Link: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Summary: After a man sees a small group of UFOs, he become obsessed with trying to understand a mysterious vision of a mountain.

Thoughts: I had never seen this classic Spielberg film before.  Although the effects are quite obviously dated, the film looked great on blu-ray.  I especially loved the look of the mothership UFO at the end, along with John Williams’s classic well-known score for this film.  The filmmaking was masterful; it’s very easy to get drawn into the mysteriousness of what the UFOs are doing as different characters take different approaches to trying to figure it out, our poor main character driven to the edges of his sanity in the process.

Overall, though, I’m not quite sure I understand what it’s all about.  Why exactly did these aliens come?  What are they doing?  What is the government trying to do with them?  What are the main character’s intentions as he walks onto the spaceship at the end?  I didn’t understand the film’s ending at all.

Still, it’s a fun film.  It was easy to get drawn into, and there’s something very engaging about the pacing and tempo of the whole thing, it just sucks you in like a catchy piece of music.  Which only makes the bizarre answer-less ending all the more annoying.