Cloverfield, the movie in which an assorted group of Manhattan party-goers are picked off by an unexplained monster, reaches for authenticity. The movie, which brought in a hefty $41m over the weekend at the box office, is shot in the style of an amateur video. Apart from a cameraman who manages to keep shooting and cracking jokes even under alien attack, the yuppie characters are more or less credible. The one plotline that prompted a harrumph of disbelief from a downtown audience: the protagonists descend into the subway at Spring Street, walk along the tunnel, run from some alien cockroaches, and, within a few minutes, discover they're already at 59th Street. That's some express line. (After the jump, if by some miracle you haven't seen it, the Cloverfield trailer.)

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