Jo walks up to the cafe counter to order a coffee. She comments, mostly to herself that nothing changes. Melissa is sitting at the counter and hears her. She asks what she means. Jo explains that Jonas, the man she was just talking to, will wait to see what Bill does. Of course Melissa wants to know why. Instead of listening in as the two women talk about Bill, the movie cuts to him standing outside. He squats down and grabs a handful of dirt. He lets it sift through his fist. He watches if fall and contemplates the sky. Back to Jo and Melissa, we've missed the whole conversation. Jo has explained what Bill can do, but all we catch of the conversation is Melissa's summary, "So you're saying Bill knows what the storm is thinking?" We see how he reads a storm instead of hearing it explained. Show, don't tell, the mantra of any screen writer, demonstrated perfectly in the movie Twister.
Monster movies were always about conquering fear. In the 50s, it was mass social anxiety played out before us. Maybe even today, we are still working out our collective anxieties in monster movies. In Twister, however, it's just one character overcoming her fear of a single monster: a tornado. The monster comes and snatches away Jo's father. It sneaks up silently, stalks her and she must chase it down and conquer it in order to conquer her fear of it. Jo also has to overcome her own emotional hurdles with Bill, her soon-to-be ex-husband. Both stories may be conventional, but are interesting in combination because it begs the question, would she overcome her fears if she couldn't learn to accept love?
All this deep analysis is really tiring. What I really like most about this movie are the characters. We get to know them quite well by the end of the movie. There are a few that only have a moment or two, but in general, the characters are vivid and have their own life in the story. I love Dusty, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. I could watch this movie a hundred times just to laugh at his quasi-surfer dude character that always calls Bill, "the Extreme! It's the Extreme." Or Rabbit, constantly pouring over maps, letting everyone know that his directions are spot on ("Rabbit is good; Rabbit is wise.") I could go on and quote a bunch of other lines from the movie, but I won't, just to save you some time.
Also, to save you some time, I love this movie. Just skip all the stuff above and read this line.