It's a by-the-numbers blockbuster, but one with a key element that's missing from most of the big-budget bloatfests crowding each other for space on the marquee every summer: heart.

| Jan 7, 2021

While it may not achieve the level of pop culture canonization as the Spielberg films it invokes, Super 8 should inspire many to use their camera-phones for something more creative than a profile pic.

| Jun 28, 2013

Super 8 is accomplished commercial filmmaking.

| Oct 7, 2011

A Spielberg pastiche of uncanny precision and sublime pointlessness.

| Aug 9, 2011

Super 8 is the most intensely Spielbergian film you'll ever see that Steven Spielberg didn't actually direct himself. And it's early Spielberg!

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 5, 2011

What keeps us enthralled is its nostalgic sensibility, partly for the time but mostly for its old-school film-making values.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 5, 2011

Super 8 is the sweetest film of 2011, an affectionate shout-out to amateurs everywhere.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 4, 2011

It is thrilling, fatuous, pyrotechnical, whimsical, barnstorming, batty, out there, out to lunch and finally, though it flails exuberantly to the last frame, out of ideas.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 4, 2011

Wears off like a warm childhood memory.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 4, 2011

The geekery has charm, but is a little self-conscious and just occasionally, this movie resembles an open-ended, rambling drama serial that gets a little, well, lost.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 4, 2011

A diverting but rather pointless affair, undermined by its obsessive and clinical commitment to recreating past glories.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 3, 2011

It's nowhere close to E. T. - what is? - but amongst the hullabaloo of summer, Super 8 is something to cherish: a beautifully made homage to better times, and better movies.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 31, 2011

Spielberg and Abrams are the unwitting targets of their own irony.

Full Review | Jun 27, 2011

Abrams is great at keeping his balls in the air, but when it comes time to catch them, he's all thumbs.

| Original Score: C+ | Jun 16, 2011

Regrettably, writer/director JJ Abrams (Star Trek, Mission Impossible III, co-creator of 온라인카지노추천 series Lost) is better here at building suspense than paying it off.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 16, 2011

A piece that satisfies what we've been craving ever since the viral campaign began, yet one that goes in directions we'd never expect and that blend is what makes it such a special film.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 11, 2011

If you're wondering what's missing from so many big-budget, effects-driven Hollywood movies, the answer lies in J.J. Abrams' Super 8: heart and passion. What's happening onscreen really matters to...

Full Review | Jun 10, 2011

A love letter to a cinematic era, before 'blockbuster' became a synonym for 'franchise' or 'tent pole.'

| Jun 10, 2011

Remember the good old days? This is the movie you went to see on a Saturday afternoon in the good old days.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 10, 2011

There's much to like in this story of a group of young movie-makers who stumble upon an event right out of, well, the movies.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 10, 2011