SUPER 8

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you; but my choices were: “Mr. Popper’s Penguins”, “Green Lantern”, “Kung Fu Panda”.  I was ultimately satisfied with my decision.

This collaboration between J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg is terrific; their imaginative powers whip up a perfect concoction of magic, mayhem and genuine believability. It is 1979 and a group of adolescents, filming their own vampire movie, witness a train crash resulting in military involvement, missing people, dogs and an inscrutable alien of exponentially lethal skills.

The movie’s success lies with the young actors who imbue their characters with precocity, innocence and awe; the script is authentic, and they deliver 100%. Joe (Joel Courtney) is a sensitive, makeup artist,  grieving for his dead mother; Charles (magnificently depicted by Riley Griffiths) is the bright, bovine director. Cary (Ryan Lee), with radioactive braces, is the demolition expert ; Alice, enchanting Elle Fanning, the most seasoned of the actors gives a remarkable performance as the star of the plagiarized vampire genre. The pack is striving for individuality, uniqueness  in a “film” world of the grotesque, supernatural, horrific: “The Exorcist”, 1973, “Carrie”, 1976, “Halloween” 1978 (one of the scariest ever produced), “The Alien”, 1979. Some of their scenes of mimicry are hilarious; and I warn the audience to stay until the credits are concluded.

Finally ,what jewels I would lovingly trade for an hour of exposure to the radiation of Spielberg’s phantasm, wizardly; all his films spray the audience with the fantasies of his youth; his rainbows are wider, pots of gold weightier;  his protagonists, even the flawed, are softened with a bolt of dignity. Goodness is pervasive, lessons learned by his characters, leave a wiser viewer. Regardless of age, we recognize ourselves: misfits in the primary grades, nerds in middle school, dreaming the unattainable, but magically, alchemically the caterpillar does morph into the butterfly; dreams, fantasies actualized in variant guises, realizing with  wonderment, the viability of the struggle that has given birth to a mind of quality, a person of substance. Leaving “Super 8” , smiling,  because once again Steven Spielberg made me feel happy, contented , with just being me, myself and I.

THREE STARS!!! (Out of Five)

For Now……..Peneflix