Super 8 (2011). Director J. J. Abrams

Set in 1979 and filmed in the Spielberg style of that period (Star Wars 1977, and later E. T. 1982), the film has great comedic moments, as when one of the kids in the film comments on drugs being bad, such an overstatement in the scene because, in contrast, the kids are in grave danger from both the Air Force and a nocturnal, subterranean alien creature that hunts humans as its food source. Watching Super 8 here is 2014 flipped me back to the 70s, the style of it being just realist enough not to be too cheesy, yet bursting with special effects and the kind of wave-crashing romantic movie music that Erich-Wolfgang Korngold introduced in the 1930s. It was as if Super 8 was actually filmed in 1979, in anticipation of the boy/alien high adventure of E. T., where the sublime alien ship rises above the earth before disappearing into the sky, where the grandeur of that ship is matched in mood by the tight hug between the child and his parent, that sublime human family bond, as it were. Even the moments of comedic relief are true to the period, a la Star Wars . . . or is it the earlier TV series Star Trek that delivered one-liners in the middle of life/death struggles?