Posts Tagged ‘vampires’

New Moon

New Moon

Monday, July 12th, 2010

So, I forget exactly why it was I decided in the end to watch the first Twilight, but I know I would never have watched the sequel (and the next one) were it not for the unfortunate casting of Dakota Fanning (and, in the next one, Jodelle Ferland)… I may have actually physically kicked something when I first realised I would “have to” watch this. So, yeah, I didn’t exactly come to it with an open heart LOL.

There’s a scene here that to me is pretty much the whole Twilight “Saga” (please, do we really have to call it that?) in a nutshell. Even better than the fact that the first major plot point hinges on ZOMG a papercut! there is a montage following Edward’s departure that literally made me LOL. Kristen Stewart sits in a chair in the middle of a room, and the camera begins to spin around her slowly. Titles indicate the passage of months as an emo song plays and she sits there looking miserable the whole time. I might be wrong, please tell me if I am, but I think we’re actually supposed to feel something other than “PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER!” about this. (I’ve since been told that this sequence appears in the novel as simply blank pages with the month names typed in the middle, which only makes it funnier…)

Later, the kids go to see a movie within the movie – titles overheard in this fictional movie theatre? “Love Spelled Backwards Is Love” and “Punch Face”. No kidding. “Drake and Josh” had better made up titles than this. DRAKE AND JOSH.

Okay, I was mostly just annoyed that I watched this for Dakota Fanning and it takes her over an hour to show up. Really: if you’re planning to watch the movie for the same reason, don’t bother. Her role is nothing here, though it looks like she might have more to do in the third (alas). And it’s far from even her most averagely half-good work. I have no clue why she thought these movies were a good idea. I don’t think I wanna know.

But there was something else that irked me… the fact that after being so annoyed by how long it took Kristen Stewart’s character in the first movie to say “you’re a vampire…”, she basically does the EXACT same thing with Jacob the werewolf this time around. At one point he actually says to her, “the killer part is you already KNOW…” like as if he might as well be asking, “Were you dropped on your head as a child?” When the penny finally drops, someone actually says, “I guess the wolf is out of the bag…” If this were a comedy it might be perfect. “So you’re a werewolf…” Bella finally twigs, “Last time I checked,” quips Jacob… “… Can’t you just, like, stop?” she asks.

But for all my bitching, I’ve gotta say, there’s a point where it slightly flips and bizarrely isn’t in the end quite as bad as Twilight. “It’s a wolf thing,” Jacob tells Bella at one point. “No, it’s a Jacob thing,” she says, “You’re like your own sun,” and I kinda got the tingles a little. But then comes the clincher, when Bella faces both her potential loves and tells them,

“Stop. You can’t hurt each other without hurting me…”

And I kinda got it. When you boil down the triangle in this series to its simplest components like that, just about everyone has a personal experience they can bring to it, and for me this line really stung. Sure, there’s still at least one more embarrassing “Twilight in a nutshell” moment to be had at this later, better stage in the movie (Michael Sheen as a mindreading vampire looks into Bella’s thoughts and sees “nothing”, LOL), but as the credits rolled I can’t deny I found myself just a little choked up, and even if that had nothing to do with the movie as a whole, it still for me makes this installment that much better than the first. But there’s still way better things to get so excited about, kids.



Twilight [2008]

Twilight [2008]

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

Where to begin on this but exactly where I imagined/feared I’d begin prior to seeing it. Simply, do yourselves a favour and if you must see this, you must see Let the Right One In first – it’s like as imperative as seeing [Rec] before Quarantine. Even if you’re a young teenager, this is my advice and just about all I ultimately have to say about Twilight, which I frankly found even more of a joke than I ever could have imagined … it coming from one of my favourite directors Catherine Hardwicke, I’d honestly thought I’d be pleasantly surprised.

Look How Moody We Are!

But this isn’t just a lesser vampire movie than that Swedish masterpiece. I find it honestly painful to think of anything it is. I struggle to imagine how it is in book form, so devoid is it of any kind of event. A vampire rescues a girl from an out of control car outside school, it takes her an hour screen time to figure out what he is, and for the last 50 minutes they run around looking moody like an Evanescence video. Though it entirely looks as pretty as a Catherine Hardwicke movie, I’m glad to hear she’s not going to waste her time on the sequels. This lacks any of the teen commentary of Thirteen, all the adolescent rush of Lords of Dogtown, and the ethereal (may I say supernatural?) sense of The Nativity Story. It’s literally just two hours of teen angst in the worst, and most passive way. It saddens me beyond words that this is the new height of teen culture. Thank God for HSM3, there’s no wonder they need that too.



Let The Right One In

Let The Right One In

Monday, January 12th, 2009

The good news to me here was I got to see this one quicker than last year’s rave reviewed foreign horror movie [Rec], lol. I did approach it more apprehensively however – my response to all the “best vampire movie ever!” quotes was pretty much, “yeah, sure … because of course every new genre movie released in the past few years has to be immediately the best of its kind,” lol.

Well, it turns out, never mind those comments .. because if this isn’t at least one of the best vampire movies, it’s certainly one of the best young love stories I’ve seen. I wrote the previous sentences before taking a gander at the movie’s IMDb message board (where the boffins reside, don’t you know ;-) ) hoping to find some kind of outraged mention of “the crotch shot” that genuinely took even me aback here, only to discover that in fact what you see appear to be scarred genitals indicating that the (cute! cute!) Eli might, as in the novel, be a boy afterall – there are vague exchanges here and there about “her” gender. What it comes down to in the end, I think, is after 200 years, does it really matter? And y’know what? This makes it an even more beautiful love story to me.

In any case, all I can say right now is this movie ultimately took my breath away, I literally didn’t want it to end and when the final scene closed, I just couldn’t wait to see it again. I’m still uncomfortable with the phrase “best vampire movie ever” because it’s such a peculiarly broad sub-genre – the phrase just doesn’t seem like high enough praise to me on the one hand, and on the other, just doesn’t seem to mean much at all. It’s one of the best horror movies I’ve seen, certainly, and like I said, it was the romance that truly slayed me. The music plays along with this, blending from gripping strings to a tender piano theme.

Yes, it does kinda seem like at last we’ve hit another one of those, “gush, gush, I’ll think about it later – loved it, bye!” reviews on this one, lol. Sometimes I find myself faced with my ridiculous queue of movies to watch and end up doing nothing because I can’t make a decision; then there are movies like this that, as soon as the opportunity arises, I truly drop everything for. The Fall fell into the same category tonight, but this was the one that truly satisfied.



Bloodrayne 2: Deliverance

Bloodrayne 2: Deliverance

Monday, December 8th, 2008

So, unlike Seed, this one really had nothing going for it but Jodelle – lord how I wish I weren’t such a loyal fan sometimes, lol. To make matters worse, she’s not even in this one much. In fact, the role calls even less upon her talents than The Messengers did (and that’s sayin’ somethin’). The big names wisely stayed away from this one and though the action moves to a more appealing, slicker Western time period than the first, complete with a score whose Ennio Morricone influence is so transparent it’s hilarious, it’s really just as (if it’s even possible, more) missable than the first. Nuff said.



Queen of the Damned

Queen of the Damned

Saturday, January 19th, 2008

I actually originally wanted to watch this not because I loved Interview with the Vampire but ‘cos it features Marnie Reece-Wilmore – Debbie Martin from “Neighbours” at a time when a) I used to watch it and b) I swear, just the greatest period of soaps ever, ever lol. I’d kind of convinced myself her role was pretty minor, though, and I doubted that a Vampire Chronicles movie that involved none of the talent of Interview could even come close to being as mesmerising.

I was right on the Marnie front – her appearance is recognisable in a “Keisha Castle-Hughes in Revenge of the Sith" kinda way, and for a fan clutching at straws (she’s really not done a lot since Neighbours), it’s worth waiting for. And overall, though like I said it couldn’t touch Interview, and I haven’t read the book yet so I can’t comment on the adaptation quality, it’s still a much better movie than I expected. Stuart Townsend is just about as perfect as the rock star Lestat as Cruise was originally, and Aaliyah is a pleasant surprise as the queen. I really can’t imagine who else could’ve played her. The music is mercifully decent too.



Day Watch: Dnevnoy dozor aka Night Watch 2

Day Watch: Dnevnoy dozor aka Night Watch 2

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

Even more lavish in the visual department than the first, at first I worried this would be at the expense of continuing what looked like a really nice story in the first movie. The second part in a trilogy is like the worst kind of second act in a regular movie – you’ve really gotta have something to pass the time. What better surprise, then, could I ask for here than a very well done gender-based body-swapping subplot, lol. Sometimes the humour in this part gets in the way of more poignant matters; sometimes, in fact, I fear it’s lost in translation entirely. But this is still a rip-roaring ride, if only for the visuals, and since there’s 2 years to wait for Twilight Watch, it’s mercifully wrapped up neatly in the end, so neatly in fact that I wonder how the story will continue. Can’t wait to find out, though.



Night Watch: Nochnoy dozor

Night Watch: Nochnoy dozor

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

I’m kinda glad I saved this till I had Day Watch in hand to follow it, because this isn’t the kind of first installment of a trilogy that wraps things up neatly at the end just in case it’s not successful enough for the story to continue. It’s even more visually impressive than I expected, and again it’s a movie where there’s simply far too much to take in on one viewing. The ending is stunning and really clarifies what is really the sole purpose of this movie: to set up the rest of the story.



30 Days of Night

30 Days of Night

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

Well if anyone complains about this one not delivering, they should be sent to bed without any supper, lol. To be blunt, this blew me away and I’m kicking myself for not seeing it back when it previewed on Halloween. This is an absolutely stunning kick in the vampire genre’s shins, beautifully shot, genuinely scary, and mercifully it also has an ending to make what originally seemed like “20 minutes too long” when I glanced at the running time well worth the wait. I don’t know if it’s just me having a thing about sun this year, but the ending here really has me comparing it in my mind to Sunshine and between the two of them, till Sweeney at least, I’ve two clear favourite movies of the year. With its glorious violence and surprising depth of meaning, I also wanna call it this year’s Silent Hill … I know a lot of people didn’t like that movie but I loved it, and I loved this one too. I mean, when even Melissa George is good, you know you’re watching something good.