Movie Details
| Title: | Cloverfield | |
| Director: | Matt Reeves | |
| Year: | 2008 | |
| Genre: | Monster | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 06.21.08 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (4)
- The Batman
- Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
- Let Me In
- War for the Planet of the Apes
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 06.21.08 | Internet | So... seeing this after all the hype and subsequent disappointment and eventual DVD release and pretty much after everyone's forgotten about it is kind of refreshing. I personally do not subscribe to JJ Abrams' cult of mystery. I'm not a fan of Lost - tried to watch it a few times in season one and couldn't get over how TV-y it was - and although I gave Alias four seasons' worth of a fair shake, I always thought that most of his work stemmed from one decent idea followed by a lot of scrambling. I like to trust that creators have more of a master plan than arbitrary cliffhangers and questions that never get answered. So when they couldn't even come up with a title for this movie, I was pretty non-interested. Seeing it now however shows off its strong points much better than opening weekend. It's unassuming at first, frustratingly strict with its point of view, and ultimately a 74-minute little romp that's pretty enjoyable. Yes, I could've used the monster looking a bit more... functional, but I thought it was used very well (except the end shot in the park which feels like it was inserted just to let us get a better look at it) and the people we're following around didn't annoy me nearly as much as everyone told me they would. So yeah, I liked it. I hope they don't turn it into a franchise or anything because that'll probably ruin what I like about this one, and I'm glad I watched it on my computer rather than in a theater (ugh, I can't believe I just wrote that) because even here the digital effects seem a bit cut-n-paste so I imagine they're more blatant blown up... that is if you can see them in between motion-sickness puke-heaves. I still couldn't really tell what was going on most of the time but at least here it was sort of intentional rather than Transformers or the last two Bourne movies or whatever. I don't know that I would call for a whole genre of these Diary of the Dead-type found-footage movies unless there was extreme care taken to keep them watchable (even here, some of the photography eeked beyond the herky jerky zooming and auto-focus that would really be going on to grant us at least a few moments of clarity, which I appreciated)... but still for just this once, I found it effective. Huh, i know! I was totally expecting to hate it. |
