2011 Films: #25

#25 Super 8


In a year of love letters to old cinema (The Artist, Hugo), director J.J. Abrams and producer Steven Spielberg released Super 8. Unlike the other two, this romanticizes the Kodak Super 8 camera and film technology, released in the late 1960s. Abrams, who also wrote the film, remembers fondly making his very first films on his parents Super 8.  "There's something about looking at analog movies that is infinitely more powerful than digital," he said in an interview leading up to the release of the film. Super 8, in both influence and actual involvement, feels very Spielberg-ian. It's got the "where the hell are the parents?" childhood adventure vibe of the Goonies and the otherworldly obsession of ET/Close Encounters/War of the Worlds. Make no mistake--it's and  Abrams' project, but it has Spielberg all over it.

Super 8 is set in Ohio in 1979 and follows a group of kids trying to make a Super 8 horror film to submit to a film fest in Cleveland. Our main adolescent protagonists are Joe (Joel Courtney), a wide-eyed wanderer with his heart on his sleeve; Charles (Riley Griffiths), the bossy film director; Alice (Elle Fanning), the muse and all-around boyhood crush; and the lovable goofball Cary (Ryan Lee). Joe's mother has just been killed in a crash and his father (Friday Night Lights' Kyle Chandler) is a sheriff who has absolutely no idea how to deal with their mutual grief. Joe, on the other hand, finds a distraction in the form of helping on the film (meant to be a short piece on zombies), and drooling over Alice. The night they go to shoot the movie, they end up capturing a nasty train crash, full of awesome explosions and train cars stacking on train cars. Little do they know, they've uncovered a bizarre army conspiracy.

The movie had some fantastic sequences, and the kids kept up a good and often believable chemistry. The dialogue between them was fun as well, using 70s kids slang like "mint" But when the dust settles on the conspiracy plot, it feels contrived and though its meant to tug at the heartstrings, it ultimately doesn't. Still, a worthwhile flick that fit perfectly into the summer blockbuster genre.