I’m going to be up front about two facts: First, I am an unabashed Twilighter, and second, as contrary as it may seem, I am a raging feminist with a vendetta against her future employer (i.e. the film industry). That being said, I have a few praises for the most recent installment of the Twilight franchise New Moon and about as many quibbles.

As many fans and film aficionados may know, the first film in the series, Twilight, was shot fast and dirty on a fairly modest budget by Catherine Hardwicke. Hardwicke was previously best known for her gritty portraits of teenage life Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown. After negotiations over New Moon fell through, Hardwicke and Summit Entertainment (the studio behind Twilight) parted ways. To helm the second film Summit turned to Chris Weitz best known for the bildungsroman About A Boy but tapped in part because of his mastery of CGI as displayed in his adaptation of Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, a film which unfortunately was so man-handled by its studio that the entire spirit of the thing blew away like Dust.

When Weitz was hired on many fans worried that with a man behind the helm the sincerity of the series’ female protagonist would get lost in the mix. Weitz repeatedly promised that while he had never experienced what life as a teenage girl is like, he does understand human emotion and that, according to him, is universal and thus within his range. Well, they were both half right.

Now, Weitz brought many talents to the New Moon table. Visually the film is beautiful, trading in Hardwick’s otherworldly gray and blue tones for rich, golden, earthen hues. Weitz also managed to reel in some of his casts’ more aggravating twitches bringing out solid performances from every one of them. Taylor Lautner (Jacob Black) deftly toes the line between brotherly and studly, Kristen Stewart (Bella) plays pain with just enough grace to avoid becoming pathetic, Robert Pattinson manages Edward’s melancholy charm with just a hint more subtly, and don’t let me get started on how delightful the “human” characters are. Let’s say a thankyou to Weitz on that one for letting Melissa Rosenberg’s script shine through. Weitz should also be applauded for his staunch refusal to cast anyone except Native American and First Nation actors in the Quileute roles, and none of his choices disappoint (especially on the eyes, those wolf boys are on it).

But, before you judge me a sentimental Twilight nerd with no real understanding of cinema, let me air my grievances. As compared to Hardwicke’s spontaneity and independent sensibilities, Weitz’s stab at the franchise delivers an all-too Hollywood slab of meat. The film is riddled with obtrusive advertisement (Volvo XC60 anyone, or how about Virgin Airlines—okay, that one’s just funny), not to mention soundtrack placement that screams, “Did you know we got Bon Iver and Thom Yorke? Did you hear them, huh, huh, huh!?!” Pardon the excessive use of punctuation. This is made all the worse juxtaposed next to the beautiful scoring by Alexandre Desplat.

Even more intrusive is Weitz’s over-use of CG elements. I’ll give the guy’s animation department props for fairly decent renderings of giant wolves and I’ll even applaud the Volturi fight at the end of the film, but at other times the use of computers to digitally replace actors instead of using stuntmen, or overcorrecting colors and flaws, deprives the film of the gritty reality it needs to support its fantastical premise.

Here’s my real issue though; prepare your war cries of “Feminazi” and “Man Hater.” Ready with your pitchforks? Mainstream Hollywood, i.e. the ones with dicks (read: the vast majority), can’t seem to shoot physically intimate scenes without hacking them to pieces and squeezing out almost every titular drop. I’m not making this as a claim for the ages, but I will claim this as it applies to at least the most recent few years of cinema. Yes, it was predicted by all those male film bloggers (heck, probably a few of the women), that some of us would piss and moan about the travesty of a woman being replaced by a man in the director’s seat, but here’s my explanation.

Any fan of the first film will tell you that the scene of Edward and Bella’s first kiss is about as steamy as a PG-13, fully clothed kiss can get. In fact, the scene was so steamy that Hardwicke had to re-cut it at least once at author Stephenie Meyer’s request. And why, pray-tell, did this scene work? Simple answer, the camera shot contained a clear view of both character’s faces. The camera stayed close in on a two shot showing every flutter of passion and instinct that crossed their faces. We clearly see the intense emotions passing between the two, drawing us into the heat of the moment.

Weitz manages to accomplish this (to a lesser extent) several times in New Moon but not in the scenes between Bella and Edward, only in the scenes between Bella and Jacob. In the moments of tension between the two, when Jacob’s hope for something more than friendship and Bella’s confusion over her feelings for him reach the boiling point, the camera takes that intimate, two shot position, allowing the viewer to see the interplay of emotion passing between the two. Heck, even the brief kisses exchanged between Sam and Emily are shot this way, hitting both Bella and the audience with the full effect of the couple’s scarred love.

Yet this model is not applied to nearly any scenes between the two characters that are blatantly, and passionately in love. Instead, the short-lived kisses between Edward and Bella are shot over his shoulder, hiding most of the contact between them. Now and then we get a cut-away to see the struggle on Edward’s face. There is no intimacy in these shots, instead the angles and cuts hack apart the bodies and emotions of the characters, erasing every last ounce of titular romance, which has been one of the key ingredients of the books. Most ghastly is their kiss in Volterra, which should be the most passionate. Adding to the poor angles and excessive cutting, Weitz layers on several cross-dissolves, as if attempting to imply a great length of time to the kiss. If passion and length are desired, let the camera be!

Unfortunately this is the norm and, from the standpoint that sometimes audiences learn to enjoy whatever gruel they’re fed, swallowed all-too-willingly by most viewers. It is too great a shame that Hollywood has become obsessed with hacking away at bodies and romance in its strange prudish way, which ultimately creates less reality and more pornography.

Whereas Hardwicke’s take on Twilight (which was by no means perfect) added something to the conversation concerning what messages Twilight sends its young female viewers, Weitz unfortunately takes a step towards retracting this. While his jaunt into Forks is pretty to look at and entertaining, it fails to say anything more.