The Twilight Saga: Eclipse *1/2

Director: David Slade
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
Bryce Dallas Howard, Anna Kendrick, Michael Welch
Sarah Clarke, Peter Facinelli, Kellan Lutz, Billy Burke
Dakota Fanning, Daniel Cudmore, Cameron Bright

By this point it should be more than obvious that the Twilight movies are definitely not meant for everyone.
The minute you walk into this movie you should know what you're getting yourself into. For those obsessed with the celibate vampirism and nonsensical romance between Bella (Stewart) and emo vampire Edward (Pattinson), no force on Earth would be able to make them see that there is not a single artistic quality to be rescued in this movie.
Unless of course, you choose to think that Taylor Lautner's body has a classical Greek aestheticism to it...
Those on the other side who only see the lackluster filmmaking aspects of the saga will no doubt indulge themselves in a constant trashing of what makes this so inefficient and will indulge in quoting the terrible dialogue, bashing Ms. Stewart's utter lack of soul and laugh out loud at the way Pattinson delivers his lines like a parody of a Victorian hero.
This time around Bella is torn because she can't decide if she wants to marry Edward and be turned into a vampire, if she has sudden feelings for werewolf friend Jacob (Lautner), what to do with the band of rebel vampires coming all the way from Seattle to kill her and what to wear for the upcoming graduation.
Nothing of much importance seems to occur in this chapter and we don't really learn anything new about the characters to justify its existence. It feels too much like a transition especially for the casual viewers.
This feeling of inconsequence is best evoked by the film's initial and final sequences during which Bella and Edward sit in a sunny field while they mope about their love.
That the film begins and concludes in the same way, just reassures us of the fact that everything that occurred in between was merely an excuse for these tow to put some drama into their lives.
Hey, if they're not having sex, at least they can channel their hormones through murder huh?
What can be rescued about this movie is the fact that it buys its message in such an un-selfconscious way that to loathe and attack it would be to do so to a being so into itself that it would never open its eyes to anything else.
Of course this doesn't have any sort of Dostoievskian magnitude and the film is far from being a clever examination of anything other than old fashioned values and the need for abstinence in a world where sex is only bad if other people know you're doing it.