Super 8

I’m not going to lie…this is one of my favorite films of the decade.

Sure, it’s almost not fair for me to say that because I’m generally biased due to my age alone. I mean, come on. I grew up in the era of Spielburg. I grew up with Jaws, and the Goonies, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T. I grew up with Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom. I grew up when films had something that almost NO film captures properly today…WONDER. Yap, that’s the magic word, and it is what’s missing from %99 of films that come out these days. Super 8 doesn’t have these problems.

You need to understand a few things about me.  I’m an 80′s baby.  And my absolute very first memory in my entire life is sitting on an old couch in front of the window and watching the TV as a young girl swam out by a buoy and seeing her silhuetted feet dangling in the water as something came slowly up beneath her.  The music stuck with me forever, and suddenly, she was yanked under the water by something.  That something turned out to be the biggest, baddest shark in the deep blue, and he went by the name of JAWS.  It was my first brush with Steven Spielburg’s incredible body of work, and not even close to my last.  I studied that man’s library like it was school, because in my eyes, it was.  By the time I was 5 years old, I was already writing my own stories, forcing my friends to act them out, and making my own movies.

All I wanted as a child was adventure.  I wanted to find pirate ships full of treasure, I wanted to avoid death ready traps and save beautiful girls.  I wanted to live.  Something very beautiful happened in my childhood.  A collection of films came out throughout those years that will possibly never be matched.  Those films imitated my life and my life imitated those films.

So it should come as no surprise that I first and foremost recommend this film to those of you who enjoy the fantastic and remember what it’s like to experience real magic as a kid.  And that’s the strength in this film.

First of all, it’s set in the 70′s and a group of kids are out to shoot their own horror movie for a film festival competition.  The entire story opens with a huge tragedy in one of the young hero’s lives and we skip ahead 4 months.  From here the film sets it’s obvious tone and pacing and what I love most is that it is slow and methodical.  This film is not a monster movie.  It’s not a horror movie.  And while damn scary, what the movie comes down to, is love.  Loss.  Grief.  And acceptance.  kids dealing with broken families, lost loved ones, and learning to let go, and how to be brave in the eye of the impossible.  The most tragic thing of all is that more films today can’t seem to pull this off.

The person I saw the film with is from another country and had never seen a Spielberg film “minus Jurassic Park”.  So I was very interested to see her reaction.  She jumped.  She laughed.  She cried.  She was very touched by the magic she was experiencing.  I think more than anything, that speaks volumes about what you are going to see when you see this film.  You will remember exactly what it’s like to be a kid.

Hell, I was quite angry coming out that I don’t yet have children of my own to share such a fantastic film with.   I’m very much skirting past details of this film because honestly, I think reviews ruin movies these days just as much as today’s horrible trailers.  They give away everything you went to see the film for.  I won’t do that to you.  Instead I will tell you that if you smiled at the thought of ANY of the films I mentioned above…this movie is a must for you.  However, if you crave relentless action without deep characters and just a bunch of shit blowing up, then this is not the movie for you.

I easily give Super 8, 5/5 stars