WORTH 12 BUCKS?: "Super 8" (REVIEW)

E.T. call home ... and sure indeed, E.T. did call home. After befriending humans and escaping menacing men in black, he did enjoy his stay in our planet, drank pop, watched daytime TV, got a to ride on a bike and accomplished a pretty wholesome existence in suburbia ... before his final departure home.

This time around, suburbia is Lillian, Ohio and the alien is not only not adorable but no longer portable. And, surprise, surprise, the government still does not know how to handle the situation and as the beat goes on, it takes a few good men-in-the-making to work out diplomacy magic and do the job that men in black don't seem capable of doing, pero wait a minute, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

This movie could have easily been titled something other than a title that suggests something out of a snuff vault. In fact, this movie could have also been titled: My Most Excellent Summer Adventure! Director J.J. Abrams has delivered his first born as a director-writer and it's definitely a cool entertainment pinata, which fully succeeds in capturing the wonders of childhood in the face of loss, pain and upheaval. 

At the brink of teenagerdoom, Joe Lamb (soulful newcomer Joel Courtney) has been dealt a bad card in life. His mother has just been crushed to death at work (did it had to be this gruesome?) and his distant, workaholic dad (Kyle Chandler) wants him to stop his filmmaking ventures. But Joe is already a mini Guillermo del Toro, he knows a whole lot about special effects makeup and really loves the monster genre. He also knows a lot about trains...

Not wanting to disappoint his friends, after some walkie-talkie coordination with his buddy and neighbor Charles (Riley Griffiths), Joe sneaks out in the middle of the night to help Charles and his crew finish their zombie Super-8 movie, titled The Case. While filming at a nearby train station - boy, that incoming train could not have arrived at a better time, talk about production values - they accidentally witness a catastrophic train crash. But was it really an accident?