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Cloverfield
Cast: Rob: Michael Stahl-David
Hud: T.J. Miller
Lily: Jessica Lucas
Marlena: Lizzy Caplan
Jason: Mike Vogel
Beth: Odette Yustman
Directed by Matt Reeves
Written by Drew Goddard
Running Time: 84 mins (inc credit sequence)
A key line in "Cloverfield" comes so quickly you could almost miss it. As New York City is being pulverised by something
very large and very angry, an anonymous soldier ushers four frightened young survivors to safety. They ask if the military
has any idea what is stomping its way through their home town. "If they know what it is, they ain't telling me,"
the soldier barks back. "Whatever it is, it's winning."
Nothing seems to be able to stop this thing. Soldiers machine gun it, tanks blast at it, jets fire missiles into its torso,
B2s even carpet bomb the thing at low altitude - yet the beast seems unperturbed by all the firepower being poured into it.
As for what it is, the only thing anyone knows is that it seems to enjoy eating people, knocking over skyscrapers and staying
mostly out of camera shot. And unlike so many movie monsters, the beast of Cloverfield does not come with any backstory or
character references. The most anyone can gather is that it is in a rather bad mood.
Filmed as if shot on a home video camera, Cloverfield is a nerve-jangling, at times visually staggering, genuinely frightening
monster film that masterfully blends old-school monster movie conventions with the visual aesthetics of the YouTube generation.
The film is a skillful hybrid, a cinematic gene-splicing of the Godzilla legacy, the panic-strewn disaster films of Irwin
Allen ( The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno) and the wild, seminal video verite stylings of The Blair Witch Project.
Indeed, Cloverfield's debt to Blair Witch is almost as large as the monster itself. As well as adopting its style, the
concept is identical, with the film being presented to us as a recovered home-made videotape containing a valuable sighting
of the beast. Despite that however, the film's combination of familiar elements produce something truly unique - and truly
terrifying. The film begins sedately enough as the ad-hoc video chronicle of a going-away party for young executive up-and-comer
Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who has just landed a plum job in Japan. The evening, however, is marred by two events.
The first is the boiling over of the relationship trouble he is having with Beth (Odette Yustman), a lovely young woman
he has been trying to give the cold shoulder to, even though he still loves her. As he explains to his videographer and best
friend Hud (T.J Miller), he doesn't want to complicate his impending departure with a break-up, but his plan now seems to
be back-firing. The second hiccup to the party is the unannounced arrival in New York harbour of Godzilla's big brother, who
makes his entrance by capsizing a ship and relieving the Statue of Liberty of her head, which is sent flying through the night
air and into the street. At this point the party is promptly abandoned as the guests join the rest of the city's residents
in running for their lives. Rob, Hud and several friends join the exodus briefly before deciding to double-back to see if
Beth is still alive in what remains of her apartment building.
There is much that is conventional about Cloverfield. As with The Thing (1951) and Alien (1979) we barely see the creature
for most of the film - though we certainly hear it as it stomps about and lets out the occasional, spine-rattling roar. What
the film brings that is new to the monster-movie genre is the compelling quality of its look. By dovetailing blockbuster spectacle
with the amateurish visual texture of home video Cloverfield achieves a new high-water mark in digital photo-realism. The
impact of the effects is amplified tenfold by the presumed authenticity that comes with jagged, gloss-free home video, especially
when taken on the run, complete with frame distortions and crackling audio.
With most events being seen from street level, one also gets a vivid sense of scale. Your eye searches for glimpses of
the monster as Hud swish pans frantically in response to the latest explosion or building collapse. This technique proves
particularly adept at immersing the audience inside a panic scene as people scurry and scream for their lives. The sequence
on the Brooklyn Bridge - a New York landmark which also gets a hard time in I Am Legend - is arguably the scariest set piece
in the film, punching the point that helplessness is never more frightening than when it is experienced with hundreds of others.
Many of the images in Cloverfield are lifted from 9/11 coverage - dust clouds, collapsed buildings, cops barking at people
to keep moving - and we even catch some post-9/11 snatches of dialogue, such as when one frightened party-goer wonders, "Do
you think it's another terrorist attack?" This may naturally prompt one to ponder whether Cloverfield is intended as
some sort of post-9/11 allegory, with the monster representing some megalithic threat that can't be stopped, perhaps terrorism
or American paranoia over its own security. Then again, the monster of Cloverfield might just be a monster, which is probably
the most fruitful reading. To be honest, one can read 9/11 themes into practically anything these days.
Cloverfield is brief - it clocks in at 75 minutes, not counting the ultra-slow final credit scroll - and it is perhaps
because it wastes no time in administering its regular doses of shock and awe that it managed to tweak that sense of primal
fear so many monster movies neglect.
Sweeney Todd
The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
Director: Tim Burton
Screenplay: John Logan (based on the musical by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler; adaptation by Christopher Bond)
Cast: Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd), Helena Bonham Carter (Mrs. Lovett), Alan Rickman (Judge Turpin), Timothy Spall (Beadle
Bamford), Sacha Baron Cohen (Signor Adolfo Pirelli), Jamie Campbell Bower (Anthony Hope), Laura Michelle Kelly (Lucy), Jayne
Wisener (Johanna), Ed Sanders (Toby)
Perceived wisdom has it that when you find something you are good at, you should stick with it, and that is exactly what Tim
Burton has been doing over the past twenty years. Honing his Addams Familyesque wit into an array of sharpened, and all-together
spooky, mise-en-scène cartoons - both animated and live-action - from Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands to his version of
Gotham City in Batman through The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleepy Hollow and Corpse Bride, right on through to his latest
opus of succulent Grand Guignol decadence - a decadence that Burton (along with six-time collaborator Johnny Depp) has made
his very own.
The story of a man wrongly accused and sent to a penal colony for fifteen years, only to have the man who framed him,
take his wife and steal his daughter, now returning to seek his razor-edged revenge, full of ghastly delights and cannibalistic
exuberance, has with Burton's quite sincerely manicured adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's 1979 musical smash hit about "The
Demon Barber of Fleet Street", added the term Burtonian to the filmmaking terms of merit.
Opening with a credit-oozing nightmare factory of a bleak smog-filled, vermin-defiled London, all soaked in near neon
coloured blood, Burton immediately - without even a chance to allow anyone to back out - places you right smack dab in the
middle of his world. A world that may seem quite vile to many an uninitiated lost traveller, but a world that is very much
a delightful grotesquery of twisted psychosis for Burton and his gang, here (once again) including perrenial playmate Depp
and his own licentious missus, Helena Bonham Carter, playing the deliciously demented dame to both Burton and Depp's mad-eyed
scientists. Obsessed with the visuals of his films more than just about any other director working today, he is probably the
most dedicated filmmaker to such expressiveness at this time. The world of Caligari and Nosferatu and Dr. Mabuse is also the
world of Edward Scissorhands and Jack Skellington and now Sweeney Todd.
Many criticisms have been lobbed at Burton and his filmmaking style in the past for being all flash over substance, and
that is indeed the case in many of his films (sometimes beautifully so) - and it is no different here. One could also say
that here is Johnny Depp again, being Johnny Depp (again), but who other than Depp could play this role with such a gleeful
glint in his ever-winking eye and such a shameless smile upon his ever-nodding psychotically perverse pretty boy face? Burton
and Depp both take us deep into the gothic grist of this Threepenny Opera inspired tale of madness and meat pies - and we
go along happily, without a seeming care in the world.
In the end, what we get, after a string of semi-successful failures (the overly sentimental Big Fish, the overly foppish
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the overly accessorised Planet of the Apes remake - only Corpse Bride managed to keep
in touch with Burton's aforementioned world during this period), is Burton's most exhilarating - and complete - work since
his woozy ode to Z-movie making in Ed Wood, proving once again that he is the most uniquely inventive, if not the most wildly
insular, director working in cinema today. Certainly it may be quite morbid, and ultimately it is a very sad tale, but in
Burton's hands, and in Burton's world, we are sure to have a cheerfully blood-spurting time.
The film is based on the Stephen Sondheim musical from 1979, when Angela Lansbury starred as Mrs. Lovett and Len Cariou
played the role of Sweeney Todd. This time as stated, Johnny Depp stars as the barber Benjamin Barker. Married and madly in
love with his wife Lucy and their young child Johanna, he soon becomes the victim of the plot laid out by the evil Judge Turpin
(Alan Rickman). Jealous of Barker's family and his overall infatuation with Lucy, Turpin banishes Barker from London for 15
years of false imprisonment. As we all know, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and in the case of Barker it does a great
deal more.
You will also meet the animated Italian Pirelli played by Sacha Baron Cohen in a role that really is far too small to
contain his huge talent. Cohen only has about 10 minutes time on screen (if that) and utterly dominates. Considering his roots
are performing in various characters dating back to his days as Ali G, Bruno and most notably, Borat, it shouldn't come as
a surprise that he can act, but in this he's outstanding.
Alan Rickman turns in a worthy performance in a limited role, as does the always-brilliant Timothy Spall as his filthy
henchman Beadle Bamford, but the show belongs to Depp and Bonham Carter equally. While neither one of them are claiming to
be singers of the highest standards they never miss a beat, and Carter's English accent seems perfectly utilised within the
lyrics of the songs she sings. Her opening performance of "The Worst Pies in London" and "By the Sea"
are not only comical inside the confines of the film, they are also songs that can be listened to independently of the film
and still just about hold their value.
However, the song to be remembered here is "Johanna". Young Jamie Campbell Bower has his own performance of
the song early in the film, but it has to be noted - Depp's consistently Anthony Newley-era David Bowie-ish renditions of
his material and especially his take on that song later on the film as he sings it while treating us to our first throat slashing
montage is terrific fun.
No Country For Old Men
Director:
Ethan Coen
Cast:
Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald
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Writer Cormac McCarthy downplayed the sound made by one of the most horrifying weapons ever used to kill a man in his baroquely
violent fiction, comparing it to a door being closed. But when the compressed-air-powered captive-bolt pistol is first used
on a human skull in Joel and Ethan Coen's butt-clenchingly taut adaptation of the novelist's 2005 'No Country for Old Men',
the sound is exactly what you suspected: a quick, almost imperceptible burst of air, like the bursting of a car tyre or a
bus' brakes releasing. Unseen is the metal rod dashing a few inches forward and just as quickly retracting, the entire action
occupying fractions of a second. All you hear is the sound, which exponentially multiplies the weapon's horror. In fact, that's
practically the only sound heard during this early scene, and unless you've read the book you might wonder what that metal
rod attached to the air canister is. But when the victim's eyes fall slack and his neck goes weak and he collapses on the
road in a quiet thud, you have a reasonably good idea.
With No Country For Old Men, the Coen Brothers abandon the genre games of their most recent films in favour of a streamlined
crime saga anchored by a fantastic cast, an arduous landscape, and a tourniquet-tight script. Even though many of their usual
crew members are on board - composer Carter Burwell, costume designer Mary Zophres, cinematographer Roger Deakins - the Coens
whittle their idiosyncratic style down to surgical precision. It's not only their best since Fargo, it's one of the most cold-blooded
and sinister movies in recent memory.
In 1980 southwest Texas, Vietnam veteran and out-of-work welder Llewellyn Moss (a Mount Rushmore stone-faced Josh Brolin,
following his predatory American Gangster turn) stumbles upon the bullet-riddled trucks, pit bulls, and bodies of a drug deal
gone awry while out hunting. He soon finds the now-dead man who made off with the cash - $2 million in a briefcase - and skeedaddles
home to his wife, Carla (the ever-excellent Kelly Macdonald), at the trailer park.
Two million doesn't just disappear, though, and soon the men who lost it have set a merciless assassin - captive-bolt
gunner Anton Chigurh (a hyena-eyed Javier Bardem), whose jean-jacket ensemble and moptop hairdo only makes this serenely unblinking
psychopath even more terrifying - on to Moss' trail. Tracking both is local county sheriff Bell - Tommy Lee Jones, whose born-Texan
drawl finely calibrates the entire film's tone during the opening voice-over and who has seen more than he's cared to during
his life and has an inkling as to how horribly wrong everything is going to get before all's said and done. Also in the mix
is a sublimely creepy cameo from Woody Harrelson as a pseudo-nemesis with a habit of second-guessing almost everyone...
The rest of No Country For Old Men is pure chase, strategically plotted, tensely drawn, and meticulously realised. The
Coens' adaptation zeros in on a harrowing, dusty Texas. Bell, Chigurh, and Moss are stern men who can read blood trails, intuitively
react in a firefight, barely grimace when taking rounds to the flesh, and stoically muscle through self-treatment of wounds.
Bardem's Chigurh and Jones' Bell are the most easily memorable performances, both conveying a macabre depth with only scant
dialogue and body language. They're also a set, the yin to the other's yang: Chigurh is a pure instrument of death, the sort
of man who kills quickly if mercilessly, and messily when required. Bell upholds the law, but he's having a hard time telling
if he's still fighting a winnable war.
Brolin, though, pulls you into this unforgiving thriller. Here he gets a chance to channel his ruggedness into cagey survival
instincts, infrequent bouts with his conscience, and alert if resigned eyes. Moss is a veritable nobody with a possible string
of bad choices behind him; it's just that his latest, calmly deciding to make off with somebody else's cash, might get him
killed. And it's Brolin's Moss that relates No Country for Old Men to its closest kin: film noir and its everyday Joes who
end up in over their heads. The Coens venture in the opposite direction from what they did with Miller's Crossing, letting
Deakins' camera capture arid lands, dead bodies, open wounds, and a killing's immediate aftermath and linger on it. The Coens'
approach turns this often sun-drenched setting into a living hell, a noir so gone to seed that even though it's bathed in
gorgeous colours, all that's left in this world is the camouflaging black of night, in whose shadows you can only hide for
so long before Death or someone far worse, comes to collect what's his.
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