Super 8 (2011)

Something just struck me with this film. I was born in 1998, so I have no personal ties to the year 1979, in which the film is set. Ah, 1979. It was a year before John Lennon was shot, and nine years after his band (The Beatles. If you didn’t know that…then…gah…) broke up. Kramer vs. Kramer won Best Picture at the Oscars, and Star Wars was still a respectable name (you ruined it, Jar-Jar). And apparently, an alien came and attacked a town in Ohio. Super 8, directed by the great J.J. Abrams (who directed the Star Trek reboot), and produced by the great Steven Spielberg (please don’t make me explain Steven Spielberg to you), is a blast through and through. Almost the entire cast is made up of unknown children, where they have lead roles, despite this being their first acting credit. The exception to this is one of my favorite child actors out there, Elle Fanning, who is making a name for herself outside of her sister’s shadow (Dakota, just for you people who didn’t know. Dakota Fanning). Elle was in Phoebe in Wonderland, which I thought was beautifully dark and twisted, and she was in Somewhere, which I have not seen yet. Either way, she’s really good and I think she’s better than her sister. Lots of people will disagree with me on that. Other than her and the crew, there really are no recognizable names for the film. The not-so-recognizable names are Joel Courtney, who brilliantly plays the lead, Riley Griffiths as the best friend movie nerd, and Ryan Lee as the crazy pyromaniac expert. All of the kids do an amazing job in the film. The film has no weak link. But all of the strong performances are by actors that nobody knows, which will make it a hard sell. Well, that, and the fact that it is a film about children rated PG-13. And it is one of the heaviest PG-13s I have seen in a while. It was on the verge of an R. And that just goes to show you, with this and Saving Private Ryan, the name Steven Spielberg is mind control over the MPAA. And I am fine with that. The plot of the film cannot really be said without spoiling it. I saw Cloverfield two years after it came out, and I knew everything about it. This film is what Cloverfield was marketing-wise. You need to go in knowing nothing. It’s still a good film with knowing, looking back, but it is much better going in with an empty mind. Basically, a bunch of kids are making a movie on a Super 8 mm camera (where the film gets the name), where they see a train crash. Then crazy stuff keeps happening over town. That is all I am going to say about the plot of Super 8. The film is going to be a hard sell. It has kids in it, kids that would normally see movies with kids in it are too young to see this, and adults will view it as a kiddy film. It is not. It is a powerful blast of a film. It has science fiction, horror, comedy, romance, everything. A good film takes fantasy and reality and walks them hand in hand. A great film takes the two and intertwines them. A perfect film takes the two and pours them together, to the point where you don’t know which is which. Super 8 is definitely the last one. I recommend that you see this film as soon as you are done reading this. It is the best film of the year.
9.5/10