Sunday, November 27, 2011

Celluloid #135

In Theaters


Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 (2011) Condon - Bella and Edward finally get married, and big surprise, she gets pregnant instantly. The rest of the film could have been 45 minutes, but we are privy to at least three tame sex scenes and the length of the pregnancy. The tension is that this human-vampire hybrid could kill Bella in childbirth, and if it is born, the wolves will want to kill it. Jacob takes his shirt off within the first minute of the film and proceeds to get angsty and breaks away from his pack. It's still weird that everyone likes Bella, the music is still bad, and the dialogue still clunky as ever, but I really do think this is the weakest of the franchise so far. ??/5

In Home


Another Year (2010) Leigh - Tom and Geri are a nice old couple who seem to have carved out a nice simple life for themselves. They love each other and their adult son, have satisfying but unglamorous jobs, like to garden, cook for each other, and have friends over sometimes. Each season is a chapter in the film and centers on a visitor drinking too much and lamenting about aging in one form or another. These visitors may be grating, but they are relatable in ways that one would probably want to avoid (desperate, sad, lonely). 4/5

Ginger Snaps (2000) Fawcett - The quality of this film is too shitty. It turns out that the story isn't much better. Two sisters are really close and into doing creepy things together, and maybe have a death pact. Their relationship begins to fall apart when Ginger gets her first period, but Bridget believes that she was really bitten by a werewolf, causing to Ginger to act crazed and grow a tail. I would have been into a genre exploration of female adolescence, but I guess we already get that in Carrie and this film is just too embarrassingly bad. 2/5

To Die Like a Man (2009) Rodrigues - Our protagonist is Tonia, a pre-op MTF. She works as a dancer and has a spoiled young junkie for a boyfriend. Basically what ensues is a lot of cliched melodrama, but this film is unique in that we never hear any character speak. They appear to talk to each other sometimes, but while we can hear the diegetic noise, no dialogue. However, we see subtitles, so what is communicated isn't a mystery. 3.5/5

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