Movie Review: Cloverfield
Published January 18, 2008
Written by El Puerquito Magnifico
Most of us have seen a few movies featuring, or are at least familiar with, Godzilla, the sometimes scary, sometimes friendly, but almost always tongue-in-cheek monster who has repeatedly terrorized Tokyo since 1954. Godzilla (or Gojira) is a lot of fun, but have you ever really thought about what would happen if he was real? If a 200-foot tall monster actually rampaged through a big city? Have you ever considered the carnage, death, and chaos that would ensue? Luckily for us, producer J.J. Abrams, director Matt Reeves, and writer Drew Goddard have, and the answer they’ve come up with is Cloverfield.
Not only have they considered the real-life possibility of a giant monster wreaking havoc in a metropolitan area, they’ve also managed to find a way to make it a truly terrifying experience: by putting the viewer directly in the driver’s seat.
Cloverfield concerns a group of young adults who have gathered for a party. Their good buddy Rob is, appropriately, moving to Japan, and they want to wish him goodbye. One member of the group, Hud, has been given the task of documenting the evening on video. When the lights go out, and everyone goes outside to see New York City in flames, Hud’s role as documentarian becomes a bit more than just drunken frivolity; he is, for all intents and purposes, documenting the end of the world as they know it.
I’m not going to go any further into the plot because I feel that you should go into this movie with an open and empty mind. You don’t need me to tell you what happens, you just need to experience it. Because of the fact that the movie is shot (or at least appears to be shot) entirely on a hand-held camera, the viewer is, as I said earlier, in the driver’s seat for this experience. And as such, it truly is an experience, not simply a movie.
Cloverfield is the type of movie that has you on the edge of your seat the entire time you’re watching it. It’s very intense and unsettling. I left the movie feeling a bit stressed, breathing heavily and wanting a cigarette, as though I had just survived a particularly harrowing evening. The whole thing felt like I was watching a nightmare, and in fact, there were at least three separate instances where I thought to myself, “Yes, I have had that nightmare. This exact situation that the protagonists are in. I’ve been in the same situation in a dream. A bad dream.”
![Gojira / Godzilla Deluxe Collector's Edition (Gojira/Godzilla [1954] / Godzilla, King of the Monsters [1956])](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51CY86JHRYL._SY90_.jpg "Gojira / Godzilla Deluxe Collector's Edition (Gojira/Godzilla [1954] / Godzilla, King of the Monsters [1956])")
- Movie Review: Cloverfield
- Published: January 18, 2008
- Type: Review
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Review, Video: Action, Video: Romantic, Video: SF
- Writer: El Bicho
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- El Bicho's personal site
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cloverfield was definitely the DUMBEST movie of the year, if you want to waste your time and give yourself a migrane, cloverfield is the movie for you. the whole movie is a group of people running away from a huge trantula that got there outta nowhere. the end, everybody dies.
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Eclectic filmmaker passes 100,000 YouTube mark
Santa Fe, NM documentary and short-film maker Jim Terr has racked up over 100,000 views of his videos on YouTube.com, and has posted a video called "A Hundred Thousand YouTube Views" to tout that accomplishment.
While there are individual videos on YouTube which have gained millions of views, Terr is proud to have built his viewership by posting a wide variety of videos -- 62 to date -- beginning 16 months ago with a video called "Santa Fe Stops," showing vehicles speeding through a Santa Fe stop sign.
Terr videos produced as far back as 1992 are included on his YouTube "channel."
The "Hundred Thousand" video features a hot boogie-woogie piano background track by former Santa Fe resident Clay Cotton, now stricken with Multiple Sclerosis. Terr hopes that exposure of the new video will increase CD sales for Cotton, and says he never tired of Cotton's piano playing in the hundreds of times he heard it while editing. "In fact, it got better and better."
37 of Terr's shorts - including previews of two forthcoming videos -- are excerpted for the "Hundred Thousand" collection, ranging from actor and comedy sketches, political satire and commentary, crafts and trades, documentary excerpts, proposed feature film "trailers," advertising parodies, local cultural events and restaurant visits, interviews, live performance excerpts and musician portraits.
Little sound was included on the music clips excerpted in the new video, however, due to clashes with the background piano track. In fact, Terr's most-viewed video, "One Year Old Child Prodigy Piano Genius" , with over 50,000 views, was not even included in the new collection.
Such celebrities as authors Tony Hillerman and Douglas Preston, humorist Dave Barry, actor Kevin Pollak and NPR broadcaster Scott Simon are included in the videos, as well as stills of and references to President Bush, Valerie Plame Wilson and others.
Videos added to Terr's YouTube repertoire in the past week alone include "J.Lo, MD" , "Jimbug: Folk Artist" , "A Hundred Thousand YouTube Views" , "Author Douglas Preston discusses his novel, BLASPHEMY" , "My Dad, the Republican" , and "Jim Terr interview re Santa Fe Farmers Market video ".
In the latter piece , Terr admits that the production of short videos has gotten to be a bit of an obsession, but he credits and thanks YouTube for making it so easy for videomakers to post and to find videos. Terr has mostly not taken advantage of other video-posting sites thus far.
He has also posted the Santa Fe-related videos on his own www.SantaFeShorts.com site, which links to the YouTube videos.
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