January Throws a Curveball

New at NightsAndWeekends.com Since Last Week:
Cloverfield

It was another slow January week in Critic Land. There were three screenings scheduled for this week—one was Mad Money, which I’d already seen (yech!), one was cancelled due to bad weather, and the other was Cloverfield.

For months, Cloverfield has been one of those movies that frequently popped up in pre-screening conversations (along with the most anticipated movie of the year, Midnight Meat Train). Ever since that brilliant teaser showed up before Transformers last summer, there’s been a steady stream of Cloverfield buzz. But the closer we got to the release date, the more skeptical we were.

First of all, we’re talking about a January release here. It’s just one of those unspoken rules that you don’t release anything of value in January (thus…Mad Money and First Sunday). As I’ve mentioned before, January is not a good month to be a film critic. Just to emphasize my point, at the beginning of this week, my average January grade was somewhere between a D and a D+.

Secondly, Cloverfield was filmed using hand-held cameras. Now, I realize that the quality of hand-held cameras has gone way up since I was a kid. That’s great and all. But until someone figures out how to use hand-held cameras in a way that doesn’t make me sick, I’m going to be a little skeptical here. I still haven’t gotten over the nausea I suffered while watching The Blair Witch Project—and just hearing the name “Paul Greengrass” makes my head start spinning.

Then there were the rumors. Some suggested that the whole thing was just some kind of a cheap ploy—that it would somehow tie into Lost (since the screenwriter, Drew Goddard, is also one of the writers of Lost). There were all kinds of ideas floating around—and none of them made me all that eager to see the movie. Mostly, I was just curious.

Since the screening was going to be on campus, the usual gang of misfits decided to meet for happy hour on Wednesday before the screening. It was a tough call, really: would drinking before a shaky movie make it better or worse? As it turned out, I was too drugged on Wednesday to drink anyway. I wasn’t quite sure of the dangers of mixing booze and DayQuil, so I chose to refrain.

Despite the fact that I already made it through my post-holiday illness, I somehow managed to pick up another one. I’m going to blame it on Neil, who was sick for about three weeks (which means that he missed seeing things like, oh, Mad Money). But we went to a hockey game over the weekend (Go Jackets!), and I think I might have caught his SARS in the midst of all the screaming and cheering and the plotting for total world domination. Fortunately, though, the SARS was kind to me, and it didn’t come out in full force until Monday night. That gave me Monday morning to head into the studio and record this year’s It’s Movie Time awards season special (which airs a week from today).

But anyway…back to Wednesday…. After dinner, we all headed over to the theater. They had already started letting the public in, but, fortunately, Matt was the rep of the evening, and Matt knew to save a whole bunch of seats for press. And that’s why we love Matt.

But enough about Matt. Let’s talk Cloverfield.

Now, I’m not going to lie to you. Cloverfield is a shaky movie. Even if you have a strong stomach, you will most likely feel dizzy—and perhaps a little bit sick. I, however, didn’t. Perhaps it has something to do with the mix of DayQuil and Pepsi that I consumed before the movie, but I’m thinking it was mostly because I was prepared. I knew it was coming. I knew it was going to be bad. I knew there was a chance I’d end up throwing up in my brand new COCFA Mafia stocking cap. So I planned ahead.

The beginning of Cloverfield is just about the characters. It tells their story and follows them around while they hang out together and throw a surprise going-away party for Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who’s moving to Japan. The whole thing is shot like a home movie—shakes and all. But there isn’t really anything critical going on here—not much that you really need to see. So that’s when I closed my eyes. I watched every once in a while—so I could see who the characters were and what was going on—but I knew that I didn’t necessarily have to watch the guy with the camera wander around the apartment and film people’s limbs. I could hear what was going on, so I knew when to pay attention. If there was a conversation, I’d watch. But for the other stuff, I just closed my eyes. Had I not done that, I’m pretty sure I would have been sick before the really cool stuff started. Instead, I was free to watch those shaky monster shots—and I felt fine.

And, as it turns out, I was highly impressed by Cloverfield. Yeah, it’s shaky—and that’s definitely something I could do without. I’d much prefer to be able to watch the entire movie and know that I’m not going to get sick. But the idea is so good that I’ll let it go. It’s so creative and so clever that I couldn’t help but like it. In fact, the more I thought about it the next day, the more impressed I was. Cloverfield is, without a doubt, the best movie of the year so far. Gimmicky, yes. But still pretty cool.

Go figure—a January movie that’s actually pretty good. Huh.

Next week is another slow week. Looks like I’ll have another one-screening week—followed by our group outing on Friday morning to see Rambo, since it’s not going to be screened for press (Hmmm…a January release, and they’re not showing it to press? Can’t be a good sign.). Until things pick up a bit next month, I’ll be camped out on the couch, catching up on DVDs. Maybe I’ll even watch a few more of those screeners that I didn’t get to see in December….

Let the January Blahs Begin!

New at NightsAndWeekends.com Since Last Time:
There Will Be Blood
The Water Horse
The Orphanage (El Orfanato)
The Great Debaters
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Charlie Wilson’s War

It’s a crazy day here at the office. I’m trying to put together my 2007 year in review—along with my COFCA nominations and my GAG Award ballot—but I had to take a few minutes out to wish you all a happy 2008.

After the annual Holiday Road Trip, which took us from Ohio to Toronto to West Michigan and back again, I returned home to a few Miramax screeners (hoorah!) and page after page of notes that needed to be turned into reviews. Then, on New Year’s morning, I awoke not with a hangover but with the flu instead. No surprise, really, since I always get sick after the holidays—but the flu was a bit of a change from the usual debilitating cold. Fortunately, though, it only lasted a couple of days—which meant that I was feeling a whole lot better by Thursday…just in time for the first screening of the year.

Last year, during my post-holiday illness, I missed stuff like Children of Men and Freedom Writers (as well as Code Name: The Cleaner, which sucked, since it meant that I missed out on a whole year of bad-movie jokes). This year, however, the first screening of the year was last night’s early screening of Mad Money. Since I hadn’t left the house in a few days—and since it was cold and snowy out—I almost skipped it. But everyone else was going, and I hadn’t seen the rest of the gang in a couple of weeks, so I figured it would do me some good to get out and see everybody again. And I was right. Jason and David and Kevin and John were there, and I was thrilled to see them all again. We were all eager to say our Happy New Year!s and share our holiday stories. And after I got home, I felt so much better that I actually sat down and ate, making up for the three days of soup and saltines. And today I was actually (somewhat) prepared to get up at my normal time and get to work. And to think that I have Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, and Katie Holmes to thank for it.

Since Mad Money doesn’t come out for a couple of weeks, I’m not supposed to say anything about it yet. So I won’t. I will, however, say that Kevin almost got in his first fight of the year with someone who may or may not have been kicking his seat through the movie. And there was also a guy a few seats down from David who laughed so loudly (and in such a horrifying manner) that we were rather worried that he’d have a stroke.

But enough about that—let’s talk about January. Now, I believe I’ve mentioned before that August is pretty much the armpit of the movie year. It’s the time when studios toss out their trash—their bad slacker comedies, as well as a few not-quite-blockbuster-worthy films. Why? I’m not exactly sure. Perhaps it’s because it’s just too hot and oppressive outside to go to a theater to watch a serious drama. Perhaps it’s supposed to be a palate-cleansing month between blockbuster season and early awards season. Perhaps people are too busy thinking about going back to school to think much about movies. Whatever.

But if August is the armpit of the movie year, January is—um…what’s worse than the armpit?—let’s say that January is the butt-crack of the movie year. Apparently, studios figure that they’ve given all they can in December—with all their holiday films and big-name award contenders and things—that they’ve got nothing left to give. So they give moviegoers things like Code Name: The Cleaner and a whole bunch of movies that they don’t even dare to screen for the press. Perhaps they just figure that people are too burned out from the holidays to care.

As for us critics, January is a mixed blessing. Sure, after the award season push, we critics do appreciate the down-time that January brings—but the fact that it comes filled with bad comedies and other crap that couldn’t cut it any other time of the year (not even in August!) is pretty disheartening. It does, however, give us a whole month to brush up on our scathing-review-writing techniques, as well as providing us with a whole year’s worth of bad movie jokes. January movies are, for the most part, really bad—so when we hear that a movie has a January release date, we’re instantly skeptical. Incidentally, that’s why we’re just a little bit worried about the new J.J. Abrams-produced top-secret monster movie, Cloverfield. Sure, it looked good when we saw the teaser trailer before Transformers—but if it’s any good, why are they releasing it in January? (Stay tuned for the answer to that one.)

For the time being, though, we’ll settle into our January rituals, drinking just a little bit more and preparing for the worst, all the while looking forward to the warmer temperatures—and better movies—of summer.