Breaking up with Breaking Dawn

            Hello to one and all who still occasionally tune into my blog!  I’m TheCinemaChick and I like to talk about movies I hate…and love.  Now, I know I promised a vlog with a bunch of my girls but as you can see, that didn’t happen.  We did go to the last Twilight marathon and things just didn’t go as planned.  I will fully take the blame for what happened because this whole thing was my idea.  For the sake of everyone involved, I won’t go into what I did to screw up so bad.  And as you can see, I’m not doing a vlog alone either.  Well…guess who managed to catch the flu when we have weather that’s in the low to mid 80s?  Yeah, that’s right, I did.  So because I’m not feeling so hot (which is ironic considering I have a fever), I’m writing this one.

           So, even though it’s about two or three weeks late, let’s jump into the “worldwide phenomenon” and its “epic finale”.  I use the phrases loosely because when I think of epics, I don’t think of Twilight.  I think of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and Les Miserables and On The Road.  To me, the whole Twilight fad is a pop culture icon, but not a literary classic.  Let me phrase it this way: If you are a die hard Twilight fan, by all means, be one.  Just give the rest of us a chance to explain why we either hate it or don’t care for it as much.

            Also…Robert Pattinson hates Twilight.  While on that subject, I just want to get something off my chest.  Why would you take a role if you absolutely loathed it?  I wonder if he did it just for the money, which I’ll admit is probably a good reason since it’s made billions overall.  Also, if you hate the character of Edward Cullen so much, you’d made another major mistake because you are no forever branded as that one character.  To me, taking this role, despite your personal feelings for it makes you a sell out.  And it’s not like he did it to make Kristen Stewart happy.  She cheated on him with a director twice her age.

            Enough of my personal dislike of certain things.

            “Breaking Dawn Part Two” is the end of the series.  It picks up right where the last one left off..  However, there are some really, really long opening credits to sit through first.  Ok, it’s one giant metaphor for Bella’s change.  It’s just time progression shots of things being frozen.  Seriously, this lasts for about four minutes.  Interesting note though, this is the only Twilight film to even have opening credits.  Once that is finally over, it goes straight to Bella waking up.  Let me dive straight into one of my main problems now and get it over with.

            Every Twilight film has the same exact layout, a four act play of blandness.  Nothing happens for the first two acts, major action in the third act and the final act is Bella and Edward in some kind of romantic setting.  That’s great for maybe two films but this seriously last for almost the entire series.  The only exception is the first installment of Breaking Dawn because it involves Bella’s death.  Would it have killed them to mix it up a little?  I know the books are the same way, but take some artistic license with the text to make it more interesting.

            Now, the first act of this movie is Bella learning to be a vampire, which I’ll admit, I found pretty cool.  We get to see how they see.  So she sees every fiber on the carpet and all the dust in the air.  When she goes on her first hunt, we see her at normal vampire speed, but then the frame slows down to show the audience how it seems so slow to them, but fast to us.  But, after this, it goes back to mundane.  I couldn’t believe Kristen’s acting when she was supposed to beat up Jacob for imprinting on her mutant offspring.  And before you get upset at that, Reneesme is a mutant.  She’s half human, half vampire.

            You know how people say Kristen Stewart always looks constipated?  Well…I hate to say this, but it’s even worse during this scene.  The way she curls her lips, the intense look in her eyes…I’ll let you use your imagination as to what I’m getting at.

           Once that’s over, she just accepts it like its no big deal.  Good lord, Bella has worse mood swings than me…oh wait, I take medication for mine.  But still, after this, it’s just them being vampires, accepting werewolves in their life, montage of the child growing into like an eight year old.

            Oh!  Another thing I want to touch on.  Since the child ages so fast, the film makers used both real babies and CGI to create Reneesme.  When Bella first holds her daughter, it looks creepy.  It’s clearly fake but the face disturbs me.  It just looks sinisiter to me.  I love children, don’t get me wrong, but this fake baby…hell no.  Although, I imagine potty training was a breeze with her.  Plus, her power is kind of cool.  She can project her memories into the minds of others.  It is sort of a combination between Edward and Bella.  But yes, CGI babies are creepy.

            **I am skipping some parts of the movie because they did not seem relevant to me and I am not comfortable discussing them.  There are more sex scenes between Edward Bella, as well as some sexual banter between Emmet and Bella.  Once again, this movie is aimed at teens.  I don’t like this stuff being added in there, even though I know it’s in the book**

            Then we have Bella and Reneesme playing in the snow.  Jacob, for some reason, is in his wolf form.  Irina, who is a member of the Denali clan and furious that Laurent was killed, shows up and sees this.  Convinced the Cullens have broken a major rule, she goes straight to the Volturi.  You see, in this world, immortal children are not allowed.  According to Carlisle, if a child is turned, it stops developing mentally.  They are careless and a single tantrum could destroy a village.  Knowing their entire family is in danger, they go to enlist people to help them.  This is also the time when Alice and Jasper leave. 

            Here’s another problem I have with this film.  There are so many vampires brought it that they don’t really get a proper introduction.  It’s basically another montage, saying here’s this person, from this place and this is there power.  The Irish coven doesn’t get introduced!  They’re just there.  The nomads don’t get names either.  The only ones I remember are Garrett, Alistair (because he leaves) and Benjamin (only because I like Rami Malek).  Beyond that, I don’t remember anyone.  They don’t get a chance to shine on their own.  So, once we have all the vampires in one place, we see Bella learning to use her powers to help everyone.

            Bella’s power is that she is a shield, so she can deflect any attack.  In the literary world, we call that a “deus ex machina” or a “god machine”.  She just happens to have the one power that will save them all from the Volturi?  Oh yeah, Aro, Marcus and Caius have decided to investigate this whole thing personally, so that’s why everyone is gathered in Forks.  I have trouble believing this girl, who could barely protect herself for the entire series, is suddenly the MVP of vampires.  Ah well, more on that in a moment.

            So, finally the time comes for the epic battle.  This was NOT in the books, which I thought was pretty cool.  There really is a full on battle with major character deaths.  I really don’t want to spoil the surprise because it really was a huge shock to me.  For now, I will say that two beloved vampires are killed and two werewolves die.  And yes, the Volturi gets destroyed.  And yes, Bella uses her powers during this, but it’s almost useless.  She can’t use it unless she’s standing still, leaving her wide open for an attack.  I will chalk that one up to the fact that she’s barely gotten to train so she doesn’t quite know how to use them yet.  At the same time, she woke up and was already the perfect vampire, so I think she could have used her shield better.

            For that matter, when Jane is torturing a Cullen (who is killed) why didn’t Bella help him?  She helped Edward the whole time, but when this guy, her brother in law, is in trouble, she does nothing for him.  I’m just saying.

            Even though the battle was pretty badass, it was a total cop out.  I’ll admit, I was grabbing Terra and screaming at the screen when I first saw it because it was a huge shock.  How could these beloved characters die like this?  Then…it’s all a lie.  Everyone’s fine, no one gets hurt and the Volturi leave.  Then we have the obligatory romantic scene with Edward and Bella, the end credits, which mention every character that has ever been given a line in the entire series.  

            Overall, it’s was just ok.  It has horrible pacing, the humor fails on most parts, unless its Aro.  Seriously, if you’ve seen it, you know about his freaky laugh and the whole “You have a strange heartbeat” thing.  And yeah, when everyone has accepted that Jacob imprinted on Reneesme, Jacob asks Edward if he should call him Dad.  The answer is a firm “No.”  Beyond that, it wasn’t that great.  The battle was amazing and I would love to just watch that again, but because it didn’t actually happen, I can’t look at it the same way.  The ending was so sweet; I think my blood sugar shot up.  “Nobody’s ever loved anybody as much as I love you”.  Really?  No one talks like that…as far as I know.

            I wanted to like it because I had bought into the hype, but once again, I just didn’t care for the generic love story with the supernatural mixed in.  I don’t like Bella, I don’t like Edward and most of the other characters are ignored.  While I do not support a sequel to this movie (it might happen) or a television series (it might happen), I would approve of some prequels.  Tell us more about the lesser Cullens. Show us how Alice became a vampire, because she honestly has one of the most interesting stories in the whole series.  This most likely won’t happen though.  Oh well.  Here’s the end of the Twilight saga everyone.

            That’s really all I have to say right now.  I’m working on being a little better with my reviews.  I’m gearing up for my “Top 12 of 12” and “Worst 12 of 12” lists.  Trust me, there were a lot o bombs this year.  Beyond that, I have no plans to see more films.  I will see “The Hobbit” when it comes out and maybe a few more things.  I’m aiming for fifty new releases this year.  Stay tuned for so much more, lovely readers.

            I’m TheCinemaChick and I broke a key off my keyboard.

Water for Elephants

Hey everyone, I’m your friendly neighborhood theater stalker, TheCinemaChick.  I’m going to tackle a genre I am not a fan of.  That’s right, I went and saw a romance movie. To make things even better, it had Robert Pattionson of Edward Cullen fame.  It also has Reese Witherspoon as the female lead.  You’re probably wondering, “CinemaChick, you have gone on record as saying you don’t like chick flicks, why did you see this?”

The answer: I couldn’t think of anything else to see.  Nothing else appealed and I’ve already see most of the new releases.  I’m also holding out hope for May, when the summer movie season starts. 

The film is begins with an old man at a circus, who begins to have a conversation with the person who owns it.  In a very smooth transition, the old man’s voice mixes with Pattinson’s and fades into the memory.  I liked how it was done since most movies would just go to the scene and clip the man’s voice out.  It was like he was speaking directly to the audience, allowing them to get lost in his story.  From there we jump into Jacob’s tale of how he was going to school, about to take his final exam and loses his parents. 

I did have a problem with that.  This introduction to young Jacob seemed very quick and slightly jerky, which is sad.  There’s no transition, just “I’m Jacob”, “I’m a veterinary student”, “I’m at my final”, “My parents are dead”.  In five minutes or so, you’ve gotten his life story and are thrown into the main plot.  Jacob loses his house, along with everything he has so he decides to leave.  Following train tacks seems to be his best choice so he does.  When a train comes by, he decides to jump on, only to be confronted by some men.  They agree to not hurl him from the train (which I assume is not only painful, but lethal) and in the morning, he learns all about manual labor.

Jacob works as a laborer for maybe one day before he admits that he’s a veterinarian.  Well, he’s not one yet, but that doesn’t seem to bother anyone.  He works with the animals, which begins him closer to Marlena (Witherspoon).  It’s not an immediate attraction, which I liked.  Their first major interaction is where he shoots and kills a horse to end its suffering.  If that’s what they’d bonded over, this movie would have never been released.  Not only is it wrong, I’m pretty sure its illegal.  Since their main horse is dead, August (the owner of the circus and Marlena’s husband) manages to buy an elephant.  I’m not sure where he found the money to do this because they are in the depression and money is tight. 

Rosie the elephant becomes the new main attraction at the circus, but they are having trouble training her.  August’s frustration becomes more apparent, along with his alcohol problem.  He becomes more aggressive, much more violent.  There is even a scene where he takes a bull hook, a stick with a hook on the end used in elephant training, and savagely beats Rosie.  I hated August from this point on, but still cheered for Rosie.  That night, Jacob discovers the trick to training their elephant.  Who knew elephants understood Polish?

And here you have the bulk of the film: circus, Jacob and Rosie, August beating on Marlena and a lot of discord.  It’s the basic plot. 

However, Marlena and Jacob do decide to run away, jumping off the train and going to a local hotel.  There is a fairly steamy sex scene which is followed by August and his men beating Jacob and taking Marlena back.  The young man goes back to the circus, bent on saving her.  He almost leaves without her, but something goes terribly wrong.  A few other disgruntled workers release all the animals, creating havoc.  During this time, August attacks his wife, choking her with the bull hook.  Rosie seems to know that the woman cared about her because she pulls a spike from the ground and slashes August’s throat, killing him.  Jacob and Marlena leave, the circus is shut down and we return to the present time to see the old man finish his story.

What does TheCinemaChick think?

Despite my dislike of romantic chick flicks, I did enjoy this one.  It did follow a pretty stereotypical plot: they meet, they fall in love, conflict comes up, they split apart but end up happy together.  Yet it was not the tpyica love story.  She was married and she did have the inner struggle of staying with her abusive husband or running off with the young man.

And now for my favorite part, what I didn’t like.

Surprisingly, there isn’t much I didn’t like.  The pace got on my nerves because some of the movie rushed by while other parts of it seemed to drag by.  Most of the time, it was almost stagnant because there are a lot of scenes with the characters just talking.  Also, when the movie is finished, there are some fictional black and white home movies shown.  It seemed out of place and a bit forced.  Yes, we all need to know that they lived happily ever after, but I think finishing the story with old Jacob would be satisfactory.

I did enjoy the movie overall.  Reese Witherspoon does really well in this type of role, the romantic female lead.  Robert Pattinson surprised me.  I’m familiar with him only as Edward Cullen and I personally do not care for that series.  In this movie, he shows emotions well and captures the spirit of his character.  Pattinson has talent.

I do want to add this one little warning.  If you have younger children, say 13 or below, who want to see this because it has Robert Pattinson, I wouldn’t take them.  While it is suitable for most audiences, there is a lot of drinking, smoking, some gambling, mild sexual content, lots of spousal abuse and graphic animal cruelty.  I’m not sure a younger audience could handle all of this.  Older teenagers might be able to watch the brutality without flinching, but make a good call on this one.

If I had to give this a rating out of five stars, five being the best, I’d say it’s about three and a half.  It could be better.  From what I’ve been told, the movie is a fairly faithful adaptation of the book.  I would like to read the book now.

What’s next on my ever growing list of films to see?  I have no idea.  I’m not sure what I’ll see next, though Fast Five is going to be on that list.

Well, I’m TheCinemaChick and on behalf of my crew, I bid you all a pleasant theater experience.