The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (2012)

It’s Your Turn Not to Break Me.

The time has finally come for me to wash my hands of the Twilight Saga.  This movie series and I have not gotten along in the past, and with good reason.  They don’t like me because I hate them, and I don’t like them because they’re awful.  Well, the bulk of them are anyway.  There would be no way that I would see this movie in theaters when it came out because I would more than likely hate it.  When it came out on DVD, I did not buy it because I would more than likely hate it.  And when it came to RedBox, I still put it off because I would more than likely hate it.  HOWEVER WILL I FEEL ABOUT THIS MOVIE?!  Find out as I review The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, based on a novel by Stephenie Meyer, written by Melissa Rosenberg, directed by Bill Condon, and starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Mackenzie Foy, Michael Sheen, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Ashley Greene, Jackson Rathbone, Nikki Reed, Kellan Lutz, Maggie Grace, Dakota Fanning, Jamie Campbell Bower, Christopher Heyerdahl, Cameron Bright, Charlie Bewley, Daniel Cudmore, Lee Pace, MyAnna Buring, Christian Camargo, Casey LaBow, Mia Maestro, Noel Fisher, Guri Weinberg, Rami Malek, Omar Metwally, Angela Sarafyan, Andrea Gabriel, Judi Shekoni, Tracey Heggins, Joe Anderson, J.D. Pardo, and Billy Burke.  If you want to recap the rest of the Twilight Saga, here are my reviews: one, two, three, and four.

Bella Swan-Cullen (Kristen Stewart) awakens from a coma (though you wouldn’t know it from her acting), having been transformed into a vampire by her husband, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), who transformed her to keep their half-breed child from killing her from the inside.  Also, her former love interest, Jacob (Taylor Lautner), fell in love with the baby Renesmee (Mackenzie Foy).  …So they’ll have to deal with that eventually.  First on their docket is that the vampire police department known as the Volturi – Aro (Michael Sheen), Caius (Jamie Campbell Bower), Marcus (Christopher Heyerdahl), Jane (Dakota Fanning), Alec (Cameron Bright), and the rest – have gotten word from Irina (Maggie Grace) that Edward and Bella have created an immortal child, which is illegal.  The Cullens rush to collect as many witnesses/soldiers to join their cause to stop/win a fight against the Volturi, if it should come to that.

Fuck this movie.  Fuck this movie series.  Fuck it out loud, in stereo, and in 3D.  In truth, I did not enjoy, but was okay with this movie for the bulk of it, but the very end was such an annoyance to me that it made me laugh out loud and yell, “Fuck you,” at my computer screen.  But the first two thirds of the movie was like watching one of the most annoying parts of the first X-Men movie for an hour and a half.  It felt like I was just watching a bunch of vampires get together and tell each other what their special powers were.  Bella kind of got the shaft on that end too.  “Super self-control.”  What a useful but shitty power.  Sure, it’s helpful to her that she didn’t eat her baby, but that lady can make electricity with her hands.  The one dude controls all of the elements.  He couldn’t have broken off a few elements for her to have a good power?  The best she’s got is the ability to make other people feel the effects of these powers less, and she can beat Kellan Lutz in arm wrestling.  I know that because they showed it to me for some stupid fucking reason.  I guess he also somehow develops the power to show Edward a montage/epilogue/ending credit sequence at the end of the movie, so she’s got that going for her.  Then there’s a really good battle – that feels to me like the reason I sat through the rest of the movie, or the entire series for that matter – followed by a big fuck you to the audience.  And I’m not talking about when Bella says to Edward, “Nobody’s ever loved anybody as much as I love you.”  That’s more of a ‘fuck you’ to Renesmee.

Okay, so this movie was boring most of the way through and then there was a big battle at the end that I really liked.  But it also lead to the biggest problem I had with this movie, and also requires the return of the ::SPOILER ALERT::  They pulled  that hack “it was all a dream” bullshit?!  For real?!  I resent the Wizard of Oz for starting this trend, but I thought Hollywood had decided in unison that they were done with this bullshit unless they were using it for comedy.  You show a great, epic fight where important characters in the Twilight series die brutal and emotional deaths, but the heroes still pull out a victory, and then it all turns out to be a vision of a possible future that Aro is watching through Alice.  Fuck you!  You just wasted a half hour of my time.  It was exciting and fun to watch until that point, but the movie itself nullified that by making it fake.  And, since the only fun part of your movie never technically happened, your movie can go fuck itself.  ::END SPOILERS::

Kristen Stewart is still awful.  And Bella is still stupid.  Why the hell does it take her the bulk of the movie to figure out that she should find the book that page the letter was written on came from?  I guess I would be offended if Stewart ever played a character that was smarter than I am.  I guess it’s the seed that built her that’s to blame.  Her father is stupid as well.  Jacob turns into a wolf right in front of him, but he still can’t figure out that the super-pasty, dead-eyed people that have taken Bella in are vampires.  Also, that toddler of yours is growing awful fast … probably not worth thinking about.  Also, why do these people get so pissed off at Jacob for telling Bella’s dad that she’s not dead?  I know the Volturi would kill him if Jacob had said “vampire”, but Jacob didn’t say it.  So you all just want to depress the father when there was an obvious alternative.  I mean, Jacob thought of it!  And he’s gross!  He falls in love with a baby that’s so fresh that it still smells like her mother’s vagina!  And later, while the girl still appears to be about 8 (but in actuality is about 6 months), he makes a joke to Edward about “calling him dad.”  Can you hold off on that joke until she at least LOOKS like you should be dating her?  Edward should’ve killed you right then.  That would’ve made me give this movie a positive review.  Or maybe if Edward and Bella had broken up.  Which they totally should have done since Edward says to Bella, “Every obstacle you faced, I thought you couldn’t overcome it.”  I know he meant that as a compliment, but he’s basically saying that she baffles him with how inept she appears, while still being able to make it through everyday life.  He probably should’ve thought she couldn’t overcome an acting challenge.  Then she could meet his expectations.  And the biggest problem with the cast of this movie is that my favorite part of it (Ashley Greene) was required by the story to be absent for the bulk of the movie.

I am pleased to finally be finished with the Twilight Saga, but I would’ve been much happier if Breaking Dawn – Part 2 wasn’t so frustrating.  The story wasn’t significant, and the movie spent the greater majority of the time describing what each new vampire could do and what part they would take in a battle that never really happens.  The battle that kind of happens is a pretty awesome watch, but I would say that no part of this movie that actually took place demands your attention.  You can skip this movie.  And, since I would say that only about two out of 10 hours of the Twilight series are watchable, I say you can skip the entire series.  20% is a deep ‘F’, people.  The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 gets “I hate the second one even more” out of “Old habits die hard.”

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The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011)

You Deserve to Live With This

Today is a good day.  I woke up around noon, had a nice breakfast, and sat down to watch the fourth Twilight movie.  Yeah, that last part doesn’t seem to fit within the “good day” category, but I’m staying positive.  No matter how good or bad this movie is, I’m done watching Twilight movies until sometime in November.  And, since there’s no way I’m paying to see a Twilight movie in theaters ever again (I was already burned by that once with the first movie), I won’t have to watch Twilight again until it comes out on DVD and I can beat up some emo high school girl for her copy of the DVD outside of a Best Buy so that they’ll get no more money from me whatsoever.  Or I can rent it from RedBox.  We’ll see.  And we’ll also see what I thought of the fourth Twilight film today, in my review of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1, based on a novel by Stephenie Meyer, written for the screen by Melissa Rosenberg, directed by Bill Condon, and starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Nikki Reed, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Jackson Rathbone, Billy Burke, Sarah Clarke, Julia Jones, Booboo Stewart, MyAnna Buring, Maggie Grace, Casey LaBow, Chaske Spencer, Christian Camargo, Mia Maestro, Michael Sheen, Jamie Campbell Bower, Christopher Heyerdahl, and Mackenzie Foy.

Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is having her soon-to-be “sister”-in-law Alice Cullen (Ashley Greene) plan her upcoming wedding to Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) because Bella is too busy trying to fit a square-shaped block into a round peg hole with a squeaky mallet.  The wedding goes smoothly, finding one hiccup when Bella tells the guy that she’s been stringing along, Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), that she intends to consummate her marriage with Edward on their honeymoon.  Though this is fairly typical, Jacob gets pretty angry at Bella for taking the risk, fearing that her vampire husband will eat her, but in a bad way.  Their honeymoon starts off fairly nicely.  Edward kills Bella…’s pussy!  HAHA!  But he stops having sex with her when he realizes that he’s bruised her arm during the coitus.  Two weeks into the honeymoon, Bella inexplicably figures out that she’s pregnant with Edward’s demon baby.  They return to Forks so that the Cullens – Dr. Carlisle Cullen (Peter Facinelli), Esme (Elizabeth Reaser), Rosalie (Nikki Reed), Alice (Ashley Greene), Emmett (Kellen Lutz), and Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) – can help them figure out what to do.  Jacob comes over to find Bella – 4 weeks pregnant and incredibly showing, somehow – and gets mad, thinking this baby will kill Bella.  Yet, when Jacob’s werewolf brethren decide they will kill the abomination inside Bella, Jacob leaves the pack with Leah (Julia Jones) and Seth Clearwater (Booboo Stewart) to protect Bella.

Much as Eclipse, I feel that Breaking Dawn was thoroughly okay, but for different reasons.  They finally got a little closer to writing a decent story, but it was kind of boring as well, not having any real action until the end.  I’m not saying there needs to be epic vampire throwdowns in every one of these movies; I know that these movies are just supposed to be sappy romantic movies that suck the coolness out of the vampire genre.  But if you’re not going to base your movie around the action, then you need something to keep the audience paying attention.  This movie could’ve used some tension to it, but they never really succeeded on any.  Without that, you’re just watching someone’s wedding video.  Yeah it’s pretty, and women are probably going to cry, but I’ve fallen asleep.  I was hoping that someone at the wedding would get a papercut to make it more interesting.  Then Bella and Edward go to Rio de Janiero, of course stopping by to show that giant Jesus on the hill, and get to the sex.  I have a problem with this scene that may be a little icky.  If Bella was, in fact, a virgin, and Edward was breaking her hymen for the first time, would there not be a strong possibility that there would be a little bit of blood?  I know it’s probably not how they wanted their series to end, but I would’ve thought it was amazing if that happened and Edward tore Bella to shreds because of his bloodlust.  There are holes in my logic, since the last movie said that Edward was no longer blood-crazed with Bella, but it was a golden opportunity to end this series once and for all.  Instead of relieving the world of Bella, they make another one, while simultaneously deciding to ignore logic.  I consulted my many currently and recently pregnant friends and this movie was way off.  She is already looking in the mirror for signs of showing at 2 weeks, and claiming she can feel the baby in there.  My friend Mike said that a baby would be the size of a poppy seed at 4 weeks (when Bella was fully showing, more closely resembling something around 6 months preggers).  Liz and Sasha tell me that about 5 months is when you first feel a baby, so they were only about 18 weeks off.  I know that the easy answer to all this is “Meaghan, Liz, and Sasha weren’t pregnant with undead demon babies as Bella is”, to which I respond “Fuck you”.  You drew her pregnancy out long enough that it felt like I’d been watching it for 9 months, so you might as well have gotten it right.  And what’s even more of an oversight on the part of the filmmakers is that Bella CLEARLY didn’t unlock her HTC Android phone when she put it up to her head and started talking to Rosalie.  I caught you again, Twilight!  Not much later in the movie, they have a pretty goofy conversation between a pack of giant, CG wolves that I was warned about, but I really didn’t find it that off-putting.  I know a lot about canine mannerisms, and I appreciated that they seemed to take them into consideration when it came to the main two wolves establishing dominance.

I found most of the movie fairly lackluster and a little boring.  The redeeming qualities of the movie can be found in the end of the movie, but it will also require a ::SPOILER ALERT::  The wolves attack the Cullens right after Bella has seemingly died during childbirth, but the baby, Renesmee, is alive and well.  Edward, Alice, and Jasper are prepared to throwdown to save the baby.  They’re outnumbered and are losing until Carlisle and Esme return, but it’s not until the wolves Seth and Leah (that have heretofore hated the Cullens) join in to help them.  And it’s finally won when the pack must leave because Jacob “imprinted” on Renesmee, which I think means he peed on her, but it also means that the wolves can’t harm her.  I had heard about this imprinting thing long before this movie came out and it was very off-putting.  The idea of an 18-year-old guy falling in love with a newborn baby is more than a little bit icky.  And now that I’ve seen the movie and done a little bit of research on imprinting, it’s still a little bit icky, but at least somewhat excusable.  Because it’s involuntary and keeps the imprinter alive as long as the imprintee, one can assume that it won’t become icky until Renesmee is of a non-creepy age.  Although, for the next 18 years, I’m probably going to think it’s a little creepy.  It also served the story a great deal, putting a permanent end to the feud between the vampires and the werewolves that I never thought made sense in the first place.  The battle at the very end of this movie was pretty good, but not in the same league as the big battle with the newborn vampires from the last movie.  The CG wolves didn’t really work that well for me.  Neither did the very ending itself.  We know that Bella is turning vampire, but they drag it out for like five minutes.  They start letting the CG that turned her into an Ethiopian melt away while showing easy scenes from previous movies (maybe they ran out of money somehow), But they decided to show that her ribs were repaired by having her chest pop out like you just finished a game of Perfection.  (Anyone remember that game?  Google it)  Well it was gross and goofy.  Also, they drag out the scene of her laying on the bed and showing her entire life up to that point, then zoom in on her eyes and hover there for approximately 37 minutes, even though we all know what’s going to happen.  Pretty much any time anyone zooms in on someone who may or may not be dead’s eyes, we know they’re going to pop open.  Can we come up with a new way to do that?  ::END SPOILER::

The performances, as with the actors, have barely changed in this movie.  Kristen Stewart’s performance actually improved near the end of the movie.  Well, she looked like she was dying, so I enjoyed it more.  At the end, her performance was much worse because now she’ll be around forever.  Of course, that just means I won’t be.  Her performance didn’t change very much for the parts where she was sickly.  Knowing that she couldn’t convey dying with her performance, they just did it with CG instead.  It was vaguely convincing.  Robert Pattinson has still done nothing that I feel is a detriment or an asset to these movies.  Taylor Lautner has a part where he has to cry, and does well enough at it, but otherwise joins Pattinson in the mediocrity box.  My opinion of the remaining Cullen clan was mostly unchanged in this movie, but it was nice to see Rosalie not be a dirty bitch for a little while.

There’s really no telling if I enjoyed this movie more than it deserved because I have roughly a year without having to see another Twilight movie.  I’m just so happy, you guys.  This movie has a story that wasn’t that bad, but was dragged on far too long.  The redeeming part is at the end, so unfortunately you’ll have to sit through the whole thing to see the good part.  Only, that is, if you actually think there’s any reason to see even the good part, which there still isn’t.  You still don’t need to watch this movie.  If I had to write a list of the Twilight movies from the most tolerable down, it would go Eclipse, Breaking Dawn Part 1, the end.  I don’t count the first two as movies.  Unless Stephenie Meyer decides that she needs another wing for her mansion, we have only one more of these things to go, but not for a while.  So, I thankfully give The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 “You have to accept this for what it is” out of “It’s crushing you, from the inside out.”

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The Hurt Locker (2008)

This Box is Full of Stuff That Almost Killed Me

Today’s movie had a lot of buzz going for it when it came out. I remember hearing about it, but never wanting to see it. I saw it as an action/drama set in the middle of a war and there was something about bombs in it, and I decided “I don’t really wanna see that.” I like a good action movie, but the combination of it being a drama and it being a drama set in a realistic, present day war situation made me think it would take a lot out of me to watch it. I’ve seen enough war movies to know that I am too much of a coward … I mean pacifist … to want to go there and do that, so why would I want to watch a movie about it? Well it came time for me to do it anyway, and so here is your review of The Hurt Locker, written by Mark Boal, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, and starring Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce, Christopher Sayegh, Ralph Fiennes, Christian Camargo, David Morse, and Evangeline Lilly.

In the beginning, Staff Sergeant Thompson (Guy Pearce) is out to disarm an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) with his teammates, Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Eldrich (Brian Geraghty). Someone in the area with a cell phone sets it off and kills Thompson. Shortly after, Thompson is replaced by Sergeant First Class James (Jeremy Renner). The rest of the movie follows these three through various situations that test their abilities and their patience. Sanborn and Eldrich don’t get along with James’ eccentric and renegade ways through each of them. They have to disarm a bomb in the trunk of a car next to the UN and James decides he would rather work with his radio and bombsuit removed, they detonate some explosives in a remote desert and Sanborn talks with Eldrich about “accidentally” setting off the explosion as James goes to get his gloves from the kill zone, they find the body of a boy that James had befriended on the base filled with explosives, and other situations as we count down the days until their tour of duty is over.

This is a pretty awesome movie, but not quite perfect. It has great action, fantastic tension, superb performances, but the story gives me a little bit of difficulty. The movie is mostly about disarming bombs, which is usually a really slow, but super tense situation, and the movie captures that brilliantly. I was captivated by the movie practically all the way through. I would say the pinnacle of the tension was the scene where they had a super realistic sniper battle after meeting Ralph Fiennes and his crew of mercenaries. The building was really far away and none of the trained snipers were still alive and they kept missing because of the range of the enemies and things kept going wrong like the bullets jamming because the sniper’s blood was in the clip and other enemies were creeping up behind them, but it was really tense and enthralling. It ended on a bit of a low note, but it was still really good. It was also filmed really well, and this was best illustrated in the very beginning when Guy Pearce dies. It exploded, causing the dirt to pop up off the ground and the rust was shaken off of a nearby car. It was really cool to look at. The problem I had with it was that it never really explained to us how Guy Pearce actually met his end. He was running away from the explosion in a bomb suit and blood exploded onto the visor of his helmet. Not being a bomb expert (as I’m sure most viewers aren’t), I wondered what it was that killed him, but never found out. Was it the shockwave that killed him? Shrapnel from the explosion? I have no idea. It didn’t take me out of the movie, but I feel like they should have dumbed it down a bit for the non-veteran audience. The real problem I had with the story was that it practically didn’t exist. It was just following around three guys going to various, somewhat unrelated situations and resolving them as best they could. There was never any story arc or resolution. It was kind of about how people get addicted to war, and they showed that at the very end when Renner returns to his wife and kid for a short time, but then returns to the service for another year of service. It feels like a bit of easy writing because you just put the same three guys into real-life dangerous situations, but you instantly get the emotional response from American audiences because we all love our troops and watching things that they actually have to deal with while we’re relatively comfortable and safe over here gets our attention. But you didn’t have to write this, so it seems a bit lazy without some kind of story arc. It didn’t actually occur to me until right after the movie though, so obviously it wasn’t that big of an issue because the things they did right overcame the lazy writing. One other thing that occurred to me as strange in the writing was what happened with Christopher Sayegh’s character “Beckham”. He was a little boy that Renner had befriended at the base and then later they find him dead and packed with explosives. This is deeply troubling to Renner in the movie, but what is deeply troubling to me is that it later turns out that this was some other random boy and Beckham was still alive. Not only does this strike me as kind of “all these people look the same” racist, but it takes away that scene’s emotional impact for the audience and for no good reason. Why not just leave it as that boy and we would all still be bummed about it? Instead Beckham just comes back later and we think “Oh, sucks for that other boy, but at least the one we knew was still alive. But James might be kind of racist, right?” I mean I couldn’t tell that it wasn’t him that was dead, but I acknowledge my racism!

The performances in this movie are fantastic all the way through. Renner was unrealistically a maverick in the field – which is something that they would not tolerate in the actual Army – but his performance was great. He kept his cool relatively well in tense situations, but really showed what he could do when reacting to finding Beckham’s dead body. And, though the movie shat on that later, his performance remains fantastic. Anthony Mackie also gave a great performance. He was the more realistic character in the group, trying to follow the proper protocols when Renner was doing his own thing. The problem I had with his character is the part where he was discussing killing Renner. I don’t know if that stuff goes down in the real Army, but I’m sure it’s not doing good things for their recruiting numbers. I like to think of my Army as the guys that are practically a family and leave no man behind, not the guys that may cause the guy to get left behind because he’s kind of a dick. Brian Geraghty is also very good, but I felt like his character was a little melodramatic at times and depressing. After Guy Pearce died in the beginning, he just kept talking about death nonstop. I understand it being a devastating thing to go through, but it’s not helping you get home to just be waiting to die yourself. He did have a lot more of the emotional performances in the movie because of it though. Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pearce were really good in the movie as well, but they go by so quickly, even though they’re the biggest names in the movie.

Finally watched it and very glad I did, The Hurt Locker combines great visuals, great tension, and great performances to make a pretty amazing movie. The only thing that struck me as off in the movie is the lack of any cohesive story to tie the awesome situations together. But this is still definitely a movie worth watching. I never felt like the real life drama took anything out of me, but it was super entertaining and demands your attention. You can find it on Netflix, but I’ll probably be purchasing it soon. The Hurt Locker gets “There’s enough bang in there to blow us all to Jesus” out of “”Support your troops, and whatnot.”

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