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It's got plenty of teen angst, romance with vampires and werewolves and other Hollywood horrors that our brave teenage heroine, Bella Swan, has to face.
"New Moon" is a classic Hollywood blockbuster that sweeps us into a fantasy world that we happily live in for a few hours and then dream about for many more.
Well, I saw a very different movie Friday, one with a much braver heroine who faces horrors that are far more terrifying than anything Bella has to go through. It isn't escape, it's something much more.
"Precious" is an amazing and devastating movie about the lives of people Hollywood never looks at, never seems to care about.
Claireece Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is 16, poor, black, pregnant with her father's baby for the second time, incredibly obese and living with a mother (Mo'Nique) who abuses her in every way you can imagine and some you can't.
She lives in Harlem in a depressing apartment, where her mother sits all day watching television and spewing abuse at her daughter.
Precious spends a lot of her time fantasizing about being in the middle of a music video, wearing splashy gowns and being romanced by handsome young men. When she looks in the mirror, she sees a pretty, thin, white girl with long blonde hair.
It's her way of surviving the brutal and hopeless world in which she lives. A world that seems to have no escape.
It all sounds pretty harrowing, and it is. Lots of of people live this way, with little if any hope, so angry and demoralized they are in no position to grab hold of the rope that is occasionally thrown their way.
Precious is lucky. She somehow manages to hold on to that rope.
Expelled from school because she's pregnant (it's 1987), Precious is lucky to have a math teacher who sees that she's good in math and recommends her for an alternative school and a principal who works to get her in.
Neither are heroes necessarily, they just haven't totally lost their own faith.
This movie does not believe in miracles. Precious' evolution toward hope is slow and confusing. Her anger does not suddenly turn into a strength, her mother does not see the light one day, Precious does not end up in a music video.
But she does survive and in her very small way, she triumphs.
What I especially liked about "Precious" was that it tries to understand everyone, even Precious' horrible mother. It doesn't excuse her behavior but makes it sadly understandable.
This movie is about the pathology of poverty, how it can make people do stupid and horrible things.
The performances here are incredible. Mo'Nique is so profoundly amazing in her role as the abusive mother I don't know how to describe it.
She is a monster throughout much of the movie but so much more, too. Her long, harrowing scene at the end of the movie as she tries to explain herself packs an enormous emotional punch but also feels very real.
Sidibe gives a more subtle performance, but one that is deep, powerfully nuanced and real. She turns Precious into a complex and strong person, but she doesn't become a Hollywood heroine.
Every time I thought the movie, directed masterfully by Lee Daniels, was going to take an obvious turn — look, Precious can sing, she's getting a record deal, or look, she can write, we're going to publish her life story — it didn't go there.
Paula Patton is wonderfully understated as the teacher who believes in Precious, Mariah Carey does an excellent job as the tired social worker who comes to understand Precious, and Lenny Kravitz does a nice job as a male nurse who becomes a much-needed friend.
There's been a lot of hype since "Precious" won the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It's deserved.
Is it depressing? Yes, in some ways. But it is exhilarating too. We are seeing a 16-year-old girl who's been beaten down by the accident of her birth and is, for the first time in her life, given a chance.
The fact that she takes it is a triumph.
