You nicknamed my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster?

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2

(2012)

The final finale of the Twilight saga, in which pig-boy Jacob tells Bella that, “No, it's not like that at all!” after she accuses him of being a paedo. But then she comes around to his viewpoint, doubtless displaying the kind of denial many parents did who let their kids spend time with Jimmy Savile or Gary Glitter during the ‘70s. It's lucky little Renesmee will be an adult by the age of seven, right? Right... Jacob even jokes that he should start calling Edward, “Dad”. And all the while they smile and smile.

Borrowing the trick of Harry Potter in splitting the last book in the series in two movies to make more cash (or to preserve the artistic integrity of the material, take your pick), both series have in common an action-lite part one and an epic face-off in part two. However, Twilight distinguishes itself with the usual mixture of dreadful acting, dialogue, sub-Dido songs and sluggishly banal but slightly surreal domesticity. Obviously a vampire soap opera shouldn't be dull, but this manages it for the first hour.

After Part 1's freakishly protracted disease movie, I feared the series had returned to the simply forgettable qualities of the second and third films. Sure, there were a few bright spots (Lee Pace enjoying himself as a sub-Spike vamp) and a touch of the altogether wrong with a horrifically odd CGI baby, but director Bill Condon finds himself mostly imprisoned within protracted canoodling between Edward and Bella. And clumsy voiceovers to cover the parts visual storytelling cannot reach. He tries all sorts of tricks to deflect attention, hitting the cutaways-to-nature button like an undiscerning Nic Roeg devotee. Often his choices are ultra-cheesy or just plain naff (vampire super-fast running, the slow motion love marathons of our super-sex-charged couple). And yet, what he is doing visually is always much more interesting than anything in the middle sequels, helped along by Guillermo Navaro’s lucid cinematography.

As for subtexts, who knows what the hell is going on, but it’s all ripe for analysis; what goes through Stephenie Meyer’s peculiar Mormon mind to come up with this stuff? There’s the aforementioned fixation of Jacob with a baby/child; it’s okay that he “imprinted” on her, it’s totally natural (that’s what they all say). Then there’s the now supervamp Bella, whom Edward constantly smiles over like in slightly sickly fashion; look how he empowered her and made her all she could possibly be (after nearly killing her)!

The acting is the usually mixture of wood and ham; Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison have given perfectly respectable performances in other movies but barely register here. Taylor Lautner, of course, makes an impression for the entirely plankish reasons he usually does. You realise that some of his dialogue might be quite mockingly amusing if he wasn’t delivering it. But also that, if anyone with any range were playing Jacob, the ultra-creepy aspect of his child-bride obsession would be even more of an issue.

The rest of the cast range from model-type eye candy posing about with nary a line to speak, to a sprinkling of proper actors either looking out of place because they can act (Peter Facinelli, Billy Burke) or because they are so over-the-top (Michael Sheen). There are others, like Dakota Fanning, where you wonder that they took the gig since it certainly wasn’t for the challenge. And then there’s that sallow Jamie Campbell Bower managing to irritate as usual just by being there smirking, Edward Scissorhands clone Jackson Rathbone remaining as unnaturally immobile as ever and Ashley Greene proving she has the best hair stylist of the cast. There’s a Kurt Cobain look-a-like vampire too, but I’m not sure how intentional that was. Maggie Grace also shows up (I think I’d forgotten she was in Part 1), this time without Liam Neeson in tow.

Just as it looked like it would end as insipidly as it had continued, there’s a big scrap. The poster, surely one of the most appalling ever designed, suggested that the final confrontation wouldn’t be worth the wait. But hats-off to Condon for a highly impressive battle sequence in the last half (take note, action directors; good staging is everything, even if the stage looks like a big white fluffy stage). This is as full-on as 12-certificate decapitation-crazy movie can be, and I was cheering away as beloved characters were offed right left and centre.

And then... I knew it was too good to be true. Still, a whole extra star for the easily the most involving half hour since the first movie. There is also a fun moment where the increasingly pay cheque-orientated Michael Sheen emits a high-pitched laugh that must have sent most of this am-dram cast scurrying in alarm behind their acting coaches.

**1/2

Comments

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

So you want me to be half-monk, half-hitman.

Casino Royale (2006)
(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

You killed my sandwich!

Birds of Prey (and the Fanatabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
(SPOILERS) One has to wonder at Bird of Prey’s 79% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I mean, such things are to be taken with a pinch of salt at the best of times, but it would be easy, given the disparity between such evident approval and the actually quality of the movie, to suspect insincere motives on the part of critics, that they’re actually responding to its nominally progressive credentials – female protagonists in a superhero flick! – rather than its content. Which I’m quite sure couldn’t possibly be the case. Birds of Prey (and the Fanatabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) isn’t very good. The trailers did not lie, even if the positive reviews might have misled you into thinking they were misleading.

Afraid, me? A man who’s licked his weight in wild caterpillars? You bet I’m afraid.

Monkey Business (1931)
(SPOILERS) The Marx Brothers’ first feature possessed of a wholly original screenplay, Monkey Business is almost brazenly dismissive towards notions of coherence, just as long as it loosely supports their trademark antics. And it does so in spades, depositing them as stowaways bound for America who fall in with a couple of mutually antagonistic racketeers/ gangsters while attempting to avoid being cast in irons. There’s no Margaret Dumont this time out, but Groucho is more than matched by flirtation-interest Thelma Todd.

Remember, you're fighting for this woman's honour – which is probably more than she ever did.

Duck Soup (1933)
(SPOILERS) Not for nothing is Duck Soup acclaimed as one of the greatest comedies ever, and while you’d never hold it against Marx Brothers movies for having little in the way of coherent plotting in – indeed, it’s pretty much essential to their approach – the presence of actual thematic content this time helps sharpen the edges of both their slapstick and their satire.

You’re a disgrace to the family name of Wagstaff, if such a thing is possible.

Horse Feathers (1932)
(SPOILERS) After a scenario that seemed feasible in Monkey Business – the brothers as stowaways – Horse Feathers opts for a massive stretch. Somehow, Groucho (Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff) has been appointed as the president of Huxley University, proceeding to offer the trustees and assembled throng a few suggestions on how he’ll run things (by way of anarchistic creed “Whatever it is, I’m against it”). There’s a reasonably coherent mission statement in this one, however, at least until inevitably it devolves into gleeful incoherence.

Bad luck to kill a seabird.

The Lighthouse (2019)
(SPOILERS) Robert Eggers’ acclaimed – and Oscar-nominated – second feature is, in some respects, a similar beast to his previous The Witch, whereby isolated individuals of bygone eras are subjected to the unsparing attentions of nature. In his scheme of things, nature becomes an active, embodied force, one that has no respect for the line between imaginings and reality and which proceeds to test its targets’ sanity by means of both elements and elementals. All helped along by unhealthy doses of superstition. But where The Witch sustained itself, and the gradual unravelling of the family unit led to a germane climax, The Lighthouse becomes, well, rather silly.

To defeat the darkness out there, you must defeat the darkness inside yourself.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)
Easily the best of the Narnia films, which is maybe damning it with faint praise.

Michael Apted does a competent job directing (certainly compared to his Bond film - maybe he talked to his second unit this time), Dante Spinotti's cinematography is stunning and the CGI mostly well-integrated with the action.

Performance-wise, Will Poulter is a stand-out as a tremendously obnoxious little toff, so charismatic you're almost rooting for him. Simon Pegg replaces Eddie Izzard as the voice of Reepicheep and delivers a touching performance.
***

On account of you, I nearly heard the opera.

A Night at the Opera (1935)
(SPOILERS) The Marx Brothers head over to MGM, minus one Zeppo, and despite their variably citing A Night at the Opera as their best film, you can see – well, perhaps not instantly, but by about the half-hour mark – that something was undoubtedly lost along the way. It isn’t that there’s an absence of very funny material – there’s a strong contender for their best scene in the mix – but that there’s a lot else too. Added to which, the best of the very funny material can be found during the first half of the picture.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog