Saturated with imagery that fascinates, terrifies, and utterly consumes the viewer with the desire to discover the secret that's eating away at the on-screen characters.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:39
Fresh:37
Rotten:2
Average Rating:8.7/10
Consensus: Close Encounters' most iconic bits (the theme, the mashed-potato sculpture, etc.) have been so thoroughly absorbed into the culture that it's easy to forget that its treatment of aliens as peaceful beings rather than warmongering monsters was somewhat groundbreaking in 1977.
Runtime: 6 hrs 44 mins
Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy
Synopsis: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND is Steven Spielberg's extraordinary film about a man named Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) who becomes obsessed with meeting extraterrestrials after encountering a... CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND is Steven Spielberg's extraordinary film about a man named Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) who becomes obsessed with meeting extraterrestrials after encountering a UFO on an abandoned road one night. Against the wishes of his wife (Teri Garr) and children, Neary, along with another witness to the sighting (Melinda Dillon), travels to a mysterious mountain where the government has built a landing strip hoping to attract the aliens. Director François Truffaut costars as Claude Lacombe, one of the organizers of the project. Spielberg hoped to follow up the huge success of JAWS with a low-budget film that would be an easy shoot, but, thanks in part to the complicated special effects, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS quickly snowballed into being an expensive endeavor but a commercial and artistic success. No one who has seen the film has ever looked at a plate of mashed potatotes the same way again. [More]
Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, François Truffaut
Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, François Truffaut, Bob Balaban, Cary Guffey, Pat McNamara, Warren Kemmerling, Roberts Blossom, Lance Henriksen, Carl Weathers
Director: Steven Spielberg
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriter: Steven Spielberg
Producer: Julia Phillips, Michael Phillips
Composer: John Williams
Reviews for Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The first film in years to give its audiences a tingle of shocked emotion that is not entirely based either on fear or on suspense.
[A] great movie, and one of the rare uplifting experiences in modern cinema.
Spielberg is nothing if not adept at punching our buttons and making us puppets in his hands.
The best -- the most elaborate -- 1950's science fiction movie ever made, a work that borrows its narrative shape and its concerns from those earlier films, but enhances them with what looks like the latest developments in movie and space technology.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) is director/writer Steven Spielberg's first film after the enormously successful Jaws (1975).
May be the greatest film ever made about the meeting of the rational and the mystical.
Though made the same year, Spielberg's awe-inspiring sci-fi fable has held much better than Star Wars due to his sublime crafstmanship, which benefits from sharp imagery and F/X, and engaging story and charcaters, well-acted by Richard Dreyfuss and others
A thrilling adventure story and a brilliant example of the art and craft of movie making.
A daring film concept which in its special and technical effects has been superbly realized.
This 'collector's edition' will probably go down in film history as the definitive one unless, like me, you think the movie works best in its original version, wherein the special effects of adult delinquency are left unknown.
Latest News for Close Encounters of the Third Kind
January 03, 2008:
New Indy 4 Interviews, Pictures Online!
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December 13, 2007:
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This Christmas, we're asking Santa for Sam Jackson's Star Wars: Episode III lightsaber, Neo's Matrix Reloaded coat, and a full scale T-800 Terminator 2 endoskeleton for that... More...
June 28, 2005:
Critical Consensus: Aliens Invade, Critics Cheer
Steven Spielberg has made a couple movies -- Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. -- about benevolent aliens who come in peace and gently help us to reflect on our place... More...
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