10 Cloverfield Lane

Hello dear reader, its film time again and as you can tell from the poster above, it’s a film that will fall into what I like to call the ‘Marmite’ category. And by that I mean that it’s either going to be a film you love or a film that you will actively avoid. This can also be said of its predecessor, Cloverfield. 

Back in the latter half of 2007, a trailer appeared for what turned out to be the Matt Reeves monster movie Cloverfield. It was attached to the start of the first Transformers film and it basically did two things. Firstly it proved that even in the early stages of social media and internet spoiler’s, it was possible to make a film that was not only under the radar but also make a film that some Hollywood studios didn’t even get wind of. Secondly, for the better part of the three months between the first trailer going viral and the film’s release, it nearly broke the internet. If you go to YouTube and just type in ‘Cloverfield’, there is page after page of fan theories and conjecture. I can’t think of a marketing strategy and plan that was executed better, when it comes to film.  

Now, I mentioned that Cloverfield is the predecessor to 10 Cloverfield Lane, which in some ways is true. However, both films are neither a sequel or a prequel to each other. The best description I’ve read about the two is that they are blood relatives. But for those of you who are preparing a trip to see 10 Cloverfield Lane, I will say this. They are both very different animals. Cloverfield is, and the statute of limitations on spoilers has well and truly expired here, is a movie about a monster, from somewhere, that has decided to rip Manhattan a new one. 10 Cloverfield Lane most definitely isn’t. 

Do you ever go into a cinema, with expectations of what you’re about to see and then have someone completely pull the rug from under your feet? It doesn’t happen to me that often and I think the last time it did happen to me was with Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, which I went into thinking I was about to watch a visually stunning science fiction epic, which for the most part it is. But fundamentally it’s a (small spoiler alert) ghost story. The reason I bring this up is because I had some preconceptions about what 10CL would offer up but what I wasn’t anticipating was just how dark the film was going to turn out to be. And by dark I mean its tone, not its lighting. To quote Ren and Stimpy, it is not a ‘Happy happy joy joy’ film at all. 

As for the film itself, I’ll start with the basics. It has a cast list of eight, yes eight. And three of those are only heard as voices. The more observant of you will pick up who Ben on the phone is played by and will realise that it’s not first time he’s been in a film with John Goodman. John himself shares the screen for most of the film with John Gallagher Jr, who is probably most famous for being in Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. For many Mary will be an actress who they are not familiar with but she has acting since the late 90’s and has been in Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Tarantino’s Death Proof and the last two Die Hard films, to name but a few. However, as good as those two actors and the performances they give are, they are both put in the shade by Mr Goodman. He plays Howard, an ex-Navy man with a survival fixation. He’s spent the prevailing years building a bunker next to his home, believing that an attack, whether its nuclear, chemical or military in nature is a forgone conclusion and it’s only a matter of when, not if, before it takes place. Howard isn’t evil however he runs the bunker with a very authoritative regimen. ‘His bunker, his rules.’ Although he isn’t evil Howard, is a very unbalanced man. Going from calm to angry in the blink of an eye. 

Mary’s character, Michelle, finds herself waking up in the bunker after being involved in a car crash. Howard has tended to her wounds, put her on an intravenous drip and provided food for her. He then tells her that the air outside has been poisoned as the result of an ‘attack’, which could have originated from outer space and as such she cannot leave. Mary, understandably, doesn’t believe a word of this and promptly puts plans into action, to try and escape back to the outside world. Now, without going into spoiler territory, there is reveal and counter reveal. As I mentioned earlier, the tone of this film is very dark and at times can be uncomfortable to watch. Its’s also worth pointing out that as with The Abyss, 10CL is a tight, claustrophobic, character driven piece that takes a big left turn about three quarters of the way through. It’s been less than twenty four hours since I’ve seen 10CL and I still can’t work out if it’s a film I want to see again. I did enjoy it and I think it’s well worth everyone’s time and effort to go and see it. I just can’t work out if I want to watch John Goodman being Howard again.

As with Cloverfeild, 10CL only appeared a short time before its release. Although there was an even shorter gap between acknowledgment of the film even existing and it taking up schedule space at the local multiplex. The first and only trailer for it was unleashed in mid-January this year (2016) and again, as with Cloverfield, was attached to a Michael Bay film, that being 13 Hours. 

Whilst JJ Abrams was playing director on a small independent sci-fi movie last year, he also had his producer hat on for Paramount. Just an aside here, if you have a spare couple of hours spare, take a look at JJ’s profile on IMDB’s website. He must have an at best, cursory relationship, with sleep. With his supervision, first time film director, Dan Trachtenberg has turned in a film that could be defined, in years to come, as a good base camp to start out from. It’s been eight years between these two films and I wouldn’t mind betting at some point in the future there will be a third. I’ll be keeping an eye on what the internet says JJ and Paramount are up to in 2024 and by then, who knows, we may have reached a point where someone at a major studio is prepared to do the film equivalent of Beyoncé and actually release a major Hollywood film with no build up, no trailers and no marketing and just casually announce that its opening tomorrow, ‘go see it’.   

There are a few things wrong with 10CL and a couple of plot devices that are, in my humble opinion, just a little bit lazy, when it comes to screenwriting. I can see the ending being a problem for some as it offers a promise of things to come that we almost certainly won’t see, at least not yet and the three main characters, on which the film hangs itself on, don’t always feel like they are being that smart. A solid four out of five but may leave a bitter aftertaste… 

Twitter Review:

Above and below, there are monsters everywhere…

#SomeThingWickedThisWayComes

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1179933/?ref_=nm_flmg_prd_7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saHzng8fxLs

http://www.empireonline.com/movies/10-cloverfield-lane/review/

Godzilla

Up from the depths, 

Thirty stories high, 

Breathing fire, 

His head in the sky, 

Godzilla! Godzilla! Godzilla and…………………………Walter White.

For those of you old enough, or young enough for that matter, to remember the Hanna-Barbera cartoon from the late seventies and early eighties, you will of course remember the above lyrics (Replace Walter White with the lesser spotted Godzooky). The cartoon in question ran for twenty six half hour episodes and basically ran along the same premise of bad guy/bad thing would turn up and create havoc. The captain of the boat, or should that be Hydrofoil, the Calico would press a little red button on his “Summon Godzilla Utility Belt” and hay presto, one green thirty story high lizard would turn up, breath fire, occasionally shoot lasers from his eyes because you know, large lizards can do that (jumping on the Superman bandwagon if you ask me) and generally save the day before disappearing back into whatever ocean they happened to be floating through at the time. 

Now I can happily report that the new incarnation of Japans very own Incredible Hulk directed by the more than competent Brit Gareth Edwards is to the old cartoon what Ronald Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla is to highbrow, Oscar winning entertainment. 

Now I have a problem and before anyone else says it, yes I have more than one. However this particular problem centres on how to tell you about Godzilla without venturing into major spoiler territory. This problem is further compounded by Warner Brothers marketing of the film and also all of its trailers. So if you plan on seeing this film please don’t read any further until you have. 

(Waits for everyone to come back………. So how about that local sports team then?............Ok, I’m not lingering around this keyboard any longer, this blog wont write itself)

Right, there really is now way of getting around this so I’m just going to state for the record that the titular big G of this film is actually the good guy. That’s right, the good guy. In a move that I never saw coming they’ve taken Godzilla and turned him into the hero of the piece. I haven’t felt this disappointed or lied too since I found out that naked Wednesdays weren’t compulsory. 

The problem is that ever since the first trailers were released, we the public have been duped into thinking that Godzilla was hell bent on mass destruction and had to be stopped at all costs, because you know, that’s what he does!

Having just re-watched the last trailer that was released earlier this year, it is my sad duty to report that nearly every shot of city damage, planes being knocked out of the sky and the armed forces basically having their bottoms handed to them is a result of the films real bad guys. Two other rather large monsters that are called MUTO’s. Which as far as I can recall stands for “Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism”. 

These two monsters, which buy the way look like giant staple extractors with legs, thrive on nuclear energy and also happen to be very much in love. The female MUTO, the larger of the two, has some real anger management issues and isn’t a big fan of being told no. However I am getting ahead of myself here and I need to go back to the beginning to start this story properly.

Our story starts in Japan, Joe and Sandra brody played by Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche respectively, are happily married with a son, Ford Brody. Ford who for most of the film played by the currently much in demand Aaron Taylor-Johnson (He’s rumoured to be in next year’s 50 Shades of Grey and will be in next year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, playing Quicksilver). It’s just a normal day at the home of the Brody’s apart from it being Joe’s birthday, which he seems to have forgotten. However because of a strange set of seismic readings that seems to be getting closer to the nuclear power plant where they both work, they trundle off to their place of employment , leaving number one son at home and before you can say “by jingo, I think that’s a major nuclear disaster” there’s a major nuclear disaster. 

This leaves one of Ford’s parents dead. Spoiler alert: It isn’t Bryan Cranston.

The story the jumps forward fifteen years and we find Ford currently serving in the American armed forces and as luck would have it his primary job is to do with the disposal of bombs in one form or another. This just happens to come in handy in the climax of the film, but before you can say that’s a tad convenient I’ll say it for you, “That’s a tad convenient….” The film does suffer a lot from these types of “Oh really???” moments. A child rescued by Ford in a MUTO attack in Hawaii is reunited with his parents the day after as they just happen to be walking past at the right time. Another Father and daughter manage to evade an incoming Tsunami and all the destruction that comes along with it by running into a local shop that seems to have been fitted with the latest and greatest in Tsunami proof shop front glass. 

Having returned home on leave after a year away from his wife and child Ford receives a phone call that his Dad has been arrested entering the exclusion zone that has been set up around the decimated nuclear plant. Ford hops on the first available plane, with some persuasion form his wife, and heads of to Tokyo to find out what’s going on. Once there Joe manages to, and I’m not really sure how, convince Ford that he needs answers about his wife’s death and the only way to get these answers is heading back into the exclusion zone once again. 

What follows is the discovery of the first MUTO, the male. It’s been feeding of the damaged reactor and growing in a cocoon of sorts over the previous fifteen years and as luck would have it just happens to hatch as Joe and Ford get there. It promptly escapes from and makes a beeline for the water…… 

No I’m going to stop with the plot breakdown, partly because I never normally give everything away when I’m writing these blogs but I think mostly just down to the fact that what follows makes about as much sense as cheese socks. Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t hate this film. I do think that it does suffer a lot from a poor script and there’s so much going on at times that it feels a bit bloated. In the same way that 2007’s Spiderman 3 had too many villains on the screen for its own good Godzilla relies far too much on its visuals. Again don’t get me wrong, some of the CGI in this film is spectacular but it seems to be at the expense of other key elements like character depth and Logic. Ken Watanabe plays a scientist that never really has that much to do and is largely wasted as an actor. What also doesn’t help is having the emotional peek of the film on ten minutes in. It’s almost an uphill battle to get the film to engage with the audience after that. 

As for Godzilla himself I’ll say this. He’s not on screen anywhere near as much as he should be and at times it feels like he’s treated like a background extra. It’s only when he gets to slug it out with the MUTO’s that he really comes into his own. As with the cartoon from the eighties his reincarnation of Godzilla also breaths fire or if you prefer, has atomic breath, and it what is another very cool visual his tail lights up internally when he’s about to let loose with the blue flames. 

I’ll finish by saying this. Godzilla is a flawed film. At times you struggle to work out why certain characters do what they do. Reasoning and understanding from the viewer does not seem to be required for the 123 minutes you’ll be sat in front of the screen. 

At the end of the film most of San Francisco is levelled by the big three-way fight to the finish. Godzilla must kill hundreds if not thousands of people during this fight but is still hailed as the hero.  It’s also worth noting that if you were to remove the human element from this film it wouldn’t change its outcome one little bit. There will almost certainly be a sequel to Godzilla and when that magnificent day does occur I really hope they’ll have spent some of its budget on a screenplay that doesn’t make me leave the cinema confused and disappointed. 

Twitter Review:

An odd film with a sting in its tail. No sense of a real story or character arc. No humans required in it or to watch it. 

#MonstersLostAtSea

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831387/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIu85WQTPRc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBwsUD7jYCI