THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX (2018) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

the CLOVERFIELD paradox (2018) movie

Genre              |   Science Fiction

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   102 minutes

Released         |   1 February 2018

cast

Elizabeth Debicki
Daniel Brühl
Gugu Mbatha-Raw
Chris O'Dowd
​David Oyelowo

director

​Julius Onah

writer

​Oren Uziel ... (screenplay)
 
Doug Jung ... (screenplay)

cinematographer

​Dan Mindel

music

​Bear McCreary

film editor

​Alan Baumgarten

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box office result

Worldwide              Not applicable

Australia                 Not applicable

North America        Not applicable

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the best dialogue

​Tam: Logic doesn't apply to any of this.

Volkov: We're definitely not in Kentucky anymore.
Mundy: Kansas.
Volkov: Kansas? Really? Who gives a shit?
Mundy: People from Kansas?

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THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX (2018) MOVIE IMAGES

Images

Posters

Images

J.J. says "Stay calm; all will be revealed"...

Director Julius Onah

Posters

THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX (2018) STORY SYNOPSIS

​After a scientific experiment aboard the space station involving a particle accelerator has unexpected results, the astronauts find themselves isolated. Following their horrible discovery, the space station crew must fight for survival.

THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX (2018) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 10 February 2018

Pop ​Movee Rating

THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX could be described as a “Victim” of circumstances. The change of leadership at Paramount Pictures has led to a number of projects greenlit by Brad Grey, the studio’s now deceased former boss, being pulled from release by Jim Gianopulos, the former 20th Century Fox chief who took over at Paramount back in March 2017. J.J. Abrams, who currently has a production deal at Paramount, has pulled back from the studio, to the extent he has signed on to write and direct STAR WARS EPISODE IX, despite - reportedly - being contracted to direct at least one more film at the studio before his ten year deal expires in 2019. Logistically, it will be impossible for Abrams to do this. The Science Fiction genre also seems to be “on the nose” at Paramount, especially with Gianopulos. Despite having the Abrams-produced STAR TREK franchise at its disposal, there’s no sign of the Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto headlined franchise on the company’s release schedule for the next three years. Whatever the issues at Paramount, Netflix has becomes the default beneficiary of the third J.J. Abrams-produced CLOVERFIELD film, securing the worldwide distribution rights for the film and releasing it just hours after the first television ad went to air promoting it.

To be honest, THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX is a bit of a con job. The CLOVERFIELD element of the story feels retrospectively bolted onto a film that may have made a very compelling one-hour television pilot. The TV Guide description would read: Scientists experiment with the very fabric of existence and end up shattering space to release a multiverse of universal horrors! Sounds pretty good. The problem of THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX is the filmic execution. Like 2017’s GEOSTORM, THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX feels like it’s two different stories cut together in an effort to graft together a feature length movie. The main story follows the bizarre adventure of a space station crew charged with saving humanity. The secondary story (much like a TV episode “B story”) follows the husband of one of the space station’s crew as he becomes the viewer’s witness to the attack of the same type of monster that brought New York to its knees in Drew Goddard’s first CLOVERFIELD movie. While the stories work in tandem, they are so tonally different, it becomes harder and harder to reconcile them as being the same movie the longer the film goes. Only at the film’s conclusion do the two stories converge, albeit in a moment of hysteria that comes from left field for the character in question. It’s always difficult to discern whether the story was always meant to play out like this, or the further into production the film got, the more apparent it became that Director Julius Onah hadn’t got what he (or the script’s writer) intended and went back for more.

What makes THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX worth the watch is the motley crew of astronauts assembled aboard the space station. The likes of Daniel Bruhl, David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw (What a name!), Chris O’Dowd, Elizabeth Debicki, John Ortiz, Norwegian actor Aksel Hennie and Ziyi Zhang make one of the most diverse groups to get together since the Nostromo headed into deep space or the Minnow went out for a three hour cruise! Some of the things this crew endure are just plain bonkers. O’Dowd wanders around for the second half of the movie without his right arm, cracking one-liners and not seeming too disturbed that his missing limb has developed a life of its own. Debicki is, at various points, put through the physical wringer by the universal shift the station has undergone. Hennie has some goofy eyeball tricks going on that are a result of a rather unwanted physical infestation. Oyelowo is the least commanding “Commander” of a space-faring vessel for a very long time. James T. Kirk he’s not. It comes of something of a surprise, given all of this, that THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX works on any dramatic level, but somehow overcomes all its shortcomings for the viewer not to express grave regrets about investing 103 minutes of their life into this movie. For those invested in the CLOVERFIELD franchise, this new movie certainly helps to fill out the series mythology, especially the WHY and the HOW as to the arrival of the New York monster from the 2008 film. 

While THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX may not come to pass as an important film based on its merit, it IS an important film as to what it signals for the entertainment industry. Cinema operators everywhere should be extremely worried by the trend emerging at studios like Paramount and Universal. Once upon a time, back in the first half of the 20th Century, the studios owned their cinemas and were able to control the product and how much people paid to see certain movies. The American government made the studios sell their cinemas, which has coincided with the overall decline in attendances on a decade-by-decade basis around the world since the 1940s. In recent times, the studios have been locked in an arm wrestle with the cinema chains as to an acceptable window between the theatrical release and home entertainment release of a movie. THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX, the upcoming Alex Garland movie ANNIHILATION and the recent pulled-from-release-schedules Universal film EXTINCTION either have or will, at some time in 2018, make their premieres of Netflix. Cinema chains should be worried because Paramount and Universal both appear to be comfortable with  selling low and mid-budget movies directly to one worldwide distributor which sees the studio get its investment back sooner and allows them to move the product to the broader home entertainment market at a time of their choosing.

This fundamental change in the distribution model has not gone unnoticed by Disney’s Bob Iger. More than anything else, the Disney boss knows the value of great content and that’s why he’s spent a lot of time making acquisitions during his tenure, culminating with the company’s purchase of the 20th Century Fox film and TV assets. Disney want to compete as a fully-fledged studio in the digital realm, beyond what they have been legally allowed to do in the traditional cinema space for many years, by producing and distributing their own, exclusive content. Imagine STAR WARS, INDIANA JONES, MARVEL, PIXAR combined with the ALIEN franchise, DIE HARD, PREDATOR, PLANET OF THE APES, THE X-MEN, FANTASTIC FOUR, ICE AGE, AVATAR to name a few. That’s why THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX represents an important development for feature films. First-run digital distribution of a work originally intended for cinemas is no longer a matter of speculation; it’s here. The frightening thing for cinemas is it’s not just Netflix. Disney are going there rapidly. Amazon wants to be in that space and, no doubt, companies like Google and Apple see themselves playing a major part. With such a crowded digital distribution space, studios will have the ability to choose who they sell their product to and it may not involve a cinema chain. It won’t take long, however, for filmmakers to work out they don’t need the studios anymore. The proliferation of players in the digital distribution space means a greater percentage of original feature film content will be purchased by the highest bidder and, hopefully, irrespective of the distribution method, it will lead to a better finished product with genuine artistic merit. Hopefully...

THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX (2018) USEFUL LINKS

​The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) - IMDb
​The Cloverfield Paradox - Wikipedia
​The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) - Rotten Tomatoes

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