Movie Reviews: "Quantum Of Solace" And "Twilight"

I saw a couple of movies this week: the new James Bond movie "Quantum of Solace" and the chick-flick "Twilight". I ended up disappointed with both.

I was really looking forward to "Quantum of Solace", both because I thought the last Bond Film, "Casino Royale", was the 3rd best movie I've seen so far in the Naughties (behind "Serenity" and "The Dark Knight"), and because I thought it had a really cool name. It turns out they should have called it "The Bond Supremacy". I'm serious -- it's not the director's fault, but all the potentially good stuff had already been done before, and better, in "The Bourne Ultimatum". What this movie does is advance the story in a workmanlike manner; you learn a little more about the re-tooled Bond, but it mainly just sets us up for the next movie. I didn't feel I wasted my money, but it's not a movie I'd stop to watch again if I see it on cable. Overall, I give it 3 Goldfinger-inspired murdered Bond lovers out of five.

We went to the midnight showing of "Twilight" on Thursday night. As expected, the audiences were about 85% female; surprisingly, though, there seemed to be a lot of adult females as well. I blame this on the fact that there are lots of us Mormons here in Meridian; you see, the "Twilight" series of books has become quite viral among LDS women and teens, to the detriment of us Mormon men and young men. "Why aren't you romantic like Edward?", we hear. Being well trained, we resist the urge to respond, "It's because we're not fictional romantic characters written by a woman, that's why!" In any event, I was hoping the movie might have some good guy stuff in it; after all, it's about vampires. Unfortunately, it featured mainly lots of longing looks, along with a thinly-buried allegory about how people (vampires, in this case) can overcome their natural inclination to do bad by self-discipline. There were some funny scenes, however. As I left the theater, I came upon my youngest, who had been in another theater (couldn't be seen with the parents) ranting about how bad the movie was. "THX 1138 was worse, The DaVinci Code was worse, and there were maybe a couple of other worse movies, but this one is definitely in the bottom five", he declaimed to looks of agreement from the guys in his party and gasps of horror from the girls. I didn't agree it was that bad, but I did give it only 2 romantic vampires out of five. (My wife and daughter, on the other hand, want to go see it again. Since I met my quarterly chick-flick requirement with this one, I'll give it a pass.)

Update 1759 04 Dec: Here's a short video of my youngest expanding on his opinions about the movie.