TWILIGHT Review

Bad Romance, Good Film

This film is hilarious, campy, surprising and honest about a teenager’s yearnings and is a deeply misunderstood film. This film is not about a romance. It is about a teenager’s thoughts, feelings, experience of romance.

Bella is treated as an object of desire in the first half of the film. As soon as she enters the school, she is leered at, looked over and hunted by the boys of the school like she is an object to be won. It makes Bella uncomfortable and we empathise with her discomfort. 

When she has her first real encounter with Edward, she is the one that is making HIM uncomfortable. Edward is uncontrollably aroused, so much that he disappears from her, keeps telling her that they can’t be together. 

Edward is an impossible romantic partner because he’s a male heterosexual character who is physically powerfully, well read, never sleeps, follows his crush to make sure she is safe from sexual assault, has a large, beautiful home with a large family who cares for him and expresses how he is worried he could lose control around Bella at any moment because “Your scent is like a drug to me like my own personal brand of heroin.”

He is NOT meant to be a realistic model for men. He is a romantic projection written by a heterosexual woman. Bella gains agency in choosing the impossible over the attainable. She is the Pygmalion figure, loving her inhuman statue and wanting it to be human. That desire for the impossible is so human and honest. 

I think the film and the book get a lot of flack from certain male audiences because it scares them when a woman wants the impossible over them. We are so used to films gearing towards male fantasies that they just can’t deal with the content and have to dismiss it as trash.

Twilight is knowing, aware of its absurdities and doesn’t care if everybody gets it - it connects to enough audiences that you know it reflects something real and honest. 

Currently on Netflix in Hong Kong

REACHER TV Series Review

Beast Mode

Reacher is an American male power fantasy that miraculously is self aware enough about the pleasure it brings to audiences. The character Reacher is Sherlock spliced with Rambo and there is something iconic about the character that makes it more powerful and fun than a run of the mill action thriller.

The series Reacher choreographs the violence viscerally - Bones and necks crunch in a satisfying way. Actor Alan Ritchson fills the frame as the massive, ex-military hobo. What is equally exciting is the inhuman deduction and detective work that Reacher is able to pull off. There is a thrill to the way Reacher prepares for an assault or figures out the labyrinth plot.

The creators of Reacher the series also makes sure they take care of the supporting cast, giving them compelling scenes and interactions so that it is not just about a one man assault. Roscoe Conklin and Oscar Finlay performed by Willa Fitzgerald and Malcolm Goodwin are almost as compelling as Reacher and they have good chemistry on screen.

It has been a while since there was a good action thriller and Reacher fills that void. 

On Amazon Prime Video in Hong Kong

Reacher TV Trailer

WEST SIDE STORY (2021) Review

Shame about the romance

When I think about Steven Spielberg’s version of West Side Story, I get irritated. It was so close to greatness. The opening sequence was brilliant, bold. The sense of a community cracking under pressure, young men and women with passions and desires and hormones ricocheting around as their world decays around them - that desperation was palpable and vivid in a way that made this film adaption feel necessary. 

The source of my irritation is Tony. Ansel Elgort LOOKS like he should be the ideal Tony. Tall, a bit dopey. Somehow though there was no sense of breathless urgency and need between Tony and Maria. 

The meeting between Tony and Maria was shot beautifully yet somehow I didn’t believe Ansel Elgort’s Tony being starstruck. I believed Rachel Zegler’s Maria because there’s an innocence and exuberance and curiosity. Elgort’s Tony looked blandly interested. 

There was no vulnerability, no goofiness, no purity in this Tony. He just wasn’t giving the level of energy, vibrancy and passion that the other characters had. To quote a friend, “he seems like he doesn’t have the life experience of loving another person.”

And that hobbles this version of West Side Story for me. I wanted to love it so much but as the story continued, I was just getting less and less invested. When Mike Faist’s tragic yet driven Riff and David Alvarez’s protective and angry Bernado died, so did a lot of my investment in the story. When Ariana Debose’s charismatic, powerful Anita got assaulted and appalled, I wanted to leave the film with her. Rachel Zegler managed to end the film strongly but I could not summon the empathy to care over the lifeless performance of Ansel Elgort. 

On Disney+