Super 8 in IMAX

Movie: Super 8 in IMAX

Genre: sci-fi thriller

Synopsis: Some middle-school friends are filming their own movie for a contest when they are witness to a horrific train wreck.  The wreck is soon swarming with soldiers who insist everything is OK.  Then people and dogs start to disappear.  When the kids get their film developed, they find that they caught more on the film than their little movie – they see what escaped from the wreck.  What follows is a race between the kids, who are trying to find and rescue their friend, and the soldiers, who are doing their best to destroy the town in their search for the escapee.

My two cents: A fabulous movie.  I could really see the influence of Steven Spielberg in how the children are handled.  The scenes between Joe (Joel Courtney) and Alice (Elle Fanning) are really touching – as are the scenes with Joe and his best friend when the confront the reason for the tension (girl related, naturally) that develops between them. Watching the way the children inter-act reminded me a bit of some classics, like “Stand by Me”.  The alien creature was great – tossing cars around like they were toys. The most spectacular part of the movie, though, was the train wreck in the beginning.  It is absolutely the most spectacular train crash I have ever seen in a movie – probably the most spectacular ground-based vehicle crash I have ever seen.  Seeing (and hearing) it in IMAX made the extra money for IMAX absolutely worth it.  The only thing I had a beef with was accepting that this ‘thing’ from the train could have been kept captive by the military for so long . . . with the powers it had, surely it would have managed to escape.

Bottom line: don’t miss this one.  It is one of those movies that needs to be seen on a big screen – preferably in IMAX.

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