Cloverfield

[flippyshark]

Originally Posted by BarTopDancer

It's not a "go out and buy movie" but I'd see the 2nd one.

I wouldn't mind seeing it again, if perhaps they issue it on DVD in a special "stabilized" edition. (Not happening, I'm sure.)

[Chernabog]

Originally Posted by flippyshark

I wouldn't mind seeing it again, if perhaps they issue it on DVD in a special "stabilized" edition. (Not happening, I'm sure.)

I seriously doubt that anyone would get sick watching it on a smaller screen.

And the more I think about it, the more I liked the ambiguity in the movie:

Spoiler:

The chick that got bit -- what happened to her? Did they shoot her? Did she explode? Why?

What happened to Central Park afterwards? Did it get bombed? How did the camera survive? Did our main characters survive and did they just lose the camera under rubble?

What was the black thing plopping into the water in the Coney Island ending? A satellite that woke up the monster? The monster itself?

Etc. etc. I like how it makes you come up with your own theories.

One thing though that I thought was odd was how the monster, while ginormous, was always like RIGHT NEAR where our main characters were. I mean, Manhattan is small, but not THAT small.

My roommate said that if you plot out on a map the path of the creature and our main characters, they were just going in a straight line the whole time, but I dunno about that. It seemed too coincidental that they were constantly running into it.

Spoiler:

And while I liked that closeup payoff of the monster's face at the end, it seemed like the scale was off -- like it was MUCH smaller than it was at the beginning.

I really want to see that movie again....

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Chernabog

I seriously doubt that anyone would get sick watching it on a smaller screen.

I can't watch people's home movies, or play first person shooters, on ANY size screen without getting sick. I will never be able to watch this movie.

[Chernabog]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

I can't watch people's home movies, or play first person shooters, on ANY size screen without getting sick. I will never be able to watch this movie.

Wow that IS odd. I would think that because the small screen isn't giving an illusion that the entire room around you is moving, then you'd be okay. I guess you're just one of the hyper sensitive ones. If you'd like, we can re-create the movie for you at the next LoT party using Not Afraid's animals.

"Roar Thurston, roar boy! Roar!"

*Thurston yawns* *Gemini Cricket runs in terror to find his girlfriend*

"Good boy!"

[sleepyjeff]

Originally Posted by Chernabog

Spoiler:

The chick that got bit -- what happened to her? Did they shoot her? Did she explode? Why?

What happened to Central Park afterwards? Did it get bombed? How did the camera survive? Did our main characters survive and did they just lose the camera under rubble?

What was the black thing plopping into the water in the Coney Island ending? A satellite that woke up the monster? The monster itself?

Etc. etc. I like how it makes you come up with your own theories.

Spoiler:

1) Violent hemorrhage(explode).

2) Fuel Air Bombs(two or more). Could not have been nukes since there were two explosions and doubtful the camera would have survived nukes. We know that the "target" was very close so the bombs must have been conventional. I am thinking that at least one of the main characters under that bridge may have survived based on the post credit audio.

3) Satellite would be my guess.

[innerSpaceman]

Ya know what, fvck spoiler tags. If people click on a thread called Cloverfield after the movie called Cloverfield is released, I think they can expect the conversation to be about Cloverfield.


Be warned.












Because everyone else dies, I think it's implied (but admittedly only implied) that Lily's helicopter gets away and she is the lone survivor.

Much as I'd like some mumbo jumbo about where the monster came from (um, some scientist could say he's from Planet 10, I suppose), I much prefer sticking to the gimmick of everything being from the POV of ordinary people.


If we were involved in such an incident, we would not know squat about the monster. I prefer this type of film to not be in the 50's style of military and scientific POV. For instance, I prefer the Spielberg War of the Worlds because it's from a civilian point of view, to the Pal War of the Worlds that had the scientist as the main character.


Since the explanations are going to be random and rather silly anyway, I rather like the unexplained "reality" of regular people we can identify with, who wouldn't know what the fark is going on.

[Gn2Dlnd]

I just saw it at Downtown Disney, and pretty much enjoyed it. there was a woman behind me, though, who, after every trailer said, "Stoopid." I didn't hear her during the movie, but at the very end I hear, "STOOpid!" I LOLed a little, inside. Shakycam didn't bother me much, but if you're looking for a happy ending, this ain't your movie.
I'm posting from my phone, so I can't open spoilers, I'm curious to know what that bit of dialogue was at the end. I couldn't make it out, but I figured it wasn't just random chatter.
I think JJ Abrams made this movie just so he could finally show a goddam monster! For everybdy who complains he doesn't show the monster on Lost? "Look, there's a monster. Happy?"
I guess I still don't understand why it was called "Cloverfield," so I suppose I'll do a little interweb research on military code names. It does occur to me, though, that since the tape we're seeing is in the possession of the government, a little non-shakycam explanatory wraparound wouldn't have been hard to justify.

[blueerica]

I need to think about it a tiny bit more, plus I decided to have a few beers tonight, and wouldn't write what I meant to, anyway.

All in all, I loved Cloverfield. Far better than I expected. I was halfway shocked - and halfway smug with my jaded opinion on other people's movie preferences - that people were so vocal about how awful the film was. I'm sure it had to do with the lack of clearly defined acts, the "realistic" footage, etc... but I felt that the film was raw and real. It's like so many parties I've been to - all the characters were there, just, perhaps a bit over-the-top with its realism... But, I loved it.

I honestly though that at the end they said

Spoiler:

We got them to watch it

Or that might be the beers talking - real beers, smuggled in from California. But, it's a reasonable facsimile to what I thought I heard a few hours ago in a dark, empty theater.

[Gemini Cricket]

I liked Cloverfield as well. The name Cloverfield was used in the text at the beginning of the film. I think it was a military code name for the tape.

After the first 20 minutes, I got used to the shaky Hud-cam.

I liked how the introduction of the monster with a big thud rocked everyone's world, including the audience's. Very effective.

I often have gripes about the performances of actors in these kinds of disaster flicks. Often it seems that the stakes aren't high enough in their brains and give sort of hokey, dramatic performances that lack realism. I didn't worry about that in this film. It was very realistic, imho.

One gripe that is GC once again beating a dead horse: ad placements. Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew, Nokia, Nokia, Nokia and Sephora, Sephora, Sephora... BLEH!

When I was working at Paramount this summer, I got to see the New York sets trashed for this film. It was neat walking through it. Cars and buildings covered in dust and huge holes in the ground and green screens everywhere. Seeing it also answers my question that I hadn't seen any camera setups anywhere. One thing that did give away some of the monster for me was a huge footprint that was in the middle of the street. At first, I thought they were trying to revive Godzilla once again... Also, last summer, the words "Slusho" was everywhere. One of the characters was wearing a Slusho shirt. It was also the codename for the film on the lot.

I'm glad they used a relatively unknown cast. It added to the documentary feel of the whole flick.

I noticed a couple of could-be nods to old Japanese monster flicks. One, the main character going to Tokyo... and I believe in Rodan, the army was fighting what they thought was the big monster but was only fighting a bug that lived on Rodan...

I was impressed with the special effects. Loved them. And, like in Spielberg's War of the Worlds, the filmmakers realized that a special effect doesn't need to be in-focus and dead center in a shot at all times. It can be out-of-focus and partially seen.

I don't know if this is a sad revelation about me, but I love disaster films. I like post-apocalyptic films, monsters destroy city films and aliens attacking Earth films. Chaos is ichiban in my book.

I'd buy this one. If just to pause and rewind certain areas.

I wasn't too keen on the monster's design. A sort of Humanoid from the Deep crossed with a snake crossed with a spider and a snake... Meh. But I don't think any design would have lived up to my expectation of what it was going to be.

I was also thinking about how extremely long their trip to Coney Island was if there was still Coney Island footage at the end of the tape. And just how long was this piece of tape, anyway? Not to mention that the batteries lasted a long time... And cellphones usually don't work in subway stations, at least in my attempts at making calls in NY and Boston stations.

And I'm also wondering if Central Park was completely obliterated, how did the tape survive?

Cloverfield is the best B-movie in A-movie clothing I have ever seen. As iSm said, it was fun.

[flippyshark]

Regarding the length of the tape, I was doubly stunned, since, in the opening text, I could swear that it was identified as an SD card. Now that is some SD card!