Cloverfield: Not Bad
I could stop this entry now and just leave it at the title. I know it seems a day late and a dollar short to be talking about a movie that’s already dollar theater fodder but I thought this one deserved a nod. To be honest, “Cloverfield” had so much viral marketing I almost didn’t want to see it after watching a few of the obsessive Youtube-ite videos. But I’ll see just about anything for a dollar. Just about. So here’s my two cents.
Pros
Excellent concept JJ Abrams. Two thumbs way up…your nose! I believe that’s called “poned” or something. Anyway. I liked the point of view filming. I thought it gave the film a more personal feel most smash-up-the-Big-Apple movies lack. I was worried I might revisit the tex mex I had just consumed but the camera work wasn’t as unsettling as I thought it would be. Huzaah. The acting was alright and I thought the characters were believable. Again, rare to do in a movie about a city being schooled by a large, phalange waving lizard thing. (Oh, c’mon. That was no “spoiler”. Unless you live in a cave on Mars you had to have known it was going to be a monster. Or Paris Hilton. Whatev.)
Cons
Regular “Duck” readers may be sick of me singing this tune but I have to yet again: this movie needed major help with pacing. Even in an action flick where buildings are being trampled by the dozen we need a minute to process what’s going on. The events of the movie were so rapidly thrown at me I eventually stopped caring what might happen next. Its like the Rocky franchise. After a while, we just didn’t care anymore. I read that Abrams wanted to film the movie in 86 minutes, the same amount of time on a DV tape. I say, buy two tapes. I needed breathing time.
So…
Do I recommend this movie? Does it really matter? Are you all going to go home, make a pot of Mac and Cheese and watch “Lost” re-runs regardless of my pontification? I hope so. And I hope you choke. Anyway. “Cloverfield” is worth a dollar. Definitely. It might even be worth having the Scientologists come after you if you illegally download it and change the head of the monster to the head of L. Ron Hubbard. Now that would be fun. A monster terrorizing the City of New York. And then denying them psychiatric treatment. I smell a sequel coming on….
March 23rd, 2008 at 8:15 pm
i wrote about this on my blog when it first came out.
if it has a sequel i will vomit and not see it. i was pissed that jj left so much unanswered and out in the open and also it seemed the alien only took up a small portion of the manhattan area. it always seemed to be where the main characters were and that is unlikely.
i thought the movie was too into mass marketing and didn’t do a good job at story telling.
March 23rd, 2008 at 8:33 pm
True true. It seems in a movie if you have a speaking role you’re much less likely to die. And the action is much more likely to happen exactly where you are.