I like to keep this for close encounters

But it contains enough angst and confusion to keep it the right side of sappy. Close Encounters is sunnier and simpler than the other great American films of its era. I love the din of different languages the cross-fire of conversation ( Robert Altman got there first, but I didnвЂ™t know that at the time). I love the breadth and business of SpielbergвЂ™s picture. But as for the rest: well, itвЂ™s still kind of wonderful a storm of dustclouds and summer crickets and vast star-splashed skies. Viewed today, it feels over-extended, a tiresome piece of prog-rock noodling that one is tempted to watch on fast-forward. In the view of everyone else, heвЂ™s taken leave of his senses.ДЄt the time, the Devils Tower finale was billed as the filmвЂ™s big bells-and-whistles showstopper. In the view of the French government scientist played by FranГ§ois Truffaut, Roy Neary is a hero. As played by Dreyfuss, Neary doesnвЂ™t rise to the occasion so much as descend to it, digging himself deeper and deeper into trouble before finally slipping down the mountainside to meet the alien mothership. He makes Neary grey-faced and rumpled and somehow older than his years hot-wired by an obsession he can barely put into words and torching his career and his marriage without so much as a backward glance. Obviously Dreyfuss was the more interesting choice. That would have made it a totally different film вЂ“ the tale of a rugged all-American turned intergalactic pioneer, as opposed to an everyman in mortifying meltdown. How strange to learn that Spielberg actually wanted Steve McQueen to play the role. Richard Dreyfus as Roy Neary, having a Damascene moment. вЂњI guess youвЂ™ve noticed something a little strange with Dad,вЂќ he tells them through the tears. It contained messy homes and messy cars and a psychologically messy hero in electrician Roy Neary (Dreyfuss), who undergoes a Damascene conversion on the backroads of Indiana and returns home a wild-eyed zealot to spook his kids at the dinner table. Except, the first time I saw it, aged eight or so, it seemed impossibly sophisticated, gob-smackingly profound and as much a guide to the perplexing world of adulthood as it was to the galaxies above our heads. Pauline Kael described it as вЂњa kidвЂ™s film in the best senseвЂќ, and she was absolutely right. And it was, for a few years, my absolute favourite movie. Close Encounters was fantastical and mystical and sometimes borderline hysterical. It was, at the time, Columbia PicturesвЂ™ highest-grossing blockbuster, and it proved the director of Jaws was no flash in the pan.

C lose Encounters of the Third Kind is Steven SpielbergвЂ™s family-sized late-70s UFO drama, starring Richard Dreyfuss as a midwestern Joe Schmoe who sees coloured lights in the sky and starts sculpting his mashed-potato into the shape of Devils Tower in Wyoming.

I like to keep this for close encounters