BEFORE: An obvious problem when setting up these chains for the two "specialty months" arises when I try to confine these genre films to their respective months - romance films belong in February, horror films belong in October. But as I've proven, that doesn't completely work, especially when some actors concentrate on horror films, and others just dabble in that genre. What I've noticed for this year is that many actors are on my lists twice, once in a horror film and once in a romance film. Well, I can't exactly move February any closer to October, so those links just aren't at all useful to me. But if somebody's been in more than one horror film, or several romances, then of course I'll want to know about that.
This month's chain would not have been possible without seeking out those actors that have worked several times in horror films - Dwayne Johnson's a great example, and finding that link between "Coco" and "Hotel Transylvania 3" came in quite handy, too. This is my main reason for moving "Dark Phoenix" to October, because I noticed that so many of the stars of the "X-Men" franchise had also appeared in horror films that were on my list. Dropping in "Loving Vincent" solved another problem, providing an essential link between two space-based sci-fi thrillers that shared no actors in common. So today, Chris O'Dowd carries over from "Loving Vincent" - and yesterday I missed his birthday (Oct. 9) by ONE DAY. Had I known, I might have doubled up to land one of his films on the right day. Anyway, happy belated, Mr. O'Dowd.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "10 Cloverfield Lane" (Movie 2,626), "Cloverfield" (Movie 1,482)
THE PLOT: Orbiting a planet on the brink of war, scientists test a device to solve an energy crisis, and end up face-to-face with a dark alternate reality.
AFTER: There's no easy way to say this, but the "Cloverfield" franchise is a difficult one to follow. With each new film, the over-arching story gets a little more complex - I get that it sort of represents its own universe and each movie is a story set somewhere (or perhaps someWHEN) in that universe, and then one might expect to see that the stories are at least connected in some way. However, it turns out that each film raises a whole new set of questions, and anyone looking for some answers might then find themselves further from shore than they were before. Narratively, I think we've all sort of drifted out to sea here, and we're floating in the middle of nowhere, so to speak.
I'm going to go ahead and issue a rare SPOILER ALERT to anyone who hasn't seen the original "Cloverfield", or either of its sequels, because it's just impossible for me to talk about tonight's film without getting into the very confusing details, so if you're not current on the franchise, please, turn back now before it's too late.
The first film in the franchise was a monster film, we can all agree on that - the hook was that it was supposedly assembled from found footage, a la "Blair Witch", only obviously that wasn't true. (Geez, it's almost like filmmakers are like politicians, pretty much everything they say isn't factual...) But let's just reflect for a second on how that film never really got around to saying where the giant monster came from, how it came to be. Several theories were, at the time, quite plausible. Then came "10 Cloverfield Lane", which was a sort of locked-room type of film, most of the action - with the world devastated by some kind of horrible events (perhaps even the ones seen in the first film) and most of the action not depicted on-screen, but coming in via radio news reports and such. In the closing minutes of that 2nd film, we did receive some more concrete information about what was responsible for the Earth's devastation, and perhaps that was tied in (somehow) to the monster film.
Now, the franchise goes in a completely different direction, with scientists aboard a space station, trying to create a new source of near-unlimited energy by using an experimental particle accelerator. What could possibly go wrong? Well, it turns out, quite a bit. A very helpful news report shows a man being interviewed, and he believes that the amount of energy released by the accelerator could break the bonds that govern time and space, this could release monsters, demons, or who-knows-what into our reality, even into the past. Aha, this guy could be on to something, because this film is set in 2028, and just maybe, this is how the monster came into being way back in 2008 (the "aughties).
But when the particle accelerator is activated, something else happens - Earth no longer shows up on the station's scanners. Was it destroyed? Did the station teleport? Did everyone on the station die or go collectively insane? What, if anything, is really happening? That feeling that something is obviously very, very wrong, without being able to quantify exactly what - yeah, you'd better get used to that feeling. While there are no xenomorph aliens in this film, it manages to have that same sense of dread from the first "Alien" film, the feeling that some weird danger is lurking around every corner, or in the duct system somewhere, and once some good old-fashioned paranoia sets in, this happy-go-lucky crew representing scientists from different nations is going to start turning on each other.
There are signs that the accelerator has somehow broken down a barrier to another reality - so even if the crew manages to find Earth, it may not even be "their" Earth. War, energy shortage, climate change, wait, who's president on that Earth? There could be a temptation to just cut one's losses and make the best of things in another reality. Maybe it's just like ours, only the television shows are better, or people drink coffee to fall asleep, not to wake up. I'm kidding - but there are some key differences, like there's a person on the mission in the NEW reality that wasn't on the mission in the old one, and one of the crew members from the OLD reality decided she didn't want to leave her family in the new one. There's more, but this is the general gist of things, and many of the other things that happen are just too weird to mention here. Let's face it, it's already been quite a banner year for weird movies, and this one is definitely one to add to that list!
But what's annoying here is seeing things come NEARLY full circle - like there's a sense that this one might just loop back and explain the first film, although that doesn't seem completely possible. Let's assume for a second that the particle accelerator did somehow open up a portal that allowed the original "Cloverfield" monster to gain access to Earth, from wherever it was before that. Now we're talking about an event in the future that somehow causes an event in the past. But does that represent a change in the timeline, or was that change always there? The event in 2028 opens up the portal in 2008, and causes the monster invasion - you can't CHANGE the timeline, because the events between 2008 and 2028 already happened, and if there weren't two decades of battling monsters mentioned at the start of the film (instead the world is fighting wars over energy reserves) then I've got a big problem with that.
Changing the timeline as of 2008 doesn't "suddenly" cause monsters to appear on Earth in 2028, because that's not time travel, that's just spontaneous creation of something in the present. And so unless we're talking about a do-over, where first the years between 2008 and 2028 had no monsters, and then "after" the event in 2028 has an effect on 2008, they somehow do, you can't suddenly have two decades of monsters where there were no monsters before. They had to have always been there, even if it's with no explanation. The two decades in-between can't exist both with monsters and without, that's a paradox. Oh, wait, the title of the film - only they talk about the Cloverfield Paradox, and that ain't it. This is essentially a variation on "What if I go back in time and kill my own grandfather, before my father was born?" Well, you can't, because you come from a timeline where your father existed, and you were born, then you traveled back and created one where your father DIDN'T exist, so therefore YOU don't exist, and if you don't exist, you couldn't have traveled back in time and done that thing. So in practical terms, you didn't do that, even if you did.
The "out" that some stories (including "Avengers: Endgame") use is that if you change events, you create an alternate reality, like you're now on a different bus on a different street, but you're still heading crosstown. Since time travel doesn't exist, we'll never know if those storytellers get it right - and even then we may not know, because if you CAN change the timeline, you'll change everything, including everyone's perceptions of the original events, and also the fact that someone tried to change them. But then how do you justify the fact that there was no need in the new timeline to go back and change that thing, so who did that? Let's say I go back in time to prevent the Titanic from sinking, or the Hindenburg from blowing up. If I'm successful, I've created a new reality where that thing didn't happen - what happens to my own reality? Does it still exist, can I go back to it, or do I need to live in the new reality where the Titanic didn't sink? If I can go back to my old reality, then what was the point of changing events, and if there's just the reality where that didn't happen, then that reality has no ME that would go back in time to stop it, there would be no need. So first I did it, then I didn't do it, and so on ad infinitum - now THAT's a time paradox.
I have a number of time-travel films on my list, and I'd love to get more into this subject - maybe next year. Those films tend to be very hard to link to, and also, quite ironically, there never seems to be enough time for me to get to them. If only I had some kind of device that would project them into the future so I could watch them - wait, I do, it's called a DVD on my shelf.
I still see that our society is having trouble with Chinese names - why can't we work this out, for God's sake? There are only like a billion people living in China, why can't we Americans figure out which name comes first? Wikipedia lists this actress as "Zhang Ziyi", but the IMDB lists her as "Ziyi Zhang" - which is it, guys, let's get on the same page. One of these systems is insulting Chinese culture, and I need to know which one it is. The problem is that in America we say "first name" and "last name" instead of "given name" and "family name", and many of us don't respect another culture to realize that not everyone has the same traditions. Hell, we're still not using the damn metric system, and the whole world laughs at us for being morons. Her family's name is Zhang, and her given name is Ziyi, just so we're clear. I think maybe the IMDB needs to stop converting Chinese names to American format, right?
The probable reason that this film doesn't completely resolve the outstanding questions of the other films is that it wasn't originally written to be part of this franchise, it was a stand-alone film called "God Particle" that was then sort of retro-fit to be part of the Cloververse. So of COURSE the connection is likely to feel tacked-on at the last minute. And, in a very maddening fashion, even when we learn what has gone wrong with the experiment and the effect it had on reality, there are still quite a few weird occurrences on the space station that, let's face it, just can't be explained away. So there may be some things that leave you scratching your head, or keep you up at night. But at least it's the correct month for that sort of thing.
Also starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw (last seen in "A Wrinkle in Time"), David Oyelowo (last seen in "The Paperboy"), Daniel Bruhl (last seen in "The Zookeeper's Wife"), John Ortiz (last seen in "Kong: Skull Island"), Aksel Hennie (last seen in "The Martian"), Zhang Ziyi, Elizabeth Debicki (last seen in "Widows"), Roger Davies, Donal Logue (last seen in "CBGB"), Clover Nee, Suzanne Cryer (last seen in "10 Cloverfield Lane"), with the voices of Simon Pegg (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - Fallout"), Greg Grunberg (last seen in "A Star Is Born").
RATING: 5 out of 10 home movies
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