Post 119

Wait, what?

Readers, the unthinkable has happened. Really, this is--it's totally out of what I have previously perceived as the Realm of Possibility. You ready?

I just saw Cloverfield. That qualifies as mildly surprising; actually shocking is the fact that I liked it. More shocking still: I really liked it. Near blasphemy: I daresay it was a well made, high-quality flick!

The better you know me, the more shocking the above will seem to you: I don't like thrillers; I don't believe in alien invasions and subscribe to a nearly wholesale rejection of speculative fiction; I hate, hate, hate shaky camera work; though I appreciate open-ended movies, I demand that every work of fiction have some kind of denouement--and yet, I like Cloverfield.

If that's not a solid recommendation, I don't know what is!

Seriously, I was impressed. I was intrigued that the camera was the real protagonist--not the people who were running it. Because of that, I was required to suspend my disbelief that people would, in such traumatic circumstances, be so attached to a camcorder, but I found that surprisingly easy to do.

The director must be a brilliant individual. Just the way the camera moves--he captures well the feel of a hand-held camera, but he manages to capture all the necessary elements in each scene just as well. Again, I had to suspend some disbelief regarding the durability of the camera and the steadiness of its operators, but I found such things entirely unobtrusive.

I dunno. I pride myself on my ability to remove myself from fiction and not be entirely sucked into it, so maybe this movie just did a good job of not drawing in its audience, so maybe it is, in fact, not a good movie in the popular sense, but its reviews have been so good that I find that hard to believe.

So yeah. I really have nothing bad to say about this movie--except to mention the rumor of a sequel, which causes me to raise an eyebrow, but if there is a sequel, you can probably expect to find a review for it right here on The Eccentric Sage.