twilight eclipse
As you may recall from last year’s New Moon review, I’m not a big fan of the Twilight Saga or the whole Mormon vampire phenom in general. So if you’re looking for a subjective review, you’re probably not going to find it here. But considering this is probably the best Twilight outing of the series thus far, you might be surprised at how much I didn’t just outright loathe this film.

Before I get into the good bits of Eclipse, however, let me first reiterate why I firmly believe this series is destroying America—teenage girls in particular. First of all, it’s repeated several times that if Bella (Kristen Stewart) has sex with Edward (Robert Pattinson) that she will lose her soul. No joke. Second of all, Bella is begging for Edward to turn her into a vampire, meaning she will literally give up her life for this dude. Thirdly, Edward is downright obsessive with Bella. It freaks me out, and I’m probably a high maintenance lady.  It’s creepy. So what messages are we sending to all the screaming girls out there? That they should look for an obsessive boyfriend who they should give up their entire lives for? But watch out, you wouldn’t want to lose your virtue by expressing your sexuality!

Anyhoo. Now that my feminist bitchfest is out of the way, onto the rest of the review where, as I mentioned already, I don’t completely bash the shit out of Eclipse!
 
 
Picture
I’m going to step out on a limb here, folks. Toy Story 3 may be the best Pixar film ever made. Allow that to marinate for a bit. While The Incredibles was, well, incredible, and WALL-E was breathtakingly sweet, Toy Story 3 has the hidden perk of nostalgia to go along with its impeccable storytelling, beautiful animation, and wonderful voice acting. While that robot flick fell apart once we reached the human space station and Up crumbled once old men started fighting with their teeth, Toy Story 3 is insanely solid through and through. It is so much more than a child’s film, which is ironic considering it’s a  movie about children’s playthings (Woody’s words, not mine)—it’s a cinematic feat that will likely touch the hearts and imaginations of all the adults in the audience while still entertaining the kiddos. Be prepared, though; you might even shed a tear or two…

Read more about the cinematic quality of Toy Story 3 AFTER the jump.
 
 
Picture
While most tikes in the '80s were wearing out copies of kid-friendly cartoons on VHS, the movies I grew up on were scary as hell. My father's genre of choice has always been horror, and during the decade-and-a-half when I had little to no say in the evening's entertainment, the two of us sprawled out on the living room floor and watched nearly every scary TV show or video released in the horror section of our local video store at least once. Being brought up on a diet of buckets of blood and boobs circa 1985 (blame evolution or casting directors, but they're notably different than modern boobs) makes me hopeful whenever I see a promising trailer like the one for sci-fi thriller Splice.

In those 90 seconds, I could still hold out hope that the genre responsible for the stupid shit that kept me up at night as a child (The Brain, The Gate, Gremlins) matured with my taste in film, offering solid scares but finding a way to work in a reasonable plot and at least an attempt at acting.

Does Splice deliver? More after the jump.