MattReeves Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Overture Films' remake of Sweden's critically acclaimed Let the Right One In has been decried as unnecessary by a lot of critics and film fans. But it's happening no matter how much digital ink we spend complaining about it, and at least they have gone and hired themselves one heck of a cast. In an official press release, Overture has announced that Richard Jenkins, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Chloe Moretz have been cast in Let Me In.

The roles are the same, though the names have been Americanized. Smit-McPhee will be playing Owen, the lonely boy who befriends the strange smelling girl who haunts his apartment complex. Moretz will be playing Abby, the immortal with a child's face. Jenkins will play her caretaker, Hakan. (They haven't decided what to change the name to, I guess. I bet you'll see him renamed Hank or Henry before long.) While I haven't seen enough of Moretz to judge her work, I know Smit-McPhee and Jenkins will be fantastic. (If you haven't rented Romulus, My Father, do so! Its a wonderful film, and it'll give you a preview of what you can expect out of Smit-McPhee in The Road.)

Of course, the performances will all depend on how the troubling, eerie story is handled by director Matt Reeves. If the nuances of the characters are bungled, then it won't matter how good the cast is. Let Me In begins filming in New Mexico (now there's a departure from the Swedish snow) this fall, and will hit theaters January 15, 2010.

As much as I enjoyed the shaky-cam mayhem of Cloverfield, I'm pretty bummed about the idea of Matt Reeves helming a remake of the 2008 vampire film, Let the Right One In. Even before the original film had hit theaters stateside, there were deals in place for Reeves to remake the film for U.S. audiences -- and that's what has me worried. Whenever something is remade for North America, what it usually means is that a little 'sanitation' is in order. For better or for worse, audiences tend to react badly to seeing children in a decidedly non-childlike way, and that's what made The Right One so memorable. But I guess I better get used to the idea, because Reeves recently told the L.A. Times that he's been scouting locations and that a second draft of the script has already been completed and now has the new title, Let Me In.

Let the Right One In was the story of Oskar, a young boy living in the suburbs of Sweden who begins a friendship with a vampire child named Eli who has moved in next door. For Reeves' remake, he's kept the time period in the 80's, but relocated the story to Regan-era Colorado. Most importantly, he's promised that he won't be making his Oskar and Eli any older in an attempt to appeal to the 'Twilight Crowd', and the success of his remake will all come down to who Reeves casts for his two leads. The director has already started working with Avy Kaufman to try and find the perfect cast, and luckily, Kaufman has experience when it comes to casting 'creepy kids', having been the casting director for The Sixth Sense and The Ice Storm.

After the jump: the original film's director and screenwriter give their two cents...

Those of us who were in a moderate panic following the news of a planned Steven Spielberg-Will Smith remake of Chan-wook Park's singular Oldboy can rest a tiny bit easier. According to Will Smith, who's out and about promoting Seven Pounds, the film is in the works -- but it's not a remake after all. Film School Rejects has the money quote:

"We're looking at [Oldboy] right now. Not the film though, it's the original source material. There's the original comics of Oldboy that they made the first film from. And that's what we're working from, not an adaptation of the film."

I'm not sure it makes that much of a difference; an American version of Oldboy is an American version of Oldboy. But at least now Park's film might be able to stand as a companion film to the eventual Hollywood behemoth, without the studio trying to make everyone forget that it exists. I don't have the same hope for, e.g., the Matt Reeves remake of Let the Right One In, which I am actively dreading. Oldboy is something Hollywood can do well, if differently; Let the Right One In can only go badly.

If you haven't seen Park's Oldboy, I strongly recommend a rental. It's pretty unique, and has at least one utterly jawdropping action scene. You know which one I'm talking about.

First up, there's a whole new buddy comedy on the way from the writers of Harold & Kumar -- Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg. The Hollywood Reporter posts that the duo have whipped up a new pic called 'Til Beth Do Us Part. Like H&K, the film will focus on two twenty-something guys, but instead of focusing on the great high, it's about how a friendship is put to the test once one of them gets engaged. I bet you anything this came from those Amsterdam-set follow-ups on the Guantanamo Bay DVD. We should hear more soon -- the plan is to get this comedy in production by early next year.

But there's also White Dad, according to THR. This spec, which comes from writer Alan Yang, is being kept completely under wraps. It shouldn't be too hard to make some possible guesses. The writer is a Yang, and it's about white dads, so maybe it's about a Chinese kid adopted by a white family? Stay tuned!

And finally, there's Matt Reeves. THR reports the Cloverfield director is going to write and direct a remake of the Swedish horror film Let the Right One In. The premise of this flick would've sent my teen penchant for vampires into overdrive -- "a bullied boy whose desire for revenge becomes intertwined with his growing love for a girl who happens to be a vampire." It won an award for Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival, and Scott loved it, so this should be good stuff. We can see the original next month, when it is appropriately released on October 24.

I think everyone's been assuming that Matt Reeves, whose career ascended to another level this year thanks to Cloverfield, would go straight to directing the in-the-works sequel. In an interview with MTV this week, he made it clear that this isn't so. Cloverfield 2 is still happening, but another of his pet projects -- a psychological thriller called The Invisible Woman -- has raced ahead of it in the production pipeline. Not actually a movie about an invisible woman, its story instead involves a "woman that gets so desperate to save her family, that she goes to crazy lengths and enters a life of crime." Reeves, who wrote the film himself, describes it as "a Hitchcockian thriller in the vein of Marnie."

Though Cloverfield was written by Drew Goddard, Reeves wrote and directed the 90's David Schwimmer comedy The Pallbearer, and co-wrote the screenplay for Under Siege 2: Dark Territory. I've seen both, but I'll be damned if I remember either, though I have a vague recollection that Under Siege 2 was pretty fantastic in that way that some Steven Seagal movies can be. Not being the biggest fan of Cloverfield (I liked it well enough), I can wait for the sequel. If you can't -- uh, well, you'll have to. Sorry. The good news is that it still appears to be on the way.

The best news about the new Cloverfield DVD is that you can pause it whenever you want in case -- ya know -- halfway through you feel a little motion sickness. It's been touted as "The Blair Witch Project meets Godzilla" or "a monster movie for the You Tube generation," but when it was all said and done Cloverfield turned out to be an original, captivating piece of filmmaking that took risks where other films of the genre would've played it safe. The initial "Holy crap, what is this movie!" is what attracted people opening weekend, when Cloverfield grossed a whopping $46 million before dropping off an equally-as-whopping 68% in box office totals the following weekend.

Was it the hand-held shakiness that kept people from seeing it ... and then seeing it again? Or was it because of the unusual storytelling techniques? Perhaps, in the end, folks simply enjoyed chasing the film through viral sites more than they did actually sitting down to watch it in a theater. Whatever the case may be, I'd definitely recommend picking up Cloverfield on DVD -- not only because it's much easier to deal with camera shakiness from your own, comfortable living room, but also because the special features truly add to the experience in a very positive way.

According to Variety, Matt Reeves is "in early talks with Paramount" to direct a sequel to this month's smash Cloverfield. This should come as a surprise to exactly no one, as Cloverfield was made on the super cheap ($25 million) and scored a whopping $46 million in its opening weekend alone. From the way the announcement is worded, it looks like they want Cloverfield II underway ASAP, as soon as Paramount can complete discussions with Reeves, producer J.J. Abrams and writer Drew Goddard, who penned Cloverfield as well as episodes of Lost, Alias, and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Reeves has also signed to direct The Invisible Woman, "a Hitchcock-style thriller" he wrote that "probes the mind of a former beauty queen who turns to a life of crime to protect her family."

It remains unclear which project will start production first, though the Variety article says there's a "good chance" it'll be Cloverfield. No word yet on the plot, but Goddard recently mentioned the possibility of showing you the fateful night of the attack from another cameraman's perspective. Much to my chagrin, I have yet to see Cloverfield. The night it came out I was assigned to review...Mad Money. You don't know humiliation until you have to purchase a ticket for a midnight showing of the new Diane Keaton comedy while surrounded by a huge mob of psyched Cloverheads. I'll check it out this weekend, but for those of you who've seen it -- are you excited for a sequel? And do you like the idea of watching events from another angle or would you want a whole new adventure?

I've been excited for Cloverfield ever since I heard that Drew Goddard penned the flick. I can't say anything about Lost or Alias, but he penned some fun episodes of Angel, and better yet -- he got his start on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Yes, I'm a Whedonite of the vamp variety.) During his stint with the slayer, he penned part of the stunning Conversations with Dead People, and headed other eps like Dirty Girls and Lies My Parents Told Me. So, hearing that he was putting his spin on the whole monster movie thing was enough to hook me, and while it could potentially be a can't-live-up-to-hype Blair Witch, I'm still running my butt down to the theater tonight to see for myself.

Of course, what we'll all see on the screen is not exactly what he intended. Bloody Disgusting chatted with Godard and director Matt Reeves on the red carpet of the premiere, and got the scoop. Drew was aiming for a "hard R" with lots of blood and disgusting bits, but was told it was "way too brutal." But maybe we'll see more on the DVD, or the sequel? Reeves wouldn't confirm or deny the possibility, but he did comment on what number two could be if they do go into sequel territory, and frankly, I love the idea: "Only time will tell. While we were on set making the film, we talked about the possibilities and directions of how a sequel can go. The fun of this movie was that it might not have been the only movie being made that night. There might be another movie!"

The whole monster-coming-back-for-round-two angle is getting old, so I would be all over a sequel that shows the same night from a different perspective. At least then, potential monster death or wrapped-up plots can still be actual endings, rather than fluff that gets twisted for round two, five, or ten. What do you think?

The first 'reality blockbuster' is a winner. Cloverfield is a lean, brisk roller-coaster of a monster movie, buoyed by the lack of story gimmicks and absurd characterizations that weigh down most movies of this ilk, no offense to you personally Mr. Broderick. In the aftermath, it will dawn on you that it's actually quite traditional -- every character has an arc -- but it doesn't feel that way. Nor does it feel like 'found footage', but something in between. Watch the prologue carefully, as our narrator/cameraman, whose point of view we'll share, is trying to make a standard going-away party commemoration tape interesting by sniffing out some sex gossip and self-consciously creating his own drama with a girl who wishes he'd get lost. This guy has filmmaking instincts, and when circumstances change and he becomes a 'character' in a disaster movie, he goes with it. He's not just pointing a camera -- he's making Cloverfield: The Movie. Ten years ago, we would have said 'it's not realistic that this guy would keep the camera rolling,' but those days are long gone.

Again, there's no pretense of reality here -- the 20-something party people who we meet and whose lives are flipped by the arrival of the monster are all as pretty and as vapid as anyone on Laguna Beach and they never become less glamorous as the movie goes on -- no one is caught in need of a snot-rag, ala Blair Witch. Among the main characters are Rob (Michael Stahl-David), the guest of honor at the party who is leaving for a new job in Japan, Beth (Odette Yustman) his ex-girlfriend who he still has feelings for but would only admit it if, say, her life were in mortal danger or something, and Marlena (Lizzy Caplan) whose quiet, wide-eyed demeanor and gruff sarcasm make her a bad candidate for 'Survivor Girl.' As the advertising will tell you, some characters will live and some will die but you never know when and where and one death is so shocking and inexplicable I wish very much that I hadn't already seen it a hundred times in the movie's 'give everything away' advertising.

I'm sure you've been waiting for another morsel about the 1-18-08 -aka- Cloverfield flick. Bit by teeny little bit, news has been coming out about this film, which has to speed up at some point if it wants to make its '08 release date. 1-18-08news.com has posted the next little piece -- a heads up that the official website has been updated. It now includes a roar. Yes, that's it -- a roar. If you go to the website, sit there and wait for a while you'll hear it -- although to me it sounds like a roar that turns into some sort of guitar screech. Obviously this is a little bone for the uber-anxious, since not everyone will just keep the website open on their browser long enough to hear the jump-inducer. I'm wondering if it would've been better to do one of those e-mail forwards that tells you to stare at some picture long enough ... it would be a great way to introduce the monster!

Beyond that, there's nothing really new to report. Personally, I'm really itching to see how Drew Goddard does on his first feature film script. He got his start on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and wrote some of the best of the latter episodes, like Conversations with Dead People. (He's also often referred to as the hot Buffy writer, which is understandable, since the guy is a looker.) Since then he's written for Angel as well as J.J. Abrams' two shows, Alias and Lost -- so he's got some experience with mysterious and other-worldly fare. What's surprising is the other Abrams crew on the job as director -- Felicity exec producer/writer/director Matt Reeves, whose last feature was the David Schwimmer stinker The Pallbearer. Stay tuned for the next crumb ... sure to be thrown at some point!