Predating Alien, E.T., Independence Day and the underrated War of the Worlds re-make, Close Encounters of the Third Kind might be the outer space movie of the last three decades. So, of course, here's Sony trying to cash in, just in time for holiday gift-giving, with a thirtieth-anniversary box set of Steven Spielberg's second blockbuster. As a follow-up to 1975's Jaws, Spielberg wrote and directed this position paper on how to be a good neighbor — even when your neighbors are long-armed, big-eyed, big-headed weirdoes from far away. Another look at the movie years after the fact serves as a reminder of several things. For one, there really was a time when Richard Dreyfuss, who starred in Jaws and Close Encounters back-to-back, was one of the biggest stars on the map.
Close Encounters foreshadows the movies Spielberg would make in the coming years. It's showy — for the mid-'70s, the visual effects are pretty nice — it's far from intellectually challenging, and it's as sentimental as a high-school yearbook. In the middle is a smart depiction of a family that's dying because the father figure (Dreyfuss) can't think about anything but the space vessels he saw jetting across the Indiana sky. He even builds a model — a big one, right in the kitchen — of the confusing abstractions he keeps seeing in his dreams. He's an ordinary guy with an obsession that makes him, finally, worth watching. — Kevin Canfield
DVD EXTRAS: This set features three discs — the original movie, the "special edition" and the director's cut. They're not really very different; the shortest version is two hours and twelve minutes, the longest two hours and seventeen minutes. A scene in the director's cut shows the interior of the big spaceship, in case you've spent a generation wondering what it looks like. The set also includes a booklet with photos and cast facts — yes, that's Francois Truffaut — and a reproduction of the original advertising poster.
