""Cloverfield" may be tacky, but since when is tacky worth fussing about?"

--You're right. It's not worth fussing about. Sorry I offered an opinion on the subject. It won't happen again.

Tacky is usually more risible than arousing, and many folks here seem incensed at this movie's very existence.

-- Personally, I'm not going to go see the film so it doesn't really matter to me if the movie exists or not. I don't agree that folks seemed incensed at the movie's very existence. In fact, more people seemed incensed by the thought that a few of us found the movie in questionable taste. By far the nastiest comments were directed against those of us who expressed the notion that the 9/11 theme (if there is one, which has been a subject of debate) was inappropriate.

"The point is, art (and yeah, filmmaking, even monster-movie filmmaking, is an art form; a thing doesn't become art by virtue of quality) sometimes disturbs. Or maybe a better word is provoked. A lot of people reading this review obviously feel provoked.

"Not everybody enjoys stirring up darker feelings; perfectly understandable. I'm not trying to disregard or dismiss anyone's feelings.

"But some of us like to dig into that ugly stuff, in a digestible, safe way; agitation can bring things to light that might otherwise have festered down below."

-- Let me repeat again that my objection to "Cloverdale" is not that I'm afraid of stirring up so-called darker feelings. I think I've pretty much worked through my darker feelings about 9/11 in my day-to-day life, so maybe I don't feel the need to see a latter-day Godzilla movie as a form of catharsis. It seems a bit weird to say that the Japanese people needed a film of a guy walking around in a lizard suit to deal with the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For my part, I'm sure I haven't been pining away for a monster movie with a 9/11 subtext to help me through any unresolved feelings about the destruction of the World Trade Center. I imagine most people who watch these movies are looking for escapism and nothing more. Note that many of the people above even deny that there is a 9/11 subtext, so if that's what's appealing to them, it's only on a very subconsious level.

--As for provocations, I was less provoked by the movie itself as I was by all the ad hominem attacks directed against those of us who even marginially agreed with the reviewer's thesis.

--I'm really through with these message boards. It's impossible to state a simple opinion here without being denounced for heresy on all sides.

I'm gonna say this again, because I mentioned the same thing in a post about Boston and how they are so boo-hoo about not having something to NOT like about their baseball team (and probably their football team, a few weeks from now).

Fuckin' get over it...

NYC is the cultural and metropolitan center of the universe for the United States. LA had it for a while, but they've lost it again (think of Earthquake, Volcano, and those "other" disaster movies)...and they rightfully lost it, because NYC is the shit! It is THE city of the U.S., and it always will be...

But for you bitch-n-moan folks that keep asking the rest of us to bow in reverence to 9/11 by not making certain kinds of films because that 9/11 wound hasn't healed yet...Well, tough-shit, I sez...if you are going to wear that mantle of being the greatest city in America (and the World), then you need to be able to take your lumps like a real person...and a mere disaster/sci-fi film shouldn't be that delicate to your sense, should it?

So it's okay for the kids to ask "Is it the terrorists" in War of the Worlds...but it's not okay to see Cthulu or some big walking hermit crab destroying the Big Apple? Is that what you NYCers that hate this film are saying? Because it's a crock of shit if that plays any part of your arguement against this film...Come off it guys!

For you Cloverfield non-haters, go read the review on the Onion AV Club...it's much more balanced, something I can't expect from Stephanie Z. in her reviews...

First off, as fast as the twilight of my college days recedes, I cannot outrun my demographic - believe me, my legs are about to give out. The popped-collar Izod trixies depicted in this film are fully-posable stand-ins for anyone else who has yet to unplug from the Grand Uncanny of our time. 9/11 has happened, as Rudy Giuliani would be more than happy to explain, and frankly, few of us are willing to be disabused of stories of heroism and good old throatfloodingly green Americana.

Hey, not to delve too deeply into the murky post-9/11 emotional reservoirs we all tap into now and again - when some of us saw Those images beamed into our faces, whether there, or 2,323 miles away, we realized how ingloriously fragged we might be.

I say we continue making movies that quote, reframe, detourn, juxtapose, subvert, and denature 9/11. Give it the full on Warhol Portraiture treatment. The Germans have ostologie - some of them want their wall back, and two feet higher - so why should anyone pull punches?

Make more movies about 9/11. Romantic comedies in which love interest A books a flight to California from Boston on that fateful morning. Throw that in for a twist ending --- Early Oscar Talk, that's what that says to me.

Better yet, I see a preview (all audiences) here --- man sipping coffee, reading the Times. Location? Windows On the World, time? 8:45 am. Zoom out for an establishing shot of the World Trade Center, and follow the plane in, in, in...Finally you see the face of Osama Bin Laden, froth of cafe du lait over the lip as he tucks the Times under his arm, and lo, white dazzle and three serifless numerals appear on the screen - 9 1 1 .

Should we set disaster flics elsewhere? LA and the west coast always gets it in earthquake films. Maybe Detroit? Is it too early to throw up an establishing shot of New Orleans under twenty feet of wastewater?

Who cares if people walk into the theater, secretly harboring a vindictive thrill at watching Gotham go up in flames.

Cinema has grown up, has adapted to the stark, criminal features of the "real world". I Am Legend's scenes of desolation were half grounded in Billy Joel's "Miami 2017", and the rest of the film was a muddled religious mess.

I for one am very pleased to have seen a movie as effective and well-sequenced as Cloverfield. Fact is, cinema is a tool for reification. If you disagree with the economy of this film, its abstractions of terror and Otherness, that's okay.

If we're bound to relive 9/11, I know I'd rather not relive it through demagoguery and political mythification. Now that we've found the shape and form of our nightmares, let's take crayons to it. Because honestly, try finding more ingratiating spatio-temporal graffiti than this film.