Today's News: Neil Marshall will hunt trolls after Game of Thrones

Posted this on MS the other day:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/150227/neil_marshall_maakt_remake_troll_hunter

As with any successful European movie, the Americans are not far behind with their remake. Even though the Norse film The Troll Hunter (original name: Trolljegeren) was only a moderate hit, it was apparently good enough for a US studio to try its luck with it. It may not be a bad thing, since some American remakes of Euro-flicks end up rather good movies (Let Me In, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), even though I'm generally averse to the entire concept of remaking. In this case less so (call me a hypocrit if you must!), since I sadly missed out on The Troll Hunter when it was running its all too brief course in Dutch theaters. I wanted to see it, but it didn't do well enough here to allow it to run for more than two weeks unfortunately. Like I said, it was not a smash hit, only a minor one. I was actually surprised to see it at my local theaters at all.

As for Neil Marshall: great choice! First of all he's British, so we'll be getting a bit of that much needed European sensitivity in this US remake (only enhanced by the fact the original producers of Trolljegeren are on board as well). Second, Marshall makes my kind of movies. The Descent, Doomsday, Centurion; solid, dynamic action/horror flicks all, demonstrating great craftsmanship on a fairly low budget - and 25 million dollars could be labeled as such - to excellent results in terms of good fun. Plus, Marshall doesn't take his own movies too seriously, which is also a plus when dealing with the likes of trolls. Furthermore, the director who gave us Blackwater on Game of Thrones is a guy we owe the benefit of the doubt. Especially now that he's supposedly working on another epic episode of GoT: so far all clues point to the Wildling attack on the Wall, which under Marshall's direction is something I have no hesitations about in terms of final quality. It's gonna be awesome. And I am rather convinced the same will be true of Marshall's Troll Hunter in time. I won't miss this film a second time, that's for sure.

Cloverfield

Rating: ****/*****, or 7/10

The 'found footage' style is applied to the age old monster movie routine, with surprising success. A bunch of New York kids throw a farewell party for a friend while one of them records the scene, but things turn awry when an unknown giant marine creature attacks the city, after which the army is brought in to fight it. Five of the youngsters decide to rescue one of their number's girlfriend caught in a ravaged part of town, and have to make their way evading the combat zone, as well as little parasitic monsters swarming the city. It soon seems likely none of them might make it out of NYC alive, but we don't mind as long as the camera keeps running and director Reeves keeps the tension, ranging from epic to claustrophobic but always dynamic, going. In typical producer J.J. Abrams fashion, the project was long kept a mystery with tidbits of information sporadically released so as to make the hype around it grow to humongous proportions, and naturally it failed to fully deliver on the anticipation it thus spawned, but it remains an enjoyable flick regardless, with good effects as we slowly see slightly more and more of the creature so as to keep interest mounting instead of giving too much away too soon. It also helped the 'found footage' take on genre films had not yet been done to death at this point in cinematic history: today this film would be significantly harder to sell to any audience in this regard.

Starring: Lizzy Caplan, T.J. Miller, Jessica Lucas

Directed by Matt Reeves

USA: Paramount Pictures, 2008