In my book, Manohla Dargis is the best movie reviewer in the world. She writes very well and engagingly and says things that are spot on. Oh, and her mastery of the English language is sheer delight! Mmmmmmm (that's an orgasmic "mmmmmm", in case you wondered!)
Anyway, the glorious Manohla Dargis writes movie reviews for the venerable and venerated New York Times.
And here, without wasting any more time, here's Manohla Dargis' review....
November 21, 2008
The Love That Dare Not Bare Its Fangs
By MANOHLA DARGIS
It’s love at first look instead of first bite in “Twilight,” a deeply sincere, outright goofy vampire romance for the hot-not-to-trot abstinence set. Based on the foundational book in Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling multivolume series, “The Twilight Saga” (four doorstops and counting), this carefully faithful adaptation traces the sighs and whispers, the shy glances and furious glares of two unlikely teenage lovers who fall into each other’s pale, pale arms amid swirling hormones, raging instincts, high school dramas and oh-so-confusing feelings, like, OMG he’s SO HOT!! Does he like ME?? Will he KILL me??? I don’t CARE!!! :)
And, reader, she doesn’t, the she being Bella (for Isabella) Swan, played with tremulous intensity and a slight snarl by Kristen Stewart. A sylph with a watchful, sometimes wary gaze who’s often cast in daughter roles, Ms. Stewart transformed from an appealing actress into something more complex with her brief, memorable turn in the 2007 movie of Jon Krakauer’s book “Into the Wild.” As the child-woman whose longing for the ill-fated wanderer Christopher McCandless is largely expressed through piercing looks and sensitive strumming, Ms. Stewart gave form and feeling to the possibility that the search for freedom and authentic experiences can be found in the embrace of another human being. This was a girl worth living for, if not for that film’s lost soul.
Since living really isn’t an option for Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), the moody, darkly brooding vampire who catches Bella’s eye and then her heart, she becomes the girl worth fighting for, a battle that, as in the book, involves not just malignant forces, but also ravenous appetite. Like all vampire stories, “Twilight” is about repressed desire and untamed hunger and the possibility of blood, the blood that flows from violently pierced necks and that, from John Polidori’s 1819 short novel “The Vampyre” to Alan Ball’s new HBO series, “True Blood,” represents ravishment of a more graphic kind. This is the ravishment that, in its pantomime of seduction and surrender, transforms innocence — like that of Bram Stoker’s sacrificial virgin, Lucy, in “Dracula” — into “voluptuous wantonness.”
Ms. Meyer’s contribution to the vampire chronicles, the trick that transformed her into a best-selling brand, has been to stanch this sanguineous emission, turning a hot human flow into something less threatening and morally sticky. Edward, you see, burns but doesn’t bite. As in the book, he leads a numbingly quiet, respectable life with his vampire family in Forks, a small Washington town under a near-permanent cloud cover. His father, Carlisle (Peter Facinelli), a doctor with a ghostly pallor and silky gait, tends to the living, while the rest of the brood, including his monochromatic mother and siblings, strike pretty poses, play baseball (in thunder and lightning) and occasionally hunt for animals. We think of ourselves as vegetarians, Edward jokes.
It’s no wonder he looks famished. When Edward first meets Bella, who has moved to Forks to live with her father (Billy Burke), he glowers at her threateningly, his hands clenching into fists. Bella is mystified, and you might be too, if Melissa Rosenberg’s screenplay didn’t turn up the volume as the teenagers grow closer and Edward hints at his true nature. “What if I’m the bad guy?” he asks. (Cue the shrieking virgins.) “I still don’t know if I can control myself,” he later confesses, as someone’s guitar gently weeps. A self-described monster, he has all kinds of cool, superhuman powers (running, leaping, mind-reading), but nothing compares to how he masters his universe: he keeps his fangs in his mouth.
That may make him catnip to anyone with OJD (obsessive Jonas Brothers disorder), but it also means he’s a bore, despite the efforts of the capable and exotically beautiful Mr. Pattinson. (The actor first broke hearts as the martyred Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter cycle.) Though her filmmaking can be shaky, the director Catherine Hardwicke has an eye for pretty young things and a feel for the private worlds that younger people make for themselves. But she’s working in shackles here. In her best movie, “Lords of Dogtown,” about the birth of the modern skateboard movement, a teenage boy sneaks out at night by slaloming off a roof while holding a surfboard. It’s a blissful declaration of freedom, including freedom from the big parental no.
Though Edward and Bella reach certain heights in “Twilight,” notably during a charming scene that finds them leaping from piney treetop to treetop against the spectacular wilderness backdrop, the story’s moral undertow keeps dragging them down. If Ms. Meyer has made the vampire story safe for her readers (and their parents) — the sole real menace comes from a half-baked subplot involving some swaggering vampires who like their steak saignant and human — it’s only because she suggests that there actually is something worse than death, especially for teenagers: sex. Faced with the partially clad Bella (who would bite if she could), Edward recoils from her like a distraught Victorian. Like Ms. Hardwicke, the poor boy has been defanged and almost entirely drained. He’s so lifeless, he might as well be dead — oops, he already is.
“Twilight” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Some violence, little viscera.
TWILIGHT
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke; written by Melissa Rosenberg, based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer; director of photography, Elliot Davis; edited by Nancy Richardson; music by Carter Burwell; produced by Greg Mooradian, Mark Morgan and Wyck Godfrey; released by Summit Entertainment. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute.
WITH: Kristen Stewart (Bella Swan), Robert Pattinson (Edward Cullen), Billy Burke (Charlie Swan), Ashley Greene (Alice Cullen), Nikki Reed (Rosalie Cullen), Jackson Rathbone (Jasper Cullen), Kellan Lutz (Emmett Cullen), Peter Facinelli (Dr. Carlisle Cullen), Cam Gigandet (James/Nomad Vampire), Taylor Lautner (Jacob), Anna Kendrick (Jessica), Michael Welch (Mike Newton) and Justin Chon (Eric).
(Click on the photo for a bigger version of the Twilight poster.)
