Close Encounters of the Third Kind is the "other"
late 1970s movie directed by Steven Spielberg, the other, of course being Jaws.
This movie was actually Spielberg's passion project that he wanted to make
before Jaws, but he was able to get Jaws financed first, which then allowed him
to make this movie. Close Encounters is a movie about aliens, essentially
dramatizing all the alien abduction and alien encounters that people alleged to
have had back in the days before we were all walking around with cameras. And,
it partly plays off distrust of the government after Watergate by involving a
government cover-up. The movie is basically told from a couple different
perspectives. That of government agents who are discovering strange occurrences
throughout the world (like finding planes that had been missing since the 1940s
mysteriously reappearing) and then those of normal people who have encounters
with the alien ships.
The film stars Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary, an electrical
worker who has one of the encounters with the ships while he is out trying to
deal with power outages caused by the alien ships. He then becomes obsessed
with trying to find the aliens, leading him to try to get to Devil's Tower in
Wyoming. The rest of the cast includes Bob Balaban (who also starred in 2010 a
few years later), Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, and Cary Guffey. Dillon
plays Guffey's mother who also has an encounter with the aliens and joins up
with Roy to get to Devil's Tower.
For those who get the 4k UHD set, there are actually three
discs. The UHD disc has three different versions of the movie, the theatrical
cut, an enhanced version that upgrades the special effects and makes some minor
edits that Spielberg would have liked to do had he not been under a time crunch
to finish the movie. Then there is a director's cut, which is basically a
different version of the enhanced version taking out a scene that the studio
wanted to add when they agreed to make the enhanced version that Spielberg did
not think should be included. Each of the cuts are around the same length and
tells the same story. Neither the enhanced cut or the director's cut alters the
story in any significant way. The UHD disc also allows you to play the other
editions in a "View From Above" mode that provides details about the differences
between the theatrical version of the movie and the version you are currently
watching.
Then, there are two regular Blu-Ray discs. One that has the
movies and one that has the extras. There are well over two hours’ worth of
extras, some of which were made sometime around 2016-2017 for the 40th
anniversary of the movie, and others that were the original behind-the-scenes
material shot around the time the movie was released. There are also deleted
scenes, storyboard comparisons, a stills gallery, and the theatrical trailer.
So, if you like going through extras, the physical discs are a good pickup. The
A/V quality of the UHD disc is good, but I would not say I was blown away by
the restoration. It does look a lot better than the standard definition footage
shown in the extras, but the UHD format does, especially in the theatrical
edition, highlight the limitations of 1977 special effects.
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