Like most writers that don’t enjoy starving to death, I’ve got an actual job. Shirts with collars, firm handshakes, offices with unattractive carpeting, etc… Yesterday, that job involved a one-day cross country round trip for a single meeting. This is the sort of thing that sounds fun and glamorous if you’ve never done it before, or like coming down with an inflammation of giant sentient hemorrhoids if you have.
But my biggest problem with this is that Monday evening is my writing night, a holdover from back when I used to do weekly recaps of Heroes episodes (what was up with that?) And as a consequence of my travels, I was completely out of contact with the Internet, that suckling teet that provides nourishment for us bloggers. Or, put in another, less crazy way: the knowledge of the day’s news and pop culture that feeds my blogging was considerably impeded.
Which means that instead of ranting at you about video games, or the Olympics (what was up with that?) I instead present to you, the semi-literate, and probably drunk Cracked reader, with my thoughts and opinions on two 6-month old movies that I saw on the plane: Cloverfield and Vantage Point.
Cloverfield
This movie started off well, when I saw that it was only 90 minutes long. I also enjoyed the incredibly boring first 15 minutes, which gave me time to finish my crossword puzzle. I had done a completely bullshit speculative piece about this movie a while back, and am pleased to report that all my theories were wrong, which for the movie is a good thing, as my predictions were deliberately retarded.
As for the movie itself, it’s very much a concept piece, where if you don’t like the concept, you won’t like the movie. The concept is that the scope of the film is limited entirely to what this small group of people experience and record during a standard monster attack. The downside with this kind of format is that you may be a little disappointed at the lack of explanation and general backstory. The movie never actually explains what the monster is, or why it’s attacking Manhattan. When I have to dive into the “expanded universe” of a movie to find out what the hell it was about, it’s irritating, and brings me great shame that I even know what an “expanded universe” is. I will admit that at the end of the movie it’s probably a good thing that I want to learn more about its monster, rather than be completely sick of him. As I think about it, an Origins style movie, where Christian Bale plays a young monster out to seek revenge upon the city that killed his parents would be pretty sweet.
All things considered, I guess I liked the film. Once the action starts, it doesn’t really let up until the closing credits, at which point it does let up, and words start to scroll by. Which is pretty normal. I don’t know why I mentioned it.
Vantage Point
AKA: “The President’s Chest Has Been Shot.”
The guy next to me was watching this while I was watching Cloverfield, and it reminded me that I had a vague “not wanting to spend any of my own money on it” interest in seeing it, so on my flight home I dialed this in.
Dennis Quaid stars at Quennis Daid (I didn’t take very good notes) a Secret Service agent who not only has a dark past, but is also a nervous wreck and loose cannon, who protects presidents by his own rules, because it’s the only thing he’s good at.
This is another concept movie. The deal with this film is that the president gets shot in front of several thousand witnesses, but they all see different things. So the movie keeps replaying the events of the day from another character’s perspective until we see the whole story. It’s a neat premise, even if it is based on the idea that the president would give a speech in front of a crowd of 40000 Spaniards. Given that in the last few years the president hasn’t appeared in front of more than a couple dozen extremely wealthy, extremely white people at a time, this seems like a bit of a stretch.
My big beef with this kind of movie is that it’s based on not revealing things to the viewers when they happen. This kind of plotting can work, but it’s really important for the script to not jerk the viewer around while doing so. And this movie fails that particular sniff test: about thirty times during its 90 minute run time, a character sees something of interest while watching video of the assassination, but we don’t get to see what they’re looking at, and won’t for another hour or more. “Hey, fuck you!” I say at the screen when this happens, earning some stern looks from the mother of two young children sitting in front of me.
There’s also Forrest Whittaker who plays a magical black man, whose power is being the most kind-hearted and helpful person in the history of cinema. I am not shitting you. He’s going around dazzled by the quaint Europey buildings, and talking in Spanish with the locals, and helping little girls, and aiding the police. Like a character in another movie I watched today, he feels the compulsive need to film everything he sees, often sprinting for several blocks to film something he finds particularly interesting. Pleasant, speaks the language, and an excellent jogger: someone needs to straighten out central casting on their definition of “American Tourist.”
So it’s got its flaws. But it was perfect for an airplane movie, because everything is spelled out for the viewer with no critical thinking or analysis required. It’s kind of like “Memento” with training wheels. Also, it had a pretty good car chase through the streets of downtown Spain , which I enjoyed.
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June 24th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Spaniards are white. They shot most of the film in Mexico.
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:30 pm
“I won a copy of Cloverfield. It never arrived in the mail. Did I really win?”
Yes, yes you did.
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:12 am
I didnt watch cloverfield cause im not really into “big monster wrecks city” movies… a friend said it was good though…
Yeah… as a spaniard myself i find hardly believable american president (Bush at least) will have the nerve of give a peace speech in Spain (specially after 3/11/04). Even if the plot is set in Salamanca (Spain), its was actually shot in South America. Wich explains why people got the “Pancho” look instead of being white (like we spanish are). The only spanish actor in the film is Eduardo Noriega, the police man who spends the movie running. I liked the movie, but the whole “30 minutes before” during all the movie and the plot getting more and more obscure makes you end up saying “fuck you! Fuck all of you! Specially you Forest Whitaker!!!”
June 21st, 2008 at 8:38 pm
That scene in Children of Men gave me chills when I first watched it
June 21st, 2008 at 8:14 pm
man, I’ll confess, I literally sobbed for like 10 minutes at the ending of the Mist. Admittedly, I was a bit stressed out at the time, but the movie did a very effective job of pulling me in as a viewer, entertaining, scaring, and exhilarating me, and then turning it all on it’s head, making me wish a huge monster would come out, and end Tom Jane’s misery, and making what would normally be a happy ending fucking tragic.
Then again, Im a huge pussy that nearly cried at the end of the big battle scene in ‘Children of Men’
June 19th, 2008 at 11:02 am
i would literally sit through cloverfield for the next six months non stop than watch the happening again. serriously, how complicated is this formula: giant monsters are good villans, plants are boring.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:59 am
when I was a teenager I often dreamed of my prince riding a big strong horse to invite me to his palace……
But so hard to find my dream lover in the real world. Am a sexy big beauty, but am still single and seeking my lover on ____ PlusMeet.c o m ____, where many big curvy girls, sweet chubby women and big nice guys mingle and seek fun&love together! Hope it will work for me!
June 19th, 2008 at 6:46 am
I love Cloverfield and like Hud. I also loved the ending to The Mist.
June 19th, 2008 at 1:39 am
I hate Hud.
June 18th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I love Cloverfield
June 18th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I can’t type :’suspension’ and ’shit’ need to replace ’suspecion’ and ’shot’. That is all.
June 18th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Ian, it’s called suspesion of disbelief. Sometimes shot happens in movies that is nopt realistic but it’s needed to move the story forward and give viewers some information. There was a huge fucking monster in the movie, too, and I’d bet it wasn’t real.
I love Cloverfield. I saw it in the theater and I felt like it was happening to me. My daughter and I were totally captivated. I was barely breathing when the helicopter scene unfolded. I was there. Watching at home, although on a 52″ TV, is NOT the same at all. Not nearly as intense.
Natasha, they royally screwed the ending of the Mist, changed the whole point of the original story and depressed me more than usual. To Stephen King I say this: we all know you can write horror but with The Mist you wrote about horrible event that brought out the best and worst of humanity and let your readers decide for themselves what may have happened. You let us use our own imaginations and moods to continue the adventure. Allowing your story to be changed in this way and endorsing it makes me hate you just a little bit.
June 18th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Oh, it is set in Spain.
But… most Spaniards are white.
June 18th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
‘40000 Spaniards’?
The buggery?
June 18th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
im an epileptic and cloverfield didnt make me have a seizure. but it did piss me off because it was a stupid movie that had a stupid ending. another movie that blowed was the mist. wtf was up with the ending. god that made me SO mad.
June 18th, 2008 at 3:28 am
I am nthing the Cloverfield love! A monster movie about a monster atacking, viewed by people on the ground. I imagine if a monster attacked (or a war broke out for that matter), I will not be running to the nearest scientist or political analyst for answers. I’d be getting the hell out of there or try to save my loved ones. That aspect of the movie was very romantic, I think; I nearly cried when I thought the guy’s girlfriend died in her house. There, i admited that. I’m a bleeding hearted romantic. The shortness of the movie is also good; too many movies are ruined by padding out the length.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
yea - i called bullshit on the metal pole thing when it happened too. But the rest of the stuff that Ian pointed out is easily forgiven for the sake that it is a movie and in the frantic pace of the whole thing it didnt really standout. (ok, the cell phone thing stood out, but the reception in the subway keeps getting better and they keep taking precautions for emergencies and the monster hadn’t gotten very far into the city at that point and the scene turned out to be rather poignant.)
June 17th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
what? A review on Cracked that isn’t angry, bitter, or intentionally inflammatory? I find this… refreshing. I liked Cloverfield too. Unfortunately, it did pull the classic JJ Abrahams of asking intriguing questions and hoping you are sufficiently entertained by the drama to forget he never answered them (the axiom of storytelling on ‘Lost’)
June 17th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
“giant sentient hemorrhoids ” wasn’t that the monster in Cloverfield?
June 17th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
I really liked Cloverfield. I saw it at the theatre though, at the midnight showing, the way movies should be seen. My friends and I were all in agreement that Cloverfield on a non-movie screen would have kind of sucked. It was too big, too frantic to be viewed on a smaller scale. That being said, it was a very novel concept, and one I think worked excellently. Ian, I agree with you about the wound the main girl sustained (my friends and I all laughed out loud at that part), but that’s about it.
Vantage Point, on the other hand, was laughable. My friend insisted we had seen an early screening of “Iron Man,” due to Dennis Quaid’s apparent invincibility.
June 17th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I’m about to ruin this movie for those who haven’t watched it. There were so many thing that were stupid about Cloverfield I lost track when I watched the movie for the first time last weekend. Making a call from a subway during a monster attact. Friends being okay with you recording their secret gossip. The army being okay with you recording what goes on at their emergency medical stations. Being able to run in darkness in the subway. Having access to a service floor of a subway (Good thing nobody locks it. I’ll have to keep that in mind). Having one of the Time Warner Center Towers rest against the other without collapsing. Pulling a lance out of a girls shoulder without her bleeding out. Having the gang survive a chopper crash and then having the girl with the shoulder wound help pulls somebody else out. I don’t care if I’ve ruined the move for anybody.
Pure ass-hattery
June 17th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
cloverfield was better than all the godzilla movies and king kong(peter jackson’s king kong) and really good
June 17th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I went to Cloverfield because the commercial showed a missile firing tank. If Happening promised me missile showering tanks, i’d go to it too.
But you have to admit, at the end monster looked stupid. If they weren;t going to tell it’s backstory, they should’ve left it out and figured some othe demise for our ill begoten chracter.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
The backstory of the monster is obesity. It consumed the city! Run from those fat bitches! They shouldn’t be allowed to breed or their spawn will eat the city!
June 17th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
That post had so much more entertainment value when it read “34/35.” The idea of a ’sexy big beauty’ reminiscing about the halcyon days of her mid thirties, trying to recapture the magic with a ‘big nice guy’ found on a dating site… That’s just golden. Also, the description of the horse makes you wonder if it’s foreshadowing for the fact that she’s looking for plus-sized men, or if there’s a bit of an animal fetish at work.
Overweight teenagers looking for lurid affairs on the internet is… well, advertising to the right demographic on Cracked, I guess, but still a bit disturbing.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
sorry, i typed the wrong age, it should be 14/15. forgive my mistakes….
June 17th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
when I was younger, about 34/35 years old, I often dreamed of my prince riding a big strong horse to invite me to his palace……
But so hard to find my dream lover in the real world. Am a sexy big beauty, but am still single and seeking mu lover on ____ PlusMeet.c o m ____, where many big curvy girls, sweet chubby women and big nice guys mingle and seek fun&love together! Hope it will work for me and help me find my Mr. Right!
June 17th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I like movies about big booty women and big manful guys.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Movies they should never play on airplanes: Air Force One, United 93, Snakes on a Plane, Cast Away. (for tv I would suggest staying away from lost).
June 17th, 2008 at 11:58 am
I liked Cloverfield as well. As DOB said - it was a fun monster movie. And it also managed to encapsulate americans’ post 9//11 fear just like godzilla did for the japanese and hiroshima.
My theory is that your opinion of the film is completely decided by how you feel about Hud. If you like him and find him humorous and even relate to him a little you’re going to like the movie. If you don’t like him and you find him annoying, stupid, and/or inappropriate then you aren’t going to like the movie.
Also, if you’re epileptic you aren’t going to like the movie, but that’s true of many things nowadays.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Holy crap, I just watched Vantage Point on an airplane, too!
June 17th, 2008 at 11:34 am
I too liked Cloverfield. It was fun which, (call me crazy), is something that I think movies need to be every once in a while. It was a Monster-Destroys-A-City movie wherein a monster destroyed a city. Few movies these days turn out to be exactly what I expect them to be, and Cloverfield was one such movie.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:32 am
The Hannahppening!
June 17th, 2008 at 9:28 am
The above comment assumes that the viewer doesn’t speak German, and has no access to Miley Cyrus, as she could easily replace all of the above torments.
But yeah, that’s right, The Happening is worse than Hannah Montana.
June 17th, 2008 at 9:27 am
You could splice the German language version of the two movies together, and watch them backwards at three-quarter speed while being flogged by an angry teamster and having your bare feet alternately burned and stabbed with rusty needles, all while hanging upside down and being shaken incessantly, and it would still be a more rewarding experience than watching The Happening.
June 17th, 2008 at 9:21 am
I won a copy of Cloverfield. It never arrived in the mail. Did I really win?
June 17th, 2008 at 9:01 am
I can’t believe that there’s someone not bitching about something in cracked. Also, it’s the only positive Cloverfield review i’ve read (i’ve read none, but still, people hate it). I agree with Bucholz (and not only because I’m afraid of him).
I wonder what real life job Bucholz has. CEO of Hell?
June 17th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Cloverfield was responsible for my seizure
Fuck that movie.