Watch The Twilight Saga New Moon Online Movie Free Hollywood Film The Twilight Saga New Moon Watch Trailer English Movie Download free Wallpaper Video Songs Review Music Preview cast and crew It's been a few months since we last saw Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and her vampire paramour Edward (Robert Pattinson), and things are not as well as they might be. Though Edward still loves her in his icy way, Bella is having a miniature existential crisis at the thought of her 18th birthday, which means that she is older than Edward, which means that someday she will be a wrinkly grandma not up to his sparkly vampiric standard.
The Twilight Saga New Moon Hollywood Movies 2009
Hollywood Movie Review
And that's when things really get going in New Moon, a follow-up to Twilight that manages both to stay true to the nature of the first film and also improve on it a bit. Director Chris Weitz sticks with the moody Pacific Northwest scenery and intense romance but also infuses a zippy, poppier sensibility, meaning the two-plus hours move along swiftly and with more humor than the first film. Plus there's a whole lot more going on here, dealing with first heartbreak and a potential new romance and the villains from the first movie, and oh yeah, that pack of handsome shirtless guys? They're werewolves.
Those who were horrified by Twilight's tweaking of vampire mythology won't quite know what to do with the wolfpack, introduced to Bella when her BFF Jacob (Taylor Lautner) discovers that, as a member of the Native American Quileute tribe, he turns into a hairy snarling beast whenever he gets angry. Jacob is the proverbial shoulder for Bella to cry on when Edward skips town, and even though Bella takes to putting her life in danger constantly for a glimpse of Edward's spirit to warn her away (no, I don't get it either), she's clearly warming up to Jacob and his rock-hard pecs as well. Jacob and his wolfy brethren-- none of whom ever wear shirts-- protect Bella from leftover evil vampire Victoria (Rachelle Lafevre), who appears so briefly hear that she'll clearly be exacting her revenge in the next movie. But when Edward mistakenly gets word that Bella has died, it's time to shrug off her hairy new friends and rush off to Italy, where there are some red-eyed vampire royals-- among them Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning--anxious to get to know her.
Though it's what has earned the book series millions of fans, the romance scenes are the worst part of New Moon-- Pattinson and Stewart recite their lines to each other with dead expressions, and all the crazy, lusty energy of the first film has been replaced with a sense that the two can't wait to get away from each other. Luckily, they do, and Stewart and Lautner establish a much more relaxed, funnier rapport, albeit one that's so friendly you can't really believe Jacob as a romantic threat. Just as in the first film, the scenes with Bella's human high school friends-- including a sharp Anna Kendrick-- are highlights, and Billy Burke returns as Bella's warm and caring father, though perhaps a guy who should pay more attention and realize that his daughter is hanging out with the undead.
Really, all of the side characters are interesting and well-cast-- the problem is that we're stuck with draggy Bella at the center of it all. Though Stewart has improved a little since the first film, relying less on stammering and flipping her hair, she's still playing the most passive heroine in the history of time. Whether she's being dumped by the love of her life or witnessing a werewolf transformation, Bella never seems remotely interested in her surroundings, and not once does she take action to protect herself or those around her. Time after time one of Bella's supernatural friends jumps in to rescue her from some new threat. She's not just a boring heroine, but given her popularity among women of all ages, an actual setback for feminism.
Pattinson, in his brief scenes, matches Stewart in his lack of interest in the surroundings, which leaves Lautner to flash his smile, crack a joke, and steal a million teenage hearts. The film's best performance, though, goes to Fanning, who in about five lines and a dozen stony glares makes more of an impact than anyone else in the two films total. While Bella mopes around like a wet noodle, Fanning's Jane is a female character who actually bothers to do-- good or bad, we don't care, so long as it's interesting.
Handling the material with less instinct than Catherine Hardwicke, Weitz still makes the wise choice of employing a lot of moody pop music and montages to move things along, and his visual style is a massive improvement-- the sparkling skin of the vampires still isn't great, but at least it's not laughable now. The same can't be said for many elements of the movie-- the constantly shirtless werewolves, Jacob's insistence that being a wolf "isn't a lifestyle choice"-- but New Moon avoids slipping into self-parody by being a little less serious as well. It's impossible to have a truly light touch with the material-- Stephenie Meyer's writing prevents that entirely-- but Weitz's efforts result in a movie that's a little less insular and self-involved, though in the end, still probably one only the true fans could love.
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Assuming the audience has nothing better to do, The Twilight Saga: New Moon struggles to tell its tiny tale over the course of two hours and ten minutes as a world inhabited by vampires, werewolves and who knows what else is pushed to the side in an effort to watch as a girl is prepared to throw her life away following her vampire lover's departure. To think they could get this film this wrong after the halfhearted first installment is something of an achievement.
Kristen Stewart returns as Bella as she pines for her golden-eye, ice cold vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Unfortunately the Cullen clan has to leave town as their immortal aging process has become something of an alarm to the small town folk of Forks, Washington and Edward won't be sticking around. You know, for Bella's sake.
The decision results in Bella turning her attention toward Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), the mysterious Native American boy with the overnight buff physique and habit of stripping down to his jean shorts and running off into the forest with his boys. This, of course, is due to the fact he's a vampire-hating werewolf, but these are just minor details in the life of Bella and passed off as everyday occurrences. She's cool with weird stuff as one of the other werewolves says.
These two previous paragraphs take up approximately the first 90 minutes of New Moon — along with briefly reintroducing a couple of loose ends from the first film to add to the running time — before things can shift to Italy, and finally get interesting for 15 minutes or so. No joke.
I'm sorry to say this, but New Moon is a bore. The characters don't seem interested in what's going on and director Chris Weitz seems intent on making sure the audience feels the same way. When Bella isn't screaming in her sleep (over and over again, night after night) we are privileged enough to stare as she sits in a chair and does nothing as the months pass by. Months! And it feels like it.
If looked at as an exercise in patience, New Moon is a gem, but otherwise you are going to be nodding off fairly early. The presumed "love story" gets so bogged down in redundancy and storytelling miscues we never once care for any part of it, especially considering it is all so telegraphed there is hardly a mystery as to how it will all come to an end.
This isn't to say New Moon hasn't improved at all where Twilight failed. The action is a vast improvement. There's an impressive forest chase sequence that brings back Rachelle Lefevre as the vampire Victoria, and the moments in Italy where we are introduced to the vampire coven known as the Volturi are easily the film's stand out sequences. However, if you noticed the likes of Dakota Fanning and Michael Sheen as part of the cast don't expect too much as Fanning gets about five words in and Sheen, while impressive as Volturi leader Aro, isn't given nearly enough time to shine.
The effects are improved, but the same stunted performances by the disinterested Stewart, the waxy bore that is Pattinson and the amateurish turn by Lautner are all still present. Even Billy Burke playing Bella's father, the lone standout from the first film, is turned into a stiff. The life was sucked out of New Moon either by the lack of story or by the inability of Weitz to tap into any kind of real energy. However, to be fair, the story is so weak it didn't stand much of a chance and certainly not for more than two hours.
Fans of Stephenie Meyer's best-selling teen-vampire franchise were tolerant of the first film, and some may have legitimately enjoyed it, but I can't help but wonder how long they can remain interested if the filmed adaptations continue to disappoint.
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Every fifth or sixth word in my notes on The Twilight Saga: New Moon is ‘mope’. If there’s a more listless, disengaged piece of film this year I hope I don’t have to suffer it. (Actually, there is, and I did right after writing this. The guys’ flipside to New Moon: Ninja Assassin.) This second Twilight film is not a dreamy, thorny gothic romance; it is a stereotypical, unimaginative caricature of depressed teens expanded into 120 minutes. By comparison, Catherine Hardwicke’s creaky first film looks like a wise and knowing glimpse into youthful distraction and obsession.
There’s another thread that dominates my notes on New Moon, and which is really the crux of why the movie is so lousy: ‘heroine’ Bella (Kristen Stewart), who in this chapter is reduced to sub-character statues. She’s less substantial than tissue paper, but is featured in nearly every scene. Bella is listless and empty, devoid of any notable characteristic. She has no opinions and nothing interesting to say; her only characteristic is that she wants. But the object of her desire, the vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson, pale and grim), is equally as insubstantial. They’d make a perfect pair, if you were looking for a couple to fill out the deep background of a better film.
We open a short time after the events of the first film. Bella has been generally accepted into the ranks of the vampiric Cullen family. But her status as a human — that is, potential food — is underlined when an innocent paper cut leads to a violent family showdown. It’s one thing when your new girlfriend doesn’t fit in with the fam; quite another when she’d fit all too well on the dinner menu. There’s also the lingering spectre of rival vampire Victoria (the briefly-seen Rachelle Lefevre, to be replaced in the next movie by Bryce Dallas Howard) who, having been defeated in the last film, earnestly want to get her fangs into Bella.
So the Cullens, not to put too fine a point on it, fuck right off. Edward brushes off Bella in the way a confused teenage kid might (ironically making his action one of the few recognizable human moments in the story) and she’s left to mope around for months. Finally her eye lands on the newly beefed up Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), who hits werewolf puberty just as he and Bella are about to really hook up. Their friendship develops as she uses him to take her mind off Edward; she’s playing him along, and he’s too smitten to see it.
It’s a classic romantic setup, but new director Chris Weitz doesn’t get it. He knows that Bella and Edward represent grand romance to a legion of teens, so he smashes them together in the frame. But there’s no spark. He knows that Bella is meant to be distracted and wooed by werewolf Jacob, so he shoots Jake and his wolfpack brothers with their shirts off and pecs glistening, seemingly unaware of how laughable the crew is. Nothing genuine passes between any of the characters; you could mistake the film for a feature-length parody of the Twilight phenomena if you didn’t already know better.
Melissa Rosenberg wrote the script. She’s already a Twilight vet, having scripted the first film, and has plenty of experience with obsession thanks to her day job on Dexter. I’m told that her script is very much a direct adaptation of the novel, so I’m left pinning the blame for this snoozefest on Weitz’s perfunctory direction. At most, perhaps Rosenberg has to answer a seemingly truncated climactic sequence where Edward tries to end his life at the hands of the Volturi, a clan of bloodsucker royalty. (He basically attempts the vampiric version of suicide by cop.)
The craft in Catherine Hardwicke’s effort was definitely more rickety than what’s on display here; from any technical perspective this is a far more competent film. (Which generally means: more traditional, which is not necessarily better by any means.) OK, the effects here are better, thanks perhaps to extra dollars in the budget that were spent on shirts for the entire cast in the last movie. But when it came to the feel, Hardwicke got it and Weitz doesn’t. In Twilight, scenes between Bella and her father were touching, and Bella’s alienation was easy to understand. It gave her a reason to be drawn to Edward Cullen. In New Moon, there’s no reason at all.
Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson both struggle against the content vacuum that sucks the life out of the movie, but neither is even vaguely strong enough to put up the necessary fight. As Jacob, Taylor Lautner is marginally better, but he also gets the best material; he’s the only active, non-depressed character of the core trio. Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning offer a little juice as Volturi elders, Sheen even channeling a bit of Christoph Waltz energy, but it’s a futile effort. So too with Anna Kendrick, who genuinely earns a laugh or two. But after seeing her sparkle in Up in the Air this is like catching her sneaking in a bored weekend of community theatre.
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Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga continues with this darker and even mopier chapter. The relational knots of emo heroes and dreamy hunks are making it start to feel rather soapy. It may not be as sharp as Catherine Hardwick's Twilight, but it'll keep fans swooning.
Just as Bella (Stewart) turns 18 and begins her senior year in high school, her beloved Edward (Pattinson) decides he has to leave town for her safety. In a deep funk, she eventually turns to neighbour Jacob (Lautner) for company, but their friendship takes a twist when he starts getting hunky and tetchy and hanging out with gang-leader Sam (Spencer). But it's not steroids; the gang members are actually werewolves, locked in mortal combat with vampires. And she needs (and wants) to keep both Edward and Jacob in her life.
The plot echoes Romeo & Juliet (and not just because they're studying the play in school), which adds tension to the otherwise dreary events. The character detail and action-oriented sideroads from the first film are actually more integral here so, despite the long running time, the story has more momentum.
That said, it's still told from the perspective of a moody adolescent.
Even more than the first film, this is a movie for teen girls who feel weak at the knees over the idea of romance with one of these idealised boyfriend types: lovers and friends. The handsome cast members generate considerable internal angst as batting eyelashes face off against rippling abs. There's also much gazing off-screen and mumbled dialog, so it's a welcome change when a grown-up arrives to steal a scene. Sheen is especially good as the leader of the uber-vampire Vulpari, as is Fanning as his vile sidekick. We should get much more of them in the next two films.
Meanwhile, some nasty touches add texture alongside all the longing and yearning. Sudden moments of violence continually catch us by surprise, adding to the drama, as do hints about both things that have happened and things still to come. The only missteps are the jerky plotting and the cartoonish wolf effects; otherwise the filmmaking is lush and forebodingly beautiful, especially as it portrays woods that are lovely, dark and deep. And everything looks so cool it almost hurts.
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