Super 8 (2011)

Rating: 80%
Well I finally saw this movie. My youngest brother got it for Christmas, so a couple of nights ago, he, my other brother and I got to see it with our grandfather who's currently staying with us. Now I didn't have a whole lot of high hopes for this film right away because it didn't look like it was going to be much of a creative movie. Now while it's true for the most part, it still turned out to be a really darn good movie.

Plot: Joe Lamb is 13-year-old boy who has recently lost his mother to a factory accident. The summer after his loss, he starts to help his best friend Charles make his movie for an upcoming film festival. One night, Joe and his friends sneak out to shoot a scene at a train depot. But as they're shooting, a train passes by and then all of a sudden a pick-up truck starts driving on the train tracks heading right for the train causing it to crash.

Now even if you haven't seen this movie, you may have guessed that this movie was a bit more like E.T. and maybe even The Iron Giant. I would say that at the very least, the setting is Iron Giant in some rough points while the climax is a bit more E.T. But all around, it's still a very well done movie. I think what mostly makes this movie good to me is that while the situation after the train crashes is certainly there, there are these nice side stories that go with it that were in the movie a pretty big amount. To me, that worked more. I mean it's not just about the mystery behind the primary story, it's also about these other things that are happening to the main characters that I got pretty well into. And while you couldn't completely see the alien, the little bit that you see seemed to have been really creative.

Actors/Characters:
Joel Courtney/Joe Lamb: I thought Courtney did a pretty good job. His character was definitely someone you were interested in watching.
Elle Fanning/Alice Dainard: I thought she did a pretty good job too.
Riley Griffiths/Charles Kaznyk: I thought he was a pretty good character. I liked how he was more trying to be the leader and all around was one of the really smarter characters unlike most fat kid characters.

Music: I thought the music was pretty good.

Editing: I thought the editing was good too.

And that's my review for Super 8. While the concept is not all that original, it makes up for it with good acting and making the concept not always the main focus of the film.