What’s on; Cinema

Published:

(12A, 130 minutes)

NOT since Harry Potter first cast a spell over cinema audiences has a franchise based on a series of bestselling novels been as completely critic-proof as The Twilight Saga.

The good-looking cast could probably stare silently into the camera for two hours and fans of Stephenie Meyer’s teen romances would still flock to the multiplexes in their millions.

Thankfully, Chris Weitz’s eagerly anticipated rendering of the second instalment of the four-book saga is thoroughly entertaining and more polished than its predecessor.

Hunky male leads Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner spend an inordinate amount of time with their shirts off, the latter sporting a washboard chest and abs that must have taken hours of work in a gym.

New Moon is too long – 15 minutes of gloom and adolescent angst could easily have been excised from the opening act – but it’s unlikely that the target audience will complain.

Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg sensibly spends the entire middle act establishing the love triangle that sustains not just this film but also the next, Eclipse, which is due in cinemas in July 2010.

This is soap opera writ large, complete with a cliffhanger finale that leaves the audience teetering on the edge of their seats until next summer.

The love affair between teenage misfit Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and vampire Edward Cullen (Pattinson) reaches a crossroads, and the paths ahead all lead to heartbreak.

Edward and the Cullen clan – Dr Carlisle (Peter Facinelli), Esme (Elizabeth Reaser), Alice (Ashley Greene), Jasper (Jackson Rathbone), Emmett (Kellan Lutz) and Rosalie (Nikki Reed) – are forced to abandon the close-knit community of Forks, Washington, if Bella is ever to be safe.

“You just don’t belong in my world,” Edward tells his beloved.

Abandoned by her soul(less) mate, the teenager becomes a shadow of her former self until her relationship with buffed-up family friend Jacob Black (Lautner) takes an exciting new turn.

Bloodthirsty predator Laurent (Ed Gathegi) returns to deal Bella a fatal blow at the behest of vengeful Victoria (Rachelle Lefevre), but a new protector is there in the girl’s hour of need.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon is glossy froth, but it’s extremely well made, apart from some of the digitally generated werewolves.

The slavering carnivores lack the correct inertia and momentum, notably in a pivotal chase sequence.

Weitz certainly likes his musical montages, employing them almost back to back in the opening hour. But like everything else in the film, they are polished to a sheen.

Stewart teases out her heroine’s internal anguish as Bella finds herself torn between morose Edward and hot-blooded Jacob.

“I’m not like a car you can fix up. I’m never gonna run right,” she tells the Quileute tribe member, in a halfhearted attempt to ward him off.

Romantic scenes with Lautner smoulder just as much as with Pattinson, which bodes well for the next film.

(15, 108 minutes)

WE ALL want to do the right thing, but few of us ever put ourselves on the line for the sake of a greater good.

In the early 1990s, family man Mark Whiteacre decided to blow the whistle on a global price-fixing scam in the agricultural industry by turning informant for the FBI.

He was the highest-level executive in American history to turn against his employers.

By agreeing to wear a wire to various meetings, Whiteacre provided the authorities with that essential link to the boardrooms of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), where all of the decisions were made behind closed doors.

FBI agents were delighted as the case slowly but surely took shape, but there was something that their star witness was keeping from them.

Great chunks of his testimony and his snippets of insider information were the product of a fertile and overactive imagination.

He also neglected to mention millions in embezzled funds, one of the perks of his position as a company vice-president.

Steven Soderbergh recounts this incredible true story of bluff and bluster in The Informant!, adapted by Scott Z. Burns from Kurt Eichenwald’s book of the same name.

Whiteacre (Matt Damon) is a brilliant biochemist at agricultural conglomerate ADM. He has a beautiful wife, Ginger (Melanie Lynskey), who is dedicated to him and their children, and a rosy future.

A tip-off from a Japanese rival suggests there is a mole in the company who is sabotaging the plant, so Mark’s bosses call in the FBI.

A routine visit from FBI Special Agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) to instal a wire tap at the Whiteacre family home leads to a shocking revelation: Mark’s bosses are party to a worldwide price-fixing scam.

Brian is stunned and, after consulting his bosses, he and partner Bob Herndon (Joel McHale) prepare Mark for a role as a snitch, unaware that the family man is leading them all up the garden path.

The Informant! is a fascinating and at times amusing true story about an everyman who pulled the wool over the eyes of some of the US government’s most highly-trained officers.

Damon gained 30lb and an unflattering moustache for the role, delivering a tour de force performance as a man lost in his own web of lies, deceit and insider dealing.

A voiceover reveals some of the truth of Mark’s feelings as he imagines himself a hero in one of his favourite John Grisham page-turners.

“Didn’t these people see The Firm? Everything these people did to me, they did to Tom Cruise.”

When the truth about Mark’s actions is revealed, we begin to squirm in our seats as he attempts to dig himself out of a hole with even more fibs, but only ends up going deeper and deeper, past the point of no return.