Super 8 2011

    In the summer of 1979, a group of young friends are filming a Super-8 movie when a pickup truck drives into a moving train.  The train cars derail one after the other resulting in a huge disaster.  The Air Force comes to clean up the site since all the cars on the train are their property.  The film team is worried that the Air Force will come looking for them since they took casts of their tire tracks at the scene.  Strange things start to happen in the nearby town.   People start to disappear and all the dogs run away to the towns surrounding this town.

    This movie is a combination of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Transformers.  Some of the ideas are hard to grasp and the strange things are filmed in dark areas so you can't see the details.  The young actors are good, it's the adults that need work.  There is some intense action violence during the train accident.  Some blood and use of weapons, some scenes may make you jump but gore is minimal.  There is some drinking and drug content including someone trying to sell kids pot plus more swearing than necessary.  3* (This movie is OK)

111 min, Sci-Fi directed and written by J.J. Abrams with Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning, Joel Courtney, Gabriel Basso, Noah Emmerich, Ron Eldard, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, Zach Mills, Jessica Ruck, Joel McKinnon Miller, AJ Michalka, Andrew and Jakob Miller, Jade Griffiths, Britt Flatmo.

Note:  Imdb 7. out of 10, Rotten Tomatoes 81% with 287 critics 75% audience with 135,249 reviews, Roger Ebert 3 1/2*, The Guardian 3* out of 5* Peter Bradshaw, Common Sense Media S. Jhoanna Robledo, age 12+, positive messages 2*, role models 3*, violence 3*, sex 1*, language 3*, consumerism 0, drinking drugs & smoking 3*, Amazon 4.4* out of 5*, dove.org sex 2*, language 5*, violence 2*, drugs 3*, nudity 1* other, a dad crying from grief, kids driving cars without consequences, kids vomiting and kids lying.

Special Note:  One of J.J. Abrams’ favorite TV show episodes is Walking Distance in the series The Twilight Zone 1959.  The Air Force code name for the evacuation plan in this film is Operation Walking Distance.  Originally, the boys were sitting and waiting for Alice to pick them.  They were going to just talk.  J.J. Abrams heard the boys singing together between takes later on.  He re-shot the scene featuring them singing “My Sharona.”  Elle Fanning was 12 years on at the time of filming her driving scene.  It was illegal for her to actually drive and another person is driving the car with a min-steering wheel in the backseat.  Steven Spielberg (producer for the production) was on set many times during filming.  J.J. Abrams and Spielberg have stated that the filming was some the most fun they have ever had on a set.