Super 8 (2011)

 

A Goonies gang accidentally captures government secrets on their Super 8 camera as they make a zombie film, and while the kids revel in making their zombie movie, you get the sense director J J Abrams himself is revelling in making  the sort of movie Spielberg made in the 80s with kids on an adventure  in a richly detailed small-town America, but J J Abrams is also paying homage to the paranoid scifi invasion B-movies of the 50s and this dual, conflicting purpose strips some Spielberg heart from the kids' adventure.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

*SPOILER ALERT*

A captive woman, always one to flee at the first sign of trouble, learns to, er, bunker down and fight, in J J Abrams' thriller full of painstakingly plotted minor details and enormous gaping unanswered bigger questions, making this a not very impressive movie except for the menace of John Goodman's captor, a doomsday prepper who may not be telling the truth about what lies beyond the airsealed bunker doors (an air filtration system in a stupid place, for one thing, and another problem which turns out to be nothing that a stiff drink and a smoke can't sort out, so calm down, Houston).

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW

Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

With an elaborate lie, Will Smith ingratiates himself with affluent Ouisa and Flan Kittredge in this pretentious, wordy, tragic, and ultimately cathartic treatise on the human condition, inspired by a real New York professional interloper -- and I love it!

★★★★★

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS