Remember Me

I won't lie to you. If asked the reason for wanting to go see Remember Me at the cinema I will have to admit "... Robert Pattinson's face." But you really can't blame me. The boy has been told he's attractive so repeatedly for so long now that he has, in effect, become 'attractive'. As a noun. "I am not sexy, I am sex" or something similar. And I have to say, I wasn't disappointed by just how much of Bobby's swagger they managed to squash into the film. He has a sexual aura on screen similar to that of a cougar, James Dean and a jazz saxophone combined.

But now onto a more serious subject, the actual film itself. I admit that after a while, I began to buy into the stumbling romance and opportunistic life values of the film. Even with the perhaps annoyingly kooky 'I eat my dessert before my dinner' token lead female (Emilie de Ravin), or the inevitable 'deep' conversation between the couple who try to 'out-death' each other with nasty stories of deceased relatives.

All this could have been forgiven, if it were not for the frankly offensive ending. I won't give much away, but in my eyes, using a terrible (and real) disaster in order to shake up the ending a little is not something that should be considered appropriate. Apparently, director Allen Coulter was fishing for socially relevant brownie points and a way to make the narrative end on a truly depressing 'your life's actually quite pointless' statement.

I give this 2 Stars for a film that could have been mediocre, but turned out more of a disaster than the subject it ended on.

New Moon

Yes, I know. And no, I’m not going to scream obscenities if you don’t like it. To be honest, I’m not THAT much of a fan myself. But what can you expect? The Twilight saga is sweeping everyone up in its colossal mudslide of domination, whether you blumin’ like it or not! And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, teenage girls being encouraged to get to grips with their sexual selves and all. But that’s for a more feminist blog, and I digress. The second film hath arrived! Which means even more hype than the first (doesn’t seem possible does it?) As you can tell by scrolling down, I have not reviewed the first film. There are many reasons for this, the main being, it was rubbish. I think many can agree that it was a very standard depiction of the book; it knew it would get fans either way and so didn’t seem to try at all. But this time around, there’s a new director in town, Chris Weitz and lo and behold, he’s done quite a splendid job!

As a film lover, you become accustomed to the idea of having to sometimes sit through not-very-good films, its part of the process (especially if you’re quite a picky film lover). So imagine my surprise when the very first shot of the film is one, very large, very absorbing, orange moon that stares you straight in the face. This moon then begins to peel back, agonisingly slowly, to reveal the title ‘New Moon’ and immediately, you can’t help but think quite enthusiastically ‘THIS is more like it!’. The acting, as to be expected, is fairly bog-standard, but not annoyingly so. The whole film seems much more rich and magical than its senior in the sense of its colour and effects. The wolves especially work very well, for example when Bella first glimpses one of the beasts and all that can be seen are two fierce eyes accompanied by a frosty breath in the dark which looks about as real as you could get. What also pulls the movie up to a much more respectable notch is the impressive and mesmerising sound track, which has a delectable fistful of atmospheric tunes that work perfectly in sync with each other or individually on their own. Listening to the much-acclaimed album is a dream-like experience that hypnotises and sums up the tone of the film brilliantly.

Obviously, the series isn’t a masterpiece. But would it really be as successful if it was? I’m pretty sure it’s the simply written books and love/danger filled themes that attract the teenage audience and not all the hidden meanings (because we all know there’s so many of them). And yes, maybe the whole Twilight shebang SHOULD be more sophisticated but really, who are we kidding? Sexy and dangerous vampires? A hot werewolf that wants to be more than just friends? An identifiable female lead? All this included in read-in-a-day books? No wonder there’s screaming teens at premiers with ‘bite me Edward’ scrawled on their faces. All I can say is, at least Weitz has attempted to include more than just the smitten fans in his audience, and make it enjoyable even for those not wearing fangs to the cinema.