Movie that appeals to a lot of people?
Hate it.
Incomprehensible piece of claptrap, in which you can't understand the characters due to birth defect, overdone horrible accent or Charleen Theron's stupidly fake buck teeth?
Love it!
So, of course, they would hate Cloverfield. Manohla Dargis tears it a new one (to put it inelegantly). However ... one must admire the viciousness of the put down deep into the review. I applaud Manohla for the general review.
True, s/he does forget to close the thought with which the paragraph is opened - so atwitter was s/he that the words were to see the light of day; so I take points off for that.
I put the paragraph in question to you. It is both tight as a drum and sloppy - oddly enough my criticism of him or her neatly parallels his or her criticism of the movie! Wheels within wheels.
For a brief, hopeful moment, I thought the filmmakers might be making a point about how the contemporary compulsion to record the world has dulled us to actual lived experience, ncluding the suffering of others — you know, something about the simulacrum syndrome in the post-Godzilla age at the intersection of the camera eye with the narcissistic “I.” Certainly this straw-grasping seemed the most charitable way to explain characters whose lack of personality (“This is crazy, dude!”) is matched only by their incomprehensible stupidity. Smart as Tater Tots and just as differentiated, Rob and his ragtag crew behave like people who have never watched a monster movie or the genre-savvy “Scream” flicks or even an episode of “Lost” (Hello, Mr.
Abrams!), much less experienced the real horrors of Sept. 11.