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Cloverfield

Saw it last night - liked it a lot, an interesting take on the monster movie genre. Engaging, scary and with a great monster!

Also got the Star Trek trailer which made me squeal with excitement and the Rambo trailer which made me wet myself laughing
 
Saw this at last the other night, and I thought it was great.

The director's ability to maintain the narrative thread simply through a single hand-held camera viewpoint was inspired. As a cameraman I know how every single shot must have been thought about 62 times. The lighting and sound were obviously far too good for a hand-held device put in those conditions, but that rather technie observation at lack of realism aside, the actual cinematography was mind-blowing, and even the shakiness was planned and accounted for.

Having the counter-point of the Coney Island trip underneath the newer monster footage was very clever, and a creative way to provide a visual and narrative balance for a bit of a breather.

I liked the monster movie as revisited through the eyes of post-9/11 cinema-goers; now we KNOW what New York looks like when under attack from unknown 'monsters', we KNOW how crowds move when burning skyscrapers are falling all around them, we KNOW how quickly the modern media begins to transport the visuals of an incident up into space and back down to TV sets merely yards away from the action - all this was evident in Cloverfield, and I think gave it an added resonance too.

Other things I noticed: The flash of cameras and the ubiquitous mobile phones which came out as the head of the Statue of Liberty came to rest - indicative, perhaps, of the new technology which one day will capture and transmit all human experience. Is this the future of the Hollywood movie - no longer the sweeping. glorious, technicolour vistas of the rostrum camera, or even the shaky hand-held video camera, but the fragmented splinters of mobile JPEGS, audio clips of 20 seconds, the ice blue aura of LED illumination? Could a clever person tell a story through these fragments? Could a clever film-goer negotiate a narrative and walk away feeling sated, having pieced together such an audio-visual noticeboard into an entire film? After 9/11 the forensic stitching together of pieces of film and their time-codes began almost instantly - does that inform a new cinematography in which all viewers are also the directors and the editors?

I'd like to see someone try.

The scale and style of the monster was great. Loved it. Loved the swing of the tale, the Iraqification of Manhattan, the tanks and soundtrack of their movements was heart-rending, the spearing light from the cannons awesome, I swear my seat was juddering!

Before I saw the film, I questioned how realistic it would be for someone to hold a camera all the way through a huge disaster like this (I suppose they did during 9/11?) - but the director cleverly made the cameraman a bit of a dope, and openly committed to 'documenting' - ;) - so this held water for me in the end. I didn't have to say: 'Why don't you put the fucking camera down!!?' because it wasn't in his personality to do so. The film makers thought about this, and accounted for it - and that indicates how clever they were, and how clever they fully expected their audience to be.

To round off the story so well, to leave the explanation for the monster up to us, to use the TV reports during the electrical shop lootings to further the story, to kill the heroes, the humour that ran through the film - all deftly done, quite unique in a way, and worthy of a second and third watch in my opinion.
 
I really liked it....perfect film for the generation who;ve grown up on Resident Evil and Silent Hill games because it had that same feel. The slow reveal of the monster worked well and you did get a sense of utter panic building.

But no fucking way would I have rescued that girl :D
 
*We also sqealed at the Trek trailer, and laughed at the Rambo one!*

LIVE FOR NOTHING - OR DIE FOR SOMETHING??!

Erm, as far as choices go, Rambo, I've had better.
 
g force said:
But no fucking way would I have rescued that girl :D
Click to expand...

I'd have told him to go and fuck himself when he said he was going to get her.

But then again, I'd have left my granny to look after herself, I'm not a proud man.:D
 
It was more where she was and the method of rescuing. Fuck that...show me the military evacuation point :D :oops:
 
Looking back, I think I liked it because there was no realy 'hero', nothing is explained (for example, why the little baby monsters only attack humans (think about the horse&carriage)), characters are butchered freely -
the bit where Marlene is killed by the troops - none of the usual 'Hmm, we'll wait and see what happens to someone who's been bitten and then freak when stuff starts exploding out of her'...the really, really quick glimpse of a human who's been mutated from being bitten

Having said that, I saw the trailer for this on S2 at Ritzy (the preview I saw was at Empire Leicester Sq) and I suspect without a HUGE screen and near-deafening surround sound this will loose a lot - certainly I won't be watching it on TV.
 
Wookey said:
*We also sqealed at the Trek trailer, and laughed at the Rambo one!*

LIVE FOR NOTHING - OR DIE FOR SOMETHING??!

Erm, as far as choices go, Rambo, I've had better.
Click to expand...

Sly also seems to have got much more incomprehensible as he 's got older - I'd be like "Sorry Rambo, can you just repeat that ... something about live for what and ..nah, sorry didnt get it, say it again"!
 
heard rumors the sequel is gonna be the same film, but shot from another person. I loved this film, had the feeling of half life to it. :).
 
Yoj said:
heard rumors the sequel is gonna be the same film, but shot from another person. I loved this film, had the feeling of half life to it. :).
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I can't imagine that would have anything like the same impact? Where can you go with it?

I thought one of the best things about the film was the way we pieced together knowledge slowly, glimpsing the monster between buildings and finding out snippets about what was happening just as someone caught up in the same situation would do.

In any sequel I can't see this working so well as you're inevitably forearmed with much more information.

As is often the case with films, I wish I was going into it with zero knowledge - I knew it was a "disaster movie with a monster". It would have been great to see it with no clue about what to expect, to be genuinely immersed in the initial "what the hell is going on here?!" that the characters were experiencing.

I always think it's a shame when half the initial scene-setting and narrative of a movie is wasted because you've seen the trailers and reviews.
 
Yoj said:
heard rumors the sequel is gonna be the same film, but shot from another person. I loved this film, had the feeling of half life to it. :).
Click to expand...

I heard it was a prequel explaining where the monster came from...although it's easy enough to find out.
 
PacificOcean said:
Can I ask why it's called Cloverfield or would that be a spoiler?

I am seeing it at the weekend.
Click to expand...

afaik, that's just a government codeword for the monster. It not having a zoological name, obviously!

Usually it's the Brits who use codenames which are totally unconnected with the thing they describe - innapropriate names like Operation Overlord, or Operation Dingbat.

The Yanks use terms like Operation Desert Sand, Shock and Awe, or Operation We're Coming to Get You! which kinda gives the game away.:D
 
PacificOcean said:
Can I ask why it's called Cloverfield or would that be a spoiler?
Click to expand...

The reason I heard would be a spoiler - ask again when you've seen it and, in the meantime, I'll dig around for a link.

Apparently, Cloverfield is also the name of a street that JJ Abrams sees every day as he drives into his office in LA.
 
Yep it's the street that his Bad Robot company is on.

Search for Slusho.jp....if you notice one of the characters is wearing the Slusho tee and it's the Japanese company the guy is off to work for. Apparently, Slusho uses marine-based products in its drinks and when deep sea trawling they free the monster
 
g force said:
Yep it's the street that his Bad Robot company is on.

Search for Slusho.jp....if you notice one of the characters is wearing the Slusho tee and it's the Japanese company the guy is off to work for. Apparently, Slusho uses marine-based products in its drinks and when deep sea trawling they free the monster
Click to expand...


Oooh, backstory!!

I thought when the cameraman said: 'It's maybe come from a cravayse...cravass!!' - and changed his pronuniation, that was rather funny.

I heard the director say the idea for the film came to him while on a trip to Japan himself, when he noticed how popular Godzilla still is over there after 40 years. He wanted to bring back the monster movie post 9-11.

I believe in the cravayse theory now then.:cool:
 
Well it had to come from *somwhere* under the sea, cos there's a teaser for it which is a news broadcast of a rig being toppled...I assumed that it was deep sea drilling related...
 
kyser_soze said:
Well it had to come from *somwhere* under the sea, cos there's a teaser for it which is a news broadcast of a rig being toppled...I assumed that it was deep sea drilling related...
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Do you mean the oil tanker in the harbour which is knocked over, or summink else?
 
It's got people talking about it almost as if it were a TV series... :hmm: :cool:

Saw it tonite and was fairly impressed.

The handheld camera worked best when the monster was close-by, especially when they were at the top of Beth's building, trying to get her to safety. In all that commotion, the monster is being blasted by the jets and you catch a trail of explosions from the missiles landing close to it. All good effective fun.

I'd happily give it an 8/10, but I suspect its potency would diminish on a regular TV setup. :hmm:
 
I saw it yesterday and thought it was absolutely shit.

At the end of the film everyone in the room audibly groaned and I walked out feeling cheated.

:mad:
 
Managed to get taken to see this without having a fucking clue what it was even about, not having seen any trailers or read any reviews, and spent the first bit of the film thinking it was a not particularly great low-budget rom-com - then nearly bloody pissed myself with fright :D Absolutely brilliant, I don't think I've spent that long clutching the back of the seat in front of me for ages...
 
Epona said:
Managed to get taken to see this without having a fucking clue what it was even about, not having seen any trailers or read any reviews, and spent the first bit of the film thinking it was a not particularly great low-budget rom-com - then nearly bloody pissed myself with fright :D Absolutely brilliant, I don't think I've spent that long clutching the back of the seat in front of me for ages...
Click to expand...


Actually when I saw this tonight I was thinking I bet this would be great if you didn't realise what it was or didn't have any preconceptions. Its almost impossible these days to have that sort of experience, marketing really does kill a film in this sense. So yea, I'm kinda jealous!

Anhows...I didn't really think it was that great a film, decent-ish, but thats about it. I also felt somewhat ill during it...motion sickness from the shaky cam perhaps?
 
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