The Twilight Saga - Breaking Dawn Part 1: Vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) and I guess you could call her a human Bella (Kristen Stewart) finally consummate their longer simmering relationship which unsurprisingly has dire consequences. As far as swishy teen movies go the Twilight movies are okay. They’ve always been disproportionately melodramatic affairs and this film, the first chapter in what is to be the series’ grand finale brings all of the franchise’s damp-faced conflicts to the fore with a miracle birth, a picture perfect wedding, and the looming threat of a vampire/werewolf war. Despite its overheated tone, Breaking Dawn is wildly unsatisfying and more than a little dull. Director Bill Condon just doesn’t have the chops that his predecessors had. He doesn’t ground the material with handheld naturalism like Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight) did, cartoonishly exaggerate it like Chris Weitz (New Moon) did or subtlety mock it while also using the material to play with other genres as David Slade did (Eclipse) thus rendering a film as soapy and hallow as the series’ detractors have always accused it of being. He directs likes like a mediocre TV director; competently but without a single trace of personal aesthetic. If you’re a civilian looking to see what all the Twilight buzz is about, start anywhere else. Also starring Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli and Elizabeth Reaser.
Special Features: Commentary by Condon, making of and three featurettes.
A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas: Very funny in a better-than-average-SNL episode kind of way. The Harold & Kumar series has always functioned better in individual snatches than as complete films. The scene where Kumar (Kal Penn) fantasizes an entire life for himself with an oversized anthropomorphic bag of weed (NSFW) or the gag with the world’s most overwrought anti-drug ad or every moment where NPH (Neil Patrick Harris) is onscreen are all hilarious. It’s just that those tear inducing scenes are always jammed in between seemingly endless scatological jokes and long stretches where poor uptight Harold (John Cho) is forced to endure one vaguely racist humiliating scenario after another. The Harold and Kumar movies are seemingly made for YouTube where you can get chuckle from “Extreme Kayaking” without having to watch Christopher Meloni hillbilly it up so hard it’s a wonder he didn’t tear a muscle. Christmas is maybe the best H&K film in that it has the highest funny to awful ratio of any film in the trilogy and it has the most screen time for the incomparable Harris but at the end of the day that’s like being happy that you got the lightest possible sentence for your drunk driving conviction. Also starring Bobby Lee, Danneel Harris, and Patton Oswalt.
Special Features: A digital copy of the film, deleted scenes and three featurettes.
Anonymous: Big old explosions auteur Roland Emmerich takes time off from finding creative ways to obliterate large parts of the world to use his finely honed destructive skills with this well photographed hit piece on William Shakespeare. The film gives bombastic voice to the anti-stratfordian theory which posits that Shakespeare was not a writer so gifted that Harold Bloom credits him with the advent of the human personality but rather a front for a variety of individuals of a much higher class than Stratford-upon-Avon’s most famous son. The evidence behind the theory already is deeply suspect before the ribald nonsense present by Emmerich and his hugely talented and totally shameless cast. The plot of Anonymous is so lurid and overblown it makes The Di Vinci Code look like a work of carefully vetted scholarship. Still, the film is not without its risible charms. The film looks amazing; showcasing a resplendent Elizabethan England and Rafe Spall is delightfully sacrilegious as the hard drinking and murderous Shakespeare of Emmerich’s imagination. A perfect film to double bill with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Also starring Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave and Joley Richardson.
Special Features: PS3 wallpaper, commentary with Emmerich and writer John Orloff and three featurettes.
All of the releases mentioned here have links to their respective Amazon pages but you can also visit Cleveland area Blockbusters, Family Videos, and Red Boxes for these and other new releases.
Mario blogs regularly at A Polemic Killer Room.
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