Seven-Leaf Cloverfield

I have braved the crowds of early audiences and returned with this review of the much anticipated Giant Monster flick "Cloverfield". The people in front of and behind us in line actually came to the theater to see the latest Uwe Boll movie(?) "In the Name of the King", but had exchanged their tickets after surviving its awfulness for a mere 20-minutes, average. Nobody warned them to avoid anything with Uwe Boll's name on it. The whole situation is quite tragic, really. Children could have walked into that auditorium. Thus, I propose implementation of the Uwe Boll scale of movie sucktitude. UB-1 being a shitty movie and UB-5 being either unedited footage of a rhino taking a dump or films actually directed by Uwe Boll.

Oh yeah, I was supposed to review "Cloverfield". On a scale of 1-10, I'll give it a 7. It had some good to absolutely brilliant moments, but I found the ending to be unsatisfactory and there were some elements that kept it from being great. The most glaring of which is that the entire movie is supposed to be edited footage from a camcorder retrieved from "the site formerly known as Central Park". This means headache or stomach turning camerawork, especially on the big screen.

They actually do a good job with the "Blair Witch" cinematography (Better than Blair Witch itself) and it provides for some very cool moments once the FX come in. Unfortunately this style of storytelling seems to sacrifice a lot the longer a movie goes on. Thankfully, the monster is big, but the movie is short (under 1 1/2 hours I think), so they seem to have understood they were pushing the limits of how much hand-held footage an audience is willing or able to sit through.

I think they could have cheated the footage more. It didn't have to be as jerky as it turned out. They could have used a little stabilization and given up some of the "realness". I mean, it's a 350-foot semi-humanoid monster attacking New York and we're already suspending disbelief with the idea that the person holding the camera wouldn't have just chucked it the second it slowed him down. Of course, he could have also used it as a weapon because the camera is apparently made out of fucking Adamantium and the re-forged Sword of the Norse God Odin. I'm serious. The camera was so tough they could have placed it on an RPG, fired it at the monster, and it would have probably killed the damn thing instantly.

Overall: Entertaining movie, possibly better as a rental for people who get motion sickness. Very good acting, with some unconvincing motivations. Cinematography is atrocious at times, with flashes of genius at others. There is a kick-ass song during the closing credits. There are no power rangers or "Zords" in this movie. Most people probably aren't expecting that, but I just wanted to cover all my bases.