Super 8

Synopsis
Writer/director J.J. Abrams teams with producer Steven Spielberg for this period sci-fi thriller set in the late '70s, and centering on a mysterious train crash in a small Ohio town. Summer, 1979: a group of young friends are filming a Super-8 movie when a pickup truck derails a speeding train. When the locals start to disappear and even the inquisitive deputy can't come up with answers, suspicions emerge that the incident was anything but an accident. As the truth finally begins emerge, no one is prepared to learn what now stalks the unsuspecting citizens of this once quiet community. Kyle Chandler and Elle Fanning star.

Reviews
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "SUPER 8 packs the emotional punch of vintage Steven Spielberg with the spectacular effects and sense of mystery at which writer/director J.J. Abrams excels." (USA Today)

"The bright idea at the center of SUPER 8 is a counterpoint between a sci-fi adventure that unfolds on a grand scale and the evolution of the little Super 8 film within the film....SUPER 8 serves as a showcase for the style of humane, richly detailed and relatively unhurried filmmaking that made those Spielberg fantasies what they are..." (Wall Street Journal)

3.5 stars out of 4 -- "SUPER 8 has the visual signatures of an early Spielberg movie....SUPER 8 is a wonderful film, nostalgia not for a time but for a style of filmmaking..." (Chicago Sun-Times)

3 stars out of 4 -- "In SUPER 8, Abrams makes us care. This movie, a true beauty, will put a spell on you." (Rolling Stone)

"Loving, playful, and spectacularly well made....It's been eons since a movie has conjured up such intense, specific feelings, images, memories, and nostalgic fantasies about American summertime youth..." -- Grade: A (Entertainment Weekly)

"[T]his science fiction adventure centered on film geek kids in smalltown 1979 America is something Spielberg can easily be imagined having made himself....Engagin on its own terms..." (Hollywood Reporter)

"The slower, more cumbersome gadgetry of the predigital past provides SUPER 8 with some clever jokes and plot twists..." (New York Times)

5 stars out of 5 -- "Like Spielberg, Abrams has an eye for awe....This terrific troupe recall not just early Spielberg but '80s favourites STAND BY ME and THE MONSTER SQUAD." (Total Film)

"SUPER 8 is distilled nostalgia....It's an unabashed romp that works even for those who didn't grow up in late-Seventies Everytown, USA." (Film Comment)

"SUPER 8 is an immaculate production, and set-piece scenes, such as the derailment and a later attack by the alien on a military vehicle, are first rate." (Sight and Sound)