Twilight

That Twilight is a barrel of tosh is largely an irrelevance. This is, after all, a movie that has trounced all-comers at theatres across America, has a hypnotically beautiful young cast and a plot honed to heart-breaking perfection. Based on the first in a series of best-selling novels by Stephanie Meyer, this is a vampire love-story.

Forks, Washington, is a wholeheartedly American town, and it's here that Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) lives with his family - who are all vampires (yes, even his father, the local doctor). Edward, however, does not bite. Instead, he wrestles with his inner-vampirism and looks perpetually brooding.

When Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) moves to town, though, her beauty is almost too much for him to bear, and the pair share lingering glances and highly-charged encounters before the arrival of evil forces brings them closer together.

At heart, Twilight is a tale of sexual abstinence (the vampire story really being a tale of lust, of course) so there is, you see, a very worthy message for the film's young audience. It's all faintly hysterical, naturally, but it's also rather lovely to see a new generation of hearts flutter as one over a new vampire craze and a fresh crop of young stars. ·