Hello all, Dan here with a guest Review.
Cloverfield , directed by Matt Reeves, was shot on a low budget with unknown actors. It uses hand-held camcorder style of film-making, originally used in the Blair Witch Project. You are treated to a first-person perspective and running commentary of the camera holder, Hud (T.J. Miller). The events surround a typical evening that goes awry when “something” attacks Manhattan. The characters are a little dumb, but I found it easy to look past their stupidity for the sake of story-telling. The overall affect is a very gritty, very realistic monster movie. If you watched The Blair Witch Project without getting a headache; if enjoy movies with monsters and explosions, you’ll probably like this movie. It’s watchable, interesting, and doesn’t have the clumsy exposition and setup that most monster movies seem to need these days. The movie has been boiled down to its essentials: running, trying to stay alive, doing dumb things that put you in more danger, and trying to stay alive after that.
On the other hand some reviewers have turned their noses up at the film, saying that a disaster movie of this nature set in New York is too close to 9/11 to be in good taste. I would be inclined to disagree, if it were not for a single scene in the movie. Early after things have started to go wrong, our main characters are on the street watching devastation in the distance, there is an explosion, and a white dust cloud moves down the street forcing our main characters inside. Afterwards, people are covered in this white dust and struggling to move away from the destruction. To me this image recalls the white dust cloud that covered much of downtown Manhattan immediately following the collapse of the World Trade Center. It is not too soon to see a explosion or two in downtown Manhattan because explosions are generic and used in every movie. It is too soon, though, to recall intimate images such as that in the format of thrill-seeking entertainment.
La Bibliofille 
