Mission: Fairly Difficult, But I Did It Anyway

With the never-ending amounts of sequels being released today, I've had to fill in many gaps in my watchlist to ensure that I'm up with the play. The latest series demanding my attention was Mission: Impossible. Starting in 1996 with a Brian DePalma film, which rebooted a popular TV series, and spawning three sequels, the latest of which - Ghost Protocol - has just been released on DVD, the series follows Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), a super IMF agent who always accepts fairly difficult missions. It was strange watching a series that is just one year younger than myself, and like my life, it has gone from stage to stage with varying results. Let's pick each film apart...

"I know that's your camera, sir, but technically that's my film."

Film: Super 8
Year: 2011
Writer/Director: J.J. Abrams
Starring: Joel Courtney, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, Gabriel Basso, Zach Mills, Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning, Noah Emmerich, Glynn Turman, AJ Michalka.
Running time: 112 min.

I often hear a lot of people getting all nostalgic about the movies they watched in their childhood, like E.T, or The Goonies, or Ghostbusters. Unfortunately, I missed the 70s/80s, when easy, breezy family entertainment was fun and fresh. Instead, I was born in 1995, which I suppose wasn't a great time for family entertainment compared to then. I didn't watch any movies either, because whenever a family movie came on at 12pm every Sunday, I would turn it off. If there was one thing I hated more than American sitcoms with canned laughter as a kid, it was corny 90s family movies. So when it came to see Super 8, a movie which I heard was extremely nostalgic and sort of a homage to sci-fi family movies from the 80s, I was a little worried that I wasn't educated enough to get it. Instead, J.J. Abrams' movie, with Steven Spielberg producing, is one that not only pays tribute to the movies that most of us/our parents grew up on, but also pays tribute to our childhood. The carefree days when we had imaginations that couldn't be reined in by cynicism or the harsh reality. The days when school didn't matter all that much. The days when everything seemed so much easier.