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Information Exchange => Movie Reviews => Topic started by: Svengoolie 3 on February 13, 2018, 01:15:09 AM



Title: The cloverfield paradox.
Post by: Svengoolie 3 on February 13, 2018, 01:15:09 AM
Ok, ever seen any of those movies where people go to explore an old building or a ship drifting at sea and naturally find it's haunted and evil spirits start murdering the cast in various ways? Like "Ghost ship" 2002 or any of it's cheap ripoffs?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0288477/ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0288477/)

Well, if you have you've already seen "the cloverfield paradox". What looks like a SF film quickly turns into a tired and tiresome old "evil ghosts murdering people in a place they can't get out of" movie.

I went into TCP with low expectations. It had, after all, the toxic initials JJA on it and we know what "the destroyer of franchises" has done to star trek and star wars.

But it looked good, at first. Good sets, good effects, good actors. The plot was about creating a new energy source to solve the worl'ds energy crisis but the experiment was dangerous so it was conducted in earth orbit.

So they fire up the Plotronic generator and DING! Earth disappears. Well, sort of.

From then on all semblance to any coherent plot disappears into the black hole of JJA's mind. Events straight out of horror movies start happening in what started out as a SF movie. Worms disappear from some sort of experiment or recycling thing and appear inside a man who explodes. A man's arm is sucked into a wall, bloodlessly severed and starts crawling around writing messages. A missing device is found inside a dead person's stomach. Why? QUANTUM!  See, instead of bizarre and senseless things happening because of ghosts and curses they happen because of "QUANTUM!" and 'PARALLEL UNIVERSE!"

So, see, it's not just  old movies like ghost ship and house on haunted hill remakes recycled, because the gruesome murders and senseless things happening in those were because of ghosts out for revenge instead of "QUANTUM!"  and "PARALLEL UNIVERSE!", see?

So horrible death here, utterly batxxxx insane thing there, quantum, parallel universe, reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, betrayal,  the end.

The movie seemed to have it in for intelligent people because as soon as an intelligent person solved a problem in an intelligent way they were instamatically killed in some impossible way that was related to the problem. I guess JJA hates intelligent people. I reciprocate the sentiment.

Well, the strong intelligent black woman gets to solve some problems and survive, possibly, but of course she gets to so we can have her be the one who wins in the end, apparently.

The movie is supposed to finally explain the first two cloverfield movies and has a few genuinely good moments. There are plenty of canned plot moments too, like the heroic black guy who takes a bullet for the team that we saw coming as soon as he appeared on screen. Yes, there is a slusho reference.

All in all, despite a few good moments, good acting and great effects, TCP is about original as the next movie to feature Milla Jovovich  or Scarlet Johansen as tough badass women fighting something evil and pulling off a last minute victory against the odds on sheer guts and toughness.

I can't and don't recommend it unless you want a form of intellectual anesthetic to numb your mind in that bad movie sort of way. But there are better bad movies that don't take themselves as seriously as TCP did.


Title: Re: The cloverfield paradox.
Post by: akiratubo on February 13, 2018, 10:14:00 AM
This wasn't even a Cloverfield movie until post-production.  They realized it wasn't good enough to stand on its own so they slapped the Cloverfield brand name on it in hopes that name recognition would help it make at least a few more $$$.

Sorry, no source, but that's what I read in an article several days ago.


Title: Re: The cloverfield paradox.
Post by: LilCerberus on February 13, 2018, 12:18:49 PM
ADHD
The single sentence synopsis made me think about Event Horizon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_(film) which had that thing that figure skater used to jump through...


Title: Re: The cloverfield paradox.
Post by: Svengoolie 3 on February 13, 2018, 03:45:50 PM
ADHD
The single sentence synopsis made me think about Event Horizon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_(film) which had that thing that figure skater used to jump through...

Not too far off the mark except in EH they actually made a semi cogent explanation of things instead of throwing around "QUANTUM!"  and "RARALLEL UNIVERSE!" randomly.


Title: Re: The cloverfield paradox.
Post by: Dr. Whom on July 02, 2018, 03:09:43 PM
I watched it recently and expected it to be way worse than it actually was. True, the whole 'haunted house in space' thing is preposterous, but then, if you have something against preposterous premises, this isn't the right forum for you. It is competently done, and part of the fun is to see whatever weird idea the movie is going to come up with next. A bit like Galaxy of Terror.

What I also liked is that the whole technology thing is treated as essentially magic. There is no attempt to justify anything with technobabble or pseudoscience. At most they talk about condensation and ventilation, as if they are operating a HVAC system. This movie is clearly saying 'we've no idea how this could work, and we don't care'

And you've got to admire the intruder from another dimension, who looks like she is starring in an early 80s music video, which leads me to think that in the parallel universe Banarama never went out of fashion.

Is it a good movie? No. It is too much by numbers and its Guns of Chekhov (one of them an actual gun) are way too clearly placed. The Cloverfield link also feels like it was tacked on (I had the same problem with 10 Cloverfield Lane). But it is enjoyable, even if it doesn't make a lot of sense.



Title: Re: The cloverfield paradox.
Post by: Svengoolie 3 on July 03, 2018, 02:54:59 PM
I'm not sure we saw the same movie.


Title: Re: The cloverfield paradox.
Post by: Dr. Whom on July 04, 2018, 03:21:45 PM
Well, it all depends on how much sense you want your movies to make.

When faced with a similar emergency, Captain Janeway might say something like: we need to recalibrate the quantum field so that the tachyon flow has a positive incidence on the proton separator. Here you get: it is condensation, we need to ventilate. For me, that signals that the movie is not even trying to make things plausible. So you have two choices: be annoyed at its stupidity, or go along for the ride.

Now, I'm not saying that  one choice is more valid than the other. It is a very silly movie, it is just whether this silliness works for you or not.

Where I do have a problem, is the Cloverfield label that is tacked on. This gives undue prominence to what by rights should ben an obscure genre movie.