Perhaps one of the most unconventional sequels of all time,
10 Cloverfield Lane assembles almost no resemblance to 2008’s cult classic
Cloverfield other than maybe its name. The movie takes place in rural Louisiana, while
Cloverfield takes place in New York City. We never truly know how much
10 Cloverfield Lane will be in the future, but we can assume it’s as soon as a couple of days and as long as a couple of weeks.
Cloverfield was a shaky camera-found footage film about aliens invading the city.
10 Cloverfield Lane is not that. It’s more like a spin-off than it is a sequel. An alien invasion is a possibility for how these characters find themselves. Still, it is just one of the possibilities described by Howard (John Goodman –
Flight, Barton Fink), the film’s antagonist. Goodman might be better than he ever has been before. It certainly is his darker role and the first movie in many years (
King Ralph, anyone) in which he has played a starring role.
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Not being a guy who is really into the disaster film genre anymore (I turned off movies like The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 before I was even a third of the way in), I was more than tentative to give San Andreas a chance. It’s a genre that once interested me in my younger days. I enjoyed movies like Independence Day, Deep Impact, Cloverfield while loving Titanic (my favorite movie of 1997), 
Though we primarily know him for his slapstick comedy (The Cable Guy, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Ace Venture: Pet Detective), Jim Carrey has proved on numerous occasions that he can do very well what many other people in his genre cannot do. He can give riveting and believable performances in both light-hearted and heavy dramas. He’s done it with The Truman Show (where he was spectacular and deserving of an Oscar nomination) and 
I cannot help comparing Escobar: Paradise Lost to Leonardo DiCaprio’s The Beach. There were quite a few similarities and also quite a few differences. I’ll start with the differences first. Except for The Man in the Iron Mask (which wasn’t promoted as a blockbuster), The Beach was DiCaprio’s first marketed movie since Titanic. It had a massive promotional campaign and was expected to vault DiCaprio even further as Hollywood’s next leading man. I had huge hopes for The Beach and liked it. Unfortunately, the movie was panned by audiences and critics alike. But before I get pounced on for enjoying it, please note that I saw this movie when I was about 24. That is my defense. I cannot defend the actions where I have watched the movie about three times since then. But I like the idea of a paradise that’s too good to be true and a lead character suddenly so far over his head that he has no means of getting out. This was a similarity to the much less marketed Escobar: Paradise Lost, a movie that received mixed reviews but, for the most part, had as many people who didn’t like the film as it had people who did.
Sleeping With Other People was the fifth movie I saw over 48 hours. The Finest Hours,