The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Catherine Hardwicke started the saga with last year's Twilight, a deliciously trashy mash of pulp and pop art that managed to take seriously its central lovers – doomy vampire Edward (Pattinson) and his teenage human paramour, Bella (Stewart) – while maintaining a sense of humor about itself. But Summit Entertainment chucked Hardwicke for the second installment, and her successor, Weitz, brings zero sense of play or sexual energy to the piece. It’s as if everything’s been buffed to achieve maximum banality. At the film’s beginning, Edward dumps Bella – like, the day after her birthday, OMG – and is mostly absent in New Moon, which turns out to be a boon. Bella, incapacitated with grief, turns to her old pal Jacob (Lautner), but then Jacob starts morphing into a werewolf. The digital effects here are top-notch (as were the ones Weitz supervised in his last film, The Golden Compass), and New Moon excels in two centerpiece action sequences.