is another supernatural dreamboat, this time newly-buff werewolf Jacob, who wants to give his all to make sure that Bella is happy and safe.

The only supernatural force, it seems, that isn't devoting itself to protecting Bella: the Volturi. The Volturi are a mysterious clan of vampires who rule from their mini-fortress in Italy. They maintain absolute secrecy as to the existence of their own kind, though they apparently feast on packs of tourists by the busfull. And it's to them Edward has gone, in order to commit a complicated form of ritualized suicide. Because he thinks Bella is dead, and, despite being 109 years old, he's a guy who doesn't really know what it is that he wants.

That old Three's Company paradox of a labyrinthine plot that could be straightened out if people talked directly to one another... Well, New Moon has that by the fistful. And judging by the response of the audience at the pre-opening night screening I attended, New Moon also has puppies and expensive Belgian chocolate and the finest of champagnes, because that's the kind of response it got.

I can't hate: this is certainly more consistent and visually interesting than its predecessor, and its overwrought silliness is infectious, like a Smiths B-side or mononucleisis. Check your brain at the door and enjoy...