Close Encounters of the Third Kind

DVD review from The Movie Snob

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (B+). How did this one elude me for so long? Well, it didn't entirely. Somewhere along the line I did manage to see a fair amount of the ending, so the movie didn't really hold any big surprises for me. Nevertheless, I still really enjoyed seeing for the first time the 2 hours leading up to the grand finale. Weird things are happening around the world, such as the discovery of the missing airplanes from Flight 19, intact, in the Mexican desert, with any trace of their crews. (Flight 19 was a group of Navy airplanes that disappeared in or around the Bermuda Triangle back in the 40's. You could look it up.) There's a rash of spectacular UFO sightings. Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss, Jaws) is an ordinary guy who happens to witness one of these sightings. From then on he's obsessed with a strange conical shape that he can't stop sculpting. What does it all mean? If you know the technical meaning of the title of the movie, you'll have a pretty good idea what's going to happen. Very good -- certainly ahead of its time.