SUPER 8
5 out of 5 stars

OMG, i LOVED this!!! it reminded me soooooo much of E.T., which it was suppose to because this was suppose to be a nod to steven spielberg’s sci-fi movies of the 80s and 90s, and it does JUST that! for a second, i thought this was going to be another cloverfield with an alien terrorizing a poor lil’ town, but there’s some depth here that makes this story special. LOVED this… ;)

so, the reason why this movie is called super 8 is because the boys in this movie are filming a zombie movie, so that they can enter it into their town’s film festival…using a super 8 camera. the movie is set in 1979, in a lil’ town called lillian, where joe lamb and his father, jackson AKA the deputy sheriff live. the movie starts with an accident at a steel manufacturing factory that kills joe’s mother, and it devestates pretty much the entire town esp. joe. everyone’s concerned about his well-being because he is so young, but he seems to be a well-adjusted kid with lots of friends. a few months pass, and his fatty friend charles tells him that he’s gotten alice (ella fanning- all teened out!) to agree to play a part in his movie. joe is surprised by this, but is excited to be working closely with her because he liiiiikes her. ;) they decide to sneak out around midnight to film their takes at the train station, but then joe sees a pickup truck intentionally crash into an airforce train, derailing it and causing all sorts of explosions! the kids manage to barely make it out alive, but then realize that their honors biology teacher, dr. woodward was driving the pickup truck. (!) WTF was he driving the truck, and why did he cause the train to crash??? the questions are posed, and the answers are good and juicy. ;) (and thanku for making sense unlike LOST)

as much as we can rag on LOST for plotholes and crazy plot twists that never went anywhere, the best part of that whole series were the human interactions and the characters that were developed oh-so-well. same thing can be said about this movie esp. joe and his interactions with his father, friends, and even the alien. the whole alien sub-story is like PSYCHO E.T. because he is not a happy alien, and will do whatever it takes to “phone home”. the script is well-written, and it’ll totally remind you of E.T., the goonies, stand by me, LOL…a little bit of independence day. i totally appreciated the mystery of the alien esp. when you get to see the footage of the crash via a super 8 camera. ;)