Mud Songs

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is one of the best science fiction films ever made, and worth revisiting if you haven’t seen it for a long time. Steven Speilberg’s directorial style quickly became what you might call obvious later in his career, but in this early film he allows plenty of room for interpretation. He shows us but doesn’t tell us anything. The final encounter with the aliens is spectacular and mysterious (communicating through music is pretty darn cool). Too bad they don’t make movies like this anymore.

From Ebert’s review: “The modern heist movie was invented in Paris in 1954 by Jules Dassin, with ‘Rififi,’ and Jean-Pierre Melville, with ‘Bob le Flambeur.’ Dassin built his film around a 28-minute safe-cracking sequence that is the father of all later movies in which thieves carry out complicated robberies… Francois Truffaut [called 'Rififi'] the best film noir he’d ever seen.”