“This means something. This is important.”

Joel’s Rating: 5 tones out of 5. And you know what tones I refer to!

Joel’s Review: Wow, six years since I’ve been here. I admit, it’s a little intimidating, but Imma diving right in!

Close Encounters of the Third Kind has an interesting history. It was a movie that Steven Spielberg had simmering in his brain for many years but could not really work on the story until Jaws became a huge hit, giving Spielberg some clout in Hollywood. But man, I’m glad that he got it done, because the end result is spectacular, even by modern standards.

And it isn’t hard to see why the movie stands up. The effects, while awesome in many ways, are still pretty practical overall and were made to be believable. And most of the movie isn’t involved with those effects; most of it relies on the strength of the actors and direction, and that is where the movie shines. It makes you care about the characters, makes you cringe when Roy seems to be falling apart. You sympathize with his wife who sees everything she values falling apart. You see another involved person, Jillian, having her own tragedy with the loss of her son. The situations are gripping and the actors are great.

And here come the SPOILERS, so you are forewarned. Throughout the movie, we see essentially a first contact with aliens from space for Earth and the United States, but it comes in a way that is both bizarre and yet intriguing. While the military and science communities are getting messages that they need to decipher in anticipation of meeting the extraterrestrials, the visitors are also somehow implanting images and an almost obsessive impulse within random humans that have close encounters early in the movie.

Most of the film is following either the researchers or the individuals who have been touched, and during this, we see some very familiar subtext in the movie. During the 1970s, there are many films of different genres that use the destruction of family as part of their stories, and here we have a very effective example. In the first third of the movie and part of the middle, Roy’s obsession is literally tearing his family apart, and he sees it and knows it is happening — but cannot seem to stop it. He is driven to an endgame but he doesn’t even know where that end will lead. He just knows that he has to. And his journey is key.

If you haven’t realized, I love this film. I have considered it my favorite for a very long time. But I don’t feel that I’m exaggerating it’s quality, as many, many folks consider this a great movie, one of many that Spielberg crafted back then.

And part of what I love is that there is so much of the UFO and other ‘world mystery’ lore throughout it. Sure, we don’t know the details from many early UFO sightings or encounters, but while there being aliens involved cannot be proven, many of the incidents shown in the film were reported or recorded back then. Close Encounters used real stories about the subject (and others, such as legends of the Bermuda Triangle, especially Flight 19) to give the film extra punch. When the movie came out, people were reading stories about UFOs in their newspapers, reading books about the subject, watching shows like the original ‘Project UFO’. It was a phenomenon, whether aliens were actually involved or not. And a lot of folks (like myself) were very immersed in it all.

And, let’s face it, at that time almost every movie about space aliens was some kind of invasion or a monster on the loose. Close Encounters was different, and the audience responded. And I love that the movie does not try to explain every detail. Numerous times, we hear people discussing the things going on with no comprehension of how or why, not even theories. They just know things are happening and respond as best they can.

I had the privilege of watching this on a movie screen the day before I wrote this, after not watching for a couple of years, and even now I notice details that had slipped my attention before (a larger screen and no household distractions help a LOT!). I won’t say that it is a perfect movie, but there is so much here to appreciate. Anyone who hasn’t watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind should do so, even if you aren’t a big science fiction fan. The sheer drama and acting talent of Dreyfuss, Garr, etc make it worth a viewing. And it can be fun looking out for actors who have small roles in this but went on to their own fame, such as Carl Weathers and Lance Henrickson (no, that isn’t Morgan Freeman in the airport tower scene, but damn, even I thought so for a while!).

And, once you have watched this, look up ‘Closet Cases of the Nerd Kind’, probably on Youtube. Heh!

Justin’s Rating: Mom said not to play with your food!

Justin’s Review: I don’t think we realize how spoiled we are as movie watchers when it comes to our being In The Know (I’ve said as such in my Donnie Darko review). We expect — NAY, demand — to be following the heroes as they clumsily exposit the main plot, spoon-feeding it to us like breast milk. Hey, you can spoon-feed breast milk, right? If there’s a mystery in a film, an unknown factor, we can be fairly sure that it’ll be cleared up for us in a matter of minutes. Not being In The Know can drive us absolutely bonking nuts.

Yeah, so prepare to go a little nuts.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind engages that rare cinematic perspective of watching from the sidelines (instead of in the thick of things) that was recently dug up and dusted off for the brilliantly tense Signs. The story’s been done before and since about a thousand times — first contact with aliens on earth — but somehow this is so different that you can’t even put it in the same league as Independence Day or Star Trek: First Contact. Mostly because it isn’t a loud, flashy movie full of ominous bass lines and government officials bustling around looking for one startlingly buff guy to take the fight to them. Instead, we look through the eyes of some fairly average joes who know something’s going on, but can’t figure out exactly what.

As far as I can figure it, a group of alien teenagers have finally gotten their drivers licenses, and decide to drag race over Earth. Their spaceships’ mere presence makes everything go funky — from reappearing World War II aircraft to magically reversing gravity — and certain people single-handedly jump-start the tabloid industry by religiously following the craft sightings. Yet the ultimate irony is that these folks (particularly sideburns-happy Richard Dreyfuss) have a better grasp on what’s going on than the various world governments and agencies, who keep racing around like they’re the Keystone Cops or something. Bad comparison? Are the Keystone Cops too archaic? Yeah, I thought so. Then why does everyone still compare anything that’s bumbling and incapable with the Keystone Cops? Particularly when you’ve got congress and TV network executives and all.

After over a decade of MTV-influenced manic filmmaking, which has gotten to the point that only bipolar epileptic telepaths can interpret the fast cutting that goes on, it’s such a profound relief to watch a talented filmmaker concentrate more on casually building up a story than immediately jumping to where Things Blow Up. Stephen Spielberg coasts around the globe, touching on the strange world-wide phenomena that has sprung up around the UFO sightings, staying in each spot just long enough to make us believe that, yeah, this could happen, and this is how people from the seventies would react to it.

I never saw Close Encounters before 2003, and even over a quarter century since it was filmed, I can easily point to this movie as something special and equally powerful as any that are released today. There’s just such a sense of craftsmanship that goes into each scene that makes it interesting to progress through what might be a fairly trite story. It teaches us that aliens like to come down the chimney like Santa Clause, playing with dirt in your living room is sometimes necessary, and alien races have absolutely no musical taste. Five notes? Sure, that might be good enough for kindergarten beginner band, but even my dog can snort something more catchy than that.

Roy (Dreyfuss) shows a warm humanity, see-sawing between E.T. obsession and love for his family. You feel a bit bad watching these naughty aliens pull a family apart, not with phasers and inside-out rays, but by replacing one priority (a man’s family) with something entirely new. Yes, that’s correct: a supernatural fixation with Captain Crunch. If only Roy knew that these little grey men were just scouts for the approximately three hundred alien races that would be laying waste to the surface of the planet in future scifi films, he might not be as excited.

Darn it! I know what this film is! It means something… if only I could figure it out…