Super 8 (2011)

So Super 8 will go down as one of the top grossing films of 2011 (top 20 most probably) and probably one of the years biggest sleeper hits, if sleeper hits can be sleepers with names like Spielberg and Abrams.

From a studio stand point it did what it was supposed to, be low budget (approximately $42 million) and deliver at the box office. This big names behind the camera plus off beat plus no big lead actors formula usually equals artistic and monetary disappointment.

Yet Super 8 (despite the handicap of contrived and premeditated studio conservatism) is a decent flick.

It's a little strange to be so casually transported into 1979. Because the cinematography is so 2011 it takes a little while to wrap your brain around the state of technology and its limitation in 1979 but once you see the kids shooting their movie on film, using rotary phones and painting models as hobbies (really?) you find the retro temporal displacement believable and its simplicity oddly comforting.

I don't want to ramble on and drop spoilers as the film has some nice twists and turns even if some of the twists and turns are to credulity itself.

But whatever. Decent film but not one you would probably ever have to or want to see again.