It is near Bella’s graduation from high school in Forks, Washington.   Her life isn’t easy sailing because Edward Cullen still is worried about making her a vampire and Victoria wants Bella dead (she is never far away).   Victoria is using a new vampire, Riley, to build a vampire army in Seattle.   The Cullen clan and the werewolves form an uneasy alliance to protect Bella.  The flashback scenes flesh out the vampire history with the werewolves and the Cullen clan.  The Volturi watch the unfolding events as they decide what to do (take care of the vampire army or let things run their course).  The film pushes forward the Bella-Edward-Jacob triangle as Bella must figure out her feelings.  She also is eager to be a vampire while Edward and Jacob have their misgivings about her becoming one.

ECLIPSE is an improvement over NEW MOON.   It has a good pace along with some good action scenes and humor.   Taylor Lautner is a more impressive actor than Robert Pattinson (who still looks too pained as Edward).   I hope there are some good deleted scenes for the DVD.    It was wonderful to see Jasper’s back story fleshed out and see the cameo by the godfather of Goth, Peter Murphy.  

David Slade is a good choice for directing this film.   The TWILIGHT films seem to find better directors with each film (and a hair stylist friend said the make-up and hair are better in this film than the last one).   The color palette is brighter than the previous two films.  Bella’s hair does look too perfect (because Kristen Stewart wore a wig for this one).  I do think Bryce Dallas Howard doesn’t hold up as a replacement for Victoria (I miss the original actress who played the part that had to bow out due to schedule conflicts).   Bryce does a passable job as Victoria.   Now I wonder what will happen in BREAKING DAWN which will be filmed as two films (but I hope not in 3D).   

This movie review is ©7-2-2010 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to lord_pragmagtic@hotmail.com