Cloverfield
I will admit, I'm not the best reviewer of things. Not even movies, just things. I wouldn't even consider myself one of the top 1,000 of reviewers of things but since this new section has been added and I see Fuji has brought some of his reviews into it, I thought "why not?". Would love to have this section become popular so I thought I'd take a page out his book and add my 2 cents on some of the movies I find enjoyable and just downright awesome.
First off, we have the 2008 first person creature flick, Cloverfield. A film that was hyped big time on the internet when the teaser trailer released before Transformers in 2007. The teaser created some gigantic buzz on the net. I mean, the movie even has it's own forum (I assume it's not very busy now, or if it even exists) but it was there and it was popular. I was fortunate enough to sort of be a part of the internet hype. Not really adding to any of it, but to see these nerds post about what they think the monster is, creating their own sketches on what it looks like, making videos deciphering the teaser proclaiming that the monster is secretly hidden in the teaser, all that good stuff. Then the release date was....released. 1-18-08. To me, one of the most notorious dates in cinematic history.
Now, onto the film. In the first 5 minutes, we see a couple (or what we find out a little later on, ex-couple. Ooh, y'all bad!!), Rob and Beth in bed flirting like a couple of lovebirds. We find out the girl, Beth has never been to Coney Island. WHAT?!?! Okay, neither have I, but dammit you live in New York, babe. Go to Coney Island now. You're missing out. Anyways, then we see Rob's brother Jason and his girlfriend Lily rushing through times square to get back home and they're planning Rob's surprise going away party (oh yeah, Rob is going to Japan for his job). Once we finally get to the party, Rob gets home to everyone yelling "SURPRISE!!!". Calm down, people. I mean, he's only going to frickin' Japan. Don't get him a stripper or anything!! Beth shows up with her new boyfriend, Travis. Rob is jealous. They get into an argument. Blah blah blah. One of the best lines in the movie, Beth is about to leave with Travis, she sees Rob and says "good luck in Japan, Rob" in a sad voice like she'll miss him and all that stuff, then Rob comes back with "good luck tonight, Travis". Beth looks disgusted and leaves. Fabulous. Good job, Robert.
So, Rob is upset and he goes outside and sits on the stairs. His brother and Hud, the camera guy joins him. They try to talk some sense into him and all of a sudden, a sudden rumbling hits, the camera pans to the city and all the lights go out. Wonderful shot, BTW. They all go inside and turn the news on to find out "a boat has capsized near the Statue of Liberty". People are freaking out. They go onto the roof to see if they can see anything. Well, what do you know, a huge ball of fire erupts in the middle of the city and that's when shit goes down. Everyone is running downstairs to get to the streets and what do we see next? THE FUCKING HEAD OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY FLY LIKE 50 FEET RIGHT INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET!!! The camera zooms and there's gigantic claw marks on the face. Dafuq?! Then we get a small glimpse of the monster or whatever. Then the fucking Empire State Building collapses and just a wall of smoke is coming their way and they fucking dip. Yeah, I would too.
Wait, where's Beth in all of this? Well, for the next 50 or so minutes, Rob and a few other people including his brother Jake, Lily, Marlena (oh yeah, Marlena. Good friend of Lily but doesn't really know Rob. She only showed up to the party to see Lily.) and Hud. From there, it's just madness in the streets of New York. They end up on the Manhattan Bridge where hundreds of people are trying to get the fuck out of there....in an orderly fashion, of course. Don't wanna get too crazy, now. There isn't a 60 ft. monster terrorizing the city or anything. Don't panic. Jason is standing on top of a big light post and the frickin' monster's tail winds up and lands on Jason KILLING HIM IN FRONT OF EVERYONE (or was he killed? oh shit, what if he shows up in the sequel like "hey....what's up?". Swerve~!). Anyways, Lily is upset her man is gone and everyone is panicking (shocker, right?). Now, Rob wants to find Beth. He needs to find her to see if she's okay. Makes sense. He still loves her and hasn't heard from her through all this destruction and terror. They end up in front of the Subway to figure out a plan, all of sudden they hear guns. Big guns. Right behind them. They turn around and THE MILITARY IS SHOOTING AT THE FRICKIN' MONSTER (I'm just gonna call him Clovie since that's his name and I'm assuming it's a dude also).
They run into the subway wondering what the hell they're gonna do now. They find a map. A Subway map of where the next train station is and all that jazz. They're walking through the tunnel. It's like, all dark n shit. Marlena runs into a bunch of rats. Like, a shit ton of rats all running in the same direction, "like they're running away from something" "yeah, but what?". Hud turns on the night vision and we see the MINI CLOVIE'S THAT FELL OFF OF THE BIG CLOVIE!! LIKE THEY'RE FLEAS OR SOME SHIT!! They start attacking the humans but the humans get the better of them but Marlena has been bit. They leave the tunnel and get to a room with water and vending machines. They try to clean her up. From there, they end up in a clothing store. In there, they run into the military who's running their own little care center for bite victims and people that were just caught in the explosions earlier. We then see Marlena with blood coming from her eyes "Hud, I don't feel so good". Nurse yells "BITE!! WE HAVE A BITE!!!. They bring her into quarantine and she frickin' explodes. Like, literally just explodes. What's really cool about this scene is that you see the silhouette of her being behind the quarntine net or whatever and just a split second before she explodes, you can see her body start to like, blow up. They make it look so good but not a lot of people really caught that.
Now, everyone's panicking...again. Hud's upset because he had a little crush on Marlena (awww). Now, they find the hotel that Beth was staying. It's like, totally tilted and leaning onto the building right next to it. So, they go into the hotel and are able to get the roof of the next building to cross-over to Beth's building. Smart move. There, they finally find Beth but she's stuck. There's like one of those metal stick thingys you'd find on construction sites dug right into her shoulder. They get it out. They leave and they run to a helicopter that the nice military were able to acquire for everyone. Unfortunately, Lily had to get on a different helicopter than everyone else and poor Lily. 10 seconds after the helicopter starts to take flight, Clovie smacks that shit down like it was an annoying ass bug and they crash and presumably die (or do they?! what if Lily shows up in the sequel with Jason like "hey.....what's up?"). Anyways, Rob, Hud and Beth get in their heli and off they go. As they're in the air, Hud pans down to the city to see Clovie get shot at while strolling around in the city.
Clovie is down. Everyone's excited. All of a sudden, Clovie kicks out at 2 and swipes their heli down as well and they land in a park (I'm saddened I forgot the name of it). They get up. They're good. They no-sell it. Then Hud turns around...FRICKIN' CLOVIE IS BEHIND HIM JUST LOOKING AT HIM!!! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!!? He wasn't all that fast and he was just in the middle of the city 2 minutes ago. Is there a.....2nd monster?! Again...dafuq?! Clovie rips Hud in half and how this scene is shot is beautiful. Since it's first person, the camera is shooting as Hud is flying through the air to the ground. Hud was holding the camera while he was dying. How kind of him. Rob and Beth are running scared and they end up under a bridge. They're terrified but they finally found a place to sit for a couple of minutes in the middle of all this terror. Rob has the camera. He points the camera to him and introduces himself, gives the date, time, all that. For the Government or whoever sees the video. He gets Beth to do the same. They both say "I love you" and BAM! A missile hits the little bridge and they're caught under all the rubble and bricks.
We end there but all of those events were being recorded over an old tape of Rob and Beth's day at Coney Island a month earlier so we go back to that part of the tape. They're both on the ferris wheel and Rob pans the camera to the beautiful ocean. What a view but wait, something pops up really quick on the ride side of the screen but they don't notice. Rob then pans back to Beth and she says "this was a good day" and smiles happily into the camera. But what the hell was that that we saw that Rob didn't notice?
Some people believe, as do I and I don't think there's any other explanation that that was little baby Clovie that fell from the sky in like a capsule or something and in the next month, it just grew and decided "hey, I feel like fucking shit up". That's where the terror starts. I thought that was a beautiful way to close off the movie. As a man that was anxiously awaiting this movie for about 3 or 4 months, I felt like I got my moneys worth when I saw it twice. Felt like it lived up to the hype. Some thought it was incredibly boring until the last 30 minutes. I say "nay". The beginning during the party makes you feel safe. Everything is going swell and people are having a great time and then absolute mayhem begins. It's a wonderful film and I'm looking forward to seeing if a sequel is in the works. 9/10
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jesus, that was a long "review". Felt like it was a play-by-play. Let me know what you all thought of the review. If it was too long, too.....short (?! You'd be a psychopath to think that). I felt it was too long but I had a lot of fun writing it.
I will admit, I'm not the best reviewer of things. Not even movies, just things. I wouldn't even consider myself one of the top 1,000 of reviewers of things but since this new section has been added and I see Fuji has brought some of his reviews into it, I thought "why not?". Would love to have this section become popular so I thought I'd take a page out his book and add my 2 cents on some of the movies I find enjoyable and just downright awesome.
First off, we have the 2008 first person creature flick, Cloverfield. A film that was hyped big time on the internet when the teaser trailer released before Transformers in 2007. The teaser created some gigantic buzz on the net. I mean, the movie even has it's own forum (I assume it's not very busy now, or if it even exists) but it was there and it was popular. I was fortunate enough to sort of be a part of the internet hype. Not really adding to any of it, but to see these nerds post about what they think the monster is, creating their own sketches on what it looks like, making videos deciphering the teaser proclaiming that the monster is secretly hidden in the teaser, all that good stuff. Then the release date was....released. 1-18-08. To me, one of the most notorious dates in cinematic history.
Now, onto the film. In the first 5 minutes, we see a couple (or what we find out a little later on, ex-couple. Ooh, y'all bad!!), Rob and Beth in bed flirting like a couple of lovebirds. We find out the girl, Beth has never been to Coney Island. WHAT?!?! Okay, neither have I, but dammit you live in New York, babe. Go to Coney Island now. You're missing out. Anyways, then we see Rob's brother Jason and his girlfriend Lily rushing through times square to get back home and they're planning Rob's surprise going away party (oh yeah, Rob is going to Japan for his job). Once we finally get to the party, Rob gets home to everyone yelling "SURPRISE!!!". Calm down, people. I mean, he's only going to frickin' Japan. Don't get him a stripper or anything!! Beth shows up with her new boyfriend, Travis. Rob is jealous. They get into an argument. Blah blah blah. One of the best lines in the movie, Beth is about to leave with Travis, she sees Rob and says "good luck in Japan, Rob" in a sad voice like she'll miss him and all that stuff, then Rob comes back with "good luck tonight, Travis". Beth looks disgusted and leaves. Fabulous. Good job, Robert.
So, Rob is upset and he goes outside and sits on the stairs. His brother and Hud, the camera guy joins him. They try to talk some sense into him and all of a sudden, a sudden rumbling hits, the camera pans to the city and all the lights go out. Wonderful shot, BTW. They all go inside and turn the news on to find out "a boat has capsized near the Statue of Liberty". People are freaking out. They go onto the roof to see if they can see anything. Well, what do you know, a huge ball of fire erupts in the middle of the city and that's when shit goes down. Everyone is running downstairs to get to the streets and what do we see next? THE FUCKING HEAD OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY FLY LIKE 50 FEET RIGHT INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET!!! The camera zooms and there's gigantic claw marks on the face. Dafuq?! Then we get a small glimpse of the monster or whatever. Then the fucking Empire State Building collapses and just a wall of smoke is coming their way and they fucking dip. Yeah, I would too.
Wait, where's Beth in all of this? Well, for the next 50 or so minutes, Rob and a few other people including his brother Jake, Lily, Marlena (oh yeah, Marlena. Good friend of Lily but doesn't really know Rob. She only showed up to the party to see Lily.) and Hud. From there, it's just madness in the streets of New York. They end up on the Manhattan Bridge where hundreds of people are trying to get the fuck out of there....in an orderly fashion, of course. Don't wanna get too crazy, now. There isn't a 60 ft. monster terrorizing the city or anything. Don't panic. Jason is standing on top of a big light post and the frickin' monster's tail winds up and lands on Jason KILLING HIM IN FRONT OF EVERYONE (or was he killed? oh shit, what if he shows up in the sequel like "hey....what's up?". Swerve~!). Anyways, Lily is upset her man is gone and everyone is panicking (shocker, right?). Now, Rob wants to find Beth. He needs to find her to see if she's okay. Makes sense. He still loves her and hasn't heard from her through all this destruction and terror. They end up in front of the Subway to figure out a plan, all of sudden they hear guns. Big guns. Right behind them. They turn around and THE MILITARY IS SHOOTING AT THE FRICKIN' MONSTER (I'm just gonna call him Clovie since that's his name and I'm assuming it's a dude also).
They run into the subway wondering what the hell they're gonna do now. They find a map. A Subway map of where the next train station is and all that jazz. They're walking through the tunnel. It's like, all dark n shit. Marlena runs into a bunch of rats. Like, a shit ton of rats all running in the same direction, "like they're running away from something" "yeah, but what?". Hud turns on the night vision and we see the MINI CLOVIE'S THAT FELL OFF OF THE BIG CLOVIE!! LIKE THEY'RE FLEAS OR SOME SHIT!! They start attacking the humans but the humans get the better of them but Marlena has been bit. They leave the tunnel and get to a room with water and vending machines. They try to clean her up. From there, they end up in a clothing store. In there, they run into the military who's running their own little care center for bite victims and people that were just caught in the explosions earlier. We then see Marlena with blood coming from her eyes "Hud, I don't feel so good". Nurse yells "BITE!! WE HAVE A BITE!!!. They bring her into quarantine and she frickin' explodes. Like, literally just explodes. What's really cool about this scene is that you see the silhouette of her being behind the quarntine net or whatever and just a split second before she explodes, you can see her body start to like, blow up. They make it look so good but not a lot of people really caught that.
Now, everyone's panicking...again. Hud's upset because he had a little crush on Marlena (awww). Now, they find the hotel that Beth was staying. It's like, totally tilted and leaning onto the building right next to it. So, they go into the hotel and are able to get the roof of the next building to cross-over to Beth's building. Smart move. There, they finally find Beth but she's stuck. There's like one of those metal stick thingys you'd find on construction sites dug right into her shoulder. They get it out. They leave and they run to a helicopter that the nice military were able to acquire for everyone. Unfortunately, Lily had to get on a different helicopter than everyone else and poor Lily. 10 seconds after the helicopter starts to take flight, Clovie smacks that shit down like it was an annoying ass bug and they crash and presumably die (or do they?! what if Lily shows up in the sequel with Jason like "hey.....what's up?"). Anyways, Rob, Hud and Beth get in their heli and off they go. As they're in the air, Hud pans down to the city to see Clovie get shot at while strolling around in the city.
Clovie is down. Everyone's excited. All of a sudden, Clovie kicks out at 2 and swipes their heli down as well and they land in a park (I'm saddened I forgot the name of it). They get up. They're good. They no-sell it. Then Hud turns around...FRICKIN' CLOVIE IS BEHIND HIM JUST LOOKING AT HIM!!! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!!? He wasn't all that fast and he was just in the middle of the city 2 minutes ago. Is there a.....2nd monster?! Again...dafuq?! Clovie rips Hud in half and how this scene is shot is beautiful. Since it's first person, the camera is shooting as Hud is flying through the air to the ground. Hud was holding the camera while he was dying. How kind of him. Rob and Beth are running scared and they end up under a bridge. They're terrified but they finally found a place to sit for a couple of minutes in the middle of all this terror. Rob has the camera. He points the camera to him and introduces himself, gives the date, time, all that. For the Government or whoever sees the video. He gets Beth to do the same. They both say "I love you" and BAM! A missile hits the little bridge and they're caught under all the rubble and bricks.
We end there but all of those events were being recorded over an old tape of Rob and Beth's day at Coney Island a month earlier so we go back to that part of the tape. They're both on the ferris wheel and Rob pans the camera to the beautiful ocean. What a view but wait, something pops up really quick on the ride side of the screen but they don't notice. Rob then pans back to Beth and she says "this was a good day" and smiles happily into the camera. But what the hell was that that we saw that Rob didn't notice?
Some people believe, as do I and I don't think there's any other explanation that that was little baby Clovie that fell from the sky in like a capsule or something and in the next month, it just grew and decided "hey, I feel like fucking shit up". That's where the terror starts. I thought that was a beautiful way to close off the movie. As a man that was anxiously awaiting this movie for about 3 or 4 months, I felt like I got my moneys worth when I saw it twice. Felt like it lived up to the hype. Some thought it was incredibly boring until the last 30 minutes. I say "nay". The beginning during the party makes you feel safe. Everything is going swell and people are having a great time and then absolute mayhem begins. It's a wonderful film and I'm looking forward to seeing if a sequel is in the works. 9/10
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jesus, that was a long "review". Felt like it was a play-by-play. Let me know what you all thought of the review. If it was too long, too.....short (?! You'd be a psychopath to think that). I felt it was too long but I had a lot of fun writing it.
