Cloverfielder

Call me a B-movie lover but Cloverfield rocked for me.  Saw it for the first time on HBO last night and before then I never even heard of the flick.  But anyway, I just tuned in, bored, until one thing gripped me...the first person, handheld videocam treatment!

This is a directorial treatment that's slowly becoming the stuff of legends.  It started with the Blairwitch Project.  Followed by Paranormal Activity.  And now, Cloverfield.  

Hey, this type of video execution IS a big deal.  It's not easy to film 2 hours of video footage on a handheld camera while keeping in mind the flow of the story.  It's not just drag the cam and let's see what happens.  There's science to it.  Not one shot is left to chance.  Everything has to look like an accident when in fact, every single shot and angling and jiggle and shake and focus and defocus is absolutely planned.  In Cloverfield, the part where Liberty's head flies and crashes onto the street caught on videocam is 'ze bomb' scene for me.

Oh and the impromptu voices and sounds in the background --that's directed, too.  But in such a way that it has to come out natural.  Not regular actor-natural, but natural like when you're at home talking to friends with nothing but boxers on.  Imagine the challenge there!

Another thing that sold me to Cloverfield is the 'un-ending'.  Blairwitch Project and Paranormal Activity had the same thing.  You have an open-ended closure that really isn't a closure.  So that leaves you to speculate on what really happened to the story in the very end.  It opens it up for discussion and debates.  And boy, do I love debates!  This kind of movie makes you think.  And you got it...I love to think, too.

Final gush about Cloverfield is the freakishly huge alien monster.  It looks like a deformed demon cast from Constantine!  And that, in itself, rocks.