Super 8 doesn't involve hotels in any way

Super 8 (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. JJ Abrams. Starring Elle Fanning, Joel Courtney, Kyle Chandler.

In 1979, while filming an amateur movie on a Super 8 camera, a group of Ohio kids witness a train wreck that releases a dangerous military secret into their small town.

With its vague marketing campaign and bad title (why would anyone make a movie about a discount Canadian hotel chain?), it's easy to go into Super 8 not knowing what to expect. Even for the first 30 or 40 minutes of its running time, it's not exactly clear. There are shades of The Goonies, Stand by Me, and The Iron Giant, and with its believable kid protagonists and its fascinating undercurrent of mystery, the film compares well with all of them.

Super 8, for the record, is a young adult science fiction action movie: a good one, and very nearly a great one. For a while, at least, it has just the right balance of danger, adventure, and personal drama.

The young actors are both likeable and capable, with Elle Fanning, unsurprisingly, somewhere out in front.

Writer/director JJ Abrams, despite his fondness for making even the most minor action scenes look like the apocalypse, has a talent similar to Spielberg (one of the film's producers) for clever and understated visual storytelling. The lingering opening shot of a factory as its "Days since last accident" sign is reset, for instance, wordlessly tells us all we need to know about a character's death well before the explanations that come after.

Super 8 does not take the Disney approach to a preteen movie. It earns its PG-13 rating with blood, visceral fear, and a precise allotment of naughty words. The film is even infused with some top-notch horror elements taken from the Alien school of suspense: namely, a monstrous presence that we never seem to get a clear look at.

But disappointment follows when the payoff doesn't live up to the immense promise of the first half (something with which fans of Abram's previous project, Lost, should be familiar). In the end, a story which seems on course to become this generation's E.T. gets a little too hung up on trying to be, well, last generation's E.T. Sure, the visitor in this case is a lot less friendly, and there are more explosions and guns (not walkie-talkies), but as the film draws towards its climax it starts to feel more and more like a very polished but very conventional sci-fi adventure.

It was close to being a classic.

Rated PG-13 for monster angst.
4 out of 5

Larry Crowne (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Tom Hanks. Starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Sarah Mahoney.

Harmless feel-good comedy/drama from director and co-writer Tom Hanks.

After 20 years of service, dedicated retail employee Larry Crowne (Hanks) is told he has advanced as far as he can without a university degree and fired. He enrolls in community college, where he meets new friends, joins a moped gang (I swear), and tries to win over his miserable public speaking instructor (Julia Roberts).

Everyone knows Tom Hanks is a swell guy. We would all be lucky to live in a world of his creation, where everyone bursts with all the decency and enthusiasm of one of those whitewashed fantasies of what the 1950s were like: a world where even the jerks mean well and all it takes to win them over is a single act of kindness. That would be great.

It's watching that world that isn't so appealing. Larry Crowne's characters are practically the cast of Toy Story brought to life. They have roles instead of personalities. They have the empty smiles of people on The Truman Show. They live in a land of easy problems and easy solutions.

Boiled down, this is the story of a nice man - who I have no doubt is a perfect transplant of the real Tom Hanks - suffering a single setback and then spending the next year making his life steadily more awesome. It has a definite innocent appeal, but amid the almost nauseating wholesomeness there is little depth or excitement.

Rated PG-13 for Julia Roberts being mean.
3 out of 5