“The movie is a landmark genre film. A true milestone in film. It is, all at once art, commercial and grotesquely gleefully gargantuan.”
How nice that Harry Knowles put his Cloverfield review up yesterday. I could have done the same if I’d pushed it, but there was no discussion and therefore no green light. Harry Knowles doesn’t need a green light. He just watches a film, goes home and unloads…yaw-hawww!
Unlike me. I’m one of those guys who has learned to raise his hand in class and go “Teacher? Teacher? May I have permission?” Because this is a system that works.
The difference is that Harry Knowles has creamed over so many movies with such unbridled effusion that you don’t know what to think when you read a rave. You think, “Okay…yeah, maybe.” But you also think, “I’ll take this under advisement.”
“There’s no score, there’s no rules [in Cloverfield],” Knowles writes. “There feels like there’s no script and no movie. It feels ‘found’, but it is so huge that you can’t ever really believe that. Handheld film just has never had a story of something this fantastical or huge happen.
“This frankly launches two giant film careers at once. As of this second, I will see and eagerly anticipate every film that J.J. Abrams produces. This sort of stepping back from a genre convention and reinvention is exactly what needs to be done.
“It isn’t simply going, ‘Oh, I can make a better Godzilla movie,’ but the audacity of saying ‘I’m going to tell that story from one of the most loathed film approaches — i.e.,found footage — and simply make the most fucking amazing found tape ever. It won’t just be what it is, but the characters and the story and the emotion and the scope and the journey that the tape takes us on. I can’t wait to see what’s next.
“Then there’s Matt Reeves, I don’t know this guy. But I’ll tell you what. You’re gonna mark his name after this. He just came out with a film about as Sundance as you could imagine. This is like an indie film that you’d dream Spielberg would make.”