ViewGuide

Created Jan 23, 2008 01:09AM PST • Edited Jul 16, 2017 01:02AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Perfect 5.0

   Big fun on the big screen, if your idea of fun runs to state-of-the-art SciFi fright fests. Worthy of its tremendous buzz, Cloverfield combines a War of the Worlds monster attack with Blair Witch Project immediacy. Put it this way: your head will bounce along with Lady Liberty’s after watching this movie.

   I found the herky-jerky images from the hand-held camera only mild annoying, and well worth the experience, but apparently others found this down-right nauseous. In any case, it is much less annoying than with The Blair Witch Project, if that helps calibrate it for you.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   The attractive cast of twentysomethings looked and sounded the part of privileged New York singles. While their naturalistic acting met the needs of the movie, it can’t be said to be great acting or even especially memorable.

   That said, it seemed to me that the actresses outperformed the actors. For instance, Jessica Lucas, the exotic beauty who carried the early part of the movie, displays a rare combination of innate sexiness and elevated intelligence, kind of like a young Angelina Jolie.

5. Male Stars Good 3.0

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    It is no wonder that for sci-fi and horror fans alike, this movie has become a sensation. A new benchmark of sorts, Cloverfield demands to be viewed on the biggest screen available.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

    Matt Reeves and JJ Abrams (he of Lost) deserve huge acclaim for this movie. In the end it is a very simple story, told through a very personal lens, yet blown up to Godzilla like proportions.

12. Play Great 4.0

    The dialogue perfectly captures the callow self-centeredness of the “Bright Lights, Big City” singles through whose lives we experience the attack. Especially in the pre-attack party scenes, no interchange was without self-serving subtext: everybody – especially the guys – was on the make, always trying to curry advantage with one another. This extended introduction to the main characters worked exceedingly well to stoke our curiosity about how they would handle the impending disaster.

    Then after things got really weird – i.e., the monster attacked – the story and dialogue ably moved our goofball heroes closer to the action, using their youthful foolishness and romanticism to great effect.

13. Music Perfect 5.0

    While there is no theme or mood music, there is no shortage of songs played at the party.

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    While I didn’t think the main monster was especially fresh, it was more than sufficiently realistic, and its ravaging of NYC was a POV sight to behold.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.9

17. Sex Innocent 1.4

18. Violence Fierce 2.1

19. Rudeness Salty 2.1

21. Reality

    Supernatural 4.0

    Obviously the movie is a complete physical and biological fantasy, but part of its appeal is that it seems somewhat realistic from a circumstantial POV. IOW, if such a biologically impossible monster could violate the laws of physics to savage modern day Manhattan, it is easy enough to believe that people would react to the situation as they do in Cloverfield.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.9

    If an unknown but clearly awful force knocked off the head of the Statue of Liberty and sent it skidding up your street in midtown Manhattan more than four miles away, would you A) run like crazy, or B) approach it and start snapping it with your camera phone? Sounds like a “Darwin was right” test to me.

23. Biological Fantasy 5.0

24. Physical Fantasy 5.0