She Blinded Me with Magic

Even after the final installment was released this past fall, the "Twilight Effect" remains in play. What began as an attempt to follow up on the success of the Harry Potter franchise with a more romantic-based supernatural story has inspired dozens of literary and a few film clones, each one hoping to match the popularity of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, which has grossed billions worldwide. Now that the atrocious vampire/werewolf/boring-as-hell-human romance has reached its conclusion, studios are desperate to recoup some of the money that that supernatural romance genre has brought in. Unfortunately success has been directly inverse to quality. The Twilight flicks were just horrible; even fans of them won't champion their storytelling, visual effects or even acting. But despite their collective ineptitude, the series became a major financial success, while far superior titles like I am Number Four floundered to find an audience.

You might not find a more cute couple in 2013.

The same is sadly true for Beautiful Creatures, a good movie based on a popular teen fiction series that failed to make much of an impact over President's Day weekend. Based on the books by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, the story tells of a normal boy named Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich), who feels trapped in the tiny, ass-end-of-nowhere town of Gatlin, South Carolina. His biggest hope is to go to college far away and escape this small town, but meanwhile he still has two more years of high school to get through. As he is about to start his junior year of high school, he runs into the new girl in town, Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert), who bears a striking resemblance to a faceless girl he has been seeing in recurring dreams. As Ethan pursues her companionship, he learns of her dark secret; she's a Caster, gifted with magical abilities but soon to undergo the "Claiming", in which her soul will be claimed either by the powers of light or dark. She's afraid of becoming a Dark Caster, and doesn't want to hurt Ethan if that comes to pass. But he refuses to give up on her, and the pair seek out a way to guarantee that she will not follow the dark path. But an evil sorceress (Emma Thompson) will stop at nothing to guarantee Lena's descent into darkness.

To beat evil curses, nothing beats checking out your local library!

There are a few reasons that Beautiful Creatures is far better than many supernatural romances. One is the excellent setting. The tiny (and fictional) town of Gatlin is precisely the kind of place you would expect nothing of value to happen. It's the place of small minds, religious zealotry and book banning, and director Richard LaGravenese (who also adapted the screenplay) manages to emulate this prohibitive environment without condemning the entire population to stereotypes or cliches. Instead the characters actually feel like real-life people, from the bible-thumping conservatives to the rebellious teens trying to expand their horizons to the small-minded folk caught up in reenacting the minor Civil War battle that took place nearby. Setting a supernatural plot in this location is borderline genius, and while the heavy southern accents can get a bit distracting at times, they also add to the film's charm.

As Inspector Gadget might exclaim: Wowsers.

And charm is Beautiful Creatures' main draw, especially when it comes to young leads Ehrenreich and Englert. Both have emerged onto the scene recently, and the pair have both supreme acting talents and excellent onscreen chemistry. Ehrenreich narrates large parts of the story, and is a natural showman in that regard, expressing both drama and humor with equal aplomb. Englert meanwhile manages to thread that line between spooky and charming with apparent ease. They alone would be worth the price of admission, but they are have the benefit of being surrounded by a bevy of talented support staff, including Jeremy Irons, Emma Thompson, Viola Davis and Emmy Rossum. Each has their own addition to make to the story, and while some characters were not as thoroughly explored as I would have liked (perhaps intended for use in sequels), there really isn't a weak member of the bunch. Unfortunately, what ARE a little weak are some illogical plot threads that result from some rushing (seriously, the whole thing was an hour and a half. You couldn't pad the story a little more?), and while the ending isn't TOO pat, the flimsy switcharoo that ultimately saves the day definitely comes off as somewhat trite.

If your girlfriend starts doing this, run.

Mediocre endings aside, I rarely had a dull moment sitting through Beautiful Creatures, a somewhat short entry into what could have been an enticing franchise had it not completely flopped. We may never know how the story would have turned out (at least on screen, the books are already available), but I definitely think that if you wasted your money on Twilight, the least you can do is give this much better movie a legitimate shot. The leads are charming, the humor and story work on multiple levels, and even the effects are far superior to almost everything else released so far this or last year. Far better than perhaps it should have been, Beautiful Creatures comes in at #4 for 2013. Enjoy it when you can get the chance.

Double Feature: 'The Words' and 'The Cold Light of Day'

Last weekend was something of an historic moment for Hollywood. While the beginning of September has kids going back to school and is often a weak time for theaters in general, and production companies shove out what they believe to be some of their less prestigious fare, a feat was achieved in the release of ensemble drama The Words and action thriller The Cold Light of Day. The pair of new releases added little to a weekend in which the top twelve grossing movies brought in only $51.9 million, the worst since 2008 and one of the lowest weekend grosses in recorded history. Both films featured rising stars and proven performers, so why did nobody turn out to see them? Where did it all go wrong?

Of the two releases, The Words was felt to have far more potential. Beyond the original story (centering around the harmful effects of plagiarism) that would on the surface appear to agree with the literary-minded set of Hollywood, this was a time-traveling ensemble piece that more than a few people expected to contend for awards this winter. Pulling it together is the talented cast led by The Hangover's Bradley Cooper but also featuring Jeremy Irons, Zoe Saldana, Dennis Quaid and Olivia Wilde, with Cooper giving a surprisingly soulful performance that stands far out from his previous, more light-hearted efforts. The only negative thing I can say about Cooper's work is that the script does its best to get away from him in order to tell the story; when he's center stage, however, he's electrifying.

Don't worry; you're not forgotten, Mr. Irons.

But if there's one performance that will be remembered this award season, it will be Jeremy Irons as the nameless Old Man from whom Cooper's desperate author accidentally cribs in creating his best-selling novel. It's funny how Irons has reinvented his career in the past year, with his success on the Showtime series The Borgias likely a major factor in his casting. The Old Man vocalizes wide swaths of the tale, but that's no problem; if Irons' throaty rasps could do all narrative voice overs for the rest of time, I'd never complain about them again. The work he puts in here is exemplary, and cannot be easily defined by a few lines of text. He's easily redefined himself as one of Hollywood's go-to scene-stealers.

Yup, this is me at crunch-time.

But The Words' rookie co-directors Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal just don't have enough narrative clout to make this film work overall. While most of the movie takes place in Cooper's present and Irons' past, a third time frame presenting the preceding events as a work of (maybe autobiographical?) fiction from ANOTHER author (Quaid) falls flat, although I can at least understand why the storytellers felt they had to go in this direction. However, the result is a choppy narrative that tries to delve too deeply into what shouldn't be all that difficult a message. Some great dialogue is wasted on a mediocre movie, though at least The Words was not the worst widely released movie to come out last weekend.

That distinction gets to belong to The Cold Light of Day, a low-tech action thriller that riffs off of the Bourne series without any of the charm and excitement that made those films such unexpected hits. The story pits an everyday guy (Immortals' star Henry Cavill) in an unbelievable situation; despite the extremely long odds, we've no doubt as to who will come out on top. When I first saw trailers for this film I was under the assumption that this would be the one to catapult Cavill into recognizable status leading into next year's Superman reboot, but apparently it wasn't even going to get a wide release in the states following the drubbing it got overseas. But with The Words as their only competition, it seems Summit Entertainment had a change of heart and started throwing the film at whatever theater would carry it. Honestly, they probably would have been better off going the limited release route.

Simply put, this is a dry, unoriginal action piece that has some decent actors rattling off inane dialogue and performing stunts that have been done to death in better, more groundbreaking productions. French director Mabrouk el Mechri certainly knows how to work his chosen genre (as he proved in the surprisingly good JCVD), but this movie has none of fun, charm and wit that is needed to carry a really good action flick. I get that every director needs to pay their dues until they get a REAL Hollywood job, but making films like this just because you don't want to give someone a shot just yet is kind of ridiculous.

The most awkward father-son chat EVER.

To make things worse, most of the veteran talent seems intent on cashing their paychecks, for all the enthusiasm they shrug into their performances. This should have been a big year for Bruce Willis, but between the last second delay of the GI Joe sequel, the "been there done that" of Expendables 2, and his uninspired performance here, it's been a mixed bag for the action star. Moonrise Kingdom has been his only legitimately good gig lately, and he might earn some points sitting across from Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the upcoming Looper, but overall this has to be a disappointing year for him. Likewise preening for the camera is Sigourney Weaver, which is a personal pain for me. In recent years Weaver has stopped caring about the roles she takes, and for every great cameo in Paul or Cabin in the Woods is matched by even more godawful dreck not fit for public consumption. What on Earth happened to Ellen Ripley and Dana Barrett? This used to be an actress I loved to see in movies; now she's little more than a famous face brought in to spruce up a sorry paint job. Finally, Cold Light does little to showcase Cavill as a potential action star. He's definitely working harder than his veteran cast-mates, but still lacks that special something that makes someone a movie star. Maybe that will change come Man of Steel's arrival next year; maybe it won't. But for whatever reason he doesn't have the inhuman strength required to carry this particular movie all that far.

Trying to hold a nonexistent audience hostage is not a good idea...

Hmm, normal guy whose existence is stripped away with the revelation that his family is not what he thought it was? And then in Bourne-like fashion he fights against all odds to retain his life, only to succeed thanks to highly irregular coincidences? Where have I heard of this before? Oh, that's right, that was the same story as Abduction, one of the worst films of 2011! You know things aren't right when you're copying the mission statement of a Taylor Lautner vehicle, but hopefully Cavill's career won't take the downward spiral that will siren-call Lautner after the final Twilight film releases. Cavill has the talent and potential to be a bigger star than most of the current "Next-Gen" actors currently working their way up the Hollywood ladder. Thankfully, nobody really sat down and watched this film, so he is in no danger of becoming the next Brandon Routh just yet. But it does raise yet another red flag in relation to the upcoming Superman film; with almost nothing (especially director Zack Snyder) pointing towards a positive experience with Man of Steel, can everybody involved in the project really step up and do a better job than they've ever done before? Because for that movie to even meet the insanely high expectations placed upon it, Snyder, Cavill and company are going to have to do just that. And The Cold Light of Day does nothing to allay those fears that it won't.