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Weekend Movie Guide 11/18: Tyrannosaur Descends Unto The Breaking Dawn
Kristen Stewart learns the perils of too much stuffing in THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN - PART ONE. Image courtesy Summit Entertainment.
Twilight fans have been fighting like bats & dogs for years over the fate of Ms. Bella Swan. This weekend, it's the beginning of the end for the franchise, and it plays out like a nursery rhyme: first came love, now comes marriage, then comes the (human-vampire-hybrid) baby in the baby carriage. Like the rest of the franchise, Breaking Dawn Part 1 is sun & critic-proof. Twi-hard fans have already forked over plenty of cash for midnight screenings, and they're just as excited for this latest entry as the rest. And why not? Director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) told the LA Times the film delivers "an ecstatic sex scene, a grotesque birth and a telepathic conversation among CG werewolves ". Oh, for a world of gods and monsters...
Prime yourself for next week's familial awkwardness with The Descendants, a more adult affair from Alexander Payne (Sideways). The literary adaptation stars George Clooney as a Hawaiian landowner struggling to rein in his daughters in the aftermath of a boating accident. If that wasn't enough tropical maladies, his eldest daughter informs him his now-comatose wife was cheating on him. Another Happy Day puts the lens on an even more dysfunctional family, albeit one with a higher star quotient: Kate Bosworth, Ellen Burstyn, Thomas Haden Church, George Kennedy & Demi Moore. The sulky sibling wedding drama had a few happy days at Sundance, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize & took home the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.
Tyrannosaur digs deep into dark secrets of alcoholism, spousal abuse & unlikely opportunities for redemption. The muted British drama is the feature debut of actor-turned-writer-director Paddy Considine (one of "The Andys" from Hot Fuzz). Dog Sweat continues the wave of Iranian youth in revolt films like Circumstance & No One Knows About Persian Cats. Unlike those films, Dog Sweat was shot quick & dirty without any authorization on the streets of Tehran. Writer-director-producer-editor Hossein Keshavarz's grainy, cinema-verite style is born of legal necessity, but also hearkens to Iranian art-film antecedents like Abbas Kiarostami (Close-Up).
That's all for this week. See you at the movies!
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