Retro Rollicks

J J Abrams churns out a reasonably entertaining Speilberg homage in Super 8, a kind of Goonies vs Cloverfield mashup. A bunch of kids growing up in small town 80's 'murika witness a train crash while making a low budget zombie flick and they find themselves in the centre of a conspiracy to keep the existence of an alien hidden from the world. There's plenty of charm and the young cast do a decent job as they bounce around town dodging the police and the army and Abrams keeps things ticking along with plenty of action and SFX but there's plenty of cheese and corn and the whole thing was just a little too wholesome for my taste.


X Men - First Class, though just as cheesy as Super 8, does a decent job in breathing some excitement into the increasingly turgid Marvel superhero franchise. This prequel is set in the Sixties when Xavier and Magneto become chums and begin the search for other mutes in an effort to combat a dastardly villain, Shaw, played by Kev Bacon. There's a ton of origin sub plots that flesh out the action and with two excellent performance from McAvoy & Fassbender that lends the cartoony proceedings a surprising amount of depth. Plus there's Rose Byrne in her scanties.