Continuing with my unofficial “Cloverfield” week, here’s my latest Sympatico/MSN movie column, cataloguing the five greatest giant-monster movies. I’d have gone to ten, but I couldn’t find five more films that really qualified …
… of course, I’d now include “Cloverfield” on that list, but deadlines and stuff being what they are, it just wasn’t possible to see it in time.
Yes, I know I did a thing about monster movies for the site last year, when “The Host” came out, but this one is totally different.
Anyway, do please go see “Cloverfield” soon, because I have a lot to say about it and I want my audience to be as educated as possible on the subject, you know?
Eh, Cloverfield was OK but in no way lived up to the hype. Its following of the Blair Witch model, not just in basic concept but in structure from beginning to end, is really its undoing. A movie of this scale demands a better payoff than it gives us. Or a story, which it also doesn’t give us. Most of what I appreciated about it had to do with the technical achievement of integrating that many visual effects into shaky camcorder footage.
My wife didn’t care much for it at all. She found the 9/11 imagery obnoxious and exploitative. The rest of the audience we were with absolutely HATED it. There was much indignant yelling when the credits came up. When J.J. Abrams’ name appeared, someone called out, “He should remove his name from this garbage!” and there was a fair amount of agreement in the auditorium. I would expect a backlash comparable to the one Blair Witch received.