Monsters and Aliens

Comments (0) By Cory Casciato Thursday, Apr 1 2010

The International Film Series ends its six-film Aliens Attack program tonight with a showing of Cloverfield, one of the best giant-monster movies ever to grace the screen. The entirety of the story is shown in a first-person, cinema-verité style via a camcorder wielded by one of the characters (Denver East High School grad T.J. Miller as Hud, who actually shot a significant portion of the film and will be a special guest at the screening). While the shaky-cam may induce nausea in some movie-goers, it lends the film an impressive immediacy and intensity.

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Producer J.J. Abrams reportedly conceived of the film as the American answer to Godzilla, and the results arguably place America at the top of the massive-monster food chain. It's full of provocative images and set pieces, from the Statue of Liberty's head crashing to the street just yards from the characters to roiling clouds of dust filling the streets of Manhattan in a manner similar to 9/11. The creatures are unique and terrifying in the brief glimpses we get, and the chaos shown on screen feels about as real as this kind of fiction can get.

See it at 8 p.m. in Muenzinger Auditorium on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder. Tickets are $6, or $5 for CU Boulder students. For more information, visit www.internationalfilmseries.com or call 303-492-1531.
Wed., April 7, 8 p.m., 2010