(May Contain Mild Spoilers) Close Encounters of the Nastiest Kind

Rating: 7/10 (4 July 2005)

Literally the other side of "Close Encounters", this film uses many of the same techniques as did that film to work on our emotions and forebodings.
I consider this Spielberg's best genre film since "Jaws", and for much the same reasons -- he delivers the scares and the gotchas with verve and precision.
The plot is a bit slight, but the point of films like this -- and of Wells' original novel -- is more to portray the collapse (or not) of civilisation on a broad canvas; in fact, i believe that there may well be MORE "human-interest" type plot in this film than in the novel.
My biggest gripes are the sorts of gripes i always have with a Spielberg film -- his inability to stand back and let the situation or action carry its own weight, the need to "punch" it up, to play on our emotions, or to force the plot rather than allowing it to develop it naturally.
Thus, in, for instance, "Close Encounters", the REAL reason ROy Neary throws dirt in the window is that Spielberg's plot requires his wife to leave and Spielberg doesn't have the time or patience to come up with a good reason. In "Schindler's List", the little girl in the middle of the B&W cinematography is there to point up the pathos of the whole thing and to twist our emotions a little more.
There are several such moments in this film -- all of which completely defy logic and violate reality in scenes when the director should be trying his hardest to make it look realer than real so that when the stuff that's flatly NOT real turns up, it will SEEM more nearly real because of the surrounding reality.
Also, sadly, there are a couple of scenes where the effects -- mostly "practical" effects rather than special effects like CGI -- fail to stand up to the rest of the film, and one important sequence looked to me like one of the worst-executed "outdoor" soundstage sets in the last twenty years.
And, of course, the film demonstrates Hollywood's complete inability to understand anything remotely technical, in its portrayal of the effects of EMP.
ALl of which said, i didn't feel at all as if i had wasted my $5.50 senior-citizen ticket money.