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| Cloverfield [Blu-ray] | ![Cloverfield [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51YpK0YYMSL._SL500_.jpg)
| Director: Matt Reeves
Actors: Mike Vogel, T.j. Miller, Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, Odette Yustman
Studio: Paramount
Category: DVD
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $16.95
You Save: $23.04 (58%)
Buy New/Used from $16.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  (515 reviews)
Sales Rank: 33
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: Blu-ray
Running Time: 84 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 0.5
MPN: 132854
UPC: 097361328546
EAN: 0097361328546
ASIN: B0018QCXGY
Release Date: June 3, 2008
Theatrical Release Date: January 18, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Five young New Yorkers throw their friend a going-away party the night that a monster the size of a skyscraper descends upon the city. Told from the point of view of their video camera the film is a document of their attempt to survive the most surreal horrifying event of their livesSystem Requirements:Running Time: 84 minutesFormat: BLU-RAY DISC Genre: SCI-FI/FANTASY/MONSTERS & MUTANTS Rating: PG-13 UPC: 097361328546 Manufacturer No: 132854
Amazon.com
One of the first things a viewer notices about Cloverfield is that it doesn't play by ordinary storytelling rules, making this intriguing horror film as much a novelty as an event. Told from the vertiginous point-of-view of a camcorder-wielding group of friends, Cloverfield begins like a primetime television soap opera about young Manhattanites coping with changes in their personal lives. Rob (Michael Stahl-David) is leaving New York to take an executive job at a company in Japan. At his goodbye party in a crowded loft, Rob's brother Jason (Mike Vogel) hands a camcorder to best friend Hud (T.J. Miller), who proceeds to tape the proceedings over old footage of Rob's ex-girlfriend, Beth (Odette Yustman)--images shot during happy times in that now-defunct relationship. Naturally, Beth shows up at the party with a new beau, bumming Rob out completely. Just before one's eyes glaze over from all this heartbreaking stuff (captured by Hud, who's something of a doofus, in laughably shaky camerawork), the unexpected happens: New York is suddenly under attack from a Godzilla-like monster stomping through midtown and destroying everything and everybody in sight. Rob and company hit the streets, but rather than run with other evacuees, they head toward the center of the storm so that Rob can rescue an injured Beth. There are casualties along the way, but the journey into fear is fascinating and immediate if emotionally remote--a consequence of seeing these proceedings through the singular, subjective perspective of a camcorder and of a story that intentionally leaves major questions unanswered: Who or what is this monster? Where did it come from? The lack of a backstory, and spare views of the marauding creature, are clever ways by producer J.J. Abrams and director Matt Reeves to keep an audience focused exclusively on what's on the screen. But it also makes Cloverfield curiously uninvolving. Ultimately, Cloverfield, with its spectacular effects brilliantly woven into a home-video look, is a celebration of infinite possibilities in this age of accessible, digital media. --Tom Keogh
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| Customer Reviews: Read 510 more reviews...
Could have been a 4 to 5 starts..........but July 4, 2008
Lots of good stuff in this movie, including the monster itself, the creatures, the effects, and the deployment of the army/soldiers.
What brings it down it the shaky camera work (barf) and most of
the actors.
Good for a view and not a keeper due to the shaky camera syndrome.
 One Crappy movie unless you like vertigo July 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I actually saw this movie at the theatre. I could barely watch for more than 10 minutes at a time. At one point in the movie because the continual movement of the camera i had to get up and leave.
 The camcorder is the star; point of view is everything July 2, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Of course, reviewers are going to complain about the shaky camcorder photography. Whether or not it made them dizzy or ill depends upon their own sensibilities; perhaps they are the people who become easily car sick or air sick; perhaps on the big screen in a dark theatre the moving images are magnified. I don't know; I viewed it on DVD.
Okay. But without the camcorder perspective, what do we have? Another throwback to 1950s post-atomic fallout science-fiction with giant squids, giant octopii, scorpians, locusts, spiders, ants, and preying mantises -- all the result of man's carelessness with nuclear detonations? The story, of course, is nothing: Beth and Rob "had sex" (woooooooo -- how old are these people? young sophisticated New York Yuppies or midwestern twelve-year-olds?) No. The story is nothing, but the presentation is everything -- point of view is the central gimmick and existential premise. Versimilitude is all -- the unreal is made to look real.
Film scholar Louis D. Giannetti reminded us years ago that each new camera set-up in a motion picture, between or even within shots, presents viewers with a new perspective from which to evaluate what they see. Films, for example, often combine omniscient narration with the first person, and the director may cut directly from first-person subjective point-of-view shots to objective camera angles, from close-ups to gauge reactions of single characters to long shots [UNDERSTAND MOVIES. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976].
Many films have, through the years, relied heavily on the subjective camera (e.g., LADY IN THE LAKE, 1946) and those FRIDAY THE 13th blood- baths where horny teenages at Crystal Lake are murdered one by one. In Jack Arnold's 3-D film IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, 1953), audiences are given control over the earthlings because the point of view when they confront the aliens is from the aliens' perspective, a device that allows the audience to see the earthlings as victims. The residents of the sleepy desert town of Sand Rock, Arizona, fimd themselves enveloped in the billowing fog that borders the vision of the viewers while they stalk victims from behind the bubble-eye of the aliens.
CLOVERFIELD is part of this subjective camera sub-genre. It begins disarmingly enough with a clever, non-horror title -- quite inspired -- not what one would expect for a monster movie like those of the 1950s or the awful Godzilla imports. The tape found in the camcorder is the whole story -- from the beginning when Rob is sneaking up on Beth during the morning-after sequence to the Coney Island close-ups of Beth giggling into the lens -- to the ending when we are back at Coney Island, the part of the tape which was not inadvertently taped over by beginner videographer "Hud" (coaxed into taking on videotaping chores by the hero's brother who wants a record of the party which is celebrating the brother's departure to Japan). The ending of the tape is the ending of the film, showing Rob and Beth's idyllic time together before the mayhem -- the tape which has now, according to the beginning of the film, become part of an official government documentation of the events.
The New York setting provides understandable echoes of 9-11 -- another terrorist attack, as some of the panicked characters speculate. Fortunately, the cinema verite plot focuses more on the fleeing citizens than on the scientists and military types that we saw in the 1950s, but with 21st century dialogue and profanity. Even one of the military officers looks like an alumnus from the TWIN PEAKS television series, but he is onscreen in only fleeting, hand-held shots. I wonder if he complained to his agent about this. We even see scenes of enterprising thieves breaking into an electronics store and looting it -- an aspect of disasters that, unfortunately, are all too real and commonplace. Even our hero, the Tom Cruise clone, steals a phone in order to call his trapped former girl friend, Beth. As they try to cross the bridge to Brooklyn, the hero's brother is wiped out, along with many others, when the tail of the gigantic creature descends on the historical structure. So much for being an iconoclast -- first the Statue of Liberty is decapitated; then the famous bridge is sawed in half. No respect.
CLOVERFIELD may not be the overnight commercial success that THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT enjoyed, but it is as least as effective, and the denouement is just as downbeat. Quit whining about the shaking camera and enjoy the experience for what it is supposed to be -- an exercise in verisimilitude.
Get a Barf Bag Ready July 2, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Simply put, this movie is terrible. About 15 minutes into it you will be reaching for a Barf Bag. It is video camera style shooting from start to finish. Jerky hard to watch and nauseating. Save your money for something better.
Sickening July 1, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Literally. We watched this movie this past weekend. About halfway through I was sweating and felt nauseous. I had to go lay down for an hour to get rid of an incredible headache. A few minutes later my oldest son joined me, saying he felt like he was going to be ill. Adding to all my misery, was the fact that I was enjoying the movie up to this point and I didn't want to miss the ending! My son and I are my families rollercoaster enthusiasts and everything. My other son and husband don't do rollercoasters and they never became ill watching this movie. Very strange. So that is just my movie's proceed with caution. The next day we picked the movie back up where we had stopped it. (In the middle). I worked on something else and listened to the movie, looking up only occasionally. I felt lightheaded, but didnt' become ill. I have to say, this movie was pretty good. The idea of using a camera was pretty cool, but I think they could've made it a little more stabilized and not lost the core audience or the point they want to get across. I loved the fact that they never explain where the monster came from. In a crisis like that no one would know until after the fact. I thought the acting was good and the storyline suspenseful. There was gore, but not a tremendous amount so I was ok with that too. There is definitely a movie worth watching here and I am only sorry I couldn't see every minute of it.
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