before i start, let me say this: if you dont like straight-up monster movies, if you havent seen the godzilla movies a dozen times (the originals, not the more recent entries), if you demand "clever" plots and deep character development in your movies... just stop reading now. this is not your movie. "cloverfield" wasnt made for people like you, and youre going to hate it, so save yourself some money, or go see some gay art flick instead.

just got back from seeing "cloverfield"... and omfg it was AWESOME! dont worry about spoilers here, because theres nothing to spoil... theres no big surpise, no great reveal, no m. knight shamalamadingdong-style plot twists... hell, theres pretty much not a plot at all... this movie is straight-up old-school monster carnage Gojira-style. hell, it IS freaking godzilla, except with bad-ass special effects, no rubber suit, and told entirely from the perspective of a puny human on the ground.

and really, its that eye-level perspective that elevates cloverfield from "just another monster movie, but prettier" to "possibly the best fucking monster movie ever made"... i mean, we all know godzilla is big. really big. but somehow it just never really hits you just HOW FUCKING BIG in the old movies because youre getting an over-arching view of the whole thing... its another thing entirely to see it all from 6 feet off the ground looking up, and thats what really gives the movie its visceral impact... human beings are like tiny fucking ANTS to godzilla, and cloverfield definitely brings that home in a way that no monster movie before has ever accomplished. it adds a whole new dimension (literally) to a monster movie, something ive never seen before, and makes the movie sheer greatness...

i shit you not, i was glued to my seat for the entire movie... i nearly pissed myself just because there was no damn way i was going to miss anything. once things get going, it never lets up, so be sure youre ready to last the whole 90 minutes (or whatever it is) before it starts... and i highly recommend seeing this in the theater. i dont think the sense of scale will translate well to a home theater, no matter how big the screen is... hell, id even go so far as to say, sit on the front row. i HATE the front row, youve got to crane your damn neck the whole time, and cant see the whole screen at once... but in this case, i dont think thats a bad thing... and if i see it again, thats right where ill be, smack in the middle of the front row... hell, i dunno if its showing on imax or not, but if it is, that would be the way to see it, on a 120 foot screen, right on the front row...

in summary, for all you TL;DR people: cloverfield = godzilla. fucking awesome. see it now.

[edit: its an hour later, and i still keep thinking "omfg that was so fucking bad-ass!" i think im gonna go see it again :)]