Quick take: Cloverfield

It could have been entitled, No Insufferable Yuppie Left Behind, but Cloverfield is not bad. By pretending to be footage shot by an amateur caught in a horrific alien attack on New York, it delivers all the thrills of a good space-monster flick while avoiding the cliches: phony cross-section of citizens reacting, preposterous scientific explanations, predictable power struggles over the appropriate response. Cloverfield asks, 'Wouldn't it be scary (but really cool!) if creepy aliens attacked New York?' and leaves it at that. It is scary and it is cool. And hey, digital video has made possible the truly first-person narrative movie.