CLOVERFIELD

Thank you to Sarah Connor for asking Mike Stone to weigh in the new release, CLOVERFIELD on the Mike Stone Massive Movie Scale.

When I started watching I was very disappointed to see this new release was a recently filmed documentary! Now there are several reasons why I usually don’t watch documentaries, no Star Power, they are very slow moving, extremely cheap production value, they are usually very complicated and sometimes I don’t really have any idea what is going on in these movies. With that being said Cloverfield did surprisingly have a lot of action, I am not saying it was good action but I feel like I understood what was going on for the most part.

I have done recent research on this Cloverfield event and I am not coming up with anything except for reviews, websites and movie previews to this documentary that I just sat through. My conclusion after watching this natural disaster shot on a hand camera is that Cloverfield is the Turkish or German translation of GODZILLA.

Where Cloverfield could use some shading on its physique:
When the producers found out that the monster was Manhattan bound they should have set up some nice Chopper shots, Crane Shots, Tracking shots, stop being so scared and use a freakin Tripod for once. You can barely tell what is going on because the camera keeps turning off, I got the shaking effect enough already, and why was the Director so intent on videotaping his friend’s girl problems when the entire city is crumbling around him? The entire cast has very limited one liner’s with the exception of “Oh My God” about 300 times throughout the entire movie. These kids didn’t even fight anyone the entire movie they just ran around screaming like weaklings and dodging those little stupid Spider creatures that were kinda small and lame.

Where it was Strong:
I will hand it to the team as they did temporarily rescue an attractive girl in her collapsed apartment. The showdown between the loudmouthed, director and the monster in the end where he is eaten alive and spit out with camera and all was funny. The body count was the highest of all movies to this point in 2008.

Weight Solution:
In all honesty when New York city is being destroyed I want to see what Robocop, The Terminator, Sly and Kurt Russell are gonna do to save the day, not a bunch of young professionals who don’t even know how to street fight. The movie could have even been better if we saw the documentary through the Militaries secret operating heat seeking, night viewing cameras, because at least they were going head to head with the monster.
I think someone tampered with the film because the movie didn’t actually end. We see the girl with the runny nose and then some debris fell on the camera with a lot of screaming and crying and then these credits started rolling. Whats up with that?

This movie is not great but an improvement over last weeks Juno, so I will be generous and give it a 4LB’s out of 10.