Etching titled Globe Aerostatique, 1783
Of his work in the early '80s, Steven Spielberg is best remembered for making two kinds of movies: (1) touching suburban dramas with a fantastic twist (E.T.), and (2) genre/adventure flicks that centered on the nostalgia of his childhood (i.e. Raiders of the Lost Ark). So it's not surprising to see that Spielberg-idolizing producer/director J.J. Abrams combining those two visions - Abrams appears to have a great deal of childhood nostalgia for Spielberg's domestic sci-fi movies. But Super 8's greatest asset isn't that it's a small-town suspense film with a lurking supernatural element - it's the naturalistic script and strong ensemble of pre-teen actors at the center of the action.
When a group of Ohio kids see a military train crash in the middle of the night under mysterious circumstances and a "something" escapes from a locked train car, an increasingly frantic series of events begins to shake up their town. But the fun comes in watching the group of young friends react and grow as they struggle to keep it together. Joel Courtney provides an emotional center as the main character, Joe, and his film-director friend Charles (Riley Griffiths) is great as well, but the best performance might be Elle Fanning as Alice. Most memorably, she does an "acting" scene that's basically the adolescent equivalent of Naomi Watts' audition scene in Mulholland Dr. The focus on the kids makes it okay that the adult cast, including a lot of top-notch character actors, doesn't get to do that much - even Kyle Chandler (who's been one of my favorites since Friday Night Lights) spends most of his scenes doing a patient, tight-lipped squint.
Super 8's major weakness is that the climax with the monster doesn't live up to the build-up. I'm not sure if audiences are actually harder to please these days in the "movie monster" department or if this is just another new movie that didn't put enough effort into the design, but it just doesn't really work. However, the conflict with the kids and their parents is more compelling and resolves nicely, so the monster plot kind of works in context. And I really liked some of the filmic visual touches - the lens flares are used to good effect here, and he does a neat trick where the picture distorts when the camera's depth of field shifts (intended to create the impression of amateur-level optics, I think.) Overall, Abrams has shown that he can do nostalgia films well (see also Star Trek) - it would be nice to see if he can eventually match the original and innovative side of Spielberg's peak-period work.
"The Monster's Loose" by Polaris
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