Cloverfield is a wonderful awful movie. The script and acting are pretty hokey and predictable, but it's so much a movie of its time that it will be studied in years to come. In some ways it's not unlike a classic such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers which is immersed in the ethos of the 1950's. Cloverfield is the first great classic B-movie of the post-9/11, highly connected mobile media world. It's no accident that the most interesting character is Hud - and he's literally a Heads-Up Display. And the execution - special effects, editing, sound - are near perfect. It would never be my favorite movie, but the target demographic will want to see it more than once and buy the DVD. It's going to make a lot of money for many years to come.
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2 comments:
I didn't know what a HUD was--that's interesting. I noted the reference to the explorer Henry Hudson (that's what "Hud" is short for in the movie) who died after he and his children were set adrift in a boat to starve when his crew mutinied. I felt the movie was referencing, in a weird way, the symbolic founding of New York, with Hudson searching for a passage to Asia and meeting a violent end (in a 17th c. sense).
I guess it's HUD and Hudson (Bay/River), both explanations work for me! Thanks Kim.
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