Cloverfield? More like Clovershit! (Spoileeeeer!)

[toblix]

Nah, I'm just waddling your paddle. It was fun, but it's like they came up with this cool concept of the camcorder but didn't dare to stray too far from what you'd expect from any other monster film. Too much drama, not enough action. Not enough playing with the shaky camcorder format, too much always capturing the action perfectly. Thinking about it, I'm actually kind of disappointed with the whole movie. The whole leaning building thing was cool. The "government archive" stuff was just silly.

Telling a "classic" story in a new way is (potentially) awesome, but I think this would be a lot cooler if they made it a mini-series or something, where they could take more risks with the format (off the top of my head, sequences without sound, image or both (omg risky thx!!))

[Erkki]

I don't like monster movies that much anyway (not sure why I watched this, maybe it was mentioned in the recommendations thread?), but I kind of agree, especially with the too much drama, too little action.

[vimes]

I really enjoyed the movie until the scene in which one of the military men let them through the blocus : to this point the amount of silliness was reasonable but after that it was just completely ridiculous :

the impaled girl who can run, the non-threatening spawn from the monster, the fact that they still keep on going together

.

On the whole, the movie felt like it didn't know how to choose between hollywood standards and a more gritty/realistic setting. For instance, I really enjoyed the characterization of the 'party' segment of the movie but I don't understand how they managed to bring these characters to perform heroic deeds similar to the hollywood canons. I mean, I think the movie could had been largely superior if they had remove the 'fat' from the scenario, canned the this 'rescue' plot and make it only about survival.

One thing that surprised me though was that the narrator was a complete distanced jackass ... which, however you look at it, is an interesting choice.

[DanJW]

I guess I agree. It was fun, and compietant, but it played out exactly how you expect it would. At no point did anything really surprise me in the way the film was made. The closest it came was

the girl exploding from the bite, but that was heavily foreshadowed.

If you say to someone "Godzilla style monster movie plus the camcorder mockumentary style from Blair Witch" then they already have the film in their head.

I tried to read up on the meta fiction and outside-film backstory, but it's typical "Lost" pretentious vagueness.

[vimes]

The closest it came was

the girl exploding from the bite, but that was heavily foreshadowed.

That caused a bit of a 'debate' with the people I went to watch the movie with

I say she explodes but others thought she had been executed.

[Guest aarathi]

I saw this film twice. Cloverfield is a monster/horror film directed by Matt Reeves. It is an engaging thriller that should thoroughly satisfy genre fans during a time of year when their choices are essentially between bad and worse. The mechanism is the message in Cloverfield, a movie so aluminum-sleek, ultra-portable, and itsy-bitsy sexy, it’s amazing.

[toblix]

I saw this film twice. Cloverfield is a monster/horror film directed by Matt Reeves. It is an engaging thriller that should thoroughly satisfy genre fans during a time of year when their choices are essentially between bad and worse. The mechanism is the message in Cloverfield, a movie so aluminum-sleek, ultra-portable, and itsy-bitsy sexy, it’s amazing.

The film is presented as a series of scenes taken by a digital hand-held camera. Fuck you you fucking piece of shit.

[Wrestlevania]

banplx?

[Nachimir]

I really hated Cloverfield for some reason. I suspect because I watched while I was travelling and had been alone for a few days, I wasn't really in the mood for something so desolate. I also found it kind of the opposite to Blair Witch: The characters in that were such a stupid bunch of infuriating assholes that right at the end I said "Oh thank fuck, the last one's dead". The characters in Cloverfield were likeable enough, so

I didn't really like watching them all get relentlessly brutalised.

[Wrestlevania]

I really enjoyed Cloverfield, because it was everything I hoped it would be: big, stupid, shallow and great fun.

Sometimes it's nice to just sit back and watch something that demands nothing more of you than your senses—then sets fire to them.

[twmac]

Sorry I can never get over seeing the 'Administratively raped' tag on first time posters that are spamming threads.

[Nachimir]

Hah Never noticed that before.

We had the same spam turn up over at Black Cat Games this weekend.

[twmac]

Just got half way through this film... The person holding the camera is called Hud right?

Was that meant as a play on H.U.D.?

Other than that, I thought it was alright so far. Trying to ignore the niggling feeling that the battery on that camera lasts for an impressively long time.

[brkl]

Is the movie ten hours long?

[twmac]

No, but he is constantly using the light (and night vision... they have that on cameras now?), I didn't realise that cameras were capable of running that long when using that kind of juice. Then again I didn't know they now had night vision so my oppinion may be outdated.

[Wrestlevania]

My cheap little JVC MiniDV camcorder has a low light feature, which is very close to night vision, and that's about 5 years old now.

And I believe the solid state camcorders last a decent amount of time, as they don't have any moving parts except the lens.

[twmac]

Well that's confirmed then. I don't know what I'm talking about and the discomfort with watching the film has been assuaged.