The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Third bite's a charm

Fans feuding over Team Edward and Team Jacob can put down their fangs. After Eclipse, both fans will convert to Team David Slade. The first-time-to-the-franchise director combines his experience with violent vampires (30 Days of Night) and impassioned teen girls (Hard Candy) to create the series' most balanced and fun vam-rom-drama. Twihards will embrace it as the first installment to live up to their imaginations (which, frankly, have always been better than either the movies or Stephenie Meyer's prose) and Summit can breathe easy that the saga of Bella Swan still has momentum going into the fourth and fifth (and final) flicks.

Slade's challenge is to navigate a novel that leaps from blood to tears, from a newly made bloodsucker (Xavier Samuel) slaughtering Seattle to Bella's (Kristen Stewart) literally eternal love triangle between Robert Pattinson's clenched-jawed sparkle-vamp and Taylor Lautner's huggable werewolf. Eclipse is about extremes: it opens with a vampire attack, then cuts to Stewart and Pattinson snuggling in a meadow reading Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice," a metaphor for the choice she has to make between warm-blooded wolves and the ice-cold undead. If tweens miss the symbolism, it's repeated in every other scene. (The best is when Lautner snipes, "Let's face it, I am hotter than you.")

Eclipse has its cheesecake and eats it, too. Like New Moon, it's heavy on topless shots of barely legal Taylor Lautner, but now Pattinson grumbles, "Doesn't he own a shirt?" It's winking melodrama that lets fans smile and critics snort with glee.

Not much happens in Eclipse. In their first scene, Pattinson and Stewart have this exchange: "Marry me." "Change me." 100 Minutes later, they're still having the same conversation, but Slade doesn't let the emo inertia drag. Since his leads are still more mannequins than actors, he physicalizes their emotions: Pattinson furiously peels out of parking lots, Lautner-in wolf form, as big as a horse-charms Stewart into petting his fur.

Though the first half hour struggles to shake off the dour New Moon vibes, this is likable fluff, junk food without regret. Reluctant boyfriends have a few minutes of the wolf pack's bros-before-emos tumbling. Reluctant chaperons will be happy that all of the adults note that Bella and Edward's romance is too obsessive. Reluctant history buffs will delight in the Civil War era reenactments. (Okay, that one's a stretch.) And conservative abstinence advocates will thrill at a teen flick where the guy wants to wait for marriage. As he tells his hot-and-bothered girlfriend, he comes from a different culture of front porches and lemonades with the family. Can he be a 109-year-old virgin? Teen abstinence group True Love Waits: have I got a poster boy for you. And trust me, he makes the ladies swoon.

by Amy Nicholson

Distributor: Summit Entertainment
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ashley Greene, Peter Facinelli, Jackson Rathbone and Kellan Lutz.
Director: David Slade
Screenwriter: Melissa Rosenberg
Producers: Wyck Godfrey, Greg Mooradian and Karen Rosenfelt
Genre: Drama/Romance/Fantasy
Rating: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, and some sensuality.
Running time: 124 min
Release date: June 30, 2010

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Release Date: 2010-07-14 · Running time: 108 minutes

Genres

Fantasy

Action

Adventure

Director

Jon Turteltaub

Writers

Matt Lopez

Carlo Bernard

Doug Miro

Producers

Jerry Bruckheimer

Principal Cast

Ethan Peck

Nicolas Cage

Jay Baruchel

Monica Bellucci

Alfred Molina

Teresa Palmer

Theatrical Release Date

2010-07-14

Despicable Me

Despicable Me

Release Date: 2010-07-09 · Running time: 95 minutes

Genres

3D

Animated (CGI)

Family

Director

Chris Renaud

Pierre Coffin

Writers

Cinco Paul

Ken Dario

Producers

John Cohen

Janet Healy

Christopher Meledandri

Principal Cast

Mindy Kaling

Kristen Wiig

Miranda Cosgrove

Ken Jeong

Will Arnett

Danny McBride

Julie Andrews

Russell Brand

Steve Carell

Jason Segel

Theatrical Release Date

2010-07-09

Salt

Salt

Release Date: 2010-07-23 · Running time: 100 minutes

Genres

Spy

Director

Phillip Noyce

Writers

Brian Helgeland

Kurt Wimmer

Producers

Lorenzo di Bonaventura

Sunil Perkash

Principal Cast

Corey Stoll

Yara Shahidi

Gaius Charles

Victor Slezak

Daniel Olbrychski

Cassidy Hinkle

Angelina Jolie

Liev Schreiber

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Zoe Lister Jones

Theatrical Release Date

2010-07-23

Ramona and Beezus

Harnessing the power of pop for a more decent, warm-fuzzier world.

Ramona and Beezus is based on Beverly Cleary's Ramona series of children's books, and while it isn't the only adaptation to give flesh (or ink) to Cleary's indomitable misfit, it's the most accessible retelling to date. Set in Portland, Oregon and swimming in the post-prairie-meets-hipster regional aesthetic, Elizabeth Allen's vision of Ramona makes up for its flaws with a perfect cast and a timeless set of values. In this world, sincerity is decency. The Quimbys aren't the comically dysfunctional family of sitcoms or the tenuously held together family of divorce dramas. They're as ideal as imperfect, and struggling in an economic climate that has a bottomless reservoir for hardship. The Quimbys (four females, one male) may be a bit femme-power-y, which could dissuade the boy demographic, but it's safe viewing for all families and it doesn't degrade itself by leaning on the blandly uncontroversial. While the film can't possibly do poorly it will still deserve higher numbers than it'll get, even with past generation book fans dragging their kids to theaters. DVD afterlife should be tidy.

Ramona Quimby (a supremely charming Joey King) is a plucky and imaginative kid whose big ideas typically get her into a heap of mess. Her imagination is so oversized, in fact, that is seeps out of her and transforms fitted sheets into parachutes and her room into the night sky awash with stars and astronauts. Her older sister, Beatrice, a.k.a. Beezus (Selena Gomez), knows better how to work in the real-world systems that surround her and has both popularity and authority to show for it. While their mother (Bridget Moynahan) stays home caring for their baby sister, father Robert (John Corbett) sublimates his artistic tendencies to hold down a sturdy job as a paper-pusher-it's a sturdy job until he's let go right in the middle of their house renovation. Frightened that the bank will (literally) drive off with her family's home, Ramona embarks on a handful of earning schemes that demonstrate her impractical cleverness and unfortunately cost the family money. Meanwhile, her Aunt Bea (Ginnifer Goodwin) is softly lured by her high school sweetheart (Josh Duhamel), an adventurer of unclear distinction who's home for a few weeks. As the bank threatens to get between the Quimbys and their home, and Aunt Bea's budding romance threatens to get between Ramona and her aunt, Ramona's excursions into her imagination grow fewer and further between (which smartly designates them as healthy) and she's forced to lean on her sister, who has her own problems to contend with. In the end of the day, it's not Ramona's penchant for daydreaming or even her cheer, which she works to preserve through her many failures, it's the bonds of family that keep the Quimbys afloat, whatever inventions Ramona thinks the tide can send.

It's fascinating to consider Cleary's Ramona is nearly five decades old, particularly as this incarnation of her poses the 9 year old as a manic pixie dream girl in the making. Ramona's ingenious to a fault and her awkwardness is a mark of her authenticity; without making a case of it, the film pits polished girls against Ramona's lack of polish (implication being polish requires no imagination). A scene in which Ramona botches an audition to play a princess in a commercial puts this contrast before the audience even as Ramona herself is never particularly obsessed with the other girls...or their superior bling. What results, besides a sort of sustainable, down-home attitude towards family, is a view of girl identity that favors the innocent wonk to the worldly (and therefore wounded) prize child. The prize child is not the villain here; she's just a nag whose admissions defend a brand of order that Ramona and the Quimbys gently oppose. This opposition goes a long (if sweet) way toward defining the family as an affectionately flawed entity, one whose cracks prove its longevity and strength. In this vision of Ramona, sincerity is decency and no mores, politics or creeds define those bounds. Screw irony, it's a temp trend anyway.

by Sara Maria Vizcarrondo

Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Cast: Joey King, Selena Gomez, John Corbett, Bridgette Moynahan, Ginnifer Goodwin, Josh Duhamel and Sandra Oh.
Director: Elizabeth Allen
Screenwriters: Laurie Craig and Nick Pustay
Producers: Denise Di Novi and Brad Van Arragon
Genre: Family Comedy
Rating: G
Running time: 104 min.
Release date: July 23, 2010

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