The 33rd Best Movie I Saw This Year: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1

There’s something I’d like to note before I dig into this movie: 

This review is not about to be a positive one. But I'm not taking shots at a huge movie simply because it's cool to not like it. I have no bone to pick with the Twilight series. It’s a very popular teen girl franchise, and while it certainly doesn’t look like anything that I would particularly care for, that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily bad. I don’t have any opinion about My Little Pony, or ‘A.N.T. Farm’ – they don’t seem like things I would enjoy. So I skip over them without comment. I’m happy to do so, because it gives me cause to ignore other people’s dislike of things that I enjoy. Don’t “get” ‘Community’? Eh, it’s not for everyone. Don’t like Doug Benson? He’s a different sort of a comedian, sure. Not a Star Wars guy? Not everybody is. This is how the world works. We are given free rein to make our own decisions, and the steady diversification of the entertainment options available means that there’s more books and movies and music and TV shows than ever that fit your specific tastes. It’s a wonderful time to be part of popular culture, and it’s only getting better as it goes.

So if there’s a giant film franchise out there that features mournful vampires and six-packed werewolves and lots of lip-biting, great. People who like that sort of thing are in heaven. And no one’s forcing me to go.

Except this time, someone forced me to go.

I got dragged to the theater on Thanksgiving by a friend, and once there, we saw the movie playing on the nearest showtime (though he did seem to be angling hard towards seeing this film while pretending he wasn't). So we went, three guys in their twenties at a late showing of a Twilight movie.

Now, I have not read these books. Not even skimmed them. Through the osmosis of living in our current society, I have absorbed some of the plot and subtext, but most of it is hazy to me. And that’s why I can tell you that if you're in the same boat I was, this movie is not for you.

It’s for people who’ve read the books, who love the books, who wanted to see the books come to life, just as they read them. It’s just for those people. And that’s fine. Not everything has to be Lord of the Rings  or Harry Potter, where the films stand fully on their own. Some things are just for the fans.

But even with all of that, Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 is still a pretty lousy movie.

The first half of the movie is wedding. And that’s it. The bride puts on a dress, comes down the aisle, they say vows, there’s dancing and cake, and later they drive off in a car. There’s no plot. It’s the world’s most beautiful and least-important wedding video, after Kim Kardashian’s (topical burn!).

In the second half (spoiler alert!) it’s only slightly less boring (end spoilers). The happy couple has a mournful – because everything is mournful – honeymoon. They play some slow, sexy chess, like honeymooners do. They have out of focus PG-13 sex. And then Kristen Stewart ends up with a demon baby inside her, and that’s when things really get slightly less boring.

They come home. Stewart gets paler and angstier and skinnier, except for the lump from the demon baby. They debate the wisdom of a vampire abortion (been there). The werewolves have some angry wolf-meetings where the digital wolves are all barking at each other, and the lines are voiced over the top, and it is hilarious. Then it finishes with the exact same final shot as Avatar, and then the movie’s mercifully over.

I’ve been defensive about Kristen Stewart before, because I think she’s a solid actress with a very limited range, and she needs to be put in the right position to succeed in order to really shine. She’s perfect as the secretly frail cool girl in Adventureland, and interesting as Joan Jett in The Runaways, and utterly lost here. A huge portion of these movies is being able to see what’s going on in her mind through Bella’s facial expressions, and that’s simply not Stewart’s strength.

Of course, she could be much worse. She could be Taylor Lautner.

The 25 Best TV Episodes I Saw This Year (#25-21)

In order to sustain some sort of vague balance to the list, I forced myself to include only one episode per program, to preclude this list becoming just a jumble of episodes from the shows you’ll see included at the top.

It’s nice, because it lets me mention some of my favorite underseen television episodes this year, including:

25. Bob’s Burgers – “Sacred Cow”

Fox has slotted a number of strange and offbeat shows into the Seth MacFarlane-ego trip that is their Sunday night animation block, but 'Bob’s Burgers' is the only one to really work. The season was an odd and spotty one, but with a few highlights, including the Lobsterfest episode, the one where Bob gets trapped in the crawl space and refuses to come out, and, of course, “Weekend At Mort’s”, where the family spends the weekend at a mortuary.

My personal favorite, though, was this bizarre creation, where a documentary filmmaker makes a statement by leaving a cow outside of Bob’s restaurant. Bob howls and complains, but ends up adopting the cow into the family and taking ridiculous steps to ensure the cow’s well-being. As always, the strange and timid Tina (Dan Mintz) and grade-school anarchist Louise (Kristen Schaal) are the MVPs here.

24. Jeopardy – “The IBM Challenge – Day 2”

It was impossible to read any coverage of this episode, featuring Watson, the IBM supercomputer, without someone mentioning the legend of John Henry, the steel-drivin’ man. While the comparison is understandable, it’s still not quite apt – whether Watson won or not, it is unlikely Jeopardy would ever switch to an all-computer-contestant format – but that didn’t stop the episode from being fascinating viewing.

Watching the episode, you found yourself helplessly rooting for Ken Jennings, a bit of a cold fish who suddenly seems like the last hope for mankind when matched against the blank black box of the IBM machine. Of course, he proves to be no match at all, and Watson defeats him handily, steadily grinding down the competition with calculations far too fast for the human mind to follow. It’s all impressive and a technological marvel, but it couldn’t feel less triumphant. When at last the competitors are defeated, and Jennings flashes up a last joke in place of his wager (“I for one welcome our new computer overlords”), it seems sad rather than entertaining. That somehow by creating this grand machine, we’ve lost our humanity.

Then I remind myself how many times I used Google just writing this entry alone, and agree that perhaps things are much better now. Though perhaps I better delete this post, before our new masters decide to teach me a lesson.  

23. Cougar Town – “Something Good Coming”

There was brief talk last summer of “Cougar Town” finally changing their name, but the only name they like (“Sunshine State”), seemed too close to ABC’s other comedy offering that spring, “Mr. Sunshine”, a dull mishmash of comedy stylings that tumbled out of the gate and lasted only a few episodes.

Instead, the show soldiers on, still saddled with the worst title on network television, still emphatically a show in no way related to its supposed central premise. I recall stumbling across the show about this time last year and realizing, “Oh! It’s ‘Scrubs’, but without a hospital.”

The season finished triumphantly with an hourlong trip to Hawaii to rescue a heartbroken Dan Byrd, and the change in location does nothing to stop the breezy, relaxed interplay between the cast. Especially good is the cameo of Sam Lloyd, recreating his ‘Scrubs’ sad-sack lawyer as a sad-sack, guitar strumming beach bum.

22. Suburgatory – “Thanksgiving”

After a surprisingly excellent pilot episode, I was perhaps too eager in my pronouncement that Suburgatory was “the best new show of the season” (there’s very little competition for that spot, it must be said. New Girl? Up All Night? Once Upon A Time? Even now, it’s not totally clear).

The show quickly devolved into a semi-interesting, overly-broad My-So-Called-Life-For-Dummies, and I gave up a few episodes in. However, when I was encouraged by Twitter to check out the Thanksgiving episode, I was not disappointed. Somewhere between Allie Grant’s decision to streak through the neighborhood and Parker Young’s description of "Ace Ventura in that super confusing Spotless Sunshine movie that had the 'Titanic' lady with the mid-sized naturals,” I was reminded of what exactly had turned me on to this show in the first place.

21. It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia – “Chardee MacDennis: The Game of Games”

It’s Always Sunny has been spotty in recent years, and I tend to drop in and out, but this season was strong enough to pull me back in – particularly this episode, where we learn the lore of the gang’s invented board game, combining every element of every board game they enjoyed (plus lots of drinking, natch).

The show’s an acquired taste and always has been, but there’s never been a better introductory episode for the new viewer if you’re curious about checking out the show. More importantly, I have a new game that I absolutely must find a way to play. Who’s in?

The 34th Best Movie I Saw This Year: Everything Must Go

It would be easy to glance at the ranking of this review and say “oh, look, Will Ferrell trying to be serious. No wonder this movie didn’t work.” I imagine most readers have already moved on to the next thing (I’m digging into Twilight next if you want to scroll forward). But all those readers are wrong.

Well, maybe they’re not. There’s plenty of reasons to keep scrolling by. The quality of my writing, for one.

But they’d be wrong about Ferrell. The movie doesn’t fail because of him, the movie actually fails in spite of him. Ferrell is far and away the best part of this film – convincing, moving, interesting to watch. Ferrell is this film’s beating heart. It’s a pity the movie doesn’t have a pulse.

(see? What did I tell you about the quality of the writing?)

Ferrell plays a struggling alcoholic, fired from his job and thrown out of the house by his fed-up wife. She leaves all his belongings on the lawn, and with nothing else to do but sit, Ferrell refuses to leave, and instead holds a yard sale from his fraying armchair. It’s a fun concept that’s given absolutely no air by its writer-director, Dan Rush. The movie wanders slowly along, moved only by the watchability Ferrell gives the character. 

The rest of the movie is spotted with standard dull, indie-movie tropes: the pregnant young woman across the street who teaches him about responsibility (Rebecca Hall), the magic black kid down the road who reunites him with his lost sense of self (Notorious B.I.G.’s son), the best friend/sponsor who keeps swinging by to check up and it turns out is sleeping with his wife (Michael Pena, and yes I know that’s a spoiler but I don’t care because I don’t want you to watch this movie.).  Will Ferrell, no thespian, out-acts both Hall and Pena, both of whom are far more lost here than actors of their caliber have any right to be. The fault, I assume, doesn’t lie with them, but with Rush’s unimpressive script and mostly tepid direction. Even the big twist reveal at the end isn’t shocking so much as unnecessary – the people in the theater perked up with an irritated look that announced that they’d already given up on the movie and saw no need to be pulled back in by cheap tricks. 

When the movie finished, we all filed out in silence, the room thick with disappointment. Movie’s are supposed to be transportative. This one never moved off the front stoop.

The 35th Best Movie I Saw This Year: Red Riding Hood

We were in the waning hours of a friend’s birthday dinner, finishing up our drinks in a pub just down the road from the theater, when the question popped up.

“A few of us were thinking of going along to see Red Riding Hood, if you’d like to come along.”

I pondered the question for a moment.

“Am I allowed to make fun of it?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll go anyway, and just stay quiet.”

I lied. Of course I lied.

Red Riding Hood is a monumentally bad picture. That’s the truth, a bald fact. Indeed, words cannot really describe to you how bad this film is, though they’re certainly going to try.

Throughout the movie, I blabbered on in disbelief at the movie’s awfulness. I’d like to defend myself, but I can’t.  I couldn’t stop myself. I was physically incapable of holding my disbelief of the movie’s awfulness inside of myself.  The words spewed forth from me in a gushing torrent, even as my friend shushed me constantly. The movie was just too terrible to keep quiet. I wasn’t being sarcastic, or witty, or clever. I was just shocked.

“This movie is so bad.”
“Someone wrote this.”
“None of these people can act.”
“Can you believe how bad this is?”
“This guy is the worst actor I’ve ever seen.”

That was the one that finally got to my friend.

“Be quiet!” she hissed. “He’s so hot.”

Well, sure. And we’ve all been there with movies, content to turn our minds off and stare longingly at the screen. Why else would Jessica Alba be cast in anything? But even the most slack-jawed of us would end up having trouble here.

If you’ve seen the Twilight movies, you know that each of them features excruciatingly wooden acting, even from people we’ve seen better performances from elsewhere. This film – directed by Catherine Hardwicke, the director of the first and worst of those movies – shows why, exactly, that’s the case. As poorly directed as that film is, this film, somehow, is mishandled even worse.

Unless you, like me, enjoy a good movie gone wrong. Everything you could ever want in a bad movie is right here, glaring out from the screen at you. An update of a fairy tale, told in the hushed, forbidden-love tones of a tween drama? With lots of wide-eyed staring back and forth, and reluctant performances from character actors well aware that they deserve better? Top-notch.

Do you know who’s not very good in this movie? Gary Oldman. Gary Oldman. An actor who is good in everything. Even he missteps here, pitching his performance well beyond the range of any of the actors in the scenes with him (this may not be his fault).  My adoration for Amanda Seyfriend can’t hide that she’s even worse, her every line read impossibly overwrought. And that’s before we get to the two male leads in this awkward, Twilite-love triangle: Shiloh Fernanedez and Max Irons.

I understand that I am prone to hyperbole. I accept that. I acknowledge that you know this as well. But before I start throwing words around like “atrocious” and “black hole of despair,” I want you to watch this clip, so you can decide for yourself.

Alliance
Red Riding Hood — MOVIECLIPS.com

Right? Right? Right?

I dug back through my twitter feed and pulled up some of my best tweets from the day, as I frantically tried to funnel some of my stunned horror at the film’s awfulness in a different direction:

“Okay, fine. But if you’re the wolf, I’m gonna chop your head off.” “I would do the same to you.” Actual lines from Red Riding Hood.

More lines from Riding Hood. Girl: "I'm not like you. You're a killer." Wolf: "You're a killer too. Remember the rabbit?" Me: "SERIOUSLY?" 

“In Red Riding Hood, Gary Oldman puts an innocent, mentally disabled child in a torture device, announces "it's for the greater good," then kills the kid.”

During Riding Hood, Amanda Seyfried has a knife drawn, then hears the wolf growl behind her. She sheaths the knife. Worst. Instincts. Ever. 

I love the movies. I love going, and as much as I enjoy digging into a bad movie, I recognize that sometimes a movie’s just not my cup of tea. Someone out there is enjoying it, even when I’m not. The next few movies on this list are like that, though I feel my dismissiveness of them is justified. But Riding Hood is something out – a movie left in the wrong hands, where every beat feels off, every shot inadequately envisioned, every reaction less-than-honest. It feels like a waste of time for everyone involved, the viewer most of all.

Unless, like me, you love bad movies. Or drinking games. Then, I think you’ll enjoy yourself just fine.

The Annual End-of-the-Year Postathon

If you’re following me on Twitter (and why wouldn't you be?), you’re well aware that it’s been a busy few months for me. I made an attempt at doing National Novel Writing Month again this year, but had to quit midway through, as the book, like everything else in my life, got swallowed up by a short film I produced for our Christmas Eve services. Things descended to the point where I was pulling 22-hour days towards the end, so you can only imagine my relief to be on the other side of the holiday with some free time on my hands.

Last year, I decided to finish the year with a flurry of posts reviewing every movie I’d seen in theaters that year. It ended up being so much fun that I decided to have another go at it this year.

I’ve rated the twenty-six films I’ve already seen this year, and while I’m hoping to head out to see a few more of the Oscar nominees to sneak them into the list at some point, I’m confident enough that even they end up disappointing, they can’t possibly be bad enough to make it into the bottom section of this list.

That sentence ended up being quite a mouthful. No matter. Let’s begin.