Valhalla Island

It’s not often I see just released movies but in the past couple of days I’ve seen Juno and Cloverfield. The new cinema they’ve built just 10 minutes away is only $5 for students, which is the price movies should be. Here’s a couple of short reviews of those movies. I warn you, there are spoilers, read on at your own risk.

Juno

I think it’s great that they’d make a movie that treats teenage pregnancy with such relaxation. I like that there wasn’t a huge, outrageous deal made about the fact she was 16 and pregnant and that everything was going to be OK.

The soundtrack was brilliant, I’ve been a fan of Kimya Dawson for a while and all the tracks had obviously been re-recorded with better production value for the movie and they sounded great. They went well with the suburban scene, especially the runners and the whole seasons thing.

Michael Cera’s character was almost exactly the same as the character he played in Super Bad and Clark and Michael. But that’s OK because I really love that character, check out Clark and Michael if you haven’t, it’s really good. I hated Juno, I know people like Juno, people that talk like they have a thesaurus in their brain, use words like “fave” and think it’s so cool and unusual to carry a smoking pipe around with them. I like the name “Juno” though. It was worth seeing for the music and every scene that didn’t include Juno.

Cloverfield

I love LOST and the previews looked good so I had huge expectations. I knew that at least some part of the movie was shot first person with the handheld camera but had no it was going to go on the entire movie. It’s a fresh idea but it got really annoying by about 15 minutes.

The entire movie is based on someone’s irrational stupidity. He ended up killing his friends, him and the girl he was trying to save. This was inevitable from the moment he decided he “had to go back”. I would have much preferred to see them get off the island and find out the consequence around the world of a monster attacking a huge city, instead I’m left watching an idiot kill himself and his equally stupid, “we’re coming with you” friends.

My favourite parts were the beginning and the end. It was great to finally see a movie that didn’t waste my time with a useless 5 minute sequence telling me who the photography director and key grips were. The abrupt ending was also good, too many movies go on with a completely unnecessary epilogue after the movie should have already finished.

Longer reviews than I would have liked to make. What did you think?