The Second Last Movie I Saw

Many many years ago I had a Super 8 movie camera and made a bunch of films, most of which were incomprehensibly abstract or badly directed plays made with my friends and siblings as the actors. In my entire oeuvre, I believe there is only one shot that was in any way memorable, a fluke of timing which created a rather nice backlit shot of a chase through an alley. Take away that 20 second sequence and it's safe to say that my adolescent filmmaking career was pretty much a bust, but I still have fond memories of playing with the camera and seeing what I could come up with. Pretty much the only enjoyment I took from the recent movie called Super 8, directed by J. J. Abrams, was the nostalgic kick of watching the youthful protagonists trying to shoot their own opus early on in the story (I know I smiled when one of them pulled out a copy of Super 8 Filmmaker, a magazine I used to read fairly regularly myself). After that, it became a pretty standard alien invasion movie, with massive jumps in narrative logic and thematic continuity. In other words, pretty much what most Super 8 movies made by teens were probably like, though I feel safe in saying none of them had this one's budget. A bad sign: I saw this movie several weeks ago and almost immediately forgot all about it, until someone mentioned it yesterday (which prompted these comments). I'm not saying it wasn't enjoyable, but it sure ain't gonna inspire any deep thoughts.