3/10
I'm not in the business of giving bonus marks out of ten for technological prowess and pushing the digital envelope, because frankly it's not something that interests me very much. Many people are intensely fascinated by the minutiae of film making, the blow by blows, the bit transfer rates and mo cap suits that make up the so called heart of Avatar.
But lets address this issue, which Fox's News International buddies are pushing as its USP for reasons that will, I hope, become apparent.
For this movie all new frontiers of digital film making have been discovered and conquered, real emotional performances elicited from the digital puppets and in "the volume" we actually have a controllable environment that can be made to be anything, achieve virtually limitless variety and feed that back to the actors immediately so the whole performance is rewarding for them in a way that digital performance can never be.
So let me be clear - on a purely technical level, James Cameron's Avatar is a colossal, barn storming, eye wateringly complete and total triumph.
Here's the thing -
Why is the whole marketing campaign for Avatar based around its technical creativity and its 3D?
Simple. On absolutely every other level, it is a horrific, bloated, trite, patronising, vacuous, heartless failure.
Avatar, and none of the vested interest journos will say this, is rubbish.
And not in a subtle, hard to spot way. Oh no.
Every character is so underdeveloped they spout dialogue like characters from the bad age of early of narrative console gaming while being crowbarred into supplying the back story in such obvious terms they practically start each sentence with "This is the plot, OK?..."
Case in point: a scientist, played by Sigourney Weaver, who has been intimately involved in events suddenly gets reminded of "why we're all here" in pretty much those terms by Giovanni Ribisi's phoned in cliché of a project manager (he even plays GOLF in the office while laughing at the savages who are standing in the way of progress).
It's as if the scriptwriter of woeful US TV dud Flash Forward, which often flashes back to things that happened THAT EPISODE in case you're confused, has been roped in to write a script in an afternoon and was then asked to make things clearer. Avatar doesn't have any flashbacks, but it repeats itself and its childish message constantly.
I've seen some of the worst dialogue ever written (Plan 9 From Outer Space, for instance) but Avatar consistently surprises with just how far it pushes the boundaries of predictability, awkwardness and cliché. It also boasts one of the poorest voice over performances since Harrison Ford's legendary "If I do this badly they won't use it" VO for the studio raped version of Blade Runner.
Sam Worthington's marine Jake Sully doesn't sound in awe or like a man changed.
He.
Sounds.
Bored.
Perhaps he'd seen Avatar.
It's obviously going for an epic coming of age and self discovery film like, say, Lord Of The Rings or Dances With Wolves and to an extent you do get the sense that there is a huge story to be told about this world - but this, crucially, is not it.
If you are going to make a vastly long film it is necessary in my rulebook (which I must write, incidentally) that at some point, any point, the audience identify or perhaps even sympathise with anyone.
ANYONE!
Instead virtually everyone is stupid, self obsessed and dull. The only slight bit of fun comes from the frankly crazy Marine chief - who is played with the dial set to "Extra Ham" throughout. But at least you connect with him on the level of humour.
Let's put the entire book on bad characterisation aside though, since you want to know about this amazing world they created, yeah?
Playing Devil's advocate for a mo, with a big brainless blockbuster the experience that's important, not the plot and characters?
Firstly, when did "brainless" and "preachy" become bedfellows?
Oh yeah... it's a FOX production.
And whoah boy is Avatar preachy.
Guess what, humanity? You're all scum. Real scum. These aliens know what's what. They're in touch with their planet and you're not. You absolute filth.
Great, meaningful, original stuff. Yeah. Sarcasm doesn't really come over on the web.
So lets look at this perfect world, that James Cameron described as "like nothing you've ever seen" (I may be paraphrasing, don't have a team of researchers)
It's Native Americans living in the jungle.
That's it.
There's nothing even remotely original or unexpected. These guys have two arms, two legs, ride horses and coexist with a lot of critters in the jungle (cats, rhinos etc) due to a very real physical link with every other thing on the planet. Oh, the horses have extra limbs and everything seems to have gills, but there's an Earth equivalent of everything except that link.
Actually, the link is the one thing that captured my imagination a bit, but it isn't remotely explored to the degree it deserves since we have to get to the next whooshy explody bit to justify the expense of 3D.
Actually, for a film set on a distant unfamiliar inhospitable planet I found the whole thing slightly racist. In an Earth sense, I mean. Diversity seems to be something the corporation in question doesn't really do. The few ethnic minority actors are an Asian scientist (how original) and Michelle Rodriguez playing that ballsy Michelle Rodriguez character you write in your movie because you want to meet Michelle Rodriguez. Pretty much all of Hollywood's non-white acting talent is in the motion capture suits playing natives.
How progressive. How patronising. How pathetic.
The alien race are 10 feet tall, incidentally, though the filmmakers, in a rare outbreak of budget logic, do their best to limit direct interaction between humans and them since I guess the Mo Cap environment would have trouble letting them do so.
Know what I'd do? Tell the story of this planet and not have any humans there at all. Think of all the options that gives you! This is not just a failure, it has come at the expense of god knows how many great potential films - you could, for example, make Paranormal Activity roughly 50,000 times for the cost of one dud like Avatar. I know which represents the better artistic return on investment for me.
Of course I'm all too aware of the simple economic models of film making and how they will ALWAYS trump artistic considerations. Doesn't mean I have to like it.
So - Avatar is not just bad, it's OBVIOUSLY bad. So obvious for the first time I am seeing the wheels of Hollywood marketing machine turning.
It seems owning not only the film, but many of the news outlets that are telling people whether it is good as well, will be the paradigm for a long time. Expect many more soulless gilded turkeys in the future folks.
I'd rather see The Phantom Menace again, frankly.
If that isn't intensely depressing, I don't know what is.
A
There. I just saved you nearly three hours of your life. And many of you will be seeing your computer screen in 3D. Maybe someone will give me a 5 Star review for this.
See the full post by clicking here...
Monday, December 21, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Review: Paranormal Activity
7/10
Quick Plot: A man buys a camera to film the events that have been disturbing his wife's sleep just as the events start to escalate.
That's all I'm prepared to write at this point plot wise, since I don't want people being annoyed I spoiled any surprises for them.
I saw it on my own in an almost empty cinema, knowing next to nothing about it. I recommend you do the same.
Don't read any further if you want to keep your experience pure.
How I wish a movie like Paranormal Activity had existed when I was 14 or 15 and trying to get girls interested in a spot of cuddling.
Back then I don't really remember any truly scary or creepy films with a 15 certificate all that stuff ended up with an 18 rating because, frankly, it were a different world then, chick. The kids of today will have girls jumping at them during this. So long as they're not expecting gore...
In this age of lazy gore filled, 18 rated torture fests I hadn't really expected something like Paranormal Activity to be successful unless it could keep its word of mouth large and its reviews good. I'm happy to be part of the group of reviewers who liked it.
I gather it cost next to nothing to make. A mere $15,000 if reports are to be believed. And has made over $100 Mill. Proof that there is a market out there for films that are just plain good.
Compared to the return on investment (artistic or monetary) of an expensive film like, say, Twilight, or even more acutely, an incredibly expensive film like 2012, the importance of that fact cannot, in my view be overstated.
Suffice to say it achieves a lot with very little and while not destined to set the world on fire, it gets the job done fantastically well. I'll probably write about its strengths and weaknesses in a couple of weeks once my mates have all seen it.
Will you like it as much as I did? It's tough to say.
Your enjoyment will almost certainly be proportional to how much you can get into the spirit of the thing and accept its premise. After the end there was a genuine moment of camaraderie between the six or seven people who were in the cinema at 14:40 on a Thursday to see it - we'd shared an almost interactive experience since you have to bring a lot to this film with you to fill in the scares and I was glad I'd seen it alone (like I did The Blair Witch Project, Ringu etc).
It's a very cool movie, and I was very impressed.
A
P.S. I have one very minor spoiler.... so don't read below unless you're prepared to know something!!! DON'T!!!
The very last moment (by which I mean the last second, not the last sequence) is a bit shit and not needed, but it's not a dealbreaker.
See the full post by clicking here...
Quick Plot: A man buys a camera to film the events that have been disturbing his wife's sleep just as the events start to escalate.
That's all I'm prepared to write at this point plot wise, since I don't want people being annoyed I spoiled any surprises for them.
I saw it on my own in an almost empty cinema, knowing next to nothing about it. I recommend you do the same.
Don't read any further if you want to keep your experience pure.
How I wish a movie like Paranormal Activity had existed when I was 14 or 15 and trying to get girls interested in a spot of cuddling.
Back then I don't really remember any truly scary or creepy films with a 15 certificate all that stuff ended up with an 18 rating because, frankly, it were a different world then, chick. The kids of today will have girls jumping at them during this. So long as they're not expecting gore...
In this age of lazy gore filled, 18 rated torture fests I hadn't really expected something like Paranormal Activity to be successful unless it could keep its word of mouth large and its reviews good. I'm happy to be part of the group of reviewers who liked it.
I gather it cost next to nothing to make. A mere $15,000 if reports are to be believed. And has made over $100 Mill. Proof that there is a market out there for films that are just plain good.
Compared to the return on investment (artistic or monetary) of an expensive film like, say, Twilight, or even more acutely, an incredibly expensive film like 2012, the importance of that fact cannot, in my view be overstated.
Suffice to say it achieves a lot with very little and while not destined to set the world on fire, it gets the job done fantastically well. I'll probably write about its strengths and weaknesses in a couple of weeks once my mates have all seen it.
Will you like it as much as I did? It's tough to say.
Your enjoyment will almost certainly be proportional to how much you can get into the spirit of the thing and accept its premise. After the end there was a genuine moment of camaraderie between the six or seven people who were in the cinema at 14:40 on a Thursday to see it - we'd shared an almost interactive experience since you have to bring a lot to this film with you to fill in the scares and I was glad I'd seen it alone (like I did The Blair Witch Project, Ringu etc).
It's a very cool movie, and I was very impressed.
A
P.S. I have one very minor spoiler.... so don't read below unless you're prepared to know something!!! DON'T!!!
The very last moment (by which I mean the last second, not the last sequence) is a bit shit and not needed, but it's not a dealbreaker.
See the full post by clicking here...
Review: 2012
5/10
There's a lot of flash bang in Roland Emmerich's latest "look at the USA being destroyed" movie, but it simply doesn't deliver enough of that to be a truly memorable spectacle, nor enough heart to be truly involving.
All this movie's problems are summed up in the choice of last line.
If you recall your Deep Impact, that film ends with a dignified yet rousing speech from Morgan Freeman's President character and we go away thinking mankind is battered but unbowed by the events of that film. 2012 by way of contrast ends on the note "Well, billions of people are dead, but at least a little girl has stopped wetting the bed!"
What a wonderful message of hope.
Spoilers start below.
You know, it's a sad day when the best performance in a film is from Woody Harrelson playing a batshit crazy pseudo-religious conspiracy theorist disk jockey. John Cusack is walking through the movie playing the Tom Cruise role from War Of The Worlds - I think Spielberg's central broken family from his version WOTW has been copied almost verbatim here, by the way. The boy & girl kids, the boy disliking his father more than the girl does. The quest to prove himself to his ex. All that.
The kids are OK, Amanda Peet plays that Amanda Peet role and no awards will be on the shelf for acting, come the season.
But you don't call Emmerich in when you want Oscars for acting!
Nah - his bag is blowing stuff up, and having obviously done Wind and Water in his last apocalypse (the Dennis Quaid / Jake Gyllenhall starring The Day After Tomorrow), he moves on to Earth and Fire in 2012, thus completing his "Elements Cycle". I just made that up. He didn't think it through that much. Especially since there's a whole bunch of Tsunamis here as well...
Right, quick plot. In 2009 a nice scientist called Adrian finds out that the world's core is heating up and will essentially melt the earth from below, meaning the thin crust will just move about freely, with catastrophic results for the people and buildings on top of it, who had really banked on the ground staying in one place.
Now - two things I like about the central concept:
The downside is, where the destruction of the human world as we know it is something you'd think was a large scale event we see it mainly through the eyes of one or two characters, one of whom simply potters about a bit before going off to safety and the other becomes an action hero immediately, jumping about and becoming an expert underwater swimmer at will.
While the former of these two is peppered through the movie to hammer home the political decisions and morality issues that, for example, deciding which 400,000 people will be rescued from certain death bring up (answer - if they're rich, they're in) the other storyline is more linear and is basically a chase movie where the thing chasing you is in fact Armageddon.
I've got nothing against the fact that a film like this simplifies and dumbs down a lot of things. It doesn't try and solve the moral dilemma (in fact Oliver Platt's character points out that the rescue wouldn't happen without the ticket money from the rich) or maintain a reality outside what is necessary to get the heroes to where they need to be.
Actually, it often makes outrageous manoeuvres to keep the heroes alive, moving an entire continent just enough at one point.
A couple more examples will illustrate that this movie has a real tendency to "do something cool" where it's not really necessary, which discards any sense of gritty realism from view.
So realism isn't part of the deal.
I did like some things in the film - the destruction is well shown, if a little callous since in one shot at least 500,000 people are dying but we're only made to care at all about three of them.
"Wow look at all those people falling out of buildings! Isn't it terrible that this little girl has to see that?"
Effects like the whole of Las Vegas collapsing are fairly exciting and silly - probably hitting a good balance between the sort of visceral smashing of landmarks we adults enjoy and the fairly bloodless nature needed to avoid traumatising your kids.
The most annoying thing though is the treatment of poor old Gordon - the estranged wife's new fella. Not only does he miraculously become an ace pilot instantly despite claiming to only have two hours in the cockpit or something (he manages to fly a giant multi engine jet between two collapsing buildings for God's sake!) but as soon as the plot wants Cusack and Peet to get back together (hardly a spoiler since it's telegraphed pretty much straight away) he's chucked to a ghastly death and is immediately forgotten. Poor sod.
So, should you go out of your way to see this?
Check the rating guys. No.
It's better than The Day After Tomorrow, but that ain't saying an awful lot. That being said, it's not one to avoid like the plague either. If your date or family member is dragging you to see it, you won't need therapy afterwards.
Unless you like Gordon, that is.
I welcome your comments below - and please spread the word to your friends. Wall Shadows is back baby!
A
See the full post by clicking here...
There's a lot of flash bang in Roland Emmerich's latest "look at the USA being destroyed" movie, but it simply doesn't deliver enough of that to be a truly memorable spectacle, nor enough heart to be truly involving.
All this movie's problems are summed up in the choice of last line.
If you recall your Deep Impact, that film ends with a dignified yet rousing speech from Morgan Freeman's President character and we go away thinking mankind is battered but unbowed by the events of that film. 2012 by way of contrast ends on the note "Well, billions of people are dead, but at least a little girl has stopped wetting the bed!"
What a wonderful message of hope.
Spoilers start below.
You know, it's a sad day when the best performance in a film is from Woody Harrelson playing a batshit crazy pseudo-religious conspiracy theorist disk jockey. John Cusack is walking through the movie playing the Tom Cruise role from War Of The Worlds - I think Spielberg's central broken family from his version WOTW has been copied almost verbatim here, by the way. The boy & girl kids, the boy disliking his father more than the girl does. The quest to prove himself to his ex. All that.
The kids are OK, Amanda Peet plays that Amanda Peet role and no awards will be on the shelf for acting, come the season.
But you don't call Emmerich in when you want Oscars for acting!
Nah - his bag is blowing stuff up, and having obviously done Wind and Water in his last apocalypse (the Dennis Quaid / Jake Gyllenhall starring The Day After Tomorrow), he moves on to Earth and Fire in 2012, thus completing his "Elements Cycle". I just made that up. He didn't think it through that much. Especially since there's a whole bunch of Tsunamis here as well...
Right, quick plot. In 2009 a nice scientist called Adrian finds out that the world's core is heating up and will essentially melt the earth from below, meaning the thin crust will just move about freely, with catastrophic results for the people and buildings on top of it, who had really banked on the ground staying in one place.
Now - two things I like about the central concept:
- It's no-one's fault.
- There's absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop it.
The downside is, where the destruction of the human world as we know it is something you'd think was a large scale event we see it mainly through the eyes of one or two characters, one of whom simply potters about a bit before going off to safety and the other becomes an action hero immediately, jumping about and becoming an expert underwater swimmer at will.
While the former of these two is peppered through the movie to hammer home the political decisions and morality issues that, for example, deciding which 400,000 people will be rescued from certain death bring up (answer - if they're rich, they're in) the other storyline is more linear and is basically a chase movie where the thing chasing you is in fact Armageddon.
I've got nothing against the fact that a film like this simplifies and dumbs down a lot of things. It doesn't try and solve the moral dilemma (in fact Oliver Platt's character points out that the rescue wouldn't happen without the ticket money from the rich) or maintain a reality outside what is necessary to get the heroes to where they need to be.
Actually, it often makes outrageous manoeuvres to keep the heroes alive, moving an entire continent just enough at one point.
A couple more examples will illustrate that this movie has a real tendency to "do something cool" where it's not really necessary, which discards any sense of gritty realism from view.
- It's not enough that the White House is destroyed by a tsunami. It has to have the aircraft carrier USS John F Kennedy land right on it.
- Similarly, if a bit of debris needs to hit the rescue ship at just the wrong moment - why bloody not make that bit of debris Air Force One?
- I counted about 6 times that vehicles clearly incapable of jumping (like stretch limos and Camper Vans) got some mad air because at just the right moment the ground shifted to form a perfect ramp.
So realism isn't part of the deal.
I did like some things in the film - the destruction is well shown, if a little callous since in one shot at least 500,000 people are dying but we're only made to care at all about three of them.
"Wow look at all those people falling out of buildings! Isn't it terrible that this little girl has to see that?"
Effects like the whole of Las Vegas collapsing are fairly exciting and silly - probably hitting a good balance between the sort of visceral smashing of landmarks we adults enjoy and the fairly bloodless nature needed to avoid traumatising your kids.
The most annoying thing though is the treatment of poor old Gordon - the estranged wife's new fella. Not only does he miraculously become an ace pilot instantly despite claiming to only have two hours in the cockpit or something (he manages to fly a giant multi engine jet between two collapsing buildings for God's sake!) but as soon as the plot wants Cusack and Peet to get back together (hardly a spoiler since it's telegraphed pretty much straight away) he's chucked to a ghastly death and is immediately forgotten. Poor sod.
So, should you go out of your way to see this?
Check the rating guys. No.
It's better than The Day After Tomorrow, but that ain't saying an awful lot. That being said, it's not one to avoid like the plague either. If your date or family member is dragging you to see it, you won't need therapy afterwards.
Unless you like Gordon, that is.
I welcome your comments below - and please spread the word to your friends. Wall Shadows is back baby!
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
A note on re-organisation
Hi folks and welcome back to Wall Shadows!
It's been too long, believe me.
Just a quick note to say over on the right hand side of your screen I've alphabetised every single film I have ever rated (even if I've not reviewed them).
Those that have accompanying reviews can be reached by clicking the links provided. There are lots so please let me know if you have any particular favourites.
I am taking suggestions and volunteers to teach me how to improve the site, but I rely on your word of mouth to get people reading and enjoying it - so if you like a review feel free to retweet it or whatever you want. Just don't try to pass it off as your own.
Thanks for your patience to those who have been waiting - and welcome to any new readers who may have stumbled into my blog. Nice to have you here.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
It's been too long, believe me.
Just a quick note to say over on the right hand side of your screen I've alphabetised every single film I have ever rated (even if I've not reviewed them).
Those that have accompanying reviews can be reached by clicking the links provided. There are lots so please let me know if you have any particular favourites.
I am taking suggestions and volunteers to teach me how to improve the site, but I rely on your word of mouth to get people reading and enjoying it - so if you like a review feel free to retweet it or whatever you want. Just don't try to pass it off as your own.
Thanks for your patience to those who have been waiting - and welcome to any new readers who may have stumbled into my blog. Nice to have you here.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Review: Twilight
3/10
First things first, welcome back to good old Wall Shadows! It's been a long time and a lot's been happening with me, but for all that boring personal stuff, you can head over to sister site Wall Scratchings and read any of that you want. I appreciate that my writing style may be shot to pieces and this may be a total random set of disconnected paragraphs but bear with me and I'm sure I'll be reviewing coherently in no time.
Now then, Twilight. Obviously being a 28 year old male I'm hardly in this film's target audience. Clearly the large quantity of pubescent teenage girls (and their unfortunate boyfriends) who have already made it a franchise don't give a flying monkey's right buttcheek what I think.
But I only ever write reviews as I see em, and Twilight is an ideal place to start since it is so mind numbingly, hilariously dull and awful that it's a veritable feast for the fingers of a cantankerous, war weary movie soldier like myself.
Spoilers abound below, people!
So - vampire movies have been around for almost as long as movies themselves. From the legendary Shreck or melodramatic Lugosi Draculas to the piss poor Richard Roxburgh, the weird little vampire has seen countless iterations, many quite good, like Scars Of Dracula; some weird, like Shadow of the Vampire and some retarded, like the laughable John Carpenter's Vampires.
We know, from these, the rules of vampires. Well, those that haven't been rewritten (how many times has Dracula been resurrected now?)
You see, some brainless loser decided that Vampires needed a makeover.
Sorry, I was being a really annoying, whiny teenager there. Get used to that if you're planning to watch this.
So, if you really think Vampires are cool, but a little too sexy and violent for you, you've got to do something about the rules that predate these books. And Miss Meyer has done so with aplomb.
If Twilight was a proper vampire movie, this would be the plot.
Bella Swann, a teenage girl, moves to a small town to live with her estranged father. A few days later she is dead and her father vows to discover her killer - whoever, or whatever, it may be...
See? Sounds good eh? Unfortunately, here's the plot for Twilight;
Bella Swann, a teenage girl, is such a wonderful person and loves her mother so much she's prepared to go live with her estranged dad so her mum can go off round the country with her new boyfriend. Immediately accepted at school into the in-crowd because she's from somewhere else (?) she meets Edward Cullen, who is a violently angry, strange looking, pale skinned, moody freak who never goes out in direct sunlight and lives with a "family" in a secluded house no-one goes to. Edward is inexplicably attracted to Bella since she's so wonderful and she catches him stalking her. But since he's dreamy she gets involved in his life anyway and for fifteen minutes at the end there's a bit with bad vampires... zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
There is so much wrong here. The outsider from a different state is IMMEDIATELY POPULAR? Did the author even go to school at any point? Seriously, I changed schools a couple of times and it takes at least three days to stop them pouring urine on your head, let alone sitting with you at lunch and pointing out the hotties.
And Edward himself is a real let down, as is his family. Perpetually filmed in slow motion, young Robert Pattinson seems to be following the Richard Gere Method - "look at the floor, then - without moving your head - look at the other person.... in slow motion!".
Everything scary about vampires has been expunged. The only thing left is that they're all really attractive, I guess. Since they're all heavily made up and the girls have curled their hair I guess we'll follow the movie shorthand and go with "Sexy". Oh, and they do drink blood. Just.
And they're nice vampires, you know. They only kill animals.
Sadly, they're also almost totally pathetic.
They WHINE.. they bitch and moan and are so mind meltingly insufferable you're almost wishing for Christopher Lee to show up and overact a bit to liven things up. Turns out the biggest danger in a Vampire's house here is walking into a screen door.
Oh, and these guys can go outside in the daytime, so long as it's misty or foggy or rainy or anything else that looks good in slow motion. The reason why they can't? I'm glad you asked. Let me explain....
Centuries ago, a small invisible goblin called Daubney, discovered the secret of mixing glue with shiny things to make... you've guessed it... glitter glue. The gods rewarded him with the power to stop time, which he gratefully accepted. But he was deceived by the gods, who in fact only made him able to stop time when a vampire was in direct sunlight - and forced him to paint the glitter glue messily all over their pasty faces and hairless torsos. It is a life of sad torment for the Goblin, who is now remembered only in the verb he coined: "To Daub".
So when the vampires go out in the direct sun they glitter a bit rubbishly. That's it.
WHAT?
THEY FRICKING GLITTER? BADLY?
I found that so upsetting I invented a story about a fricking Goblin to stop me having to type it for a while.
The only even vague semblance of an actual plot outside the obvious "oh he's so dreamy" antics (which have no structure - they simply love each other immediately) is introduced and dealt with in about a total of 15 minutes of screen time at the end, much of which is spent changing the dynamic from "oh I love you, but I don't want to use you" to "I love you and I will protect you and not use you"
Oh wow, how modern. How "new". How mind crushingly boring.
And in the end, that is Twilight's greatest crime. Forget the fact it's not scary. In fact, don't.
It is the opposite of scary. It is just plain boring. I just can't get past that.
Add to this the sad fact that the effects are laughable, despite Daubney's best efforts. The vampires can run fast. Fine, that's a pretty cool power - but not when their leg movements are totally unconnected from the way they're moving - it's almost as if they're on a track and running on the spot, Wile E Coyote style! Rubbish.
And add to THIS that the whole production value seems to be firmly planted in "TV pilot" territory and we have a real stinker on our hands. It wasn't even funny for long.
Dire, drab, pitifully acted and fatally boring. Please, let me take from this experience the knowledge that my suffering has spared just one other person. One sad, lonely person who might think "sod it, it can't be all that bad - I'll just watch it to check".
Please don't.
Comments are welcome and encouraged below. Thanks for reading.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
First things first, welcome back to good old Wall Shadows! It's been a long time and a lot's been happening with me, but for all that boring personal stuff, you can head over to sister site Wall Scratchings and read any of that you want. I appreciate that my writing style may be shot to pieces and this may be a total random set of disconnected paragraphs but bear with me and I'm sure I'll be reviewing coherently in no time.
Now then, Twilight. Obviously being a 28 year old male I'm hardly in this film's target audience. Clearly the large quantity of pubescent teenage girls (and their unfortunate boyfriends) who have already made it a franchise don't give a flying monkey's right buttcheek what I think.
But I only ever write reviews as I see em, and Twilight is an ideal place to start since it is so mind numbingly, hilariously dull and awful that it's a veritable feast for the fingers of a cantankerous, war weary movie soldier like myself.
Spoilers abound below, people!
So - vampire movies have been around for almost as long as movies themselves. From the legendary Shreck or melodramatic Lugosi Draculas to the piss poor Richard Roxburgh, the weird little vampire has seen countless iterations, many quite good, like Scars Of Dracula; some weird, like Shadow of the Vampire and some retarded, like the laughable John Carpenter's Vampires.
We know, from these, the rules of vampires. Well, those that haven't been rewritten (how many times has Dracula been resurrected now?)
- They're so sexy women collapse in front of them with their... ahem... necks... out for all to see.
- They can't go out in daylight. It's fatal.
- You can kill em with a stake to the heart.
- They're not fond of crosses or garlic. A cross made of garlic, while stinky, would be a good defence.
- They drink blood. Oh yes.
- They tend not to die. Unless some do gooding chump with a spiky bit of wood gets involved.
You see, some brainless loser decided that Vampires needed a makeover.
Sorry, I was being a really annoying, whiny teenager there. Get used to that if you're planning to watch this.
So, if you really think Vampires are cool, but a little too sexy and violent for you, you've got to do something about the rules that predate these books. And Miss Meyer has done so with aplomb.
If Twilight was a proper vampire movie, this would be the plot.
Bella Swann, a teenage girl, moves to a small town to live with her estranged father. A few days later she is dead and her father vows to discover her killer - whoever, or whatever, it may be...
See? Sounds good eh? Unfortunately, here's the plot for Twilight;
Bella Swann, a teenage girl, is such a wonderful person and loves her mother so much she's prepared to go live with her estranged dad so her mum can go off round the country with her new boyfriend. Immediately accepted at school into the in-crowd because she's from somewhere else (?) she meets Edward Cullen, who is a violently angry, strange looking, pale skinned, moody freak who never goes out in direct sunlight and lives with a "family" in a secluded house no-one goes to. Edward is inexplicably attracted to Bella since she's so wonderful and she catches him stalking her. But since he's dreamy she gets involved in his life anyway and for fifteen minutes at the end there's a bit with bad vampires... zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
There is so much wrong here. The outsider from a different state is IMMEDIATELY POPULAR? Did the author even go to school at any point? Seriously, I changed schools a couple of times and it takes at least three days to stop them pouring urine on your head, let alone sitting with you at lunch and pointing out the hotties.
And Edward himself is a real let down, as is his family. Perpetually filmed in slow motion, young Robert Pattinson seems to be following the Richard Gere Method - "look at the floor, then - without moving your head - look at the other person.... in slow motion!".
Everything scary about vampires has been expunged. The only thing left is that they're all really attractive, I guess. Since they're all heavily made up and the girls have curled their hair I guess we'll follow the movie shorthand and go with "Sexy". Oh, and they do drink blood. Just.
And they're nice vampires, you know. They only kill animals.
Sadly, they're also almost totally pathetic.
They WHINE.. they bitch and moan and are so mind meltingly insufferable you're almost wishing for Christopher Lee to show up and overact a bit to liven things up. Turns out the biggest danger in a Vampire's house here is walking into a screen door.
Oh, and these guys can go outside in the daytime, so long as it's misty or foggy or rainy or anything else that looks good in slow motion. The reason why they can't? I'm glad you asked. Let me explain....
Centuries ago, a small invisible goblin called Daubney, discovered the secret of mixing glue with shiny things to make... you've guessed it... glitter glue. The gods rewarded him with the power to stop time, which he gratefully accepted. But he was deceived by the gods, who in fact only made him able to stop time when a vampire was in direct sunlight - and forced him to paint the glitter glue messily all over their pasty faces and hairless torsos. It is a life of sad torment for the Goblin, who is now remembered only in the verb he coined: "To Daub".
So when the vampires go out in the direct sun they glitter a bit rubbishly. That's it.
WHAT?
THEY FRICKING GLITTER? BADLY?
I found that so upsetting I invented a story about a fricking Goblin to stop me having to type it for a while.
The only even vague semblance of an actual plot outside the obvious "oh he's so dreamy" antics (which have no structure - they simply love each other immediately) is introduced and dealt with in about a total of 15 minutes of screen time at the end, much of which is spent changing the dynamic from "oh I love you, but I don't want to use you" to "I love you and I will protect you and not use you"
Oh wow, how modern. How "new". How mind crushingly boring.
And in the end, that is Twilight's greatest crime. Forget the fact it's not scary. In fact, don't.
It is the opposite of scary. It is just plain boring. I just can't get past that.
Add to this the sad fact that the effects are laughable, despite Daubney's best efforts. The vampires can run fast. Fine, that's a pretty cool power - but not when their leg movements are totally unconnected from the way they're moving - it's almost as if they're on a track and running on the spot, Wile E Coyote style! Rubbish.
And add to THIS that the whole production value seems to be firmly planted in "TV pilot" territory and we have a real stinker on our hands. It wasn't even funny for long.
Dire, drab, pitifully acted and fatally boring. Please, let me take from this experience the knowledge that my suffering has spared just one other person. One sad, lonely person who might think "sod it, it can't be all that bad - I'll just watch it to check".
Please don't.
Comments are welcome and encouraged below. Thanks for reading.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
