Cloverfield

I didn't take notes during the film; I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. It's survival horror meets sci fi at its best, with a particular story and feel and I've never seen before. The handi-cam work might bother some, but to me it just helped maintain a constant sense of unease. I especially liked the brief clips of old tape to keep a grounded base in Normal, just to show how insane and surreal things had become.

Cloverfield
2008, 84 minutes, directed by Matt Reeves

P.S. No more apocalypse films for a while, ok? At least not set in New York.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

When Arnold Schwarzenegger entered politics, with his blustering grandstands and naivety, I chose to stop patronizing his films. I haven't seen one on more than ten years. It seems, though, that as his political ambition can rise no further, and as he's seen what it really takes to get things done - compromise - that he's evolved into something more humble. With that in mind, I took the opportunity to watch something I'd missed.

With the Terminator series created over two decades, it lacks the plot rails of a typical trilogy. Instead, each movie stands on those before it, but builds on its own. I found little to dislike in the third installment. The action picks up immediately, and the story takes little time to reflect on the past. Yet again John Conner fights back against the rise of the machines, and yet again only one unit is sent back to kill him, and conveniently one older model returns to save him. With his mother Sarah dead, John is instead joined with a forceful yet reluctant Kate, who is destined to share a fate similar to John's.

The action sequences are good, if rushed from start to finish. I only saw a few places were the special effects had aged beyond appreciation. I'm satisfied that the trilogy is complete. (Please, Arnold, don't pull a Stallone and make another one next decade.)

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
2003, 109 minutes, directed by Jonathan Mostow

Transporter 2

I liked Jason Statham a lot in the first movie I saw him in - Snatch. I wish in subsequent films he hadn't been shaped into a cookie-cutter action hero. A least the first Transporter movie had the right mix of action and scenery to make a decent film. In this also-ran installment, the "special" effects are far less impressive.

The DVD commentary claims that all the driving shots are "real" plus added effects, but the end effect is low-grade CGI. At first the martial arts action scenes were the only respite from mediocrity, but even those fell into cliché. "Now let's see Statham take on a line of gooks with a pole. Now let's see it with a fire hose."

Transporter 2
2005, 87 minutes, directed by Louis Leterrier