Super 8 is a film about filmmaking, childhood crushes, friendship, coming of age, fathers and sons, secrets, grief and loss. It’s also about a huge alien monster.

I’ve tried to stay away from big movies this year after constantly feeling like being ripped off every time I watched something at the theatre. I can’t recall anything recent that offered a genuine spectacle or invoked a sense of wonder like the movies I grew up watching.

Super 8 is a throwback to the kind of stories Spielberg and Joe Dante did in the 80s about children who stumbled on elaborate conspiracies and managed to maintain a sense of objectivity that most, if not all adults seemed to sorely lack. The movie works because J. J. Abrams employs a narrative structure that, if you think about it, is essentially just the three-act structure done really well. He teases you with bits and pieces of information and does the full reveal only once he thinks you’re ready (I admit, it’s impossible to not feel a little cheated once you get to the end but the trip’s worth it). That’s the kind of filmmaking I miss; most movies try so hard to keep your attention and essentially just bombard you with bloated visuals and those annoying quick cuts. What happened to the foreplay?

Sadly, a lot of people I know don’t seem to want to know what Super 8 is about and that’s just sad. But if you do decide to go and watch this big little film, don’t read anything about it. Go in cold and it’ll be worth it because Super 8 has both spectacle and heart.

I’m probably inviting ridicule by comparing Lost, a mainstay of the popular zeitgeist for over 6 years now, to something as revered as Paradise Lost. Beneath all that sheen and soap-opera style drama involving mostly beautiful people with perfect bodies, there were allusions to weighty philosophical dilemmas and age-old conundrums. I’ll admit that it took me a while to fully appreciate the epic scale of the show, and once I did, I was completely invested in its characters and mysteries despite the experience being far from perfect. But I’ve been hurt before, and it was with some amount of trepidation that I sat down to watch the final two hours of what was probably the most genre-bending show on television.

And yeah, it was a letdown (but nowhere near the fiasco that was Battelstar Galactica’s ridiculous ‘god did it’ conclusion). I fail to understand why otherwise brilliant writers resort to pulling deus ex machinas out of their asses when shows like these deserve far more fitting farewells. What exactly is the appeal in introducing overtly spiritual elements to a show that has had outstanding episodes like ‘Man of Science, Man of Faith’ and ‘The Constant’? Why tie up all loose ends with an explanation that renders it near impossible to question anything and everything that preceded it? Granted, Lost has jumped the shark a few times since season one and while the time-travel plot line was cleverly executed, drawing out an alternate reality without thinking things through was, to quote a friend, just plain shoddy and cowardly writing. Turns out, the alternate reality was (*spoiler*), purgatory. Really?

Don’t get me wrong; I loved the first 80 minutes of the episode. There was plenty of great acting (Terry O’Quinn and even Matthew Fox), a few answers, some great emotional resolutions and a pretty intense fight sequence. But the last 20 minutes took away from an otherwise great finale. I’m yet to fully grasp the impact that the finale had on me, and perhaps after the dust has settled, I’ll love it. Or maybe I’ll come to terms with how it’s been a disappointment—but a beautiful disappointment nonetheless.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1060277/ 

Don’t believe the hype. Cloverfield is a terrible, nauseating and utterly pointless piece of cinema catering mostly to today’s attention deficit generation. No matter what they tell you, the camera work is not clever, it’s maddening.

Now that’s out of the way, it does have a couple of redeeming qualities (none of which redeem the film as a whole); the set design is tremendous, the ‘monster‘ itself is like nothing we’ve seen before and the theme that plays through the closing credits is brilliant. That’s about it.

3/10

16 dollars down the drain. Frick!