Cloverfield, Awesome movie. Solid B+. The movie is everything it promises to be and only what it promises to be. The movement of the camera added to the experience for me. Ultimate Drew does not disappoint on this one. If you've seen the trailer and think I'm gonna like this movie, you probably will. If the trailer looked awful you will hate the movie.
Also the movie had a trailer for Neil (the Descent) Marshall's new movie Doomsday before it. Which looks so shiny. I hope to finally get around to watching Dog Soldiers this weekend and my hype for Doomsday will probably help. Plus you know how good the Descent is.

theMidnighter | January 18, 13:36 CET

'Dog Soldiers' has more of a B-movie, 'Evil Dead II'-ish feel to it theMidnighter, don't expect the same unremittingly dark tone as 'The Descent' but it's excellent IMO, just great fun (do you know 'The Tick' ? Trust me, after watching 'Dog Soldiers' you'll understand why his rallying cry is "Spoon !" ;). And 'Doomsday' is definitely one of my must see films this year.

Really looking forward to 'Cloverfield', it's out here in a couple of weeks.

Saje | January 18, 13:58 CET

What did he do to his hair??! I knew he cut it, but THAT short?! He looks like a far-more-hunky Eddie Munster! Grow back the 'do, Drew! (and GOOD LUCK with the opening weekend ;-)

OzLady | January 18, 15:01 CET

I know writers rarely get credit (and all the hype about Cloverfield seems to leave him out of it), but come on... "actor" Drew Goddard? Has he ever acted in anything before? Guess the photographer or someone thought writer didn't sound noteworthy enough.

archon | January 18, 15:58 CET

Drew does get credited in here in this positive review.

Lioness | January 18, 16:55 CET

I am a bad bad fan. *smacks hand* Bad fan! But I just never realized what a hottie Drew is. Not at all the point of this thread, I know. I'm just sayin'. Wow!

skeezycheeses | January 18, 17:46 CET

But I just never realized what a hottie Drew is. Not at all the point of this thread, I know.

Any thread with "picture of [Buffyverse VIP]" is going to go there, though.

Sunfire | January 18, 20:36 CET

I'm already annoyed with the reviewer who declared it "trite screenwriting," and I haven't seen the movie. I want our ME alums to get respect.

And as far as the hottie factor, of course it's gonna come up. (Aside--Jane Espenson? Yummy, especially with those glasses.)

WilliamTheB | January 18, 21:00 CET

Seattle Times *** (of 4) review

Roger Ebert's *** (of 4) review

The Onion A-V Club review (A-)

As for myself, I rate the film a solid ****/A. :) Great entertainment.

Hjermsted | January 18, 21:41 CET

I'm already annoyed with the reviewer who declared it "trite screenwriting," and I haven't seen the movie.

There's actually, I think, a reason why some reviewers are going to see it this way, but I'm not sure I should make my argument in a non-spoiler thread, heh.

The One True b!X | January 19, 05:48 CET

Just got back from seeing "Cloverfield." Without being spoiler-y, much much love to Ultimate Drew for a well-crafted, edge-of-your-seat-until-you-leap-out-of-it-and-cling-willy-nilly-to-the-hot-girl-sitting-next-to-you script. It's not cheesy, it's not a parody...it's just a damn good creature feature (if that's not an oxymoron).

See it!!!!

OzLady | January 19, 07:52 CET

Just got back...awesome movie. I loved it...Goddard and Reeves did an excellent job...this movie is going to make a ton of money

lax01 | January 19, 10:30 CET

Saw this last night, and loved it.

The audience I saw it with was pissed, though, and let out a very audible groan at the end. Whatever. All I know is, I mourn the death of the collective moviegoing audience's imagination.

(Oh, wait. This happened several decades ago, and said imagination may never have existed at all. Never mind.)

UnpluggedCrazy | January 19, 16:04 CET

Unpluggedcrazy, loved the comment. Said imagination probably exists in about 5% of the collective moviegoing audience, and that's likely a generous estimate.

Shey | January 19, 16:38 CET

Well, hate to rain on this parade of praise, but I saw it and pretty much hated every minute of it. I'm okay with shaky cam, but shaky cam for 84 minutes becomes meaningless static after a while - doesn't enhance the experience at all. Kudos to sticking rigidly to the premise. Pity there's few likeable characters or moments to really appreciate any of it.

Blair Witch did everything this film did years ago. That film also sucked. At least this one had a cool CGI monster.

The allusions to 9/11 were pretty offensive.

crossoverman | January 19, 18:10 CET

That can't be Drew Goddard. Whoever it is, he's FAR too good looking to be a writer.

daylight | January 19, 19:07 CET

Yes, crossoverman, because there were no monster movies and certainly nothing bad ever happened in NYC on film before 9/11. Do you have the same issues with "Escape from NY" and the more recent "I am Legend?"

OzLady | January 19, 20:30 CET

daylight Yes, the Ultimate One is amazingly hot. Also quite witty, very tall, and he owes at least me, if not a handful of others, a French kiss.

Drew, if you're out there in Lurkdom - I still don't know what happened in Season Five of "Angel." Now how's that for a feat?

ShadowQuest | January 19, 21:12 CET

Well, crossoverman, we agree on one point:

The Blair Witch Project did, indeed, suck.

UnpluggedCrazy | January 19, 21:47 CET

Oh yeah. "Blair Witch" was craptastic. :-)

OzLady | January 19, 21:54 CET

Giant monsters have been attacking NYC for 50 years in Marvel.. I don't think 9/11 had much to do with them.

[ edited by Awkward Saw on 2008-01-19 19:05 ]

Awkward Saw | January 19, 22:04 CET

I liked Blair Witch AND Cloverfield!

Drew got in some truly hilarious moments amidst all the mayhem.

My review here, after sushi talk.

Polter-Cow | January 19, 23:47 CET

It's funny. A lot of the reviews say the 9/11 references are offensive (I personally didn't have a problem with it). Yet, when there was a 9/11 reference in Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," people praised him for his cleverness.

Odd.

QuanticoMVP | January 19, 23:49 CET

That's because Spielberg can do whatever the fuck he wants!

Polter-Cow | January 20, 01:55 CET

Just got back from Cloverfield, and it was pretty good. Not great. Not good. Pretty good. 3.5 stars on a 5-star scale. And I gotta say, the thing I thought was best about the movie, and my main problem with the movie at the end, was probably Drew Goddard's script. I'll go into my objections below. They're invisotexted because I need a few spoilers to explain what I didn't like, so if you don't wanna know about what happens, don't look.

Still with me? Great. So, I loved the conception that Drew came up with to get around the 'exposition problem.' In a found-footage movie, it's really hard to let people know the story's background without revealing the conceit to be just that. I've never really seen a satisfactory solution to this problem until now, certainly not in Blair Witch, and not even in Cannibal Holocaust (as far as I know, the first film to use this trick, and one which you should not ever see if you want to keep your soul intact...and I'm not kidding...don't ever see that film). It was a stroke of genius to have Hud film the movie by taping over some of Rob's fondest memories of Beth. The few glimpses we get show why they're memories that Rob desperately wanted to save, give adequate motivation for him to risk his life to rescue Beth when the $h!t hits the fan--and oh yeah, they give all the backstory we need. And for most of the movie, what we hear sounds like real people having real conversations, also something crucial for the art form.

But the last bit of the film, where we cut immediately from Rob and Beth dying in Central Park to their date at Coney Island, felt so contrived--so like a "Buffy moment," like one of those ironic contrast transitions that worked so well for Whedon and Co.--that it yanked me right out of the story and forced me to remember that Drew Goddard had written the whole thing. And once I was out, I was able to look back over the film and see that, despite the fact that it had seemed so fresh when I was watching it, it was pretty much your standard Godzilla plot mixed with a slightly different cinema-verite vantage and garnished with a cool monster. It was like going behind the curtain at an amusement park and seeing all the wires and levers that made the magic work...that always takes the magic away. I'm not saying the film was bad, or that I'm sorry I went. For most of its running time, I thought I had already found my favorite film of 2008. But the ending made me remember that I was watching something somebody sat down and thought up, which is the kiss of death for a found footage-approach, and it left me with a slightly bitter taste in my mouth.

UnpluggedCrazy and Shey, because of what I said above in the invisotext, I think you're being unfair to that portion of Cloverfield's audience that disliked it when you accuse them of a lack of imagination. I see where they're coming from, and I don't think that's their problem. I think they're like me...that they've seen a bunch of monster rampage films before, and thought this one would be different because of its incredible marketing campaign, and then felt really let down at the end. The only difference between me and them is that I'm willing to give a hell of a lot of partial credit for the rest of the film, which truly was an awesome experience and a tribute to both Goddard's fine writing and Matt Reeve's deft direction.

BAFfler | January 20, 02:17 CET

One other thing. I didn't have a problem with the whole 9/11 stuff. One of the film's greatest strengths is the way it plays off 9/11, to make you realize just how scary it would be if your whole world was turned upside down without warning.

BAFfler | January 20, 02:23 CET

UnpluggedCrazy — I'm with you. Very clever concept, very well-executed, amazing continuity and effects, ending makes perfect sense...

...and then the chick behind us says, very loudly, "That is the worst movie I ever saw!" Again and again.

("Clearly never saw 'The Hired Hand,'" I told my son, who agreed.)

filops | January 20, 03:41 CET

I want to see it (although I doubt I'll have time for about another week), but it's intriguing htat the movie is getting such mixed reviews. In fact even the "averages" don't seem to line up: the Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes scores don't correspond very closely with each other, which is unusual.

As far as the 9/11 thing, monster movies have always been linked to disasters--Godzilla was about Hiroshima, if I recall. The line between representing and exploiting a national tragedy isn't always clear. I'll have to see it to be sure.

WilliamTheB | January 20, 04:25 CET

I saw Cloverfield last night... and am still recovering from the massive motion sickness it induced. While I certainly didn't enjoy it, I did like it. Much like BAFfler, I like how it reinvented the structure, if not the story.

The crowd at Grauman's seemed to like it overall... there was a collective exhalation at the end, followed by applause.

Lady Brick | January 20, 04:30 CET

The people comparing and using 9/11 as an excuse to pan the movie are idiots...

lax01 | January 20, 05:57 CET

The people comparing and using 9/11 as an excuse to pan the movie are idiots...

Well, that's a wonderfully detailed argument. Thanks for your input.

But the moments after the first building collapses and people are running, screaming, covered in dust is clearly meant to be evocative of 9/11. And that's pretty damn offensive for something that is supposed to be just a monster movie. It's one of the few moments of the film that viscerally affected me - simply because of the comparison and not because the film was at all succesful in creating its own tension or horror. It traded on the real life event - no question.

I suppose a similar comparison can be made to Speilberg's War of the Worlds, but that didn't seek to recreate the moment precisely. It alludes to it without actually being it. War of the Worlds is also a classic piece of literature. Cloverfield is merely schlock monster movie entertainment - and it's almost a complete rip-off of the Blair Witch project, down to the teary snotty to camera confession late in the film. Both films basically end the same way as well. I expect more of Drew Goddard, although under JJ Abrams I guess some writers don't flourish the same way as they do under Joss Whedon.

One of the film's greatest strengths is the way it plays off 9/11, to make you realize just how scary it would be if your whole world was turned upside down without warning.

We need a movie to show us this? Have people really forgotten the images of 9/11 already? Clearly, because this films trades on them and most people don't seem to have one problem with it at all.

Do you have the same issues with "Escape from NY" and the more recent "I am Legend?"

It's not merely about the destruction of New York, though. What happens in I Am Legend is nothing like what happened on 9/11. Neither it nor Escape from NY is trading on images we all remember from that day.

My objection is about moments in the film specifically staged to recall that day in 2001.

And speaking of Escape from New York, the head of the Statue of Liberty in Cloverfield is an obvious rip-off of the Escape from New York poster.

Hey, it's just a monster movie, right? Why take it so seriously? Okay, 9/11 allusions aside, the strength of the film is its resolve to stick so resolutely to its premise. Yes, it's found footage. Yes it's one guy taping over another guy's last happy day.

But beyond that, watching the shakiest of shaky cam is really like watching static. Sure, eventually you get used to it, but it's not really aesthetically pleasing.

Yes, the CGI was amazing - although given how blurred nearly every shot in the film is, the CGI doesn't even need to be rendered to the high quality we expect on the big screen these days.

Characterisation is mostly flat, too. The story itself become ludicruous. Did they have to descend a building to climb into a toppled building? Wasn't it enough there were creatures all over the city? These people really climbed 47 stories up and 47 stories back without being the least bit tired?

I'm willing to suspend some disbelief, but when it keeps piling up and up, it's hard to keep suspending it. And by that time, I wanted to kill the guy who was holding the camera and didn't really feel for the main guy or the girl he was in love with.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

crossoverman | January 20, 06:49 CET

Let me rephrase, then, so you understand my point. Were you actually in New York on 9/11? I wasn't. I was in Oklahoma City the day the Murrah Building collapsed, but that doesn't compare. Yes, I remember the images from New York. I've watched the videos time and time again. But were you on the streets? Did you run from the falling debris of the World Trade Center? Well, that's what I meant...the part of the movie most strikingly associated with 9/11 is capable of making you feel like you were there, which is exactly the experience that most Americans didn't have.

Don't get me wrong. I get why you don't like it, I do. And I understand exactly why you might find it offensive. I just happen to disagree with you. A lot of art trades on disaster. Should I sell my copy of Godzilla, which treats Hiroshima/Nagasaki in the same sense as Cloverfield treats 9/11, because it's exploiting a tragedy? Should Abrams have waited three more years, to match the nine years between Hiroshima and Godzilla? I'd be interested in your take on this.


Some people might call it a homage, or a reference. Those people would be more charitable than you, obviously. For my part, I have no problem with it. Movies have been referencing each other for almost as long as there have been movies.


Part of judging a piece's aesthetics has to be putting it in context. The movie chose to play the found-footage angle, and did it well...it succeeded at its aim. You may not like the form it took, just like I don't like modern art sculptures. But when I view them, I at least try to do it on their terms instead of sitting back and muttering, "Well, this sure isn't the Pieta."