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Voici la 1ère critique d'Eclipse

El Guapo



Il ne connait pas l'histoire mais il semblerait que Bella soit amoureuse à la fois d'Edward et de Jacob. Il ne peut dire si l'histoire respecte le livre. Le début est un peu lent et se focalise sur la relation Edward / Bella ( leur futur) . On voit aussi beaucoup Taylor Lautner torse nu mais les membres de la meute semblent un peu mou. Puis on voit les Volturi et les nouveaux nés. Les effets spéciaux sont bons. C'est le meilleur film de la saga visuellement. Les filles vont adorer le film et les fans de la saga vont être ravis. Si votre petite amie vous demande de l'emmener allez y car à la fin , il y a plein d'action.

source spunk ransom

C'est un peu sommaire comme critique!!! il ne se mouille pas bcp!!

CelebrityBeeHive’s “Eclipse” Review (Spoilers)

I’m no idiot so let’s just preface this with no matter what I say about Eclipse, millions will still flock to theaters with their respective “Team Edward or Jacob” tees and make me eat my words. But, I’m happy to report that despite all the uber hype, Eclipse manages to serve up enough drama, romance and supernatural action to satiate most Twihards.

Ironically, it is David Slade, an indie director who delivered the most mainstream installment, and in my humble opinion, the best movie of the three films! Don’t get me wrong, there are some minor issues with it and Twilight purists might have a few words for Summit, I’m sure. The fim is broken down into three universal themes, one being the love triangle between Bella, Edward and Jacob; the second theme is revenge, which is a test of everyone’s loyalty, and the last theme is Good vs. Evil, which culimnates in an epic battle at the end.

Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg, condensed the best moments of the book. Jasper and Rosalie’s background stories were revealed. The Quileute creation story explains how shapeshifters called Spirit Warriors, were the original werewolves. Some character tweaks can be forgiven like giving Academy Award nominee, Anna Kendrick more face time. Victoria’s second in command, Riley, was given an expanded role, having more presence than Victoria herself, who just seemed to run around a whole lot. I was, however, disappointed that Alice’s role was so diminished that it didn’t seem as though she and Bella are actually close. It’s a shame because freaky, pre-cog Alice and her special relationship with Bella is one of my favorite story arcs.
But seriously, it was all about Edward and Bella’s romance and trust me, there’s plenty of making out. The beloved leg hitch scene is in and it’s hot! What I like about Eclipse is that there are finally conclusions to open storylines. Victoria’s bloody vengeance comes to an end. Bella makes her final decision to become a vampire after weighing all the consequences. The love triangle comes to a conclusion; Bella chooses Edward, breaking Jacob’s heart. But was there ever really a contest between Edward and Jake? I say no. Taylor Lautner’s Jacob (looking amazig!) however, was much more mature than book Jacob, keeping his obnoxious behavior in check. The much anticipated tent scene lives up to expectation. Jacob has arguably the best line in the movie. When Edward asked him why he was getting into Bella’s sleeping bag, he replies “I am hotter than you!” it sent the audience into fits!
There’s something for everyone so if interactions of the amourous kind aren’t exactly your thing, then there’s plenty of vampire-on-werewolf- blood-sucking-jaw-gnashing action too!!! I do have to say that dead vampires looking like broken marble statues was kinda wierd, and bordering on the cheese. I know, so minor. Even still, Twilighters will be out in droves to show love and adoration for their favorite Forks crew. So here are my final words: Eclipse, I’m in!!!

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Critique d'Eclipse par CelebrityBeeHive (Spoilers)

Je ne suis pas sutipde donc disons en préface que peu importe ce que je dis sur Eclipse, des millions de personnes iront au cinéma pour soutenir leur “Team Edward ou Jacob” et me contrediront. Mais je suis ravi de dire que malgré la folie , Eclipse a réussi à nous offrir du drame, de la romance et de l'action supernaturelle qui raviront les Twihards.

Ironiquement c'est David Slade, un réalisateur indépendant qui nous offre l'épisode le plus conventionnel, et , à mon humble avis, le meilleur des trois films! Ne vous méprenez pas , il y a des problèmes et les puristes de Twilight auront des choses à dire à Summit. Le fim parle des 3 thèmes universels , le triangle amoureux entre Bella, Edward et Jacob; la revenche , qui teste la loyauté de tous , et le Bein contre le Mal , don tle point culminant est la bataille finale

Melissa Rosenberg a condensé les meilleurs moments du livre .Le passé de Jasper et Rosalie est révélé . La création des Quileute nous permet de comprendre pourquoi ils sont métamorphes et qui ont l'esprit guerrier qui les a fait devenir loups. Certains personnages ne peuvent être oublié comme la nominée aux Oscars Anna Kendrick , Riley à qui on a donné un rôle plus important , et qui est plus présent que Victoria qui semble ne faire qu'une chose : courrir . J'ai été décu que le rôle d' Alice soit si amoindri qu'on ne la voit pas plus proche de Bella C'est dommage car la relation entre Alice et Bella est un de mes passages préférés.
Mais en fait , on ne voit que l'amour entre Edward etBella’ et croyez moi ,ils s'embrassent beaucoup . La scène de séduction est là et elle est sexy ! Ce que j'ai aimé dans Eclipse c'est que certaines histoires trouvent leur conclusion . La revanche sanguinaire de Victoria tpuche à sa fin. Bella décide enfin de devenir vampire après avoir pesé le pour et le contre des conséquences . Le triangle amoureux s'achève ; Bella choisit Edward, brisant le coeur de Jacob. Mais y avait il une lutte entre Edward et Jake? Pour moi, c'est non . Taylor Lautner alias Jacob (lest surprenant !) est plus mature que le Jacob du livre , veillant à ne pas avoir une attitude trop excécrable . La tant attendue scène de la tente est à la hauteur Jacob a sans conteste la meilleure réplique du film . Quand Edward lui demande pourquoi il se met dans le sac de couchage de Bella, il lui répond “Je suis plus chaud que toi !”ce qui fait rire le public!
Il y en a pour tout le monde et si les interactions maoureuses ne sont pas votre truc, il y a plein d'action avec les loups et les vampires!!! Je dois dire que les vampires morts ressemblants à des statues de marbre brisées sont un peu étranges . Je sais ce n'est qu'un détail. Mais les Twilighters sortiront pour montrer leur amour à leurs habitants préférés de Forks . Pour conclure : j'ai aimé Eclipse!!!

celebritybeehive.com via spunk-ransom.com

Merci Ptiteaurel
Ça y est les premières critiques sont là...ça commence plutôt bien on dirait....

Tant mieux parce que ça ne changerais rien a mon optique .

on va voir si ca continue

Early “Eclipse” Review Gives the Film a B+

The heightened tension of the love story – mixed with killer fight sequences – make “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” the best film so far in the series.

The film, based on Stephenie Meyer’s third book, works equally well as a love story and action film because of the first-rate work by director David Slade.

The love story continues the fight for the affections of Bella (Kristen Stewart) by her vampire love Edward (Robert Pattinson) and hopeless suitor Jacob (Taylor Lautner).

Slade manages to find time for all of the angles of this triangle to play out, culminating in a verbal showdown between the guys. The mix of serious tone and light comedy makes the romance interesting.

All of the scenes featuring Edward and Jacob work better than in the other films because Pattinson has such a strong handle on playing the moody Edward and Lautner has finally become comfortable enough in his buff skin as Jacob to be on an equal acting plane.

The director – with the help of screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg – balances the love story with well-staged action sequences from start to finish, including the final big showdown full of vampires and werewolves. Meyer’s book loads most of the action in the last third of the book but Rosenberg sprinkles the action throughout.

Bouncing from the romance story to action this way magnifies the tension in both.

Because there’s so much going on in “Eclipse,” the film feels a little top heavy with extra players. Bella’s high school buddies – and even the feared Volturi – have only a few lines more than the background extras.

Even with this small problem, Slade may have done too good a job. There are two more films planned in the series, but Slade plays out the romantic triangle and handles the threat to Bella with such skill that this could have served as a very pleasing finale.

The person who should be worried is Bill Condon, the director tapped for the two-part finale “Breaking Dawn.” He’s got a real challenge to make movies as good as “Eclipse.”

___

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE

Grade: B-plus

victoriaadvocate.com via spunk-ransom.com

Une critique prématurée d'“Eclipse” donne un B+ au film

La tension plus importante de l'histoire d'amour – mélangée à ces super scènes de bagarres – fait que “ Eclipse” est jusqu'ici le meilleur épisode de la saga.

Le film, adapté du 3ème livre de Stephenie Meyer, a su donné une part équitable à l'histoire d'amour et à l'action grâce au travail de qualité de David Slade.

L'histoire d'amour se poursuit mais cette fois ils sont deux à se battre pour l'amour de Bella (Kristen Stewart) : son vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) et son courtisant désespéré Jacob (Taylor Lautner).

Slade a réussi à trouver le temps de nous proposer tous les angles de ce triangle amoureux , qui culmine avec les joutes verbales entre les deux hommes . Le mélange de ton sérieux et de comédie plus légère rend intéressant ce triangle amoureux

Tous les scènes montrant Edward et Jacob ensemble sont bien meilleures que dans les autres films car Pattinson maitrise tellement bien son alter ego Edward et Lautner est enfin à l'aise avec le barraqué Jacob qu'ils sont sur un pied d'égalité au niveau de leur jeu d'acteur

Le réalisateur – avec l'aide de la scènariste Melissa Rosenberg – a trouvé le bon équilobre entre l'histoire d'amour et les scènes d'action bien jouées du début à la fin, incluant la scène finale pleine de vampires et de loups . Le livre de Meyer a mis toute l'action dans le 3ème opus mais Rosenberg a su distiller l'action tout au long du film

Passant de l'histoire d'amour à l'action permet d'intensifier la tension présente dans les 2 domaines .

Puisqu'il se passe tant de choses dans “Eclipse,” le film semble avoir un peu trop négligé les personnages secondaires . Les camarades de classes de Bella– et même les redoutés Volturi – ont quelques répliques, comme les figurants d'ailleurs.

Même avec ce léger souci , Slade a fait du très bon travail . Il reste encore deux films dans la saga , mais Slade a su jouer le triangle amoureux et a maitrisé la menace encourue par Bella avec un tel talent que le film aurait pu être le dernier.

La personne qui devra s'inquièter est Bill Condon, le réalisateur de “Breaking Dawn.” Il va avoir un défi à reléver : que Breaking Dawn soit aussi bien qu'Eclipse.”

___

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE

Note: B-plus

victoriaadvocate.com via spunk-ransom.com

Bonnes nouvelles tout ça !!!
Merci ptiteaurel !

CA commence bien.

lu sur allociné

Citation:

Il y avait 2 projections presse de Twilight 3. Samedi 19 & Lundi 21 Juin. J'ai été à celle de Lundi! Les critiques de cinéma/journalistes/fans voient toujours le film avant, c'est logique! Normalement il faut attendre une semaine avant la sortie pour pouvoir poster les critiques de film. Lorsque je suis sortie du cinéma, beaucoup de journalistes ont pensé qu'il s'agissait du "meilleur des trois". Bien que j'en ai entendu certains dire "Il ne mérite pas la moyenne"

Critique d'Eclipse par variety.com

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

It goes without saying that the faithful will devour "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," the third movie in Stephenie Meyer's immensely popular supernatural love-triangle saga, and also the one in which Bella must finally choose between her two beastly suitors. The pleasant surprise this time around is that the result finally feels more like the blockbuster this top-earning franchise deserves. Employing a bigger budget, better effects and an edgier director ("Hard Candy's" David Slade), "Eclipse" focuses on what works -- the stars -- even as the series' parent-friendly abstinence message begins to unravel. Summer release should reap Summit's biggest yield yet.

Taking a cue from the "Harry Potter" series, which maintains continuity on the writing and casting fronts while introducing a different feel with each change of director, the "Twilight" producers have embraced a variety of different visions behind the camera. Capitalizing on her indie sensibility and keenly observed teen insights, Catherine Hardwicke set the tone with the low-budget first film, with Chris Weitz expanding (and flattening) the world with his broader, daytime soap-opera style in "New Moon." Now, the task falls to Slade, who clearly understands how to work with actors while also demonstrating a welcome competence in the action and melodrama departments.

It's no easy task taking a piece of material auds already know inside-out and spinning it in such a way that individual scenes still generate tension and suspense. Slade sets us on edge from the outset with an atmospheric vignette merely alluded to in the book, as small-town boy Riley (Xavier Samuel) is ambushed and bitten by an unseen vampire in shadowy Seattle (looking every bit as ominous as Tim Burton's Gotham City).

Not much happens for the first 300 pages of Meyer's novel, during which vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) vie for the affections of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), with our increasingly impatient heroine determined to surrender both her virginity and her humanity to the brooding bloodsucker (to his credit, Bella's 109-year-old boyfriend wants to marry her first).

Slade and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg wisely intercut these puppy-love scenes with uneasy horror-movie jolts. After all, "Eclipse" builds not to a showdown between Edward and Jacob (no matter how often he takes off his shirt, the poor wolfboy will never be Bella's first choice), but to an uneasy alliance between the Cullen clan and Jacob's tribe of shape-shifters, united to protect Bella from the vengeance-seeking Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard, taking over the role from Rachelle Lefevre) and her army of "newborns," undisciplined but super-strong new vampires.

Rather than attempting to elevate Meyer's swoony prose to the level of literature (the poor scribe exhausts herself trying to find synonyms for "perfection"), Rosenberg's task is to faithfully adapt the material for fans in such a way that works onscreen; that means having the freedom to remove, reorder or completely rewrite certain passages. She also has to contend with "Eclipse's" muddled message -- Bella's in a hurry to be bitten, while everyone else is telling her to slow down -- and devises a nice graduation speech for best friend Jessica (Anna Kendrick) on the merits of not rushing into things.

Despite the somewhat simple-minded source, the producers plot everything as if it were a strategic game of chess, paying off earlier gambles -- Jacob played third wheel in the past, but gets the sexier kiss here -- while seeding future films. Of particular interest is a wide-eyed young newborn (played by Jodelle Ferland), subject of Meyer's spinoff novella "The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner," who serves as an effective tool in setting up the powerful Volturi's villainy for the two-part "Breaking Dawn" finale.

"Eclipse" feels the most cinematic of the series so far, taking scenes out of the lunchroom and Swan house as much as possible. Slade shares Hardwicke's aesthetic of using dramatic aerial photography to give the otherwise intimate tale a more epic sweep, and expands on it by repeatedly lining up the various clans like the subjects of a Vanity Fair cover shoot, their iconic group poses helping to make the movie seem as big as its following. Though Slade inherits "New Moon" d.p. Javier Aguirresarobe, his choice of lenses and shooting style (including a fair amount of handheld camerawork) gives things a more dynamic energy.

Visual effects have improved considerably, with no fewer than 11 companies working on everything from Edward's sparkling skin to CG wolves that realistically blend with live-action characters. A scene of Bella side-by-side with canine Jacob feels perfectly plausible, but nothing beats the sight of vampires and werewolves going at it in the climactic battle. If anything, the digital work outshines the other departments, with bad makeup, lifeless wigs and creepy contacts being the elements that disrupt the fantasy.

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117943068.html?categoryid=4032&cs=1

via robpattznews

Critique par hollywoodreporter.com

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse -- Film Review


Bottom Line: The teen vampire series finally hits its stride with an entertaining mix of romance and action fantasy.

It took three films, but "The Twilight Saga" finally nails just the right tone in "Eclipse," a film that neatly balances the teenage operatic passions from Stephenie Meyer's novels with the movies' supernatural trappings.

Where the first film leaned heavily on camp and the second faltered through caution and slickness, "Eclipse" moves confidently into the heart of the matter -- a love triangle that causes a young woman to realize choices lead to consequences that cannot be reversed.

With the momentum of a movie series that sees installments arriving like clockwork every year, "Eclipse" looks primed to be the most successful film yet in Summit Entertainment's franchise. The action is pretty much relegated to the climax, but it's nifty enough that young men may get into the series too even if "Eclipse" isn't their first choice on a Friday night. (Read about the fan frenzy surrounding the premiere here and here, and check out photos of the Thursday night event at L.A. Live here.)

The film starts a little slowly with its classic reintroduction of its main characters, heroine Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), more determined than ever to go vampire for her undead boyfriend; the gloomy dreamboat Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), an ancient being who still hasn't graduated high school; and Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), a perennially bare-chested Native American who shape-shifts into a wolf at a moment's notice.

Even here the film doesn't mind kidding itself. Edward takes one look at Jacob and complains to Bella, "Doesn't he own a shirt?" The script by Melissa Rosenberg offers a few more opportunities like this that wink at its own silliness.

Things pick up rapidly once intros are done, with the ramifications of the girl/vampire/werewolf triangle becoming increasingly intense for all parties while an outside threat looms over them all.

A crime wave has hit Seattle, a few leagues from the bucolic Washington town that shelters so many supernatural creatures apparently without any townspeople catching on. A series of vicious killings and disappearances tip off the Cullen clan that a vampire is creating an army of newborns -- newly turned vampires whose ravenous thirst makes them stronger and more deadly than "old" vampires.

This army recruiter is red-headed Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard, the epitome of sensual, feline cunning), who, in seeking revenge against the Cullens and Edward in particular, means to destroy Bella. Which causes Edward and Jacob to contemplate the unthinkable, a temporary alliance to protect the girl they both love.

It's like the uneasy partnership between lawman Wyatt Earp and outlaw Doc Holliday against the Clanton clan at the O.K. Corral in "My Darling Clementine." Well, why not a Western? "The Twilight Saga" already mixes together high school melodrama, outsider fiction and teen romance into a mishmash of sci-fi and horror genres. (Check out video of the "Eclipse" stars talking to THR on the red carpet of the film's premiere here.)

Since Rosenberg's writing has never been the problem in the series, much of the credit for the success of "Eclipse" probably belongs to the series' third director, David Slade ("Hard Candy," "30 Days of Night"). He quickly establishes a rapid yet unhurried pace, a willingness to let tongue perch in cheek and an unapologetic indulgence in this basic fantasy of every teenage girl -- that two high school hunks are in love with her and willing to die for her, except, of course, that one is already undead.
About Town gallery

The three leads shine under his direction. Stewart anchors everything with a finely tuned if not slightly underplayed performance that catches her character in moments of doubt about the course and the man she has chosen. Pattinson makes you forget the white makeup and weird eye contact lenses to concentrate on a person torn over his love for a woman and the sacrifice he knows she will have to make to stay with him.

But it's Lautner who nearly steals the movie with his ripped muscle and steely acting. He definitely has the "it" factor Hollywood always looks for. (The "Twilight" cast invaded "Jimmy Kimmel Live" last week; check out photos here.)

The high school scenes and those between Bella and her police chief dad (Billy Burke) are quick and light and doubly effective for not dawdling. The series' more peripheral characters are coming into better focus as well. The film delivers backstories for both Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) and Rosalie (Nikki Reed) of the Cullen family as well as the origins of Jacob's family, the wolf pack, without any of these flashbacks seeming like intrusions.

Speaking of the wolf pack, the CG wolves, huge creatures whose ferocity fails to mask their tenderness, are very cool, and the fight at the climax among wolves, vampires and one poor human is no letdown. It delivers the goods without overstaying its welcome, which is more than can be said about most CG movie fights.

Production values are aces with DP Javier Aguirresarobe and production designer Paul Denham Austerberry very much taking advantage of the dark, woodsy and utterly beguiling beauty of British Columbia.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film-reviews/the-twilight-saga-eclipse-film-review-1004101007.story

via twilightsource.com

Bloody Disgusting Reviews “Eclipse” (*Spoilers*)

There’s a scene very early in Twilight: Eclipse in which Bella (Kristen Stewart) and sparkly vampire-boyfriend Edward (Robert Pattinson) lounge in a sun-streaked field of lilies, swooning over each other as they deliberate the future of the most important relationship ever to exist in the world – namely, their own – and generally babble on about just how tragic and beautiful they are. There’s also a lot of intimate embracing, and fingers lacing through fingers, and…well, you get the picture. It’s a groan-inducing scene for anyone over the age of twelve or in possession of a set of testicles, and it instantly brought to mind the dreadful second installment, New Moon, where by the end I literally felt the urge to spear out my own eyes and force-feed them to Chris Weitz on sharp metal skewers.

Luckily, my fears of having to sit through another interminable two hours of Bella crying in a forest was mostly for naught – Eclipse is by far a better movie than New Moon, and that’s thanks to director David Slade (Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night), who understands how to balance action and melodrama in a way that Chris Weitz just didn’t. Where New Moon was a clumsily paced, brutally long-winded exercise that peddled in second-rate CW theatrics, Eclipse – while still at least twenty minutes too long and not without its flaws – is lighter on its feet and infinitely more bearable.

It’s not to say that Eclipse is a great, or even a particularly good, film. The CG “werewolf” effects still leave much to be desired, and the dialogue (the script was written by Melissa Rosenberg, in her third outing) still tends toward the banal and expository. It’s also bogged down (again) by that painfully leaden love triangle, which just doesn’t possess the required tension to sustain our interest. Sorry girls (and gays), but a key part of the problem is undoubtedly the casting of Taylor Lautner. Sure, he looks good with his shirt off (at least that’s what everyone keeps telling me), but his performance is mannered and awkward; like a cutout from a beefcake magazine, he’s all pecs and shoulders, but no heart. Quite frankly, the character of Jacob calls for a real vulnerability that Lautner just isn’t capable of as an actor, and may never be.

Faring better this time around is Kristen Stewart, who unlike Lautner actually does possess a shimmer of raw, human feeling behind her eyes. Left to her own devices, she has the tendency to bury this natural openness beneath a mountain of repetitive physical affectations that give her performances an ungainly, amateur-hour feel, and this tendency reached its grating peak in New Moon (not helped by the fact that Weitz’s film was such a poorly-paced schlep). Maybe it’s due to Eclipse being an immeasurably more engaging movie than New Moon, but here Stewart seems to have dialed down the mannerisms that so plagued her performance last time. It’s not an Academy Award-winning turn by any stretch, but it’s certainly an improvement.

Plot-wise, the film still feels rather unwieldy, with characters dashing in and out before you even knew you were supposed to be paying attention to them, and subplots being briefly entertained before getting brushed aside to give us another shot of a shirtless Taylor Lautner, leaning against a car and glowering like an oversized sixth-grade bully getting ready to steal some poor kid’s lunch money. Rosenberg’s biggest weakness as a writer here is her inability (unwillingness?) to excise the narrative fat from Meyer’s books, while also being far too indulgent of the “I wanna see Jacob’s nipples again!” whims of every pimply tween girl in the audience. The plot, ignoring all the underdeveloped detours, is thus: back in Forks after being reunited at the end of New Moon, Bella and Edward’s relationship runs into more problems when a premonition reveals that flame-haired, revenge-fueled vampire Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard, taking over from Rachelle Lefevre) is creating a Newborn Vampire Army to hunt down and kill Bella in order to avenge the death of her lover James. Meanwhile, Bella makes her best attempt to quell the romantic rivalry between Edward and Quileute-werewolf Jacob, whose quest to win her over intensifies. Ultimately, the vampires and werewolves must come together to fight off the Newborn Army invasion if Bella is to survive.

That nutshell summary really only scratches the surface of what’s going on here. In addition to the large cast already established in the previous two films, we’re also introduced to a few more, including Riley (Australian actor Xavier Samuel), Victoria’s first Newborn victim who leads the Army into battle; Leah Clearwater (Julia Jones), a female member of the Quileute tribe involved in some sort of barely-brushed-upon love triangle; and Seth, a pubescent member of the Quileutes played by the unfortunately-named young actor Booboo Stewart. (Yes, that’s right. Booboo.) It’s a large cast to juggle and Slade does his best, but in the end you can’t help but feel sorry for some of the supporting actors, i.e. Elizabeth Reaser (returning as Esme, “matron” of the Cullen clan), who stands around for most of the movie looking confused as to where all her lines went.

Nevertheless, it’s in the fleshing out of a couple of heretofore underdeveloped characters where Eclipse really hits its stride. In essence, we’re treated to a couple of nifty flashbacks detailing the origins of both hot-headed Rosalie (Nikki Reed) and “twin brother” Jasper (Jackson Rathbone). In the first, (possibly the movie’s most rewarding sequence) Rosalie is shown in her pre-bloodsucking days as a 1930s society girl, being courted by a wealthy suitor only to be gang-raped and nearly killed (off-screen, naturally) by he and a group of his drunken low-life friends. After she’s left for dead in the street, Cullen clan leader Carlisle (Peter Facinelli) finds her and changes her into a vampire, saving her from certain expiration and giving her the opportunity to return to the home of her wicked ex and dispatch him in a delicious moment of retribution. The second, a Civil War-era flashback, sees Jasper as a Confederate soldier unfortunately finding himself set upon by a group of lusty Southern belles with a taste for blood. These sequences, not only serving as welcome moments of relief from the weak-sauce love triangle, also hint at the more interesting side-road possibilities of the Twilight universe. (Reed also has a pretty great monologue that made me want to see more of her.)

It is, again, the romantic crux of the story that is ironically the most lacking element here, but thankfully Slade’s slickly poetic visual sensibilities and more judicious use of editing (thanks to previous Slade collaborator Art Jones and first Twilight editor Nancy Richardson) help to salvage the film and give it a real narrative momentum. He also seems to recognize the franchise’s particular set of limitations for adult viewers and, with Rosenberg (who, interestingly, originally intended for the films to have more of a tongue-in-cheek undercurrent before she was vetoed), gives this installment a “wink-wink” vibe which, while sometimes clunky and overly-satisfied with its cleverness, nevertheless helps to lighten the self-serious tone that dragged like so much dead weight in the last movie.

Sadly, a promising first half soon devolves into a “climactic” Newborns-vs.-everyone-else ending that suffers from too-quick edits lifted straight from the School of Michael Bay. Yes, werewolves leap and teeth gnash, but you can hardly get a handle on what is happening to whom, and when; there’s no real sense of space or scope, and thusly we’re lost in a jumble of CG fur and pale-faced smears. Which also brings me back to the effects – the “werewolves”, if you can even call them that, are really just oversized canines that stand in as examples of the worst kind of CG-heavy filmmaking. They’re on-screen, but they don’t possess any real weight, robbing them of any saber-rattling sense of menace in action sequences where that very quality is key to their effectiveness.

At the end of the day, Eclipse comes out far ahead of New Moon but falls just short of being the best in the series (that honor goes to the dreamy, intermittently-hypnotic Catherine Hardwicke-directed first installment). It’s true that in a series saddled at every turn with a cast of mostly-underwhelming young actors and a writer not quite able to get a handle on the material, the relative quality of each film in the series really rests on the shoulders of the man or woman behind the camera. Slade I feel was an adequate choice, but unless Breaking Dawn director Bill Condon can pull an Alfonso Cuaron and salvage the series into something more nuanced and artistic (don’t hold your breath), it’s all in service of a series that seems destined to gum rather than bite.

Score: 5 / 10

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/review/2483

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