Source

Remember Me 2/4
Summit Entertainment, Rated PG-13

Remember Me is a suds-driven dramatic vehicle with a dollop of early 21st century Romeo And Juliet tossed in—not necessarily for good measure. And while Robert Pattinson, aka Twilight’s sexy vampire, may not be everyone’s cup of bloody brew, his cultivated angry young man persona which this story seems to have been custom built for pretty much upstages the lean plot line. In the end, the film’s title is something that, 20 minutes after leaving the theater, most viewers won’t be able to do.

Set in the summer of 2001, Remember Me is helmed by small-screen director Allen Coulter (The Sopranos, Sex And The City) and penned by first-time screenwriter Will Fetters, and their unfamiliarity with the imperatives of this medium shows. Robert Pattinson is Tyler, a poor little rich kid matriculated at NYU, who doesn’t seem to be involved in much schooling, but has plenty of time to smoke, drink, brawl and party hard, all the while boasting a smug nihilistic attitude about nearly everything in life.After having his butt kicked and getting arrested one night in a back alley by Officer Craig (Chris Cooper) following an impromptu pub smackdown, Tyler decides to get even by pursuing his daughter, ravishing coed Ally (Emilie de Ravin), on a dare from the mouth of his twisted geek sidekick Aiden (Tait Ellington). Love blossoms, as the dating pair discover what they share in common—great wall sex and family members who experienced horrible deaths.

But the primary conflict presenting itself is whether or not their extracurricular romance will elude detection by either a clueless Ally or her I’ve-got-anger-management-issues dad. Then there’s the question of whether or not the couple can co-exist, as each has quirks that take some getting used to, including Ally’s dessert-for-appetizer eating habit, because life has proven to be so tentative and she fears not living long enough for the main course, and Tyler’s justified but out of control rage against a neglectful, brash tycoon father (Pierce Brosnan) and tendency to defend his withdrawn kid sister Caroline (Ruby Jerins) from grade school bullying. His solution? To terrorize her classroom full of mean girls by tossing their desks around, which comes off even scarier than Pattinson’s neck-sucking obsession.

You get the impression Coulter panicked and, as if to salvage a wilting, less than tightly woven narrative with a dominant episodic sensibility, takes an emotional detour and shifts directions, doing a hasty cut and paste into what seems like an entirely different film. Though in no way is Pattinson to blame—He just feels far too big for this movie.

Source

“Remember Me” could have been called “The Many Moods of Robert Pattinson’s Hair.”

Scruffy, coiffed, combed, exploding like an M-80 in a haystack, flattened by sleep, wet from having a pot of spaghetti water dumped on him … this young actor’s follicles are the star of the show.

Pattinson (of the “Twilight” saga) plays Tyler Hawkins, estranged from his rich, powerful and remote lawyer father (Pierce Brosnan) and living in abject squalor in a Soho apartment. He’s angry and sullen and rudely smokes in inappropriate situations. He audits classes at New York University but apparently has no ambition or goals.

We’re led to believe that Tyler’s malaise is a result of the suicide of his older brother, but perhaps he’s just a jerk. It looks as if the actor absorbed all the angst-riddled mannerisms of the late James Dean but overlooked the humanity.

At least Tyler has a soft spot for his little sister (Ruby Jerins), a sensitive misfit who may be an artistic genius.

Emilie de Ravin (of TV’s “Lost”) is Ally, who witnessed the mugging murder of her mother when she was 10. She’s strong-willed and no-nonsense, which leads to some friction with her controlling father, an NYPD detective (Chris Cooper).

When Tyler is arrested by Ally’s father after an altercation, he starts dating her, mostly to get revenge on her old man. But he falls for her, and, of course, there’s that uncomfortable moment when she learns the truth. Here we discover Pattinson’s hair is compelling even after he has just been slapped.

For no apparent reason, Will Fetters’ meandering screenplay is set in 2001. But wait… didn’t something important happen that year?

Allen Coulter’s movie isn’t a total disaster. There are a couple of laughs, and the film looks fine.

But “Remember Me” is a romance that isn’t particularly romantic, a study of disaffected youth that’s just not affecting.

Source

What inspired you to cast Rob to begin with?
We needed someone who could embody a certain kind of angst that one feels at 21, and the complications and complex relationships that grow from the confusions of being 21. And Rob seemed in our initial meeting to understand that and grasp that, but have enough distance on it to be able to act that.

Source

Ever since the Twilight phenomenon captured tween (and maybe more than a few adult) hearts, it’s almost impossible to watch a film that features Robert Pattinson without imagining Edward Cullen sparkling in all of his James Dean-esque sultriness. But Remember Me is definitely not Twilight, as the first scene of the film quickly dismisses that notion.

Remember Me starts out in 1991 New York, where a little girl — Pattinson’s future love interest — witnesses her mother’s murder. Flash forward ten years, where Tyler (Pattinson) and his family meet on the anniversary of his brother’s death. Tyler is a rebellious 21-year-old who is aimlessly wandering through life and has issues with his father (Pierce Brosnan), a high-powered businessman. Ally (Emilie de Ravin), now also 21, is Tyler’s complete opposite, living life to the fullest despite tragically losing her mother at a young age.

At first, Ally presents the perfect way opportunity for Tyler to get back at her cop father for roughing him up. But this is a romantic drama, so after getting to know each other, the two start to fall in love, as they are brought closer together and connect via familial tragedy. However, their relationship becomes threatened when initial intentions become known and they are faced with the struggle to get past the circumstances that are tearing them apart.

The plot of the film isn’t all that exciting, but Remember Me is more about character development than narrative. Because of Ally, Tyler goes from being an angry, self-destructive miscreant to a young man who finds happiness and meaning in his life. It would have been nice to see a little more character development with Ally, as she seems to just be there to support Tyler’s coming-of-age transformation. In contrast to Tyler, Ally is a little too perfect, which comes of as a tad unrealistic; you’d think she’d be a little more mentally unstable, especially after experiencing such a traumatic childhood event.

Perhaps any further character development for Ally would have taken away screen time from Pattinson, and why would they want to do that when they could cash in on the current Twilight hysteria? However, some “twihearts” might not like seeing Pattinson in a role filled with angst, causing him to get into drunken bar fights. Although it shouldn’t come as a surprise, given Pattinson has recently been choosing roles that distance him from the Edward Cullen image.

However, those same Twilight fans can take comfort in watching a film that is 90-percent Pattinson looking broodingly dreamy. Remember Me is even worth a watch just for the few scenes that are a little steamier than we’re used to seeing from the PG-13 star. De Ravin makes a perfect co-star; it’s finally nice to see a female lead who can actually act and is worthy of Pattinson’s gorgeousness (sorry, Kristen). (E1)

Source

Can Robert Pattinson transcend his Edward Cullen character in the hugely popular, teen-idol-making “Twilight” series? The British actor is making a bid for a wider film career this weekend with “Remember Me,” a “Love Story”-esque love story between a troubled rich kid (Pattinson) and a working-class girl (Emile de Ravin). Audiences are guaranteed plenty of Pattinson’s trademark brooding, star-crossed melodrama and, according to advance word on the film, a shock ending. One critic has even said that “Remember Me” has all the makings of a campy midnight movie. Not exactly how you want your non-”Twilight” film be viewed if you’re R.Patz. Here are a sampling of critic’s reviews.

• “The fact is, “Remember Me” is a well-made movie. I cared about the characters. I felt for them. Liberate them from the plot’s destiny, which is an anvil around their necks, and you might have something.” [Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times]

• “…the script offers no tolerable explanation as to why, for instance, Tyler’s business-mogul father (Pierce Brosnan, sharp in a business suit) is such a cold SOB. Why Tyler’s kid sister (nicely serious young Ruby Jerins) is bullied by the mean girls at her school. Why Ally’s policeman dad (the great Chris Cooper, outwitted) behaves so inconsistently. Or why “Remember Me” goes where it goes with such staggeringly misplaced self-seriousness — a movie with all the hyperventilating hysteria of a 1960s teen-tragedy pop song and all the disposability, too. [Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly]

• “Pattinson already proved in the Twilight franchise he could brood like a baby Brando or Dean, but here, working with far superior material (by first-time screenwriter Will Fetters), Pattinson gets to sink his teeth into something more than posturing.” [Kimberley Jones, Austin Chronicle]

• “Fate sticks its foot out to trip all the characters in all the worst ways in “Remember Me,” a grave romantic drama with grandiose thematic intentions. Framed in a portentous manner with a calamitous ending that will only come as a surprise to those who haven’t been paying attention, the modestly scaled film delivers some moving and affecting moments amid a preponderance of scenes of frequently annoying people behaving badly.” [Todd McCarthy, Variety]

• “…I came out of the screening with an ear-to-ear grin I don’t usually get from even great movies. Bless you, R.Patz & Co., because this gloriously steaming pile is officially in the bad-movies-we-love pantheon.” [Keith Uhlich, Time Out]

Source

It’s not possible to discuss the most noteworthy aspect of the new drama “Remember Me,” a twist likely to provoke tears in some viewers and disgusted disbelief in others, without spoiling the film for anyone going to see it.

So let us just acknowledge that its final few minutes hit below the belt, and that this viewer — who despite many reservations was warming to the film in the second half — suddenly felt the victim of a very bad joke.

Those closing scenes aside, “Remember Me” is a partially effective romance suffering from some serious annoyances. The photography, for one thing, is almost literally painful to watch for two hours. The hazy images, with faded colors and background light frequently flaring so brightly that the actors in the foreground are obscured and look as if they were shot through a fogged lens. It left me fervently hoping never to see a film shot by cinematographer Jonathan Freeman again.

There’s also the script, which pulls a few muscles as it reaches for cleverness, and the grating performance by Tate Ellington, who plays the protagonist’s party-fixated roommate.

But there’s enough earnestness beneath the contrivances that some viewers will want to give the film the benefit of the doubt. Robert Pattinson, best known for playing a vampire heartthrob, and Emilie de Ravin, the young mother on “Lost,” are a couple of NYU students with wounded souls and difficult fathers. They meet under circumstances that guarantee trouble down the road, but give each other some much-needed support before that rolls around.

Some threads of melodrama surrounding these two pretty youths are more believable than others. One bit, the peculiarly nasty aloofness of Pattinson’s father (Pierce Brosnan), seems cooked up largely to give the young actor the opportunity to try (not quite successfully) to channel James Dean in a last-act shouting match. Chris Cooper, as the other father, has more credible motivations for his problematic behavior.

Though Pattinson shows greater range than he does in the “Twilight” films and de Ravin has more restraint here than on “Lost,” neither actor really musters much charm. For moviegoers who find them attractive, the angst and earnestness of “Remember Me” might be deeply stirring. For the rest of us, the movie’s irritants really outweigh its pleasures.

Source

I have been pretty stoked about Remember Me since I saw the trailer months ago, giving it my “two thumbs up based upon preview alone” review, which basically means it’s a must see. Don’t judge me for my prematurity — the movie stars Robert Pattinson (Twilight) and Emilie de Ravin (Lost), with makes it a mashing of two of my true loves into one glorious package of on-screen entertainment. In that sense, there was no going wrong.But then, somehow, it went a little wrong.

Tyler (Pattinson) is a fairly typical, comes-from-money rebellious youth plagued with daddy issues and a dead brother. Ally (de Ravin) is a smart, sassy girl from Queens with some daddy issues of her own and a weird dessert-before-dinner habit that I kinda love. They meet under less-than-perfect circumstances and fall in love in about 20 minutes. Then at some point they hate each other, but it’s OK because they fall back in love again. Drama, family problems and a plot twist ensue, leaving me a little bit teary-eyed by the time the credits rolled.

Most of the “dramatic scenes” in Remember Me are overacted to the level of a bad film-school project, and the caricatures painted for us aren’t always a whole lot better. For instance, Pierce Brosnan as Tyler’s father is the picture of a New York businessman: pinstripe suits, cliche office decor, you name it — to a point that is almost unbelievable. Despite my issues with the overacting and too-obvious costuming, the first 90 percent of Remember Me is actually very enjoyable if you aren’t thinking too much. Emilie de Ravin does a great job portraying a 21-year old girl trying to break out from her father’s overbearing rules, while Robert Pattinson basically offers another brooding version of Edward, minus the fangs and bloodsucking habits. I guess the filmmakers were playing by the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” rule, and truth be told, he’s a damn good brooder.

Though both actors are playing to their strengths and succeeding most of the time, neither stands a chance when they are in a scene with Tate Ellington. Tate portrays the funny, “normal dude” roommate Aidan exactly the way I wanted him to, without it feeling forced or cliched. I’m not sure how he pulled it off, but this unknown actor’s adorable quirks, out of nowhere remarks and sarcastic humor literally made the entire movie for me. I think I liked him more than Tyler (which was probably not the director’s goal), and I have the feeling I won’t be alone in this. The other surprise of the film is little Ruby Jerins, who plays Caroline, Tyler’s younger sister. She’s smart, artsy, honest and vulnerable, and Jerins plays the role of misunderstood middle-schooler better than I did when I was actually a misunderstood middle-schooler.

I’m getting too wrapped up in the acting, but like I said, the first 90 percent of the movie was actually quite enjoyable; so much so, that I forgot what I knew had to be coming at the end. I got all wrapped up in the love between Ally and Tyler, the deep sadness that brings them both closer, Caroline’s childish but relatable tears, Aidan’s neurotic humor and the steamy sex scenes. (Yes, I just used the word steamy.) Then reality crept back in, and it occurred to me that this movie is called Remember Me. The plot then twisted*, and I sat in the theater wondering if I was the only one who felt like the last portion of the film was thrown in during the 13th hour because the director didn’t think the movie was dramatic enough.

I wouldn’t go rushing out to see Remember Me, but it wasn’t horrible either. RPatz fans should get on it, because you’ll be swooning your little hearts out. And even if you aren’t on Team Edward, the movie is still worth a viewing just to check out Ruby Jerins and Tate Ellington’s performances. But take my advice: If you do go, leave before the end. You’ll have a much more enjoyable movie-going experience.

Source

In “Remember Me,” Robert Pattinson has temporarily stepped away from “Twilight,” apparently in search of his “Five Easy Pieces” or “Rebel Without a Cause.”

When Pattinson’s character — a wayward, rebellious 21-year-old named Tyler Hawkins — meets who will quickly become his love interest — a fellow NYU student named Ally (Emilie de Ravin) — he informs her that his major is “undecided.”

“‘Bout what?” she responds.

“Everything,” he says.

As a character-defining quote, it’s a long way from Marlon Brando’s “Whaddya got?” in “The Wild One.” Perhaps an earlier draft had him saying he’s getting a “Ph.D. in misanthropy.”

Pattinson may be on leave from the narcotic melodrama of “Twilight,” but he’s still in full-on brooding mode. The young actor has an unmistakable screen presence. However in “Remember Me,” he pours it on thickly and self-consciously.

With low eyes, sleeves rolled up just so and cigarette drooping artfully from his mouth, Tyler (like Edward Cullen) is a reluctant romantic. He quotes Gandhi in voiceover, makes love to Sigur Ros and (understandably) can’t be moved to laughter by “American Pie 2.”

His deepness runneth over.

“Remember Me” begins ominously with the Twin Towers lurking in view behind an elevated subway in 1991 Brooklyn. A woman is senselessly murdered while her young daughter watches.

When the film shifts 10 years later, the girl is Ally, whom Tyler meets through a rather preposterous revenge plot directed at her father (Chris Cooper), a New York police officer who roughed Tyler up.

Their meeting is orchestrated by Tyler’s roommate, Tate, played by Aiden Hall. But there will be no fan-created Team Tyler vs. Team Tate here. The roommate is an annoying chatterbox, whose comedic moments drag the film.

A sense of dread — hinted at by the movie’s title and intoned by Marcelo Zarvos’ score — is carried though the film, which is set in the summer of 2001. Sudden spurts of violence punctuate the story.

Long before the big reveal ending, one begins to feel “Remember Me” is romanticizing — even fetishizing — tragedy. There’s a pretentious reveling in emotional scars and painful loss.

Tyler is the son of a high-powered attorney (Pierce Brosnan), an absent father to Tyler and his young sister, Caroline (Ruby Jerins). Some time earlier, Tyler’s older brother committed suicide — the hurtful event that has given Tyler much of his grimness.

Heaviness weighs on Ally and her father, too. Cooper is typecast as an uptight, overbearing father, but he’s predictably solid.

Brosnan is the highlight of the film, again proving — as he did in Roman Polanski’s recent “The Ghost Writer” — his character actor chops. Tucked stoically behind a suit, he ably sports a Brooklyn accent in believable, confrontational scenes with Pattinson.

Director Allen Coulter shows the same skill in creating atmosphere as he did in “Hollywoodland,” but the script by Will Fetters (his first) is uneven.

The most pleasing thing about “Remember Me” is its boldness. It may be affected, but “Remember Me” is at least aiming for an intriguing character study — a positive sign in the young career of Pattinson (who is also an executive producer).

He may very well grow into a less showy actor. For now, Tyler’s response to Ally when she tells him that she’s 19 is the most telling.

“I can do teens,” he says.

Yes, sir. You certainly can.

PG-13, 113 minutes, **

Source

Usually, MTV News waits to bust out a cheat sheet — one of our handy guides to everything you need to know about a major film release — until a film actually hits theaters. But we already have so much “Eclipse”-related content, and fan enthusiasm is so high for Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner’s new film, that we’ve gone ahead and put together a cheat sheet for the teaser trailer of the third flick in the “Twilight” franchise.

Read on for every casting development, every cast interview, every sneak-peek photo and much more. With over three months to go until the movie’s release, here’s MTV’s “Eclipse” trailer cheat sheet.

Beginnings
Even before “Twilight” hit theaters, Summit Entertainment optioned the rights to “Eclipse” in mid-November 2008. By early 2009, with the first vampire flick on its way to a $385 million worldwide haul, “Eclipse” got a release date: June 30, 2010. Names like Drew Barrymore and Juan Antonio Bayona were tossed around as possible directors before David Slade won the job in April of ‘09. Two months later, we found out that filming would begin in mid-August and wrap in late October 2009.

Gathering The Cast
Obviously, Pattinson, Stewart and Lautner would be back for “Eclipse.” But filmmakers had to flesh out a new cast of characters for the third film. In July came word that Xavier Samuel had signed on to play a “newborn” vampire. In August, Jodelle Ferland was cast as another “new” vampire. Other actors like Julia Jones, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Tinsel Korey, BooBoo Stewart and Jack Huston joined on as well. But the biggest casting move came in July, when Bryce Dallas Howard controversially replaced Rachelle Lefevre in the role of Victoria.

“Eclipse” Stars Dish
As the months went by, the stars of the film started to share their excitement about “Eclipse” with MTV. Jackson Rathbone and Kellan Lutz spoke about their intense preparation for some fight scenes. Lautner revealed his excitement about working with a new director. Ashley Greene gushed about Slade’s gritty vision for the film. Howard admitted to the trickiness of taking over Lefevre’s role. And Stewart dished about one of her favorite “Eclipse” scenes. The list of interviews goes on and on.

First Looks
Shortly after the start of filming in August, we got our first look at the cast in action: Howard and Samuel locking lips. Slade also posted pictures on his Twitter account, including a stunning one of Lautner flipping through the air. The first official still arrived in October: Pattinson and Stewart together in a field of wild flowers.

Enter The Trailer
Word dropped in February that the “Eclipse” trailer was set to debut during screenings of Pattinson’s romantic drama “Remember Me,” which is poised to hit theaters on March 12. Early this month, Pattinson revealed that he’d already seen the trailer. The rest of the world can now say the same thing: the love-triangle-displaying, vampire-action-revealing trailer hit the Web on Thursday (March 11).

Source

A contrived plot twist undermines the best efforts of two hot young actors.

REMEMBER ME

★★ 1/2 out of four stars

Rating: PG-13 for violence, sexual content, language and smoking.

Related Content

• Link: Showtimes for “Remember Me”

More from Movies

• NYC ex-model sues over use of photo in comedy film
• Review: “A Prophet” is an education in brutality
• Review: “Green Zone” is Iraq war thriller
• Chavez thanks Sean Penn for slamming his critics
• Item World: Local news and views

The makers of “Remember Me” had a pretty nifty romantic drama going for a while there. Robert Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin cast off the ghosts of “Twilight” and “Lost” as New York City college students falling in love. They give it all they’ve got, and they are pretty darned charming.

Their family conflicts are intelligently sketched in. He’s mad at his financier father for being too distant, she worries that her cop dad is too smotheringly protective. Each is overcoming a family tragedy. The milieu is nicely detailed, with convincing, atmospheric locations in Queens, Wall Street, dumpy student digs and swank Hamptons vacation homes. The hip banter is well above average, and the supporting cast (Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper, Lena Olin) is first-rate.

The script has a playful way of tweaking clichéd love-movie scenes. When a flirty kitchen episode becomes too movie-ish, somebody gets jokingly drenched with a pot of cold spaghetti water, and it really livens up the scene.

But the project takes a fatal wrong turn by demanding that we wallow in a dramatic twist of fate. A seemingly inconsequential action at the climax becomes a profound life-changer, giving each character’s journey an unpredictable — and I would argue, contrived — conclusion. Director Allen Coulter is apparently aiming to create the feeling that we’re watching individuals in real life rather than characters in a movie. The device that screenwriter Will Fetters uses to impose that unearned gravitas on the finale left me feeling like he’d doused the audience with a pot of cold spaghetti water. And not in a nice way.

Source

The “Twighlight” hunk branches out with a new romantic drama that opens on Friday.

In the romantic drama “Remember Me”, Robert Pattinson plays Tyler, a rebellious young man in New York City who has a strained relationship with his father (Pierce Brosnan) ever since tragedy separated their family.

Tyler didn’t think anyone could possibly understand what he was going through until the day he met Ally (Emilie de Ravin) through an unusual twist of fate.

Love was the last thing on his mind, but as her spirit unexpectedly heals and inspires him, he begins to fall for her.

Through their love, he begins to find happiness and meaning in his life.

But soon, hidden secrets are revealed, and the circumstances that brought them together slowly threaten to tear them apart.

“Remember Me” is an unforgettable story about the power of love, the strength of family, and the importance of living passionately and treasuring every day of one’s life.

“Remember Me” also stars Academy Award winner Chris Cooper (Adaptation) and Academy Award nominee Lena Olin (Chocolat).

The film is rated PG-13.

Source

Well it’s here. The “Eclipse” trailer has hit and been graded, and now the countdown is ticking down the (112) days until the latest installment in “The Twilight Saga” hits theaters. We’re sure many of you have watched, rewatched, watched again and analyzed every last minute detail of the trailer, but we’re here to toss in our two cents just you don’t miss a thing!

The meadow scene. Oh the meadow scene. What a way to kick off the “Eclipse” trailer. This seems to be another one of Bella’s dream sequences since the visuals match up so well to what we saw at the beginning of “New Moon,” but there is also a chance this could be an actual sequence.

To read the rest of their analysis, please click here to visit MTV!

*****The following article has been placed under the cut for a MAJOR PLOT SPOILER discussion.

click to read the entire post