Cloverfield (2008) Starring Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, T.J. Miller, Michael Stahl-David, Mike Vogel, Odette Yustman, Chris Mulkey, Rick Overton, Margot Farley, Theo Rossi, Anjul Nigam, Brian Klugman, Kelvin Yu, Liza Lapira, Lili Mirojnick, Ben Feldman, Elena Caruso, Baron Vaughn, Roma Torre, Billy Brown, Jason Lombard, Susse Budde.

Directed by Matt Reeves.

Running time: 84 minutes.

Rating: PG-13

"Whatever it is, it's winning"

A late spring, Friday night, New York loft party send-off for Rob Hawkins (Stahl-David), a guy headed for a high profile job (the kind anyone with even just a little ambition does not refuse) in Japan is caught on video camera. Rob's brother Jason (Vogel) and his girlfriend Lily meticulously plan the festivities right down to the "toonage" and then enlist Rob's best friend Hud (Miller) to videotape testimonials from the party guests.

A mysterious disaster suddenly strikes the city a little after midnight and reactions of the self-attractive twenty-somethings are also subsequently committed to the same tape which we are led to believe has been recovered from Central Park and kept by the U.S. Military for study.

If you don't like the people at the party (and why should you?) then you might have trouble getting through the first twenty minutes of the film. That Rob and Beth had a tryst awhile back is the biggest news imaginable (until the new complication of overriding importance presents itself) for the pseudo-trendy clods at this party. The only thing, which seems genuine about this group, is how phony and shallow they all are.

The gossip about Rob and Beth is so significant a tectonic shift that their real day-to-day concerns like "Do my Facebook Funwall messages reflect the maturity level someone of my age should have?" "Will the right people see me if I go to the Tom Waits concert?" or the ever popular "Does my razor stubble give me just the right air of machismo/hip attitude and maturity that preferred women are captivated by?" suddenly seem trivial. This group is so highly evolved in its pretentiousness that one can almost picture unread copies of Catcher in the Rye on all of their nightstands.

This portion of the film has only the realistic feel of the party you have to go to (for work or because a friend needs it) and make an appearance. Mercifully, after slightly more than eighteen minutes of screentime, what at first seems like an earthquake/power outage happens to understandably shift the attention

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