Succinct Movie Reviews: Cloverfield, Plus a Special Bonus --- My Very Own Version of "Cloverfield"

Godzilla, from the tiny model's POV.

That's praise, not criticism, imagine redoing Godzilla, not from the omniscient narrator perspective more common, but instead from the 'bugs eye view' of the tiny little fake cars, tanks and people that the big rubber monster goes about crushing.

Do that, and you have Cloverfield. It's a visceral picture, moves quickly, and doesn't shy away from the thick and obvious 9/11 parallels. There's enough character development to care about these people, and somewhat buy their stupid choices, but mostly it's just a bunch of shakycam footage of things that go bump in the night.

I'm sure there are plenty of folks who will want to over analyze this picture as to its choice to destroy Manhattan, and its choice to make the existential threat dooming thousands if not millions of New Yorkers a fantastical monster and its spawn/minions rather than the real monsters that want to destroy places like Manhattan.

I'm sure there are plenty other people who will complain that the entire cast is made up of attractive young people, but they all played their (somewhat thin) roles credibly, so I have no problem that they happen to be easy on the eyes.

If you are susceptible to shakycam induced motion sickness then avoid this picture, or at least sit in the back of the theater, the less of your field of vision the screen occupies, the less intense the queasy factor will be.

That all brings me to a criticism of the criticism. A lot of the negative reviews mention the queasy factor, but anybody going into this picture knows it was shot handheld in its entirety, so don't send a reviewer who will get physically ill trying to watch this film, there's no way they can give this a fair appraisal.

Speaking of things that make you queasy, here's an excerpt from Manohla Dargis' review:

For a brief, hopeful moment, I thought the filmmakers might be making a point about how the contemporary compulsion to record the world has dulled us to actual lived experience, including the suffering of others — you know, something about the simulacrum syndrome in the post-Godzilla age at the intersection of the camera eye with the narcissistic “I.”

I'd rate that sentence (that's all one sentence?!?) a 1250 on the millidargis scale, but the overall review a mere 600 millidargis.

Waiting for YouTube to finish processing the "Cloverfield" video I made, I'll embed it below when it's available. It's Cloverfield in its entirety, and for the Cloverfied/Cloverfield connection, this Defamer post serves as good as any. Good thing JJ Abrams didn't used to have an office on Gen. Thaddeus Kosciuszko Way, I think if they called this picture "Gen. Thaddeus Kosciuszko", people would have been really confused (not that a biopic about the actual Thaddeus Kosciuszko would be such a bad idea).

UPDATE:

Here's the video, by the way, how's the weather where you are at? Sunny and in the 60s here, suckers.

Why Did I, Someone Who Dislikes Bob Dylan's Music, Hates His Voice, Despises Hippies and 60s Boomer Nostalgia-ism, Choose to See "Im Not There"?

Reason: cause I love Todd Haynes as a director.

Do you want a review? You don't have to want one to get one, that's the wonder of the internets.

Here goes my review, on the Millidargis scale of review uselessness and pretentiousness, I'd probably rate my own review that follows a 1500 or so, it's pretty useless as far as reviews go, but this kind of movie can only be discussed in obtuse and tangential ways. I'd rate AO Scott's review of the film a mere 650 millidargis, he actually writes a pretty straightforward piece on the picture (I so wanted to rip apart another pretentious Dargis review regarding this difficult but rewarding picture, but alas, she didn't pen one).

It's a worthwhile picture, it's a difficult picture, and it's a beautiful picture. One measure of the quality of a film is how many people walk out on it. That may seem like an odd measure of a film's worth, but I find the truly unusual, daring, and challenging films often cause walk outs. This film managed to cause 3 of the 16 people who chose to spend a late morning/early afternoon on a blustery but sunny Saturday on the glorious Westside of Los Angeles to walk out well before the final credits. In some ways they didn't miss much, in other ways they just didn't get it, and it's their loss.

Using 6 different actors (from a young black boy, to an amazing Cate Blanchett) to represent different aspects of Dylan's persona, his relationship to his music, and his relationship to his fame was a stroke of genius. Either that or it's a showy, 'auteur' trick that is designed to frustrate the 'squares' and excite the psuedo-intellectuals. I fall on the side of calling it genius, but I sympathize with those that read the film as being arty for art's sake to little effect.

I hate biopics, normally, but thankfully this was the most abnormal biopic ever made. This film is the template from which all future artists bios should be created. People familiar with Dylan's life will recognize moments (which being a non-fan, I only know tangentially), others may be perplexed, but the film works because of its disjointedness rather than despite of it. Rather than the usual narrative driven exploration of an artist's life (like Ray, or Walk the Line), this film digs behind the masks, behind the music (sorry VH1), and behind the culture from which the artist sprang.

Todd Haynes is a masterful director who has made some of the most interesting pictures out there of the past decade or so. This film plays like a 2hr15min music video that doesn't have a lot of music, or a series of six separate and very different shorts interleaved together despite lacking any strong throughline between one piece to the next.

The performances are strong, especially Cate Blanchett, who has received attention mainly for the gender-bender-iness of her performance, but the strength of her performance is in the acting, not in the fact that she's playing somebody who happens to have a penis. Oddly, her performance is the most imitative of Dylan, yet it's an imitation with an edge, she doesn't occupy his cadences and mannerisms circa 1965 for the usual reasons (in biopics, the actor's portrayal usually seems to be built from the surface inward, believing that if you capture the surface similarities between an actor and their subject, the inner truth will follow), instead she seems to be working from the inside out. By being like him from an emotional standpoint she represents his surfaces also. It's hard to explain, but it's there, you can see it on the screen if you choose to look for it.

This film is worthing catching on a good screen, it's filmed gorgeously, and unfolds slowly, it would be tempting while watching at home on DVD to pause, or backtrack, or break it up in to more digestable bits, but I think you'd get the most out of this pic by watching it the way Haynes put it together.

It's a shame nobody seems to want to see this picture, difficult and box office (even the lower standards of 'indie box office hit' standards) don't mix.

Shaky Cam Must Die!!!

Saw Transformers, was impressed with the impressive bits, bored with the boring bits, and somewhat humored by the humorous bits. There's plenty of stupid to go around in this movie, but it's stupid in a good natured way, and that's important. It's two tales intertwined, a very simple old fashioned boy meets girl story, and a very simple bad guys versus good guys tale. Both tales are told less artfully than they should be, but you don't buy a ticket to this ride expecting a whole lot of plot.

Shia Labeouf is an unlikely action hero, but all we get nowadays are unlikely action heroes, the likely ones aren't ironic enough, or something.

Ed Driscoll points to this piece at Libertas praising the film, and mentioning the core pro-military, and pro-American message in the film.

This movie will still do fine in foreign lands, though. Even with the pro-American message (presumably a bad thing nowadays), the America haters will be happy to see large portions of Downtown Los Angeles torn to pieces.

Why don't aliens ever pick on Tehran, Beijing, or Caracas? Funny how they always end up in either DC, LA, or NYC.

The effects are the most seamlessly intergrated CGI with live action effects, ever. Despite the over the top nature of the destruction, you never get the sense that the actors are just reacting to a tennis ball in a green screened soundstage. The Autobots and Decepticons occupy real physical space, and interact in that space convincingly. Think of the recent War of the Worlds and King Kong remakes, this was the opposite. Both of those films had big set pieces with the heroes running from unimaginable destruction, yet you never got the sense of physical danger you should have.

But back to the shaky cam. Michael Bay uses it way too much in this, and it makes it impossible to follow the action in some of the sequences. Plus once you've seen one impossibly articulated and speedy robot, you've seen them all, so despite an attempt to give character to each robot, they have a tendency to blend in action.

It's a deeply flawed film, would have been the tightest, most visually stunning popcorn film, ever made at 90 minutes with a better script. Instead it was a meandering 144 minute film that has a few too many lulls. They don't need to lose the entire boy meets girl plot, but it should have been a lot tightened up, plus the whole hacker and "section 7" subplots were superfluous.

GM probably will get their money's worth, especially when the new Camaro comes out 1Q 2009 (maybe GM will encourage Paramount to rush a sequel that summer to give sales an extra boost, they always leave room for sequels in these pictures, could make it a Bumblebee solo pic, no Shia, no other Autobots, just the sweet, sweet Bumblebee and his bitchin' Camaro self). All the good guy robots are GM branded, but it never feels like a commercial. Selling the new Camaro in any color other than bumblebee gold, might be tough, though, it looks awesome in that color. In the film, turns out it's a reskinned Pontiac GTO in Camaro drag, but I won't tell if you don't.

But mainly, try and see this film in the loudest theater in your area, this is a film that sounds best turned up to 11.

I haven't made fun of Manohla Dargis in awhile, but luckily, the NYT made the mistake of assigning her this film (or she gladly volunteered to see a film she knew before seeing she'd hate).

The opening paragraph sets the tone

Boys and their toys are in full formation in “Transformers,” a movie of epically assaultive noise and nonsense. Originating with the shape-shifting toys — created in Japan, rebranded in America — that transform from robots into stuff like cars and planes, then back again, the movie has been designed as the ultimate in shock-and-awe entertainment. The result is part car commercial, part military recruitment ad, a bumper-to-bumper pileup of big cars, big guns and, as befits its recently weaned target demographic, big breasts.

She says it as if those are bad things, "epically assaultive noise and nonsense", sounds good to me. Just in case that didn't prove Manohla's disdain for this film, and for its jingoism, she uncorks this bit

The movie waves the flag equally for Detroit and the military, if to no coherent end. Last year the director of General Motors brand-marketing and advertising clarified how the company’s cars were integral to the movie: “It’s a story of good versus evil. Our cars are the good guys.” And sure enough, most of the Autobots take the shape of GM vehicles, including Ratchet (a Hummer H2) and Ironhide (a TopKick pickup truck).

But, remember kiddies, Brand America is the only real evil in this world, and this movie didn't have the decency to even poke proper fun at our current president

Shape-shifters of another kind, Hollywood action movies bend this way and that politically in a bid to please as many viewers as possible, but they almost always play out exactly the same, as entertaining violence leads to heroic individualism leads to the restoration of order. “Transformers” is no different, even if it does offer chewy distraction for the bored viewer: the would-be suicide bomber, American soldiers tearing it up in the Middle East while American cars keep up the fight at home, along with plugs for Burger King, Lockheed Martin, Mountain Dew and the Department of Defense. Why there’s even a president who asks for a Ding Dong. He’s wearing red socks like a big old clown, but no one really laughs.

What an ass. On the Dargis scale I give this review only 500 millidargis (a reminder of what the dargis unit is, here) as at least it's clear what she thought about the film and the reasons for her dislikes. The review is still mostly useless as a review of the film given that she spends most of the word count accusing all men of being infantile and Americans being war happy and our corporations being greedy, but at least she sort of mentions some specifics about the film while venting her spleen.

Another Standard Setter

This metric sickness seems to be contagious. First Bill adds his thoughts, offering some excellent suggestions on fine tuning the funkometer, and now John Podhoretz at the Corner seems to be hinting at a new scale for bad, pretentious film reviews (via Ed Driscoll)

The Dargis would be the unit. Specifically, Manohla Dargis' review of David Lynch's Inland Empire. He warns you that you will be a changed person should you venture into that labyrinth of a review.

(and no review good or bad would keep me away from seeing this film, I'm a Lynch fan, and it's set in the Inland Empire, where I went to college, woohoo!)

Obviously this particular review is a full 1000 millidargis on the pretension scale, while something like her review of AI clocks in at a mere 350 millidargis (I'm following the European method of using millidargis as both the singular and plural form).

In contrast this Christy Lemire review of Deja Vu is downright cogent and concise earning -150 millidargis. Still not as clear as it could be (a truly clear and helpful review would be -1000 millidargis), but certainly better than most reviews you get (even if I disagree with some of what she says about that film).

But enough about them, should I start applying a metric to my own posts?

And what would that scale be?

UPDATE: I've just searched this site for previous mentions of Manohla Dargis, and I had forgotten her ridiculous review of Snakes on a Plane. That's a full 1500 millidargis for that review. It's 50% more Dargis than that Inland Empire review. She's really incredible. She's a master. A.O. Scott ain't got nothing on her. Peter Travers comes close, but who reads Rolling Stone any more?

And so many folks get Lynch wrong, he's not the freak (Dennis Hopper), he's the boy scout (Kyle McLachlan).