The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 *

Director: Bill Condon
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
Nikki Reed, Peter Facinelli, Kellan Lutz, Elizabeth Reaser, Billy Burke
Maggie Grace, Mia Maestro, Michael Sheen

They say a good director can turn a mediocre story into something cinematically astonishing, Breaking Dawn Part 1 proves that sometimes there is material so, so poor that it becomes impossible to save, regardless of who commands the production. With its unintentional comedic moments, preposterous "acting" and its truly ludicrous use of dramatic tension, Breaking Dawn Part 1 is a new low in an already ridiculous saga.
This time around, emo vampire Edward (Pattinson) and his beloved Bella (Stewart) finally tie the knot in what would be the grand finale in similarly facile teen romances. However things go wrong when Bella becomes pregnant - apparently no one knew vampires could knock up a mortal, which makes one wonder exactly what comes out of a vampire's seminal canals.
As the fetus begins to eat Bella from inside, a war begins to rage between the vampires and werewolves, once again putting broken hearted Jacob (Lautner) into the equation. Just how many wars, tepid love triangles and ultra conservative messages can one saga fit?
Time and time again, the Twilight movies make one wonder, just what exactly are these people saying? How can so little be said in so much running time? This chapter in particular made a case for being one where nothing really happens. Edward and Bella look at each other, look towards the distance having flashbacks of them looking at each other and then exchange melodramatic readings delivered with absolutely no consideration for dramatic purpose.
Where it wants to be deeply romantic, the film results impossibly dull, where it wants to be mature, it comes out as inexperienced. But other than its silly plot twists and terrible acting, there is something much more disturbing at the bottom of these films.
Author Stephenie Meyer might just be the most reactionary working writer of the past decade. Her moralistic ideas about sex, birthing and relationships are so old fashioned that they almost seem prehistoric. While the first three movies were based around the idea that "if you have sex you will get chlamydia and die" (thank you Mean Girls), this one grabs that idea and takes it even further into ultra conservatism.
Apparently for Meyer, marriage isn't enough punishment for horny teenagers who crave sex, they also will get pregnant and have to give up their lives for their babies.
What in a 1940s movie would've been justified reason for a big tearjerker, is pure denigration in the twenty first century. The fact that abortion - even in the face of severe health issues - isn't even considered as an option, isn't romantic, it's scary! By removing women's power to choose and preserve their lives, Meyer and the movies she inspired are doing a great disservice to any feminist movement in history.
Apparently to them, all that women are worthy of are being objects of desire to both the living and the undead. The vampires in these films aren't after the blood, they want to suck your brains out.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse *1/2

Director: David Slade
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
Bryce Dallas Howard, Anna Kendrick, Michael Welch
Sarah Clarke, Peter Facinelli, Kellan Lutz, Billy Burke
Dakota Fanning, Daniel Cudmore, Cameron Bright

By this point it should be more than obvious that the Twilight movies are definitely not meant for everyone.
The minute you walk into this movie you should know what you're getting yourself into. For those obsessed with the celibate vampirism and nonsensical romance between Bella (Stewart) and emo vampire Edward (Pattinson), no force on Earth would be able to make them see that there is not a single artistic quality to be rescued in this movie.
Unless of course, you choose to think that Taylor Lautner's body has a classical Greek aestheticism to it...
Those on the other side who only see the lackluster filmmaking aspects of the saga will no doubt indulge themselves in a constant trashing of what makes this so inefficient and will indulge in quoting the terrible dialogue, bashing Ms. Stewart's utter lack of soul and laugh out loud at the way Pattinson delivers his lines like a parody of a Victorian hero.
This time around Bella is torn because she can't decide if she wants to marry Edward and be turned into a vampire, if she has sudden feelings for werewolf friend Jacob (Lautner), what to do with the band of rebel vampires coming all the way from Seattle to kill her and what to wear for the upcoming graduation.
Nothing of much importance seems to occur in this chapter and we don't really learn anything new about the characters to justify its existence. It feels too much like a transition especially for the casual viewers.
This feeling of inconsequence is best evoked by the film's initial and final sequences during which Bella and Edward sit in a sunny field while they mope about their love.
That the film begins and concludes in the same way, just reassures us of the fact that everything that occurred in between was merely an excuse for these tow to put some drama into their lives.
Hey, if they're not having sex, at least they can channel their hormones through murder huh?
What can be rescued about this movie is the fact that it buys its message in such an un-selfconscious way that to loathe and attack it would be to do so to a being so into itself that it would never open its eyes to anything else.
Of course this doesn't have any sort of Dostoievskian magnitude and the film is far from being a clever examination of anything other than old fashioned values and the need for abstinence in a world where sex is only bad if other people know you're doing it.

A Nightmare on Elm Street *

Director: Samuel Bayer
Cast: Jackie Earle Haley
Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker
Kellan Lutz, Clancy Brown, Connie Britton, Lia Mortensen

Anyone who's been alive for the past three decades knows who Freddy Krueger is. Heck, he might've even be the cause for them falling asleep at school during the day or the reason why they would never look at red and black stripes in the same way.
Truth is you don't even need to be a die hard fan of the original movies to know what Freddy represents.
This remake, carrying the tragic Michael Bay seal of quality, takes everything about the character and reduces it to a version of 902010 with blood and, more, screaming.
The setup is still pretty much the same: a bunch of kids begin to die mysteriously during their sleep, the only thing they have in common is that all of their dreams feature a man called Freddy Krueger.
The man wears a knifed glove and most of his skin is burnt. He also has a thing for torturing and brutally murdering the teenagers in their dreams while they sleep.
Because the characters and situations are so inconsequential, the thing that's left to judge about the movie is its ability to frighten us, which it never does.
One of the plot twists has to do with the fact that, after an extended period of time, insomniacs might enter a limbo where dreams and reality are impossible to separate. This nod to the power of dreams could've given the film its most terrifying theme but the Freddy scenes are done with such lack of nuance that the audience always knows when it's a dream and when it's not.
The unimaginative cinematography and score do little to set the mood and there is a scene with visual effects out of Scary Movie.
The most important effect of course should be Freddy himself and while Haley's performance tries to amp up on the creep, it never comes even close to conveying the macabre gusto with which Robert Englund dug his claws into the meat, pun intended.
With all its supposed dismay, attempts at conveying a dark back story with all sorts of perversions and traumas; the truth is that the film's use of facile, ridiculous Freudian techniques to explain the whys of Freddy might be the only thing worth a nightmare.