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Cloverfield Discussion
I don't get to see many movies with a 4 month old in the house, but I managed to escape to see Cloverfield. Stop reading immediately if you don't want spoilers. It's Blair Witch's first person camera work, applied to a small (for the genre) budget monster movie. The monster is cool. The little monsters are cool. The acting is sometimes good, sometimes awkward. The action is often great and very intense. And it will undoubtedly be the most hyped movie of 2008 until the spring blockbusters arrive. I really enjoyed the movie, but I'm posting this so you guys can have a place to talk amongst yourselves about this movie. Groundbreaking movie-making or just hype-making? I'm not sure. I'm also not sure my skull can handle watching it again- that jerky camera action gave me a headache. (Also, there was a Star Trek teaser trailer attached, and I'm almost ashamed to admit that I want it so badly it made me hurt. Please Abrams, don't screw it up)
You know, it's nice when 50,000 people from /. help a torrent out, but a blair witch wannabe ? What's that, like a piece of nothing aspiring to be a piece of shit ?
I saw the movie last night and I have to admit I'm not sure how I feel about it. The story was fucking incredible but I think the shaky camera was over done. It made my head hurt and confused the story at times. I think it could have been made with out it.
But I think my most concern is fuck the people. I want see the same story from the army point of view.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
I don't know why but I just can't seem to bring myself to think that this movie is going be anything groundbreakingly good. I've been watching rottentomatoes and the last time I checked the cream of the crop had it at 80%. I'm torn, but I still probably won't see it in theaters. The trailers just show you little enough that that's the reason I'm thinking it's just getting hyped, but hey I might be wrong.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
I loved it up until they survived the helicopter going down. I wished the movie would have ended with the crash.
I was expecting a rehash of the Blair Witch Project. Somethings that made it refreshingly different:
1) The main character, for me, wasn't Rob. It was the guy holding the camera. He was a complete idiot, but I loved him.
2) I thought there was clear character progression for Rob, from complete, insensitive jerk to heroic.
3) Clear resolution on the real story, which is Rob's relationship to whats-her-face.
4) Kick-ass special effects.
One caveat about the movie: bring Dramamine. Lots of it. I had two friends with me who missed the whole second half of the movie because they couldn't look at the screen.
Why do these monsters always seem to appear in cities? There's been so many movie monsters popping up in New York, Tokyo... eventually, probability dictates that one should pop up in the middle of nowhere. That's what my monster movie's gonna be about: a giant monster that pops up in the middle of Kansas. It'll terrorize a corn field and like two farmers.
Sounds like the internal code-name for a new Intel processor chip.
Good afternoon,
> I don't get to see many movies with a 4 month old in the house,
> but I managed to escape to see Cloverfield
Here's the trick my wife and I used for our "dates" when our son was younger - one of us would drop the other off to watch the movie and then go shopping for a couple of hours with child in tow. Then back to the theater where we'd do a hot driver swap, and the first to watch the movie then shopping for a couple of hours with child in tow. Then back to the theater to pick up the other, and we head off to dinner to discuss the movie. We took turns being first.
Take care,
cb
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
I can live with that but Abrams has already said there is no Lovecraft tie in. Thank god it wasn't Godzilla.
Offtopic Advice: I know there are some geeks out there that plan to have kids and some of you already do, CmdTaco. Pay attention because I'm about to give you some advice that you won't find in any blog or manual. When you buy kiddy shampoo make sure that you can tell what it is from feel alone. Make sure that when you are doing that blind shower grope the kiddypoo feels different from your conditioner. Trust me on this, you will thank me.
My fucking hair now smells like strawberry but on the upside it does have a nice bounce.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
I just posted a review on my blog: http://blakeyrat.com/2008/01/19/cloverfield/
... the monster sucked! All I can say about the monster is that it's a good thing the cast and crew kept it such a tight-lipped secret, because if they'd released photos of it I think it would have hurt their chances at the box office. Yes, gentle viewers, New York was being destroyed by a monster that not only had killer lice, but literally could not stand upright. Being one hundred feet tall? Scary. Waddling around on flippers? Not scary. The two even out to give the general reaction, "eh." When the reaction to the main character of your film is "eh" (and let's face it, people go to kaiju films to see the monster), then you got problems.
I'll paste the text here, but I'm still thinking of going back and revising it.
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The one sentence review: Cloverfield is unfortunately kind of disappointing, and bring your Dramamine if you're sitting close to the screen.
Look, I like kaiju movies. I like serious Godzilla, the Godzilla of the 50s and 90s. I like crazy Godzilla, the Godzilla of every other decade. Yes, even Godzilla's Revenge. (What? It's funny... don't look at me like that.) I like crazy Gamera, and I believe honestly that Gamera truly is friend to all children. I like the serious Gamera of the 90s, which are still pretty crazy when you think about them, just with more gruesome effects. I even like Garuda, even though it's not really in the same genre.
I'm also the first person to proudly say that despite its name, kaiju movies are an American invention, damnit. Even if you don't think King Kong counts, there's still this awesome little flicked named The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms which not only fits the genre's conventions perfectly, but was released a year and change before the original Godzilla and had special effects by Ray Harryhausen and was written by Ray Bradbury and you really can't beat that.
So what I'm getting at here is you'd think I'd enjoy Cloverfield simply by default, and I didn't really. It had some moments that were truly worthwhile, but the film as a whole just didn't gel for me for whatever reason. And it didn't help that...
Spoilers Ahead
The second problem is that Cloverfield doesn't explain anything. Where does the monster come from? I dunno. Why is it in Manhatten? No clue. How come when the little killer lice bite you your head explodes? Shrug. I'm ignoring the questions that apply to all monster/horror movies, such as: "how come weapons that can penetrate 20 thick reinforced concrete are useless against fleshy creature?" and "why the hell are they just standing there gaping when they're in mortal danger?" Even Spielberg's War of the Worlds gave a BS explanation for the alien's presence. (They buried the spaceships a million years ago, then teleported into them under cover of a thunderstorm... God that movie sucked.)
Cloverfield also makes use of the new popular technique to make movies and TV shows look "more real" by not using a steadicam at all. Actually, the entire movie is a first-person viewpoint from a camcorder held by one of the characters, which flashbacks provided by the un-erased parts of the tape he was recording on, so that when the camera jogs or skips you see a few minutes of what it recorded a couple weeks before the events of the movie. I thought that was pretty clever. I'm not a huge hater of the hand-held camera look like a lot of people are, but I do want to warn you if you're going to see the movie that this camera movies. There are several-minute long scenes of it pointing randomly downwards while the characters are running. There's one shot where the camera falls 40 to the ground. (I want to know what model that is, damn it's durable.) Unlike, say, I Am Legend or Battlestar Galactica which are filmed with hand-held cameras that are held pretty steady, the camera in Cloverfield really, really moves. I sat too close to the screen, don't make the mistake I did.
So, in short, despite some exciting moments, I think the negatives of Cloverfield outweight the positives and I left the theater pretty disappointed.
Comment of the year
Thomas Galvin
15 years later that child in therapy...
"Every time a movie trailer comes on or I go past a theater, I have to go shopping. I can't figure it... my credit cards are maxed..."
The problem is we're used to the regular monster movie. We see the government's point of view, we see them engage the monster directly, and we see them figure out how to kill the thing. In Cloverfield, we see some kids running for their lives, helping their friend save the girl he has always loved, and between the kids and the girl, there's a giant monster being shot at by army dudes.
It's not really a "giant monster movie" as we're used to, and I really think that's the problem most people have with it. I, personally, loved it. I'm a HUGE fan of TJ Miller (Hud, aka the camera guy), and I think it's funny that he's the only character to directly be killed by the monster.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
The whole point of the movie is that it's the raw, unedited content of a consumer video camera that was found and is now being used as a piece of government evidence for the Cloverfield incident. I think we are supposed to feel like we have been given access to the raw content by the government (because we are a part of an investigation or an FOIA or something...) So in that sense you just get whatever happened to be on this tape (or SD card).
That being said, I don't know anyone who is that bad with a camera; even a small handicam which doesn't have the mass to help dampen small movements. I mean seriously, it's one thing to not hold it still or to zoom in and out too much, those are novice mistakes. But it is an entirely different thing to not hold the camera level while shooting or to completely cut off the head of your subject. Sure, if you are running and forgot to turn it off, fine, but no amature holds the camera at an extreme "artsy" angle while they are actively filming something. Admittedly, the odd angle often composed the image better than a straight-and-level shot would have, but someone who knows enough to do that would have a steadier hand and a better overall ability to compose scenes.
As an amateur videographer myself I've had to sift though hours and hours of tedious, useless, and horrendous raw clips from a variety of sources, including my own and I can tell you that it takes practice to be able to get usable content from spontaneous events and activity. It's almost impossible to get commercial content without a lot of planning and orchestrating, and that's assuming that you've got experienced hands on the camera(s). I was actually filming one time when the plane I was filming in crashed. The camera was on the whole time (you can hear me saying goodbye and that I was filming my death) and except for the actual impact (where the camera blanked out briefly) and the part where I was crawling out of the wreckage, my footage is more stable than Cloverfield's.
Cloverfield's videography truly made me feel like a pro was trying to act like an amateur and failing. The move would have actually been better, in my opinion, if they'd given the camera to the actual actors and made them do everything themselves while acting the actual scenes. You would have at leas gotten shakiness that made more sense with the action.
Once I was able to force myself to swallow the fact that I was watching completely raw, amateur handicam content I spent the rest of the movie trying to build my own story out of it as if I was viewing raw evidence for something I knew nothing about (which was true) and actually came away liking the movie. My wife, who gets sea-sick at the drop of a hat, even liked it (apparently there was too much violent movement to trigger more than just a headache for her). We are going again today to take our son to see it. It's painful to watch, but I appreciate the fact that someone has made a different kind of monster movie than the normal formulaic ones. I especially like the fact that no one survived. That, at least, was refreshingly realistic. Some movies need happy endings. This one was better without it.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution