X-Men: First Class (2011)

3/5

X-Men: First Class is just another mediocre superhero movie. The movie tracks the origins of Professor X (McAvoy) and Magneto (Fassbender) when they battled together against a common enemy, Sebastian Shaw (Bacon), during the Cold War. The plot is trite and unoriginal, the side characters are forgettable cardboard cut-outs, and the dialogue is nauseating. And Beast is just laughable. The rest was a mixed bag. The special effects were either seamless (yay) or appallingly bad (boo). The action sequences were usually pretty tense and exciting. What the movie had going for it was the character development in the young Xavier and Magneto. They were given much more depth and humanity than in the previous X-Men movies, but unfortunately not enough to recommend this movie to any but the most devout of comic book nerds. Overall, I was thoroughly underwhelmed by this movie.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1270798/

New Moon (2009)

1/5

New Moon is a bad movie. This is the extent to which I know the plot: the vampire (Pattinson) makes up some reason to leave the town, which of course makes the pale girl (Stewart) depressed. She starts getting closer with her werewolf neighbor (Lautner) and then has to choose between them. There's little else in the 2+ hour movie, although I did learn a few things during the course of watching it. First, Kristen Stewart is ugly when she cries. I think she's ugly all the time, but apparently that sentiment is not as universally shared as I thought. Second, Taylor Lautner has a fairly fit physique. I know this because EVERY SINGLE SCENE with him in it had him shirtless. Kyle thinks his back muscles make him look like a camel or something. Third, Robert Pattinson has kind of a grotesque, gargoylish, sickly frame that makes me think he should see a doctor for anorexia or heroin addiction. Fourth, the CGI werewolves looked like they have really fat necks. It was weird. Oh, and I presume the director had a call for extra pauses, and asked the male pauses to have sex with the female pauses, because there are a bajillion pregnant pauses in this movie intended to simulate fierce thinking and emo angst. Nearly half an hour is wasted on long, drawn out dialogue where the teenagers cannot find the words they want to say. The movie has a lot of forced writing, forced acting, and forced action. It's a round peg of a book being forced into a square hole of a movie. I can't wait for the third one!

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259571/

Twilight (2008)

2/5

Twilight is a terrible movie. It is about an awkward high school girl who meets an equally awkward high school vampire (despite the fact that he's been around for 200 years or so) and the heroin-like obsessive love they develop for each other. You would think that after two centuries of existence, he would be less socially inept (and would've found someone else!), but you would be wrong. So after postulating that he's a vampire based on visual experience and an ancient tome, I can see how a silly girl might believe that to be the case. But isn't it far more likely that she's experiencing hallucinations or delirium? Maybe she should have checked herself into a mental institution. (Also, I may not have a great memory, but I'm pretty sure high school was never that awkward and weird. Granted, we did not have vampires in our class, as far as I know.)

The romance aspect was clearly unhealthy, with flat, uninspired pairings of flat, uninspired characters. The acting was monotonous, the directing was bland, the music was forgettable (except the Radiohead song they played during the end credits). There wasn't even any vampire action to speak of, just a lot of simple audiovisual special effects. Lots of unconvincing whooshes and time lag filters. The only thing that stood out was the rest of the high school class (the non-vampires), although their storyline quickly fell to the wayside about halfway through the movie. All in all, this is an unsurprisingly unimpressive preteen movie.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1099212/