seraphcelene (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seraphcelene) wrote2008-01-19 11:51 am
seraphcelene) wrote2008-01-19 11:51 am
Entry tags:
Cloverfield (2008)
Cloverfield (2008)
Cloverfield is the kind of movie that splits the audience into two camps, those who love it and those who hate it. There is some wiggle room in the middle for those who enjoyed it, but skimming through reviews post- my own trip to the theater confirmed by theory. There were few reviewers straddling that middle fence, most were firmly in one camp or the other. Me? I'm one of the lovers.
Cloverfield isn't for everyone. If you like neatly packaged, solidly wrapped-up, all questions asked and answered kind of movies then this is definitely not for you.
Produced by J.J. Abrams, Cloverfield is very much Lost meets The Blair Witch Project. There's a gargantuan, ugly creature from who knows where attacking Manhattan for who knows why! We have four pedestrians -- Rob, Lily, Hudand Marlena -- on the run with Hud behind the camera documenting everything because "people are going to want to know."
The movie is shown as if it really were a piece of documentation located at the site of some horrendous event. It's been tagged government, and time sealed and all sorts of things. The movie opened with a test pattern that I initially thought was a problem with the theater (it was someplace I'd never been, so how was I supposed to know?) and proceeded to identify the film as belonging to the U.S. Government (do not duplicate) and as having been retrieved from a location designated Cloverfield.
We're introduced to some of the characters and some of their drama and then suddenly all hell breaks loose.
The creature, when we finally get to see it, is monstrous ugly and it doesn't look like anything you've ever seen ever! It's got some sort of smaller, parasitic flea/spider looking hybrid dropping off of it and wreaking havoc on the population and not just the buildings. There's a great scene where Our Heroes are walking through the subway tunnels and suddenly a swarm of rats come rushing past their feet. I yelled run, of course they turned around to see what the rats were running *from*. Silly Heroes. Obviously, they've never done this before.
The movie is, like all the best monster movies, very much about running, hiding and escaping. Survival is what gets your juices pumping and flowing and I was right in the middle of it. The maligned "Handcam" style throws you very much into the mix.
Lily is the only character to survive, or at least it's suggested that she is. The love birds die while hiding under a bridge in Central Park (why they weren't trying to run for it, I will never understand) and Hud, our impromptu cameraman, gets mostly eaten. Poor Hud!
What Cloverfield gets right:
* Mainly, I was trying to get a clear look at that freaking *thing* rampaging all over the city. Although the hand held camera was one of the annoying things about the movie, but intrinsic to the type of movie that it was, the director did a great job with not over exposing the creature. Often with CGI creations we see too much of it and it begins to lose it's shine. The more we see it, the more we get to see what isn't *right* about it. Hud, our initially reluctant documentarian, is so busy running for his life, that he often forgets the camera. So, we're always trying to *see* what the fuck that thing is. When we do get glimpses of it, they're shocking and short because, as I mentioned before, Hud is busy running for his life. I, personally, liked that.
* We only know as much as the characters. These are ordinary, average people, living very ordinary, very average lives. There's nothing special about them except that some of them are very pretty (Jessica Lucas and Mike Vogel, for example). They are living small lives and the opening set-up reveals just how plebeian their lives are. Rob has slept with Beth who he's been in love with for forever. They decide not to make an attempt at having a real relationship because Rob is moving to Japan for a job (head tilt to Godzilla). Lily, Rob's brother Jason's gorgeous girlfriend, is throwing Rob a surprise going away party and Hud has been given the job of recording goodbye's. Then all hell breaks loose. It was very key, and very important that the commercials showed that there's a party happening and then shit breaks out. Otherwise, that opening sequence would have been a lot more boring. As it was, you're kinda paying attention to the every day drama as it ensues, but mostly you're waiting for the moment when Apocalypse begins because you know it's coming. It comes so out of the blue, that you're just as startled as everyone else. And then we're off.
* Although, the main character of this film is kinda that creature, the battle with it and the destruction of the city are very much background. We watch these people run through the city trying not to get killed and meanwhile all hell is breaking loose over their heads. We don't find out what that thing is because THEY don't know what it is. And, realistically, why should they? They aren't soldiers or scientists or government agents. There's no reason that anyone who knows anything would tell them and there's no reason that they would be involved with anything more exciting than running for their lives. Why they're running back into the city? That's one of the things that Cloverfield gets wrong.
What Cloverfield jacks up:
* Our impetuous is a love story. Rob goes back for Beth who has called him on his cell. She's at her apartment and a wall has fallen on her. Rob's brother Jason has just been killed when the Brooklyn Bridge was destroyed and Rob decides that he's got to go back for Beth. What the fuck, are you kidding me?! I thought that was silly and trite. Okay, I get it, you love her, blah blah blah. But I think that it would have believed more or been more behind it if it were his brother or maybe his wife who he was going back for. Once they do find her, battling crazy creature bugs and dodging the big mambjama monster, there's this cheesy ass reunion scene, that's about as cliched as they come. I wasn't buying it and it totally disrupted my enjoyment of the film. What was awesome was when they had to pull her off the rebar that she'd managed to get impaled on. Although, I didn't kind of buy that she'd have been able to survive the later helicopter crash with that injury. I say this because she's been impaled and there's got to be some pretty major blood loss as a result. I get that while she's running and the adrenaline is pumping that she wouldn't feel much, but once she stops, she's in trouble right? I mean she's in a helicopter crash and they're all knocked out for at least twenty minutes. Yet, she's the one to wake up first and wake up Hud and help him drag Rob out of the wreckage. The pilots have, of course, died.
* Lily in heels. Personally, I would have looted one of those stores for two second to find a pair of flat shoes.
* Rob's cell phone. Considering that the world is ending, I found it hard to believe that Rob was always able to get a clear cell phone signal. With the number of people who would be on their cells, all over the world, not to mention the military chatter, I was surprised that Rob's only problem was a dead battery. Hell, I had trouble calling out on New Year's because every damn body called at the same damn time. The networks were totally overloaded. I also found it highly suspect that Rob was able to pull a battery off the shelf at an electronics store, put it into his phone and it worked. I always thought you had to charge those things first.
Conspiracy theories:
Okay, so of course, with the total lack of answers provided by the movie, we have to start talking about what that thing was and where it came from.
* We all thought that it was aquatic, I volunteered some unknown whole or trench along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, but then retracted that because it wasn't as fragile as I imagined something that had been living at the bottom of the ocean for millions of years. Plus, how come it can breathe air? I then read a review that referred to the creature as crustacean like and I thought, oh, aha! That could work. So, Godzilla!! or Godzilla's uglier cousin.
* Military experiment. I volunteered that it was being transported in the tanker that capsized at the beginning of the movie, but then we got a look at the tanker and I wasn't so sure. Plus!! That thing was freaking huge! and I can't imagine the government being able to produce, let alone sustain, something so enormous. Plus! Because why?! There's no way to control the thing, so what would be the point?
* Alien. We scrapped that idea pretty quickly because it would require a meteorite or something else to crash land and that would be to far fetched even for this movie. Although, it could be an alien creature that crashed into the ocean, like, billions of years ago and has only recently woke up.
* There's more than one creature. The one that eats Hud at the end appears much smaller than the one that's been ravaging the city. It also got ignored by the planes passing over the park. How they didn't see it is curious, or maybe they didn't Depending on where in Central Park the helicopter crashed, there may have been a monster that crawled out of the ocean and into the park without anyone being much the wiser. aaaagggghhhh!!!!!!!
All in all: Make of the movie what you will. It was a wild ride that I quite enjoyed. It reminded me quite a bit of Jurassic Park which I loved, but which in the end wasn't really about anything more deep and meaningful than people running and being eaten by dinosaurs (even with the man vs god theorizing on the side).
Critics and Reception:
What I noticed about the differences in reception for Cloverfield is that it seems to lie quite solidly along the lines of audience expectations. Those of us who were looking for an awesome monster movie and some big CGI surprises, got exactly what we were looking for. Those who were searching for deep meanings about the post-9/11 U.S. and the transmission of media in the You Tube generation were largely disappointed. Although Cloverfield does make a vague sort of commentary on those things, they are largely peripheral. Cloverfield is a straight up creature-feature, a monster flick for the ages. It, of course, incorporates all of those things that have become hallmarks of the millennium and the Digital Age -- camera phones and the hand held digital cameras as record of events -- but that, I think, can be read, in part, to what has become par for the course in this global environment. We saw the same sort of thing happen in Burma -- information gathered and dispersed via digital media controlled, not by professional journalists, but by lay persons. If the Statue of Liberty's head came rolling down the middle of your street, you can bet that there'd be hundreds of photos all over the Internet. So, to me, that isn't so much commentary as it is statement of fact. This is what would happen.
As for the head tilt, as it were, to 9/11, I'm not sure that it's entirely possible at this point to make any kind of movie in Manhattan that includes massive amounts of damage to the city without bringing to mind the attacks of September 11th. If buildings fall, that's what people are going to think of. BUT! The director does, very purposefully, include visual cues to remind us of 9/11. The huge explosion in the distant, the dust cloud that floods the street in the beginning of the movie are all reminders of what occurred. In that light, we could read the monster as a symbol of the inevitable. Destruction comes to American shores and the American military, despite a valiant effort in the movie, are powerless to stop it. In contrast to the reality of 9-11 when it was all ready to late, the military in Cloverfield arrives astoundingly fast and respond immediately. However, it's another case where there is no warning of attack until the attack is well underway.
With all of that said, there's a second reason that I think Cloverfield takes place in Manhattan and why it's appropriate that it does, and it has nothing to do with 9/11.
Manhattan is a contained, heavily populated environment. Avenues of escape are limited: the Brooklyn Bridge (destroyed in the movie), the Williamsburg Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, The Queensboro Bridge, the Lincoln Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge (my choice for an escape route). The city is also small, about 23 square miles (I drive that to work every day). What better setting for a monster movie. It keeps the monster very close at all times and it heightens the sense of panic because the question is always, how the fuck do we get off the island?
I thought the movie did a great job, the creature ranging from the Financial District all the way up to the Upper West Side (at the very least). We get a great sense of it's proportion, measuring it against the New York City skyscrapers. OMG, I LOVED the visuals we finally get from the helicopter right before the monster KNOCKS it out OF THE SKY!
So, are we commenting on 9/11? Sure, of course. In post-9/11 U.S., it's impossible not to comment on or reference 9/11 in a movie featuring the destruction of Manhattan. And it's going to happen regardless. Whether it's done by destroying Manhattan or designating the Arabs as the bad guys. For me it wasn't a huge or even an immediate reference. With the exception of that dust cloud, 9/11 was the last thing that I was thinking of.
Cloverfield is the kind of movie that splits the audience into two camps, those who love it and those who hate it. There is some wiggle room in the middle for those who enjoyed it, but skimming through reviews post- my own trip to the theater confirmed by theory. There were few reviewers straddling that middle fence, most were firmly in one camp or the other. Me? I'm one of the lovers.
Cloverfield isn't for everyone. If you like neatly packaged, solidly wrapped-up, all questions asked and answered kind of movies then this is definitely not for you.
Produced by J.J. Abrams, Cloverfield is very much Lost meets The Blair Witch Project. There's a gargantuan, ugly creature from who knows where attacking Manhattan for who knows why! We have four pedestrians -- Rob, Lily, Hudand Marlena -- on the run with Hud behind the camera documenting everything because "people are going to want to know."
The movie is shown as if it really were a piece of documentation located at the site of some horrendous event. It's been tagged government, and time sealed and all sorts of things. The movie opened with a test pattern that I initially thought was a problem with the theater (it was someplace I'd never been, so how was I supposed to know?) and proceeded to identify the film as belonging to the U.S. Government (do not duplicate) and as having been retrieved from a location designated Cloverfield.
We're introduced to some of the characters and some of their drama and then suddenly all hell breaks loose.
The creature, when we finally get to see it, is monstrous ugly and it doesn't look like anything you've ever seen ever! It's got some sort of smaller, parasitic flea/spider looking hybrid dropping off of it and wreaking havoc on the population and not just the buildings. There's a great scene where Our Heroes are walking through the subway tunnels and suddenly a swarm of rats come rushing past their feet. I yelled run, of course they turned around to see what the rats were running *from*. Silly Heroes. Obviously, they've never done this before.
The movie is, like all the best monster movies, very much about running, hiding and escaping. Survival is what gets your juices pumping and flowing and I was right in the middle of it. The maligned "Handcam" style throws you very much into the mix.
Lily is the only character to survive, or at least it's suggested that she is. The love birds die while hiding under a bridge in Central Park (why they weren't trying to run for it, I will never understand) and Hud, our impromptu cameraman, gets mostly eaten. Poor Hud!
What Cloverfield gets right:
* Mainly, I was trying to get a clear look at that freaking *thing* rampaging all over the city. Although the hand held camera was one of the annoying things about the movie, but intrinsic to the type of movie that it was, the director did a great job with not over exposing the creature. Often with CGI creations we see too much of it and it begins to lose it's shine. The more we see it, the more we get to see what isn't *right* about it. Hud, our initially reluctant documentarian, is so busy running for his life, that he often forgets the camera. So, we're always trying to *see* what the fuck that thing is. When we do get glimpses of it, they're shocking and short because, as I mentioned before, Hud is busy running for his life. I, personally, liked that.
* We only know as much as the characters. These are ordinary, average people, living very ordinary, very average lives. There's nothing special about them except that some of them are very pretty (Jessica Lucas and Mike Vogel, for example). They are living small lives and the opening set-up reveals just how plebeian their lives are. Rob has slept with Beth who he's been in love with for forever. They decide not to make an attempt at having a real relationship because Rob is moving to Japan for a job (head tilt to Godzilla). Lily, Rob's brother Jason's gorgeous girlfriend, is throwing Rob a surprise going away party and Hud has been given the job of recording goodbye's. Then all hell breaks loose. It was very key, and very important that the commercials showed that there's a party happening and then shit breaks out. Otherwise, that opening sequence would have been a lot more boring. As it was, you're kinda paying attention to the every day drama as it ensues, but mostly you're waiting for the moment when Apocalypse begins because you know it's coming. It comes so out of the blue, that you're just as startled as everyone else. And then we're off.
* Although, the main character of this film is kinda that creature, the battle with it and the destruction of the city are very much background. We watch these people run through the city trying not to get killed and meanwhile all hell is breaking loose over their heads. We don't find out what that thing is because THEY don't know what it is. And, realistically, why should they? They aren't soldiers or scientists or government agents. There's no reason that anyone who knows anything would tell them and there's no reason that they would be involved with anything more exciting than running for their lives. Why they're running back into the city? That's one of the things that Cloverfield gets wrong.
What Cloverfield jacks up:
* Our impetuous is a love story. Rob goes back for Beth who has called him on his cell. She's at her apartment and a wall has fallen on her. Rob's brother Jason has just been killed when the Brooklyn Bridge was destroyed and Rob decides that he's got to go back for Beth. What the fuck, are you kidding me?! I thought that was silly and trite. Okay, I get it, you love her, blah blah blah. But I think that it would have believed more or been more behind it if it were his brother or maybe his wife who he was going back for. Once they do find her, battling crazy creature bugs and dodging the big mambjama monster, there's this cheesy ass reunion scene, that's about as cliched as they come. I wasn't buying it and it totally disrupted my enjoyment of the film. What was awesome was when they had to pull her off the rebar that she'd managed to get impaled on. Although, I didn't kind of buy that she'd have been able to survive the later helicopter crash with that injury. I say this because she's been impaled and there's got to be some pretty major blood loss as a result. I get that while she's running and the adrenaline is pumping that she wouldn't feel much, but once she stops, she's in trouble right? I mean she's in a helicopter crash and they're all knocked out for at least twenty minutes. Yet, she's the one to wake up first and wake up Hud and help him drag Rob out of the wreckage. The pilots have, of course, died.
* Lily in heels. Personally, I would have looted one of those stores for two second to find a pair of flat shoes.
* Rob's cell phone. Considering that the world is ending, I found it hard to believe that Rob was always able to get a clear cell phone signal. With the number of people who would be on their cells, all over the world, not to mention the military chatter, I was surprised that Rob's only problem was a dead battery. Hell, I had trouble calling out on New Year's because every damn body called at the same damn time. The networks were totally overloaded. I also found it highly suspect that Rob was able to pull a battery off the shelf at an electronics store, put it into his phone and it worked. I always thought you had to charge those things first.
Conspiracy theories:
Okay, so of course, with the total lack of answers provided by the movie, we have to start talking about what that thing was and where it came from.
* We all thought that it was aquatic, I volunteered some unknown whole or trench along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, but then retracted that because it wasn't as fragile as I imagined something that had been living at the bottom of the ocean for millions of years. Plus, how come it can breathe air? I then read a review that referred to the creature as crustacean like and I thought, oh, aha! That could work. So, Godzilla!! or Godzilla's uglier cousin.
* Military experiment. I volunteered that it was being transported in the tanker that capsized at the beginning of the movie, but then we got a look at the tanker and I wasn't so sure. Plus!! That thing was freaking huge! and I can't imagine the government being able to produce, let alone sustain, something so enormous. Plus! Because why?! There's no way to control the thing, so what would be the point?
* Alien. We scrapped that idea pretty quickly because it would require a meteorite or something else to crash land and that would be to far fetched even for this movie. Although, it could be an alien creature that crashed into the ocean, like, billions of years ago and has only recently woke up.
* There's more than one creature. The one that eats Hud at the end appears much smaller than the one that's been ravaging the city. It also got ignored by the planes passing over the park. How they didn't see it is curious, or maybe they didn't Depending on where in Central Park the helicopter crashed, there may have been a monster that crawled out of the ocean and into the park without anyone being much the wiser. aaaagggghhhh!!!!!!!
All in all: Make of the movie what you will. It was a wild ride that I quite enjoyed. It reminded me quite a bit of Jurassic Park which I loved, but which in the end wasn't really about anything more deep and meaningful than people running and being eaten by dinosaurs (even with the man vs god theorizing on the side).
Critics and Reception:
What I noticed about the differences in reception for Cloverfield is that it seems to lie quite solidly along the lines of audience expectations. Those of us who were looking for an awesome monster movie and some big CGI surprises, got exactly what we were looking for. Those who were searching for deep meanings about the post-9/11 U.S. and the transmission of media in the You Tube generation were largely disappointed. Although Cloverfield does make a vague sort of commentary on those things, they are largely peripheral. Cloverfield is a straight up creature-feature, a monster flick for the ages. It, of course, incorporates all of those things that have become hallmarks of the millennium and the Digital Age -- camera phones and the hand held digital cameras as record of events -- but that, I think, can be read, in part, to what has become par for the course in this global environment. We saw the same sort of thing happen in Burma -- information gathered and dispersed via digital media controlled, not by professional journalists, but by lay persons. If the Statue of Liberty's head came rolling down the middle of your street, you can bet that there'd be hundreds of photos all over the Internet. So, to me, that isn't so much commentary as it is statement of fact. This is what would happen.
As for the head tilt, as it were, to 9/11, I'm not sure that it's entirely possible at this point to make any kind of movie in Manhattan that includes massive amounts of damage to the city without bringing to mind the attacks of September 11th. If buildings fall, that's what people are going to think of. BUT! The director does, very purposefully, include visual cues to remind us of 9/11. The huge explosion in the distant, the dust cloud that floods the street in the beginning of the movie are all reminders of what occurred. In that light, we could read the monster as a symbol of the inevitable. Destruction comes to American shores and the American military, despite a valiant effort in the movie, are powerless to stop it. In contrast to the reality of 9-11 when it was all ready to late, the military in Cloverfield arrives astoundingly fast and respond immediately. However, it's another case where there is no warning of attack until the attack is well underway.
With all of that said, there's a second reason that I think Cloverfield takes place in Manhattan and why it's appropriate that it does, and it has nothing to do with 9/11.
Manhattan is a contained, heavily populated environment. Avenues of escape are limited: the Brooklyn Bridge (destroyed in the movie), the Williamsburg Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, The Queensboro Bridge, the Lincoln Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge (my choice for an escape route). The city is also small, about 23 square miles (I drive that to work every day). What better setting for a monster movie. It keeps the monster very close at all times and it heightens the sense of panic because the question is always, how the fuck do we get off the island?
I thought the movie did a great job, the creature ranging from the Financial District all the way up to the Upper West Side (at the very least). We get a great sense of it's proportion, measuring it against the New York City skyscrapers. OMG, I LOVED the visuals we finally get from the helicopter right before the monster KNOCKS it out OF THE SKY!
So, are we commenting on 9/11? Sure, of course. In post-9/11 U.S., it's impossible not to comment on or reference 9/11 in a movie featuring the destruction of Manhattan. And it's going to happen regardless. Whether it's done by destroying Manhattan or designating the Arabs as the bad guys. For me it wasn't a huge or even an immediate reference. With the exception of that dust cloud, 9/11 was the last thing that I was thinking of.
no subject
IN the last scene, when they're at Coney Island, in the background, off in the distance, we saw something fall out of the sky and splash into the water.
no subject
Once they were officially dead, I checked out on that ending, obviously I shouldn't have. Alien!!