This is Second Thought, a roundup of the cultural nuggets plucked from the endless flood of movies, books, television shows, celebrity-comeback campaigns, and takes. If you’re trying to keep your head above water, you can sign up here to receive this column every week.
First things first: Kristen Stewart, who played sullen teen Bella Swan in the “Twilight” series, has reemerged as an auteur, and boy does she have opinions about “Method acting.”
Kristen Stewart was the world’s worst teen icon. She starred in five Twilight movies alongside Robert Pattinson from 2008 to 2012 and seemed to resent it all. She refused to play ball with the glitzy world that wanted to embrace her; she was awkward, painfully self-conscious, and made accepting a People’s Choice Award look like waterboarding. The teen star seemed to have a massive chip on her shoulder, at a time when anyone else in her shoes would’ve been milking it and shimmying down the red carpet, happy to be adored by millions of teenagers the world over.
And you have to respect it on some level. She didn’t sell out after Twilight. She went on to star in indie movies like Adventureland, and Spencer about Princess Diana; she married a woman; and now, more than a decade after the Twilight saga ended, she’s made her directorial debut with The Chronology of Water.
I went to see the movie this week, and at the end, the guy sitting next to me reflected generously on the film. “It’s important for people to take big swings,” he said. The woman behind me, however, was less circumspect. Turning to her friend, she asked: “What the fuck did you just take me to see?”
They were both right.
