So I saw Cloverfield...

Unfortunately last weekend I had to cancel my trip to Philly to see the Rhett Miller concert for reasons explained in my last post. I did try to salvage the weekend a little by going to see Cloverfield.

I'll start by saying that I'm one of those people where J.J. Abrams is now with Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow as guys who I'll give anything they have a hand in a chance (although I'm not going to see his reboot of the Star Trek franchise).

My favorite things about the movie:

• I'm very impressed that the budget was only 25 million or so. For a movie that looked like it was filmed with a hand-held camera, the effects were pretty good. I actually think that if a giant monster started attacking New York City while I was in there, that's pretty much what it would look like.
• While I never got nauseous like a lot of people apparently did, the length was perfect for a movie shot with a shaky camera P.O.V.
• Before the monster started attacking the city, the music being played at the party was pretty cool. I went in to a monster movie not expecting to hear "The Underdog" by Spoon or "Four Winds" from Bright Eyes.

My least favorite things about the movie:

• My main complaint about the movie was actually the first twenty minutes or so. I understand that they had to make up care about the characters a little bit but I didn't. There was not one moment where I thought, "Gosh, I really hope ___________ doesn't get killed." But that's because I rarely say "Gosh." But yeah, I didn't care about a single character in the movie.

This movie, as J.J Abram's vehicles seem to be leaning towards now, had a large viral marketing campaign. Personally, I didn't follow along. Apparently there was fake websites giving hints and clues about things that could be seen in the movie if you paid closer attention. I wish I could have followed along but when I'm at work I just don't have the time. Maybe if I did, I would have liked the movie even more than I did. If I'm doing stars again, I'll probably do 3 and a half out of 5. It would have been a 4 if there was somebody for me to root for to live.