10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

Remember "Cloverfield"? I'm writing again in a hurry, at 4:30 AM before 2-3 hours of sleep, after which I have to prepare my luggage and get to the plane. So don't ask me to search my blog and check how much I rated it and when I did that. All I remember is that's a forgettable movie. "10 Cloverfield Lane" is a whole different story ...

I had one "serious" reason to watch this movie: I like Mary Elizabeth Winstead (MEW). I did not expect to see much more than the alien invasion shot a la Blair Witch in the first part (I suppose that's what happened there considering the events presented now, because as I said, the first iteration is forgettable). So, what's the story here? A careful fellow (played extremely well by John Goodman), not to say a paranoid one, built a bunker. When the events in the first movie start, he decides to use it. By chance (or not) on the way to the respective compound his path intersects with Michelle (MEW). By hitting her car = so the poor girl ends in crotches, and also in the bunker, because well ... she needed to be rescued. How much was this actual help, how much not, in what shapes the monsters come in this movie (as stated by the poster), who else resides in the bunker, who wants to get in, who wants to get out, and other questions :) find their answers in the movie..

"10 Cloverfield Lane" has something of "Dawn of the Dead", "Shining", "Alien", "Misery", "Panic Room", and maybe others, put together. Not directly referencing them, and definitely not in this order as consistency of material. The dynamic of the movie is excellent. You have a start with lots of thrills that might make you think on Goya's line that "sleep of reason produces monsters" who are more horrible than anything else. After that we have a calm settling, when the sleep of reason doesn't seem exactly a sleep, and therefore it can't give birth to monsters. Just that, towards the end, without notice, to have a shocking blow that brings us to the final and gruesome showdown. But surprise ... that's not the final showdown, where we actually have another type of enemy, and also seemingly some other type of action. You can say that it's still a "run for your life", but I - going back to the list above - have seen an almost instantaneous passing (spoiler) from Jack's wife in "Shining" (much better in MEW's version, as subjective as I might be) to the rebirth of Ripley from "Alien" (much better than Noomi Rapace's version in "Prometheus" for all aspects of that part). And I doubt it can be said we have the same character :) Well, see it and judge for yourself ;) ...

Rating: 4 out of 5

Thale (2012)

Guess what .. again no time :) I've picked "Thale" on length criteria, because it did seem a good option at less than 90 minutes (despite the IMDb rating which seems more and more irrelevant as time goes by).

The setting: Two guys, one weirder than the other, employed by a cleaning firm have the task to clear out a cabin in the middle of the woods after the owner died. Surprise, there's still something lurking there. Or somebody ...

"Thale" is not a horror as it's labeled and the way the trailer might suggest. Yeah, well .. it might have some scenes that are more tense, but it's far from my scary movie definition ... As a reference is as much as horror as "Dreamcatcher". Only that here as aliens we have the "hulders". If you're not an expert in Scandinavian folklore check-out Wikipedia (it's the way I did).

The Norwegian movies are cold. "Trollhunter", "Hodejegerne", "Pioneer", I don't remember watching anything made in Norway that didn't have a specific coldness. It's interesting that the Swedish films are not the same. And it's not the snow. Complicated to describe. "Thale" is not an exception ... And still, this time the so cold "horror" has a key moment. When we find out why the guy weirder than the other guy is so weird. I don't know why but somehow from this results in the end the warmest cold movie I've seen shot in that country ... still a weird one :)

Rating: 3 out of 5

Pacific Rim (2013)

Once upon a time there was "Godzilla". Much before the epic disaster staged by Roland Emmerich (who surprisingly seems to deal much better with action movies, but about this next time). Once upon a time there also were many and diverse versions of robots fighting every kind of terrestrial and mostly extraterrestrial forces. At least two animes come to my mind (way before Transformers). Both (Godzilla & the robots) come from Japan, which seems to have a fetish for metal giants and a pathological fear towards monsters risen from the Pacific. The combination is called "Pacific Rim" and is produced in Hollywood, having though many references and even action locations placed in the Asian world.

I was expecting a light silly story and as many (positive) reviews said a pretty simple one, eventually having the "classical" one per 5 minutes explosion. Something like a mix between "Godzilla" and "Transformers" with a scent of "Battleship". Fortunately "Pacific Rim" is directed neither by Roland Emmerich, neither by Michael Bay and neither by Peter Berg. It's by Guillermo del Toro. Who after an excellent "Hellboy" continued with a lame "Hellboy 2" so I had some reserves. Well ... I guess I start to bore with my references so let's see what's to be said about the actual "Pacific Rim".

- The story: simple as it was said but not so thin as expected. From a rim in the Pacific depths emerges an alien threat = kaiju - the monsters, race who wants to take over the Earth. The counterattack is done first with robots = jaegers, driven through a neuronal interface by two pilots. More in the movie. It's enough to be discovered behind a trailer. And even if we don't have any heavy drama here, the fact that is not describable in just two sentences compensates at least a little the parts hard to believe in the story (normally otherwise for this genre)

- The actors: "Star Wars" style (= something like "starring Mark Hamill"), with the exception of Idris Elba and Ron Perlman in secondary parts, we have an "unknown hero" as planet savior: Charlie Hunnam. Overall the movie is ok regarding the casting, although I guess I would have preferred somebody else in the lead female role = the 2nd half of the robot pilot.

- The direction & the technic stuff: excepting things like - mostly all the battles take place at night during rain which looks like saving on the FX budget a bit, the movie looks impeccable and is directed also impeccable. We are far from the kitsch in Transformers regarding the robots design, who aesthetically (at least for me) look way better in "Pacific Rim". And about the direction, what can I say ... for this kind of movie, to name it like I did is enough that the frequency and the length of the battle sequences don't even try to surpass the records established by Michael Bay :)

Verdict: a light SciFi, summer blockbuster type, nice to see and with a boring factor reduced to a minimum compared with other titles in the same genre

Rating: 4 out of 5