Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

[Edgy MD]

Roy is a lineman for the county. Juggling job and family pressures, he gets called out late one night when the whole power grid is on the fritz. Lost in the dark, he has a strange interaction with a bright light, and thereafter begins driving his family bonkers with his visions of a big butte. An enormous butte.

Could a massive government coverup conspiracy be underway?

In limited release.

[MFS62]

I gave it 3 1/2 stars.
Better than I thought it would be, but less than I had wanted it to be when I first saw it, mainly because of the pace.
After the movie, I gave up mashed potatoes for baked.

Later

[Guest Mets Willets Point]

I like big buttes.

[RealityChuck]

Still a good movie, but at the final scene, I wanted to shout, "It's a cookbook!"

[youtube:340241wp]vdl24bLAs1k?t=22m10s[/youtube:340241wp]

[Benjamin Grimm]

When it first came out, I was "meh" (to use a stupid word that didn't exist then). I was 14 and it didn't really capture my imagination. (Neither did Star Wars, for that matter.) The second time I saw it was decades later, and probably due in large part to reduced expectations, I liked it a little bit more. But I still mostly found it unsatisfying.

[Frayed Knot]

I wasn't a big fan either - especially not after I saw it twice right after it opened.
First was with my entire batch of siblings figuring it was good for all ages. It may have been the only time we ever did that and I seem to remember the younger set liking it more than the older (we would
have ranged from 8 - 19 at the time).
Then, about a week or two later, my sister closest in age to me complained that I never went out with her friends (we traveled in different circles) so I should go to the movies with them.
I forget what that group was going to see but it was only after getting in the car that I was informed that the group had changed their minds and were going to 'Close Encounters' instead as several had
yet to see it. This time didn't bother me as much as I slept through most of it.

The other thing I remember about it was it was re-released some years later with a re-cut ending and maybe some other changes, a change which (in my memory anyway) was greeted with mostly
critical acclaim as it supposedly cleaned-up some of the muddled scenes and whatnot, all of which brought me to wonder where all those critics were who were praising the movie the first time around
and were only now calling out the flaws in the original. Shit, I was saying those things all along only to be called a cro-magnon for not liking it the first time.


Maybe I'd think differently I saw it again (never have since those first two - well, 1-1/2 - times) although I'm not heading to a theatre a third time just to find out.

[metsmarathon]

this is a movie which, while i'm sure i've seen all of it in parts, i'm not entirely certain that i've watched it all the way through in one sitting. i was a mere babe when it was originally released, and i don't think i ever saw it in theaters, resultantly.

[Guest Mets Willets Point]

I think it's been about 35 years since I last watched this. I remember liking it at the time. I always like Richard Dreyfuss and Terri Garr.