CloverfieldA $25 million dollar budget and a handheld camera  January 23,
2008 4:48:25 PM
If the makers of The Blair Witch Project had had a $25 million budget, or if the Godzilla people had had digital video technology and computer-generated special effects, they probably would have come up with something more original than Cloverfield. But credit director Matt Reeves and producer J.J. Abrams for the premise, which by now is familiar to all from the saturation marketing. Friends throw a surprise party for a guy leaving Manhattan for Japan. They give the dumbest fellow in the room a camera. Then something awful destroys the city. Kind of puts one’s personal problems in perspective, doesn’t it? Well, no, because it sets up that old disaster-movie cliché where the hero desperately tries to rescue his beloved while the world is being destroyed — the difference being that Cloverfield is shot with a handheld camera by someone making stupid comments. Despite the surreal images and the gratuitous 9/11 references, all this amounts to is about a $40 million opening weekend. 84 minutes | Boston Common + Fenway + Fresh Pond + Circle/Chestnut Hill + suburbs
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- Bill Gage has Down syndrome. And his band rocks
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- A woman's body tells her what she needs to know
- Ray Davies hits the road
- Art on the move
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The Stones find satisfaction in Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light
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The Boston Turkish Film Festival at the MFA
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Borderless realm of love, loss, and reconciliation
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The Boston Underground Film Festival celebrates both
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Artfully done soap opera
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Art vis-à-vis life
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The world of half-baked ideas
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- Irresistibly good
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- Unbalanced and unoriginal
- Love and politics
- Reflections on Spindleworks in Brunswick
- The Stones find satisfaction in Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light
- More gripping than highlight reels
- Not scary and a measly PG-13
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