Sorry, this movie sucks

Simply A Masterpiece

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The movie starts in a chaotic fashion and disengages the audience right at the get-go. The awfully slow combinations of disconnected scenes include noise, dust, flashlights in darkness, yelling and screaming at the breakfast table, erratic behavior of a father of two, dispassionate government workers and so on. The movie is not even sure about its own genre. What starts like an UFO encounter which was trendy of its time takes a weird turn into a cheesy horror flick with all the known cliches like an eerie soundtrack, screws coming off, doors slamming all by themselves and then goes back to its nonexistent plot. Only in the last half an hour or so, Spielberg makes some futile efforts to tie the loose ends together in a weak plot but that appears too little, too late. I can't believe he doesn't even force his imagination a bit later in ET where he recycles the same alien characters of this movie. I saw the movie about 40 years after its release and felt like it aged 10000 years.

The movie that made everyone fall in love with space and aliens. Amazing and beautiful story telling makes this movie one of the best the ever was.

I hate to say it, I swear I'm not a contrarian, but Close Encounters is a mess. The film reeks of a young, overconfident Spielberg coming off the success of his masterpiece, Jaws, and directing his own screenplay, but afraid of editing himself down because he was in love with his script. And a solid idea his film's plot is, filled with interesting characters, an eerie yet hopeful take on alien life. Unfortunately, his film gets bogged down in the final third. Richard Dreyfuss is charming as ever, and his humor hits regularly, Melinda Dillon is also hugely watchable, and the soundtrack is incredible, one of the all-time greats, but a lot of what is setup is never paid off. Dreyfuss' family life is heavily focused on in the first two acts, but the film seems selfish, with Dreyfuss and the film abandoning his children and wife for a fantastical ending that just doesn't want to end, and plays the audience a little too long. It at times feels like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, in how it's so in love with it's giant ships and epic scale, but the humans get waysided by the spectacle. The ending is awe-inspiring, in fits, but overstays it's welcome, with a cynical character decision in the end, that left me angry and dumbfounded. This film is a complete mess, but it's a beautifully directed one, with an incredible score, and some great performances, and it should be appreciated for those reasons alone. It's worth a watch, and maybe it will connect with you more, but for me it seemed like 1977 Spielberg needed to be humbled, which seemed to have happened with his film 1941, with bombed, and brought him back down to Earth.

This film is a classic. It is a well made Sci-Fi drama. The story is not simple but compelling. In this film an ordinary man encounters a strange thing he can not explain. At the same a child is kidnapped by a UFO.Other strange events lead other people into an out of this world film experience! Now there is 3 version of "Record". The 1977 Original Theatrical Cut. The 1980 Special Edition. and the 1998 "Directors Revisionist Cut". However there was a television edition that combined the 1977 and 1980 versions. However that cut has never been officially released on home video. There is minor differences in all 3 cuts. The worse version to me is the "Specail Edition". My prefered version is the original theatrical cut. I love that version. It has more of the comic relief moments that were cut in the 1980 Special Edition. Hard to imagine that the original theatrical cut was not seen by the public for 13 years. Criterion rescued that version after it was almost lost forever. Now you can decide what version is the best because 3 of 4 versions are on home video releases. George Lucas should do the same with the "Star Wars Films"