Obviously, it's been a long time since my last review. It's not that I haven't been going to see any movies. I have, and most of them I enjoyed. Some of them (True Grit and Source Code, just to name a couple) I loved. But somewhere along the way, I lost my motivation to write about them. I've been in an extended emotional and spiritual funk that I couldn't seem to find my way out of. But that changed today (at least temporarily) when I went to see Steven Spielberg's and J. J. Abrams' Super 8. Today is Father's Day, and I was already in a somewhat fragile emotional state, having lost my dad a few years ago. Thinking a movie would take my mind off of things, and knowing next to nothing about this movie before going in (that's the way I like it), I was expecting to be simply entertained for a couple of hours. But I ended up being touched in a way that no other movie has touched me in years. In fact, I was touched in a way that no sermon has touched me in years. But you know, that's just me.
In 1979, I was in the 9th grade and my primary interests were movies (science fiction and horror, in particular) and pop music (you name it). I remember vividly sitting in rapt attention in front of the living room television set at 1 a.m. on Saturday night, watching Night of the Living Dead for the first time, but sitting close enough so I could quickly change the channel to watch The Midnight Special, which was being hosted by Blondie, whenever the zombie action got too intense. Super 8 took me back to that precise moment in time. It perfectly evokes the summer of '79: The polyester clothes, the Farrah Fawcett haircuts, the songs sprinkled conspicuously throughout the soundtrack (one character meets a particularly gruesome fate during Blondie's "Heart of Glass"), and the model TIE fighters suspended from a 13 year-old boy's ceiling. As someone who probably appreciates authenticity more than your average moviegoer, these images resonated with me. It touched me on a pretty deep level.
The film revolves around a group of kids who spend an awful lot of their time outside of school making zombie movies with a Super 8 movie camera. One night, in the middle of shooting a particulary dramatic scene, they witness a horrific train crash and capture it on film. Without giving too much away (because that would really be a crime for any of you who are thinking of seeing this movie), the train was transporting "something" that The Government doesn't want anyone to find out about. But the kids know enough to get themselves into a heap of trouble. And they're smarter than any of the adults, and they know The Truth, but they can't get any of the adults to believe them -- that's why kids of a certain age will love this movie. We're not exactly in the gentle territory of previous Spielberg blockbusters as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.; some scenes add a dash of intensity reminescent of The War of the Worlds or even Ridley Scott's Alien, and the endless, borderline-excessive explosions of the train wreck at the beginning are pure Abrams. That said, Super 8 does retain just enough of the sentimentality of those earlier Spielberg films to gnaw at your emotions, especially if you've lost a parent; there's a scene at the end symbolizing the importance of "letting go" that reduced me to tears. I'm not ashamed to admit it.
In short, I highly recommend Super 8. It's for the 13-year-old kid in all of us. I know it helped me reconnect with mine. Now I remember why I liked him so much.
