Cloverfield Review and Heath Ledger Dead??

I didn’t want to do both of these together but this came as a huge shock to me and I just needed to say something about Heath Ledger. I got up this morning went on my daily ritual of surfing my favorite websites, before I went to see Cloverfield, when I saw the news on TVGuide. I was seriously bummed when I saw it. It’s a huge loss. I think he is practically the best Joker that’s going to ever play the role, because he looks so down right creepy in the trailers and the pictures, which is of course what the Joker should look like really . Supposedly he od’d on heroin sleeping pills, and this makes me think, we seem to be living better lives than these celebrities. They got the money and the fame and they are still not happy. What does it take to be happy? Not heroin. For me it’s love, and if these ‘celebrities’ had people who loved them, they wouldn’t have to be in this situation. Want to bets on whose next? Britney or Amy Winehouse? You pick. Call me heartless but I don’t like their music and them as a people. But Heath Ledger may you rest in peace.

Onto Cloverfield. First of all let me say I love monster movies, and I luuurved Godzilla (1998), maybe I wouldn’t like it if I watched it now, since I watched at is a kid and all, but I luurve seeing people in jeopardy as long as it’s not me. Ahem. All I can say is J.J Abrams has done it again. He produced Alias and LOST which were big hits and now Cloverfield which is turning out to be a big hit as well breaking the box office record for January.

The whole movie is filmed with a Camcorder (actually different camcorders but according to the movie only one) by Hudson one of the characters who attends his best friend’s farewell party. So he’s going around filming the whole thing when the city is attacked by a giant monster accompanied by small other monster creatures. This is the story of their horrible experience viewed by the US Army who finds the tape. The whole thing is seen from a first person perspective so you don’t get to see the monster a lot but you see it enough to make a clear image in your head of what it looks like. The monster is pretty darn huge and it goes around wreaking Manhattan even throwing off the head of Statue of Liberty, which was pretty cool. The special effects were pretty well done considering this was filmed with camcorders and they had to make it look as real as possible. I actually got quite dizzy watching the movie since I was so engrossed in it and since the camera was going to and fro in all directions. But it was one great experience. I actually thought of that once scene in Children of Men where the guy goes into the battlefield to rescue the baby, which was shot on one take (which was pretty darn amazing), while looking at some of the scenes in the movie. It’s surreal. I think most of them won’t like the movie because it ended abruptly without answering much questions. But I like it better that way and I don’t want any sequels (which was hinted after the credits, some guys over at youtube played backwards the creepy message that is after the credits to hear ‘it’s not dead’) since I like leaving stuff to the imagination.

There are so many things I missed in the movie because it was one great helluva ride and I was in shock by how great it was. There are some things that I found online after watching it. After the camera goes to black we supposedly see a satellite falling into the sea (which is actually what happened one month earlier) and this satellite awakened this monster which was in hibernation for about 1000 of years under the sea. This has been confirmed by J.J Abrams to be true. There was some online viral marketing going on for the movie which I missed but there is this connection with the main character Jason and the company whose satellite fell down. It’s a Japanese company named Turigato and he was leaving to work there as a Vice President. Coincidence? Me don’t think so when it comes to J.J.

I hope there is no sequel. The concept was great so was the special effects as well the story, the acting not so much, but they accomplished what they tried to do; which was to get some monster loving for the United States trumping Godzilla of Japan’s. So all in all I’ll definitely by the DVD when it comes out hopefully because this is one of the best movies I’ve seen and I’d love to see the extra stuff they’ve added to it.