Culture

Hello, my name is Anne Pick and I am a Twilight-aholic. I didn't use to have this obsession, in fact, this time last year I was making fun of my best friend for buying into the teenage vampire pandemonium. Despite my previous disdain for the series, I read all four books (twice) and I have seen the light; and that light sparkled off of Edward Cullen's abs. Last night, I along with what seemed to be more than 2,000 other vampire-loving fans (only one of which was dressed as a Edward Cullen), crowded into 15 different sold-out auditoriums to see the next installment at a few minutes past midnight.
One of the things I liked best about the adaptation of Stephanie Meyer's second book in the Twilight Saga was it is definitely a film made for the fans. This movie wasn't made for critics or to win awards, it was made to please the series' millions (maybe billions) of fans. New Moon blows the first Twilight film out of the water and one factor that contributes to that is it follows the book much more closely than its predecessor. Speaking as, and for the fans, what we've all been hoping for over the last year is that the future films don't ruin what Meyer has established in the books. No more of this “Hold on tight spider monkey,” bull crap.

Somehow, the filmmaking duo that brought us Fargo, No Country For Old Men and The Big Lebowski managed to sneak a movie under the radar that has the feel of an instant art house classic. Simply put, A Serious Man is the best movie I've seen this year. Stemming from all things Jewish, Leave it to Beaver and Middle America circa 1967, the Coen brothers have executed a comic masterpiece.
While opening credits snap to the drumbeat of Jefferson Airplane's “Somebody to Love,” we zoom through an ear cavity of a kid listening to a transistor radio during Hebrew school. And you might guess that this is going to be another bizarre ride on the Coen Bros Express. But it's not as weird as it is simplistic, a meticulous tale that's taken to every inch of its breaking point.

The theory behind Roland Emmerich's latest disaster movie is vaguely interesting. According to the Mayan calendar (gee, that looks so stupid in writing) the world will end in the year 2012. A frighteningly large number of people actually believe this and are busy preparing for the fire, flood and all. An equally vast contingent of people of the New Age variety believe 2012 will bring a shift in consciousness, and we will all get along together in a more friendly way forever after.
In a few years time something will happen because people believe it will – be that mass suicides, or mass yoga practices. The level of intrigue for most of us is probably on a par with our interest in who wins American Idol. 2012, however, is such a nothing nothingness of a film that it should be consigned to a pile marked “unreviewable,” so there's little to say in the face of all its tired old silliness.

Ah Richard Kelly, he would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those pesky portals to another dimension. The writer-director was handed a big box of his own when his debut, Donnie Darko, drew in enthusiastic crowds. It's a box filled with plenty of responsibility and a whole lot of money. And at 25 years-old, Kelly had been so convinced the movie would sink that he entered Harvard Law School.
Initially critics didn't get Donnie Darko and Sundance didn't care. Success came from word-of-mouth excitement and since then, it seems like Kelly's been holed up, pondering exactly why Donnie Darko made it big. Somehow, he figured it was all down to those shimmery, stretchy portals – rather than the characters, atmosphere or writing. Kelly's second film, Southland Tales, was plain nuts. But The Box has many elements of what made Donnie Darko genius.

OK, let me say this right off the bat: The Fourth Kind is the biggest hoax of the year. Immediately raising the bar for believability sky high, Milla Jovovich saunters towards us in the film's opening to convey that she will be playing the “real” Dr. Abigail Tyler and that some of the “real” archival footage may prove disturbing. The movie then slams down to Earth, falling flat on its face.
Shot in Bulgaria, The Fourth Kind is basically another Paranormal Activity or Blair Witch, but with a bigger budget. Both director (Olatunde Osunsanmi) and Jovovich tell us on camera, “Here are the facts; it is now yours to decide.” The real facts are that in Nome, Alaska between 1960 and 2004 more than 20 people mysteriously died, or vanished. The FBI concluded that “excessive alcohol consumption and a harsh winter climate” were to blame for the disappearances, though a serial killer hadn't been ruled out. This still left many unanswered questions and nine unrecovered bodies. From that, The Fourth Kind postulates that Nome is the epicenter for alien abduction, and not the ET-friendly kind, but rather the murderous-evil-white-light probing kind. Phoniness, however, overrides any hope for realism.