2007 Saturn – CLOVERFIELD

This is the first movie I’ve covered here in a long time (since Alien Nation, I think) that I’d never seen before. I wasn’t actively avoiding it; I just never got around to it. The film was most famous for its mysterious marketing and the involvement of geek-God J. J. Abrams. I’m not a big Abrams guy, and the mystery thing didn’t hook me, so I stayed home.  But, I was intrigued, and I liked screenwriter Drew Goddard from his Buffy work…so I was kind of surprised to discover just how much I hated this.

The film is presented as found footage of a giant monster attack (that’s a kaiju attack, for my many Japanese readers). Some dudes are filming their friend Rob’s going away party when Manhattan is attacked by a big slimy thing from the sea. It throws the Statue of Liberty’s head at them, and eats people with its spider babies. You know, the usual. Eventually, douchebag-dude Rob, camereman-dude Hud, his crush Marlena, and hot-chick Lily, go into the heart of the attack to look for Rob’s friend-with-benefits-chick Beth. I wish I didn’t have to reduce all the characters to such simple descriptions, but that’s about as deep as the film gets, despite spending a fair amount of time on them. Maybe they’re just really shallow people?

The core problem here is that the film tries to have it both ways, as cinema verite AND Hollywood blockbuster. Unlike, say, the Blair Witch Project, there’s a slickness to the production that belies its conceit. The most obvious manifestation of this is the unrealistic hotness of all of the characters. Look around the early party scenes; it’s quite clearly a room full of young actors and actresses. The performances aren’t particularly naturalistic either. I never bought the “realness” of the footage, which meant that shaky cam, jump cuts, and the lengthy early party scenes accomplished nothing more than annoying me. I do wonder if it might have been better in the theater, but I don’t think that’s much of an excuse (although, I should note that, in a weird bit of synchronicity, my Netflix Blu-Ray disc got kind of jumpy in the last ten minutes or so as the camera was malfunctioning. I guess that just enhanced the effect, right?)

There’s a good idea here: a small, character focused film about a very big natural disaster.  If the characters had been more interesting, and the production had committed more to making the film seem “real,” it could have been amazing. As it is, I’d call it an annoying waste of time.

Grade: D

2010 Hugo nominee, Dramatic Pres., Long Form: Star Trek Screenplay by Robert Orci & Alex Kurtzman; Directed by J.J. Abrams (Paramount)

I'm going abroad for the rest of the month (to a country that's likely to have dodgy internet), so this is the last post of May. I'll be back in early June, and I'll post quite frequently to catch up (I'm on summer break now!)

J. J. Abrams' reboot of the Star Trek franchise was a fun crowd-pleaser. As long as you don't think too hard about the plot, there's a lot to enjoy.

Abrams had a tough choice here. Stay within the 43 years of continuity and possibly alienate new fans (who are certainly needed for a film this big to make a profit), or throw out the continuity and anger the fanbase (also essential to the film's success). Somehow, Abrams managed to do both. He uses a little time travel to create a new, branching continuity. The characters can go in new directions, and anything can happen, but there are plenty of Easter eggs for the old fans. Surprisingly, this approach actually seems to have worked. The film was a critical and financial success and most Trekkies (Trekkers, whatever) seem to have really liked it.

A Romulan miner named Nero manages to bring a ship from the 24th century to James Kirk's 23rd. Kirk's father is killed in the first contact between the Federation and the future ship, and the young Kirk takes a different path to Starfleet Academy. While still at the Academy, the students are scrambled to combat an attack by Nero on the planet Vulcan. In the battles that follow, the familiar crew make their way up the ranks of the Enterprise.

In a lot of ways, the film is patently ridiculous. It has cadets taking command of a starship. The villain's motivations are strange and his plot incomprehensibly convoluted. There are a few over-the-top slapstick humor sequences. And, there are a series of horribly contrived meetings between characters. It is, on a lot of levels, a stupid film, and I don't think that should be surprising since the writers, Orci and Kurtzman, were responsible for the very stupid Transformer films.

And yet, the film does work and was deserving of a lot of its success. The production values are so high that it manages to transcend so major story flaws. The acting is great, and Chris Pine especially does a great job filling the shoes of Shatner's iconic Kirk performance. And the film looks and sounds incredible. J. J. Abrams did a great job, even if he could have dialed back the lens flare a bit.

While critics were raving about it, the Onion had this hilarious news story. It's funny, but at the same time, I did want more boring alien diplomacy scenes. Or at least a story that made sense and had some real resonance. I'm looking forward to seeing more Trek in the years to come, but as long as Orci and Kurtzman are running things, I'm not too confident. The film had a lot of good will when it first came out, but I think that enough people have come to see the film's flaws that I don't see it winning the Hugo.

Grade: B