I used to work for them here in NYC. I didn’t make it through the ‘merger’. How are things on the lot now? You’ve have a pretty good year BO wise.
This might be the first movie where it’d be a good idea to take some ginger, or Dramamine before viewing.
I don’t agree with the rest of the review (I thought the film was a lot of fun, in an amusement park kind of way), but I’ll second this quite rigorously. The only time I’ve ever come close to feeling seasick in a theater (note, I always sit up front) was in Open Water, but this one came quite close. Interestingly, it’s not the run-through-the-streets/sprint-down-the-stairs/escape-from-the-monster moments which are the worst, but the downtime moments where the camera is still doing a slower, rocking motion (which means the opening exposition of the film is tougher to take than the action-oriented stuff later on). Even an hour later, I was still feeling my insides roiled a bit (and note this has 100% to do with the camera movement and nothing to do with how graphic the film is/isn’t).
Rats! I really wanted to see this but I just can’t do shakycam. I was so nauseated and clammy at The Blair Witch Project I wished the witch would just kill them all and get it over with. Kill me too while you’re at it, just make the Woozy World stop. I appreciate the warning because a ticket would have been wasted money for me. Guess I’ll wander around the Web and spoil it for myself then, and continue to consider The Host the best creature feature of recent times.
They have the poster in the subway here in NYC. It has the image of the headless SoL and smoke rising from damaged buildings in Manhattan.
Someone wrote on it
Zebra, ha!!
It was nice meeting you MikeG, and sorry we didn’t get to talk after the movie. I’m glad you enjoyed it. I didn’t even see Gaudere, since I was in front row center once they let us into the theater. I’m glad she made it in ok.
I agree with that, absolutely. Did I come off sounding as if I didn’t like it? I didn’t mean to. I enjoyed myself quite a bit. When I say it’s not the greatest monster movie ever, I just mean that people should lower their expectations, and not expect to dance out with stars in their eyes thinking “omg, that was the most amazing monster movie I’ve ever seen!” though many in the younger generation, who’ve only seen some of the classics on small television screens, might very well do that. Personally I think the first two Alien movies are the greatest monster movies ever, but then, I saw them in the theater on the big screen when they were first released, which I think makes a big difference.
I enjoyed The Host (Jodi, I’m glad someone else saw that!) more than Cloverfield but that takes nothing away from Cloverfield. I had a good time. Nitpicks crossed my mind but I immediately dismissed them, you have to in a movie like this lest your brain explode. Besides the shakycam (and the wimpy name “Cloverfield”) my only real complaint is that there was not enough monster, but I am so there for a sequel. I don’t know what they could do for a sequel though. New York will have been pretty well monstered-out.
Also edit to add, there’s not much of anything after the credits, just a short burst of radio static. Since I’m sure there will be a sequel, perhaps it was relevant, but I couldn’t make out what was said. Anyway, no visuals were with the static.
Looks like we’re of similar minds, then, Equi. I liked The Host better as well, but I did not find the characters unlikable in Cloverfield. And although everyone’s calling it Godzilla meets Blair Witch, I think a much more accurate description would be 9/11 meets Miracle Mile.
And Odette Yustman is a real cutie!
Oh, and Michael Giacchino’s score is really, really good (even though it doesn’t turn up until the closing credits).
ArchiveGuy, I liked that monster movie score too.
To address some of the things that popped up in this thread…
No authority figures are central characters. You just see some army guys trying to kill it, and briefly see them putting people in quarantine, but only one has lines in a very short scene.
No scientists. This is just about a specific group of people, from the beginning to the end. It never cuts to anyone else or any other storyline.
The girl doesn’t sprain her ankle, though she probably wishes she had.
As for your last point,No death/retreat of the monster here. It wins.
Nope, it’s a great-looking monster, and doesn’t defy gravity that I saw.
Nope, no scientists and nobody gets changed for the better by anything they’ve experienced.
Ok, there is that. 3 of them in fact.
I liked KK a lot. It’s funny, I don’t think of KK as a monster or the movies as monster movies. I guess because I expect monsters to be monsters, not big sentimental lugs.
It is handheld, but I didn’t see it as nonsense. It worked because that’s what the movie was, found footage, even though the nitpicker would wonder about a few things.
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It looked really REALLY good most of the time. It must have been a high-end Beta HD camera.
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The tape and battery longevity was pretty amazing. And it was remarkably rugged.
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I think if it were me, there are several points where I would have dropped the camera to run/fend off without a moment’s thought. It must’ve been glued to that guy’s hand.
And especially,why would you hold a camera when looking straight at the monster, knowing you’ll be dead in about 5 seconds?But what the hey, it still worked for me, shakycam aside.
Strangely, that’s not the case. A few scenes are, but as I mentioned above most of the time it looks pretty darned good for a consumer camera.
Re: the quality of the film at the very beginning, the DoD info says the source was an SD memory card; 84 min would be a pretty big card and the camera had a spotlight and night vision so I’m gonna say it was a pretty high end camera or Prosumer model. I bet there are people who could identify the exact model used
Re: The monster and the sprained ankle comment above: I am not convinced the monster is alive. When the soldier mentioned HammerDown, he said they were willing to sacrifice all of Manhattan. Now the big question is do they just dump a metric assload of conventional wepons on him or d othey go nuclear? I’m betting on metric assload, although the logistics of that are daunting, I mean hundreds of GBU/43B’s dont just magically show up.
I haven’t seen the film, but I doubt it was shot with a consumer level camera. It was most likely shot using professional equipment. Is there some reason to think otherwise?
I don’t think this needs to be in a spoiler, but ok.
My husband uses a Sanyo XACTI. It shoots 720p HD and can do nearly 2 hours of High Definition on an 8gb SD card, so I should have consulted him before writing what I did. It’s a consumer unit, and the character in the film could have had one.
Because the conceit of the film is that this is found footage, taken from the camera of a citizen who happens to be at ground zero of the monster attack.
I know that, but is there any reason to believe that the film was shot with anything but professional video equipment? Or to put it the other way, is there some reason to believe it was shot with consumer level cameras?
Oh, I think I understand.
Equipoise was speculating on the type of camera used by the character within the movie to produce the footage seen.
He was not commenting on what type of equipment the filmmakers had used to create the film.
She smile. Exactly. I’m sure they used professional cameras for the actual filming, but the comsumer camera used by the characters had to have been a very good one, just based on how good the footage looked.
Btw, I found a picture of the camera. I’ll have to ask my husband if he knows what that is.
Apologies for unintended gender confusion. I truthfully hadn’t paid any attention.
Right, but…who’s to say there aren’t more where that one came from? And that the parasites can’t reproduce like nasty little spider-like bunnies? They may have nuked NYC for all we know, but there’s always a way for a sequel to happen. We never saw it get killed, but yeah, you’re right, it probably was.
I haven’t seen the movie, but this makes me wonder how the military would actually respond if there was a monster attacking Manhattan. Do they have contingency plans on file? I wonder what the strangest scenarios are that the US military actually has plans for. (We’ve all heard of plans for invading Canada.) Alien invasion maybe?
Wait - what?
Add me to the list of people who won’t see it because of the shaky cam. I hate that shit (it makes me queasy as well as being very intrusive). There is a fine line filmmakers have to tread between making things seem real and amateurish, and still making them entertaining and polished. I think shaky cam crosses that line. If we wanted real, all we have to do is look around us; I want my movies to look better than real.