Super 8 (2011)

A bunch of 13 year-olds are filming a homemade zombie movie when they unintentionally film a train crash. This train contained some sort of extra-terrestrial technology and the kids are soon being hounded by evil government officials.

After what seemed like the longest c.g.i. train crash in history, there are a few creepy scenes, one in particular at a gas station. Then the film starts to fizzle out and the mind (mine, at least) begins to wander. I started trying to guess which of the young actors was gay (the lead had a lisp that kept creeping out), I wondered if every member of the Fanning family can cry on cue, and I marveled at how they managed to find the ugliest child actor I've ever seen. This mouth breather's braces-clad teeth were so protruding, that if you squinted it looked as if he were wearing an aluminum foil mustache. This is good, but unlike director J.J. Abrams previous efforts (Cloverfield, Start Trek), it's not great. It seems producer Steven Spielberg may have played a larger role than mere producer, for this seems like a Spielberg movie, kind of E.T. meets The Goonies. Abrams shouldn't have deferred to the producer so much, there's a lot of Spielbergian sentimentality. Instead of Abrams on a good day, we get Spielberg on a bad day.