Those Who Walk Away

Sometimes you get a more accurate reflection in a cracked mirror.

(2022) Horror (VMI Worldwide) Booboo Stewart, Scarlett Sperduto, Nils Allen Stewart, Nancy Harding, Grant Morningstar, Bryson JonSteele, Devin Keaton, Josh Bradshaw, Connor McKinley Griffin, Michael Holub, Yash Gajera, Brandon Leonard, Ethan Wieland, Steve Hausler, Kim Smith, Paula Macfarlane Van Kuren, Alexis Curtiss, Dante Yatel Nayvaez, Beau Elliott, Daryl Anisfeld. Directed by Robert Rippberger

First dates can be magical things. They can also be terrifying. Often they end up being completely forgettable. How many times have we gone on first dates, only to be checking our watches…excuse me, smart phones… or fidgeting in place as we realize that it was an enormous mistake to ask this person out in the first place (or say yes when asked). Sometimes, however, there is a chemistry that just pops up without any provocation or intention and it becomes an event you never forget for as long as you live, however long that may be.

Max (B. Stewart) has been out of the dating game for a while. He had been taking care of his seriously ill mom, until the grind and mental fatigue finally overwhelmed him. He feels tremendous guilt for having walked away for caring for his mom, but here is a chance to get into a healthier relationship.

And at first glance, it seems like Avery (Sperduto) is tonic for the troops. The two met on a dating app and decided to take a shot and meet in person. Not only is she pretty, but she seems to be quite taken with Max. At first, both are awkward, particularly the chronically shy Max as the conversation sputters, reloads, stops, and shifts gears. The two walk slowly through their small town, making small talk as they take their time before arriving at their movie. Except that the movie has been canceled due to extenuating circumstances. Bummer.

After a brief stop at a bar where their mutual attraction seemed to take off into overdrive, Avery suggests visiting a reputedly haunted house on the edge of town. Max quickly agrees. Once there, the rotting and crumbling house seems to be the perfect place for a malevolent ghost and one lives there – Rotcreep (N.A. Stewart). Avery tells Max that Rotcreep has agreed to remain tied to the house so long as sacrifices are made, otherwise he would escape and rain terror on an unsuspecting world. And, as it turns out, nothing is at all what Max thought it was.

The first half of the movie is a stroll through town, moving at the kind of pace you would expect from a stroll. The strained small talk, the awkward conversation – all ring true, but Rippberger made the decision to film his movie in a single continuous shot, which feels unnecessary and gimmicky here. Note to aspiring filmmakers; if something like that doesn’t add anything to the narrative other than being an exercise in self-indulgence, then you don’t need it. It becomes distracting and irritating to the viewer. Just some friendly advice.

Booboo Stewart is perfectly cast as the shy, awkward Max who has tremendous burdens, but at heart is a kind young man. He has pretty good chemistry with Sperduto, which is necessary to carry the first half of the film. Unfortunately, that part of the film is going to be virtually excruciating for those who expect a roller coaster haunted house film, which is what the trailer is selling.

There are a lot of cinematographic twists and turns as cinematographer Diego Cordero spins the camera, flips it upside down in an effort to create a literal visual coaster effect; however, be warned that such effects can be vertigo-inducing and wear out their welcome after a couple of turns.

There are some pretty good ideas here, but the backstory of Rotcreep is confusing and contradictory; what is explained to be always fatal turns out to be survivable after all, and he doesn’t appear until comparatively late in the film (they don’t even get into the house until 45 minutes in). The production design is spooky and really well done, considering the miniscule budget. I would have liked to have seen a little less small talk and a little more development of the haunting set-up, but to be truthful, this isn’t bad so much as it makes a few missteps.

REASONS TO SEE: A good college try from both Stewart and Sperduto.
REASONS TO AVOID: Takes WAY too long to get going.
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity, violence, sensuality, disturbing images and terror.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Loosely inspired by the Ursula K. LeGuin short story “Those Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Avery even mentions early on that she is writing a paper on that very story during their stroll around town.
]BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Google Play, Microsoft, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/16/22: Rotten Tomatoes: 43% positive reviews; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Autumn Road
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Marry Me

New Releases for the Week of October 13, 2017

THE FOREIGNER

(STX) Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan, Katie Leung, Rufus Jones, Charlie Murphy, Michael McElhatton, Lia Williams, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Stephen Hogan. Directed by Martin Campbell

A Chinese businessman living in London is horrified to see his daughter killed in a terrorist bomb blast. Grieving and obsessed with seeing justice for his daughter’s murder, he crosses swords with a government official with a past who may have clues as to the identity of the terrorist. What the official doesn’t realize that the businessman also has a past – one that may very well cause all sorts of mayhem before all is said and done.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Action
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for violence, language, and some sexual material)

American Satan

(Miramax) Denise Richards, Booboo Stewart, Malcolm McDowell, Mark Boone Junior. In a moment of weakness, a young rock band makes a deal with the devil. Fame and fortune seem to be coming their way but they soon realize the cost is way too high. Can they figure out a way to get out of their deal before it’s too late?

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: AMC Universal Cineplex
Rating: R (for strong sexual content, nudity, drug use throughout, pervasive language and some violence)

The Florida Project

(A24) Brooklynn Prince, Willem Dafoe, Valeria Cotto, Caleb Landry Jones. In a decrepit hotel near Walt Disney World, a precocious and fearless 6-year-old girl gets into mischief with her friends while her rebellious mother barely scrapes together enough for the two of them to get by. Over the course of one magical summer, the young girl will take magic wherever she can find it under the watchful eye of the grumpy manager with a heart of gold. A festival favorite, this one has been getting Best Picture Oscar buzz and was shot right here in Orlando.

See the trailer and a clip here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: R (for language throughout, disturbing behavior, sexual references and some drug material)

Happy Death Day

(Blumhouse/Universal) Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine, Rachel Matthews. In the grand tradition of Groundhog Day, a high school senior relives the same day over and over again. It’s her birthday, normally a good thing – but it’s also the day she is murdered. She must find out the identity of her killer and survive until the next day – or be doomed to be killed over and over and over and over and over…

See the trailer, clips and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for violence/terror, crude sexual content, language, some drug material and partial nudity)

Marshall

(Open Road) Chadwick Boseman, Josh Gad, Kate Hudson, Sterling K. Brown. A cocky young African-American lawyer takes on a controversial case that has wider ramifications in the fight for civil rights. The lawyer will have to battle the prejudices of an entire nation in order to triumph but triumph is what Thurgood Marshall’s whole career would be about – as the first African-American to be appointed to the Supreme Court.

See the trailer, interviews and a clip here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for mature thematic content, sexuality, violence and some strong language)

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

(Annapurna) Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall, Bella Heathcote, Connie Britton. Psychologist William Marston is best known today for creating the Wonder Woman comic in 1941. Incorporating the feminist ideals of his wife and their lover, the comic was controversial from the beginning but Marston stood up for his creation, making her the most popular female superhero in the world.

See the trailer, featurettes, clips and an interview here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for strong sexual content including brief graphic images, and language)

The Secret Scripture

(Vertical) Rooney Mara, Vanessa Redgrave, Eric Bana, Theo James. A woman who has been placed in a psychiatric care facility begins to receive visits from a young psychologist. His interest in her diary begins to trigger flashbacks to her youth which was filled with romance, obsession, intrigue, turmoil and ultimately the mental breakdown that got her committed.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Thriller
Now Playing: AMC West Oaks
Rating: PG-13 (for disturbing thematic content, some sexuality and lanuage)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

Blood Money
Raju Gari Gadhi 2
RWBY Volume 5: Premiere

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI:

Brawl in Cell Block 99
Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
Raju Gari Gadhi 2
Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA:

6 Below: Miracle on the Mountain
Jane
Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards
Marjorie Prime
MFA
Raju Gari Gadhi 2
Udaharanam Sujatha

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE:

Lucky
Raju Gari Gadhi 2

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Brawl in Cell Block 99
The Florida Project
The Foreigner
Happy Death Day
Lucky
Marjorie Prime
Marshall
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World

FILM FESTIVALS TAKING PLACE IN FLORIDA:

Miami Film Festival GEMS (Miami, October 12-15)

Honeyglue

You meet the happiest people in bars.

(2016) Drama (Zombot) Adriana Mather, Zach Villa, Christopher Heyerdahl, Jessica Turk, Booboo Stewart, Amanda Plummer, Fernanda Romero, Ezequiel Stremiz, Faran Tahir, Clayton Rohner, Saidah Arrika Ekulona, Kristin Minter, Josh Woodle, Fernando Martinez, Jeremy Shelton, Rajan Velu, Pamela Francesca, Cristen Barnes, Cody Provolt, Stephen Farbman, Chelsea Mark. Directed by James Bird

Love doesn’t choose very well. It just chooses. Who we fall in love with may not necessarily be the best person for us but the heart doesn’t care. It loves who it chooses.

Morgan (Mather) is a young woman from a middle class, conservative background who has gotten some bad news. Her metastatic brain tumor has gone past the point of no return and she has just three months to live. This doesn’t sit well with her parents, her stolid dad Dennis (Heyerdahl), her mom Janet (Turk) and her brother Bailey (Stewart).

Jordan (Villa) is a troubled young man from the wrong side of the tracks. His somewhat fluid sexual identity makes him a target for abuse, something he’s not really a stranger to. When he meets Morgan in a club, she is making videos with an old Super-8 camera to try and document what’s left in her life. The two find each other talking, and eventually these polar opposites find common ground.

As Jordan and Morgan fall in love he is made aware of her situation. She invites him over to meet her amazingly tolerant parents and her kid brother who seems to accept Jordan out of hand even though he teases the sensitive artist mercilessly. For Jordan’s part, he is inspired by Morgan to write a children’s story about a Dragonfly boy and a bee princess who fall in love. Soon, life imitates art.

But it isn’t easy for two such different people to co-exist and with the specter of Morgan’s imminent demise and her desire to die somewhere other than a hospital looming over their heads, Jordan is going to have to do a lot more than just break the rules for her. He’s going to have to write some new ones.

The dying teen story tends to be one of the most poignant in all of the world’s tales (although I’m guessing Morgan/Mather is more in her mid to late 20s) and to the filmmakers credit, they don’t exploit it as much as they might. The film concentrates heavily on mortality itself, and the question of quality of life versus quantity of years. With Morgan’s clock ticking down, it seems a ripe opportunity to get her thoughts on the subject.

And we kinda do, but they are expressed so poorly in platitudes that sound profound but comes off as pretentious and smug. The movie tries really hard to be different than the norm, too hard in fact and we end up feeling talked down to rather than engaged in conversation. It’s a shame, because the cast actually manages to put together some fine performances, particularly by Mather, Heyerdahl and Villa, but they are let down because they are given such preposterous dialogue. On the beach, Jordan purrs “You are my realistic fantasy” while Morgan coos “You are my fantastic reality” and the rest of us throw up a little inside our mouths. Real people don’t talk like that. At least, real people you’d want to actually talk to.

I like the idea of making Jordan transgender, but they don’t really do anything with it. It comes off as almost an affectation, like Jordan just happens to like wearing skirts to be different rather than an integral part of who he is. That does actual transgenders a disservice. I thought that giving both Jordan and Morgan (and for that matter, Bailey) unisex names was a bit too cutesy. There’s a feeling that Bird, who also wrote the film, was writing about stereotypes rather than people. While the chemistry between Mather and Villa seemed genuine, the relationship did not.

I was annoyed in a lot of ways by Honeyglue because there really is a good movie to be made here and this is a squandered opportunity to say the least. The performances and subject matter make the movie marginally worth seeing, but the writing and overall tone just lost me. I don’t know if Bird knows any cancer patients or transgenders and maybe he does but if he does, they didn’t make it into the script. The characters didn’t feel real; in fact, none of the characters here did, and that’s a big problem. The movie is gradually expanding to locations around the country and will likely be on VOD at some point, but this is one only for the curious. Serious film lovers will likely find this as frustrating as I did.

REASONS TO GO: Tackles an important subject head-on. Some decent performances in the cast.
REASONS TO STAY: The dialogue is occasionally pretentious and overwrought. Tries too hard to be daring and different.
FAMILY VALUES: There’s a fair amount of foul language, sexuality and some drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The animation, based on the children’s book that Jordan is writing, was done by Kevin Weber.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 6/3/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 40% positive reviews. Metacritic: 17/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Fault in Our Stars
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Smile and the world smiles with you.

(2014) Superhero (20th Century Fox) Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Jennifer Lawrence, Peter Dinklage, Halle Berry, Omar Sy, Nicholas Hoult, Shawn Ashmore, Ellen Page, Evan Peters, Josh Helman, Daniel Cudmore, Bingbing Fan, Adan Canto, Booboo Stewart, Lucas Till, Evan Jonigkeit, Mark Camacho, Zabryna Guevara. Directed by Bryan Singer

In the modern era of Superhero films, each franchise faces a particular problem – each succeeding entry in the franchise needs to be bigger and better, the stakes higher in order for the audience to continue to flock to the multiplex to see them. That is why, in my opinion, studios choose to go the reboot route rather than continue on with existing casts.

Bryan Singer may not necessarily subscribe to that theorem. He took the cast members of the X-Men: First Class reboot of the popular mutant superhero series and blended it with the original X-Men cast of his era and created a time-travel epic that carries the torch for both series’ nicely.

In a dystopian future, mutants have been all but eradicated as well as a good chunk of the human race. The Sentinels, giant robots with organic elements and an artificial intelligence that allows them to adapt to the various powers of the different heroes they fight, have become so powerful that not even the X-Men of the future can best them. The only humans left are those who agree with the agenda that mutants must be wiped off the face of the planet, using those who remain as slave labor.

Making a last stand in a Chinese temple are the remaining X-Men: Professor X (Stewart), Magneto (McKellen), Storm (Berry), Wolverine (Jackman), Bishop (Sy), Colossus (Cudmore), Shadowcat a.k.a. Kitty Pryde (Page), Blink (Fan), Sunspot (Canto) and Warpath (Stewart). They know that it is inevitable that the battle will be lost. They have only survived because Pryde has developed a plan in which she sends one of their members consciousness back a day to warn the rest that an attack is imminent so they can be elsewhere when the attack comes.

Professor X proposes that they do something similar but long-range. He has pinpointed the problem back to an event in 1973 – one in which weapons scientist Bolivar Trask (Dinklage), an anti-mutant hater of epic proportions, is assassinated by Mystique (Lawrence), the shape-shifting chameleon who was once the close friend of Charles Xavier (McAvoy) and later became the ally of Eric Lensherr (Fassbender) a.k.a. Magneto. She was later captured and her DNA was used to make what was already hard-to-defeat giant robots into nearly unbeatable sentient machines. The assassination also turned public sentiment against the mutants.

Sending someone back forty years is nearly impossible however. Pryde points out that “the human mind can only stretch so far before it breaks.” However Wolverine with his mutant healing power is the only one who can survive the trip. So it is that Mr. Cheroot first and Ask Questions Later is sent back to the Disco age where he will be given the monumental task of convincing the younger Xavier to try and find Mystique and stop her from her appointment with Trask.

Wolverine knows full well that it will take both Xavier and Lensherr to talk the headstrong Mystique who is angry and wounded over the deaths of several friends in Trask’s experiments on living mutants to discover what makes them tick. However, this is no walk in the park assignment. Xavier is bitter and angry over being shot by his old friend. He was paralyzed in the incident but a serum that Hank McCoy a.k.a. Beast (Hoult) developed allows him to walk and numbs the pain but also blocks out his powers. Xavier is just fine with that and really doesn’t give much of a flying you-know-what for the future but at last his conscience kicks in and he agrees to help Wolverine.

Getting Lensherr aboard is slightly more difficult. He is being kept in a metal-less prison hundreds of feet below the Pentagon – apparently he’s been blamed for the magic bullet that killed JFK – but Wolverine knows a guy. That guy is Peter Maximoff a.k.a. Quicksilver (Peters) who has superspeed and the attitude to match.

Of course, once they free Magneto he turns out to have an agenda all his own and now the clock is literally ticking – in the future, the Sentinels are approaching the temple where the remaining X-Men are holed up and Wolverine’s consciousness hangs in the balance.

This all sounds very convoluted and it is. I have deliberately left the individual powers of most of the different X-Men unexplained – it would just take too long. The issue I have with movies like this is that we get literally a dozen or more different characters most of whom are given short shrift or split screen time with a younger/older counterpart. When you have a cast that’s chock full of actors who’ve received Oscar consideration (there are eight of them), something’s got to give. Poor Halle Berry (who won Oscar gold) has almost no dialogue and only a couple of minutes of screen time although to be fair, Berry’s pregnancy prevented her from taking part in the movie as much as the producers would have liked. Anna Paquin (who also won an Oscar) gets no dialogue and less screen time than it takes to read this sentence and yet she gets star billing. Ah, the magic of Hollywood credits.

Despite this, the movie flows surprisingly well and those actors who do get more than a few moments of screen time make the most of it. McAvoy in particular does well with his self-medicating and self-loathing Professor a far cry from the suave and confident Professor X of his counterpart Patrick Stewart. We see the road that Xavier is taking towards the compassion and wisdom his character becomes known for and it’s rather fascinating. Jackman as well continues to make Wolverine his own and while it’s hard to make something new out of a character he’s played seven times, Jackman manages to accomplish that.

The supporting cast is pretty stellar and Dinklage is a superb villain. His Bolivar Trask doesn’t see himself as a villain but rather the facilitator who unites mankind against a common enemy. His enmity against the mutants is somewhat surprising considering that as a small person, Trask is himself an outsider within society. It’s a multi-layered role and a villain worthy of a broad canvas such as this.

As you’d expect the battle sequences are plentiful and well-done. The Sentinels are fearsome creatures that have expressionless faces that are all the more terrifying for their mechanical blankness. Lots of things get blown up real good, and there are plenty of fists, fur and energy beams flying through the ether, not to mention flames, ice and the occasional claw.

A warning to those unfamiliar with the X-Men comics; there is a lot that goes unstated in the film that may not make sense. For example, the Wolverine in the ’70s has bone claws and in the future, claws of metal. That’s because the metal infusion that changes the nature of his weapon doesn’t take place until later on in time. In fact, the man responsible, Stryker (Helman) makes an appearance as an ambitious Trask operative here – he’d be played by Brian Cox in X2.

What really saves this movie is the plot which is complex and intelligent. Some often snipe at comic books and the movies that are based on them for being dumb and loud, but this is certainly not the former (and only occasionally the latter). Some thought was given to the mechanics and ramifications of time travel. The movie also made a good effort in re-creating the time period. Just as First Class was something of a superhero Bond movie, this is a lot like a superhero conspiracy movie, complete with Tricky Dick, the military-industrial complex and lava lamps.

This is the kind of entertainment that is synonymous with summer and a perfect fit for a year which has been thus far an improvement over last summer. The X-Men have always been some of the most interesting of comic books with some of the most compelling themes in the art form. The apocalyptic vision of the future here however is nothing compared to what is to come in the next installment of the series which is teased in an extra scene following the credits.

REASONS TO GO: Some sensational action scenes. Riveting storyline.

REASONS TO STAY: Too many characters; may be hard for non-fans to keep up with all of them. May not make sense to those unfamiliar with the comic.

FAMILY VALUES: Lots of comic book action and violence, some suggestive material, brief nudity and a few bad words here and there.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: In the comic storyline the movie is based on, it is Kitty Pryde who travels back in time, not Wolverine. The change was made for continuity reasons – in the 1970s Pryde wouldn’t have been born yet, whereas Logan is ageless and would appear exactly the same in both future and past.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 6/1/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 92% positive reviews. Metacritic: 74/100.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

FINAL RATING: 7.5/10

NEXT: A Million Ways to Die in the West

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1

Be still my heart.

(2011) Romantic Fantasy (Summit) Kristin Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Jackson Rathbone, Elizabeth Reaser, Nikki Reed, Billy Burke, Rami Malek, Maggie Grace, Mackenzie Foy, Dakota Fanning, Lee Pace, Anna Kendrick, Michael Sheen, Christopher Heyerdahl, Booboo Stewart, Daniel Cudmore, Justin Chon, Julia Jones, Sarah Clarke. Directed by Bill Condon

Sometimes you have to take into account as a critic that your own personal taste isn’t going to mesh well with the intended audience of a film. One instance where that has been demonstrated time and again is in the Twilight series. Wildly popular, particularly among young girls (and to a large extent, their moms) it has spawned a diehard fanbase who identify themselves as TwiHards. It has also spawned an incredible backlash, mainly among boys (and to a large extent, their dads) who despise the series with a vitriol heretofore reserved for the same regard held by Jews for Nazis.

So what is a critic to do? Are we supposed to write one review for the intended fanbase and another for the rest of the world, or try to make something that can be useful to those who aren’t necessarily fans of the series but may be curious whether or not to see the movie for themselves? Generally, I tend to go for the latter route as those fans have likely already seen the movie at least once – probably during its theatrical run or if not on home video certainly.

Taking place following the events of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, the long-awaited wedding of Bella (Stewart) and Edward (Pattinson) is finally here and yes, the blushing bride looks ravishing in a demure-yet-sexy wedding dress that of course keeps her grinning groom hungry for more. Bella’s good friend Jacob Black (Lautner), the werewolf who was the third leg of the love triangle with vampire Ed, is less sanguine about the union – not just because he wants Bella for himself but also because he realizes just how dangerous it can be for Bella. They have words and Jacob ends up running into the woods, leaving Edward to escort a distraught Bella back into the reception.

They honeymoon on Isle Esme off the coast of Brazil. There, the loving couple at last consummates their marriage. True to form, Bella wakes up one morning and discovers herself pregnant. This isn’t necessarily a good thing. It isn’t that Bella and Edward don’t want children – it’s just that the mortal human body wasn’t meant to bear the child of a supernatural undead being like Edward. It is unlikely that Bella will survive it.

Her pregnancy proceeds at an advanced rate and they cut short their honeymoon and head back to Forks. When the werewolves find out what has happened, they are furious – and terrified. The spawn of such a union will be demonic indeed and in order to protect themselves, they must kill Bella before she can give birth. Jacob of course is having none of this and he leaves his pack, creating a new pack with Seth (Stewart) and Leah (Jones) with Jacob as the Alpha.

Bella grows progressively weaker and soon is forced to drink human blood to keep the fetus viable and allows Bella to gain some much-needed strength. When she goes into labor, all Hell is going to break loose. Edward must convert her into vampirism but will it be enough to save him – to save them all?

Condon is actually a pretty decent director with such movies as Gods and Monsters and Dreamgirls to his credit. He brings Guillermo del Toro’s usual cinematographer Guillermo Navarro on board and Navarro responds with the most beautifully shot movie of the series. He also continues to stock the soundtrack, as those who came before him did, with some nifty alt-rock tunes that nicely enhance the movie and appeal nicely to the target crowd.

Unfortunately, the dialogue is cringe-inducing and the acting really hasn’t improved much over the course of the series. Of course, you can’t really blame the actors for that – Summit’s demanding shooting schedule in producing one of these suckers every year is bound to take its toll.

There is enough here that makes this a much superior film to New Moon which isn’t saying much, but it’s still not enough for me to really recommend it to most audiences. Hardcore fans will love this as they inevitably would – TwiHards are nothing if not loyal – and even those not quite so obsessed but still within the target audience are likely to find this worthwhile.

The overwrought drama and again, choosing to make Bella a simpering idiot rather than a truly strong role model for her audience is frustrating. Meyer and those involved with the series have chosen to waste an opportunity to create a hugely popular series with strong female role models and instead turns it into an indigestible bodice ripper with little redeeming value other than it excites the fantasies of young girls and middle-aged women alike. While there is certainly nothing wrong with that as a goal, at least couldn’t they have made Bella able to protect herself?

WHY RENT THIS: There are plenty of fans who think this is the best film of the series.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: I’m not one of them.

FAMILY VALUES:  There are some scenes of paranormal action, some partial nudity and scenes of sexuality, a couple of disturbing images and some mature (relatively speaking) thematic elements..

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Author of the Twilight series of books Stephenie Meyer has a cameo appearance as a guest at the wedding of Bella and Edward.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: There is a wedding video done in the hand-held style of most home wedding videos. There’s also a Jacob Fast-Forward and an Edward Fast-Forward in which those on the respective teams can watch all the scenes that their favorite heartthrob is in without having to endure those scenes with that other guy.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $712.2M on a $110M production budget.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Beautiful Creatures

FINAL RATING: 4/10

NEXT: Farewell, My Concubine