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Any Questions For Ben?
The talented bunch of actors ably cut through the surface gloss, but it’s tough to remain invested in the plight of the self-absorbed lead.
Shame
It starts off as brutal but arresting stuff, and the two lead performances are scorching, but disappointingly dissolves into a case of tragedy for the sake of tragedy.
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Twilight (Film)
Rating: M
Running Time: 121
Country: USA
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Cast: Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattison, Kristen Stewart
Distributor: Hoyts
Release Date: December 11, 2008
Film Worth: $11.50
FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth“…a work of surprising precision and restraint…”
As smart and heartfelt as can be expected from a teen vampire romp, Twilight - based on the first book from Stephanie Meyer's best selling series - is a work of surprising precision and restraint from talented filmmaker Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Lords Of Dogtown). The film stars up and comer Kristen Stewart (Into The Wild) as protagonist and narrator Bella, a teenager who moves to the Pacific Northwest and falls in love with a century-old vampire named Edward (Robert Pattinson, Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix).
With a plot defined more by young (chaste) love and high school politics than high octane bloodsucking, Twilight is something of a departure from sexy vampire mini-epics like Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula or Neil Jordan's Interview With A Vampire. Commentators have thus labelled it a Buffy The Vampire Slayer companion piece, and there is room for that argument, but Twilight is more self-serious and less ironic in its execution than the Joss Whedon-penned film/TV series and the subsequent and iconic long-running television programme.
There is room for that sort of shift, of course, should the rest of Meyer's four-part series be developed into films (the second book, New Moon, is currently at "script stage"), but it's happily difficult to imagine the coming films losing Twilight's charming naiveté. Stewart and Pattinson gamely offer up more than a touch of bittersweet teen angst that is rarely brought to fruition on screen; they act, essentially, like sixteen-year-olds behave: sulky, fragile and self-involved. Auxiliary roles are ably filled by Billy Burke (as Bella's taciturn, protective father), Taylor Lautner (as a friend to Bella and a rival to Edward) and Peter Facinelli (as the creepy, kindly patriarch of Edward's vampire clan).