“A lot of hype leads to some delivery.”

Today is 1-18-08. Any other year, this day isn’t a big deal, but this year is different. Audiences viewing the trailers before Transformers were treated(and thoroughly confused) with a Blair-Witch-like trailer for a movie with today’s date. A viral marketing campaign hit the internet and everything from Voltron to Godzilla were rumored to be the topic of this mysterious film. Nobody could figure out what it was. Nobody knew what hit us. But we did have a date: 1-18-08. And on that date, Cloverfield was released in theaters and the mystery could be put to rest.

As immersive an experience as Cloverfield can get by with it’s cinema verite aesthetic, it also is an enjoyable, entertaining flick. Given the hype, however, I don’t think any movie short of The Godfather could have lived up to it’s hype. With it’s short run time of literally less than 1 hours and 30 minutes(!!), you don’t have to work hard to piece things together. What I gathered from the Cloverfield experience is this: This is how you market a movie, but not necessarily how you make a movie.

Cloverfield will get viewers in this opening weekend based on the sheer curiosity factor developed from it’s intense viral marketing campaign. Once this flick starts hitting word of mouth reviews, look for a huge dip, because of how it doesn’t stack up to it’s potential or huge hype. That being said, I did think the director made some pretty poor decisions with some parts. Productions really do need to find another way to create scary looking creatures. This is the second movie I’ve seen in the past month with lame looking monsters. There, I’ve wrecked it. The monster isn’t that impressive. Other than that, it was a fun, cool movie.

I hate to be so nonchalant and perhaps lack in criticism, but this movie is enjoyable to watch. It’s characters are pretty endearing and don’t really get annoying. It has a nice balance of comedy, action and suspense and achieves it’s goal; a first person account of a monster attack. Now I’ve heard all the post-9/11 sentiment surrounding the destruction end of this flick. I think it only strengthens the potential horror that audiences could get from the flick.  It’s the monster movie from your point of view, which works because it connects with the audience at their deepest level; what would you do if this happened?

I did find myself questioning the motives of the characters in this flick. In our darkest and most horrifying moments, isn’t there some sort of fight or flight mechanism? And considering you can’t really go pick a fight with a skyscraper sized monster, don’t you just fucking run? I mean the sentimentality in the flick isn’t over the top. On the contrary, it’s actually quite welcome. You may find yourself however, wondering what you’d do in their situation. I suppose this is a success of the film rather than a detraction, unless of course this becomes a distraction, which it does slightly. Also to note, with all these good lucking young professionals running around after true love and higher morales, I noticed no ugly people. I figured out why: We were fucking running and frankly, didn’t have anyone to go after. Good lesson from Cloverfield: Ugly people always live.

All in all, Cloverfield is fun and entertaining. It’s immersive and pretty enjoyable. I had my issues with it, with some bad directing decisions (that I won’t ruin for people) and also not really filling its potential as a sick sci-fi/horror flick. I wish it were longer and I wish there was a bit more of a bigger story, which isn’t to say the intimacy of the survivors is boring, but some larger story arc would be cool. I ended up leaving with more questions about the movie. I smell sequel. This get’s a 7 out of 10 Bones for being a fun, entertaining flick that misses the mark because it depends on it’s hype and small, yet satisfying story, to create a total experience.

RATING:

“Coen Bros. succeed again in making me not understand the hype”

There are some directors in Hollywood that I don’t totally get and I think the Coen Bros. may be one of those directors.  Suffice it to say, No Country for Old Men seemed like a gritty, violent, dark flick and that’s something I do get.  It’s also been garnering some serious critical acclaim, so I had that to boot.  I figure, “Why not? I’ll give it a go”.  I did and I can honestly say, I still don’t think I get the Coen Bros.

Which is weird, because I ended up watching Fargo after I saw No Country for Old Men, and found myself enjoying it.  Which isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy No Country for Old Men, but I didn’t see the big deal.  It was certainly a fine film, dark in style and humor with really memorable characters.  It’s this sort of New Age Western, where the violence is very life-like and the characters aren’t black and white.  Everyone’s got blood on their hands and no one comes out clean.  

Which I suppose it’s the strength of the film.  Javier Bardem is the best villian in cinema since Hannibal Lecter, as his presence looms over every single scene.  He is the most evil, robotic bastard ever and yet you seem to root for him.  He helps establish this dark, ominous tone to the movie that really does make this a pretty good experience. That being said, there are detractions.

Apparently I am the only person that doesn’t get some of the Coen Bros. humor.  The gas station scene irked and annoyed me.  The general way conversations went frustrated me.  I could do deal with this if it was here or there, but it really get’s talky and boring.  I found myself tuning out of the dialogue until Javier Bardem came back or Josh Brolin came up with some other great scheme to continue running, which may be because I’ve been indoctrinated into American cinema with the attention span of a 2nd grader with ADD. But I asked the people I went to see it with, and they agreed.  I wasn’t alone!  And one of them is a big Coen Bros. fan! Take that!

I can say No Country for Old Men is enjoyable and gritty, but I cannot tout it as this “new classic”.  It really isn’t as good as Fargo(a movie I liked, but still didn’t get the hype for it).  Do not listen to the hype on this as it does tend to be a bit boring.  I give this a 7 out of 10 Bones for being dark and brooding and loses on being long and slightly boring.

 RATING: 

There are certain times when a book bumps into you and you may say “This would make a cool movie”. This happens to be the case with me and I Am Legend. This project has been floating through Hollywood for awhile, but just recently got going with Will Smith at the helm. I was skeptical with the trailers for the flick as they didn’t really look like any of the imagery from the book, but alas I’d see it. It’s Will Smith and what was supposed to be vampires. What could go wrong with that?

A lot. Let me get the positives out there. The film does a good job of getting a scary, suspenseful tone out of it’s use of silence. I really got the sensation that Will Smith was alone in the city. Will Smith is very good in his role and in general the action is pretty decent. I like the character of Robert Neville and the constant flashbacks as they served to be nice distractions to the flow of the movie.

That being said, I had a lot of issues with this flick, most of them centering around the schlocky, crappy CGI. The vampires/hemocytes/I-AM-ROBOT-esque creatures that everyone had turned into looked awful. They may end up being the least scary things I’ve ever seen. There was nothing scary about them as creatures as most of their scariest moments came when you couldn’t see them. This movie felt to me like they were still making movies for the sake of selling action figures. It was total studio bullshit with small conventions built in to try and salvage a lack of edginess. It’s a very safe movie about the end of the world. There’s two sentiments that should never be uttered together.

I always felt like the concept of putting this story into a city would be a dis-service to the original film and while it didn’t detract, so to speak, from the overall feel, it certainly felt like he was alone only in the city. I never felt like he was the last person on Earth, which is kind of a key point. The ending is just such a let down and really poor in execution. I was dissapointed with this flick, but otherwise found some of it to be decent enough. I feel bad that the original masterpiece by Richard Matheson got butchered even when the movie was loosely based. All in all, skip it until it hit’s video stores or On-Demand. I give this a 5 out of 10 Bones for just not delivering with such an easy formula to make it a good movie.

RATING:

In recent years, there has been this “indie darling” film that comes along and captures the imagination of audiences.  Lost in Translation and Little Miss Sunshine are the two that really come to mind, and Juno is no exception. Juno manages to capitalize on this weird balance between artistic vision and Hollywood billing, not unlike the aforementioned, with great preformances and a charming story.  Put into basics: This is how movies should have been made.

It occurs to me after watching this, that while Juno is a very good movie, were it made in a time where movies with heart were made, it might rank toward the bottom of that list.  Which brings up a problem with my logic in that 1. It’s unfair to do that and 2. Makes me sound pretentious by claiming that a movie has a “heart”.  I’m ok with the first one, as being a reviewer requires me to make bold statements and backing them up by using past experiences.  I’m not ok with the second one however, because who am I to give that perception of heart?

Well fuck it, I’m doing it anyways.  Juno has heart and a lot of it.  While it tinges on the side of sappy and idealistic as opposed to realistic, it’s easily overlooked with how the movie flows and feels.  I have tried to not judge preformances as a basis of my judgement on movies anymore, but Ellen Paige is a brilliant young actress and really shines in this movie.  The writing is hysterical to begin with and I can’t imagine many other actresses at her age being able to effectively encapsulate the character that Juno McGuff is with such ease and grace. 

The movie does border itself on “lovely” indie movie fare: the uber-unique protagonist, the pastelly,arty visual tone and soundtrack.  While this certainly doesn’t hurt the film, I think it does a dis-service to Jason Reitman, who’s made a fine film.  I’d love to see him develop his sense of visual style to compliment his great storytelling ability instead of relying on heavy conventions of a budding genre. 

What worked for me through the few scratches and itches was the relationships with the characters.  This movie achieves this in so easily a manner, that it feels conversative to the audience, in that through the lingo a message is being delivered.  The message isn’t clear, but there are moments of true romantic power (i.e. the Jiffy lube bill) that really made an impact with me.  I liked trying to figure what the movie was about rather than being fed it’s meaning.  Which isn’t to say that every movie should be ambiguous or hard to obtain meaning, but attempt at sub-text, a feat Juno manages quite well. Juno is a true balance that Hollywood should seek to emulate and frankly a film that you should see. This get’s a 9 out of 10 Bones for being truely entertaining, touching and charming.

RATING:

 I originally thought about just making this review  “LoL!”, but I figured I’d at least give it a little bit of love.  If we didn’t get enough diarrhea with the first debacle that was Aliens vs. Predator, we get this hunk of steaming dookie.  I figured I’d make my feelings known immediately so as to not string anyone along.  The original trailers for this made it look really cool and the concept was actually very intriguing, but of course, mis-executed and totally crap…but funny in the worst way.

 Theres nothing worst than Hollywood making movies with big effects and budgets that come off as B-movie laugh-fests.  I was enamored by the lack of quality in the script and frankly the talent they could pull out for this flick.  There wasn’t a real known star in this, which isn’t always a bad thing, but that would have at least legitimized the crappiness.  It would have shown me that they at least put some effort in trying to legitimize this cirque de stupide.  But enough bashing…let’s get down to the brass tacks.

 Theres a negative backlash against this movie and for good reason, and perhaps I’m a bandwagoneer, but I tend to agree with said backlash.  There is no semblance of execution in this.  How can two franchises such as Aliens and Predator not be mashed together and not retain the greatness of the individual franchsies as seperate entities? In other words, how can Guinness and Bass not go together to make a great Black and Tan?  It boggles my mind.

And when did the AvP series become a wrestling match between Aliens and Predator?  If I wanted that type of entertainment, I’d just watch Monday Night Raw and have wrestlers dress up as such.  Look, the flick was campy and gory yada yada…but it felt like the lowest rent of such.  The only redeeming factors in this movie is the unintended humor.  Example being this line: “People are dying. We need guns”.  Explain to me the logic of that line. 

 All in all, maybe campy was what the directors(The Brothers Strause) had intended for the film, in which case they succeeded but not in a way that does justice to the series or the film.  I don’t know how seriously this film was taken in making it and that of course reads to the audience.  How can such a great concept go wrong is beyond me.  And what does Requiem have to do with the story, other than sounding cooler than AvP 2.  How does a movie like Freddy vs. Jason manage to entertain and be fun and a movie like AvP and AvP:Requiem fail to miss the mark? This movie is somewhat entertaining, not intentionally funny and overall just kind of schlocky and dumpy.  Skip it until DVD or entirely.  This gets 2 out of 10 Bones for being laughably bad, but still got some chuckles and some decent gore/action.

RATING: